The Well Rounded Mama

A Little Bit Asian

I remember that when we first moved in India back in 2000, we were surprised to see all the families riding on motorbikes. It wasn't uncommon to see two, three, four, or even five people on ONE bike. That's just how it is there.  People don't own cars and so if you need to get somewhere and you are fortunate enough to own a bike, you take your bike. I remember thinking that those people were totally crazy.

It doesn't surprise us anymore.  Motorbikes are EVERYWHERE (in India and here in Indonesia). I remember when I checked out of the hospital after having Alaina and I got into a taxi and the lady from the room next to me got onto a motorbike with her newborn! Often we see families riding around, kids sleeping, and even mothers nursing on a motorbike! Yea, it doesn't surprise us anymore and I have to admit I think we have become a little bit Asian.  You judge for yourself.

And yes, we HAVE a car.  But Jason prefers to buy groceries this way.  At least traffic is so congested that they can't actually go very fast on the bike. 

The Road to our House

Having lived in a developing country for seven of the past ten years, I know we have it pretty good here.  Our power almost never goes out, bottled water is easy to find, we don't have to boil our milk, we have a constant water supply, we can buy chocolate chips and cheese, we can drink Starbucks and eat at Pizza Hut and McDonalds.  When we lived in India...well, that was a different story.  Three hours to our nearest pizza place.  About 8 hours to our nearest McDonalds.  Drinking milk consisted of boil, simmer, repeat x3.  We had to boil our "filtered" water due to the unhealthy upkeep of the water tanks.  We didn't have water at least one day a week and had to store up enough to make it through the day -- all the while dishes piled up, toilets only got flushed when absolutely necessary, and we had to be careful about not wasting water that could be used for drinking.  I won't even go into the time we had to drink the swimming pool.  Oh yes. Life is good here.  Not as nice as our two years in Malaysia, but hey, that's what spring break is for.

I am VERY aware that life here in Bandung, Indonesia is actually pretty nice.  People coming straight from the States might be in shock, but for us, well, we just don't mind.  We realize we are blessed, life is relatively easy, and we are happy.

Except...this incessant rain.  Rain, rain, rain.  That is all it has done since September and if the mold and leaks in our house don't drive me to the brink of insanity, I know what will: THE ROAD TO OUR HOUSE.  Let's take a photo tour of the road we have to take each and every day to get to and from our home.

This is what our road looks like.  In the mornings, the holes are "filled" with rocks, dirt, and leaves (with boys who are doing the work standing in the road collecting donations).  In the afternoon, the heavens open up and the rains pour and all the hole-filling is a distant memory. Come with me on our trip home yesterday afternoon.  This is the last kilometer or two of road before we reach home. I think we need an all-terrain vehicle.  And please excuse the somewhat blurry photos...it is a rather bumpy ride!

A small patch of smooth road, just moments before our turn off

This is where we turn (to the left).  If we had to keep going, we would be back to the roadless road

The security station in front of our neighborhood...ah, to be home! 

         
       

A Weekend Away

Part of Jason's job as Athletic Director is to travel with the teams for their annual tournaments. This past weekend the basketball teams traveled 12 hours in a bus to Salatiga, home of Mountainview International Christian School. There, a number of smaller English speaking schools from around Indonesia gathered for a weekend of sport and fellowship.  For the first time, I traveled with Jason and the teams.  I have always wanted to go in the past, but between me nursing all last year and also not having anyone to watch the kids, I never went.  But this time, Jason really wanted me to go and I really had no reason not to -- so I went.  I was anxious about leaving the kids for three days, but I knew they would be fine and the time away with my hubby would be good.  And...I love seeing new places.

Although I don't think most people enjoyed the 12 hour bus ride, I was in pure bliss.  Twelve straight hours of being awake + having no demands placed on me meant 12 hours of reading, listening to music, napping when the urge struck, and talking with other adults.  Bliss for sure.

The rest of the weekend was great (minus the food poisoning experienced by about ten of our players/coaches/fans).  The town of Salatiga is beautiful and I LOVED the small town feel.  A town of 175,000 may not sound small, but when you live on Java -- one of the most densely populated places on the planet -- and you live in a city of 4 million people, a small town of 175,000 is heavenly!  I just loved walking around, seeing the people and the homes and the shops.  I love small towns!

Being away from the kids was hard and I spent considerable amount of time sitting at the playground watching lots of little kids play, but I have to admit that the time away was really good for me.  I spent lots of time reading and thinking and praying and being refreshed and renewed in my goals, both as a mother and as a child of God.  There have been some deep things (good things) going on in my heart the last few months and this was the first opportunity I have had to really try to process them. The highlight was definitely on Saturday night when Jason went to a banquet and I stayed back at the hotel.  I was able to fully prostrate myself before God and enter into an amazing time of prayer -- with little speaking and LOTS of listening.  God is so, so good.

And if being away for a little while was good, coming home was even better!  Jason was given the day off (due to our 3 am arrival home!) and we spent the whole day together as a family.  Lunch with friends, a beautiful drive, lots of wrestling and hugs and kisses...all topped off with a yummy dinner of cinnamon bun pancakes with white maple syrup. Perfection.

Rain Rain, PLEASE Go Away

As I was taking pictures today, I was busy thinking that I was so totally over the rain here.  Having a front and back yard lake after ten minutes of rain isn't really something I asked for.  The rainy season lasts for EIGHT MONTHS...September through April.  And while it is tempting to continue whining about my leaking roof and mold infestation, I realize that I am one of the lucky ones.  This is right here in our town.  Lives are being lost, homes destroyed.  Please, rain, GO AWAY.

Didn't Quite Go As Planned

Not every day goes as planned.  Like yesterday.  Oh...yesterday.

We have been wanting to go see a place called Kawah Putih.  It is another volcano about two hours from where we live.  It has a gorgeous turquoise lake and is supposed to be just a stunning place to visit.  We have been putting it off and we finally decided that yesterday was the day.  Christmas break is coming to an end and needed to do it while we still had the chance.

So we left around 8:30 in the morning and everything was going very well. We decided to have our driver drive us so that Jason could sit in back with the kids. That helped SO much (you know how I feel about driving long distances with kids in the car!)  I sat in the front, read, and only had to intervene with the hooligans in the back a few times.

The drive was beautiful...love all the mountains, rice paddies, and small town.  We started climbing up the mountain through lots of twisty, turny roads.  That is when I learned something very important...

My almost two year old gets very, VERY carsick.

I have never seen so much vomit come out of one person. Never.  And of course, we did not have a change of clothes.  So we stopped at a hotel/restaurant, and did the best we could to get her cleaned up.  But her clothes were no longer an option so we got a spare diaper (her old one was dry -- yea Katie -- but had vomit all over it) and she sat on my lap for the last bit of the trip.  And for those of you who don't live overseas, just get over the shock of her not being in her car seat for a little bit. It will make your life, and mine, easier. We do care greatly for the safety of our children.   The good part of all this was that I got this sweet picture.

A few minutes later we arrived.  They wanted to charge us tourist prices but once again my standby sentence, "Kami tinggal di Indonesia" (we live in Indonesia) got their attention.  After a few questions like, "Berapa lama sudah di Indonesia?" (How long have you been in Indo?) and a few answers, "Hampir dua tahun" (almost two years) our price miraculously dropped to less than half and we were in.

We stepped out of the car and realized we should have taken the comments of, "Oh it's really cold there" more seriously.  But people talk about it being "cold" here a lot and while I AM a wimp when it comes to weather, I don't think that 65 degrees can really be considered COLD. But we stopped out and realized a few sweatshirts and long pants might have been a good idea.

We walked into the park and we got a few glimpses of the gorgeous turquoise (see photo at the beginning of the post) but the boys saw a trail and it was decided that we would hike first. Our two little boys, who just a week ago complained non-stop about a 3 mile walk along a nice paved trail, saw an adventurous trail through the woods and took off without looking back.  To their credit, it was a beautiful trail.

I did get them to stop long enough to attempt a photo.  But they were too busy telling me they were "SUPER HIKERS!"

There was a problem with the hike though -- I was wearing flip flops.  I didn't realize that there was a walk around the volcano and I wasn't quite prepared for the sort-of trail that was there.  We walked for about twenty minutes and then made the family decision that we would turn around and plan for the hike another time.  That turned out the be a VERY good decision because not long after we turned around it started to rain. And rain it did.  By the time we got back to the start of the trail we were SOAKED.  Dripping wet and freezing cold. Katie had been wearing Jason's jacket inside the child backpack and when I peeled that off of her she was cold, wet, and shivering. I sent Jason to go buy an overpriced sweatshirt so I would have something to put on this girl.  Jason then went in search of warm food while the kids sat in the car dripping wet (cars in Indo don't have heat!) munching on Oreos.  She looks cute two inches from my camera lens ;)

The rain didn't let up and we made the decision to go home...without ever seeing the crater.  Another day, I guess.

The ride home was wet and cold to say the least.  It took 30 minutes in a hot shower for me to start to warm up.  At least I was rewarded with a date night and baked potato soup from Tony Roma's.  The day wasn't all bad.

 

A Day Trip with the Hubby

 

With less than a week of school vacation left, Jason and I decided we needed to take the chance to have some time alone while we still can.  It isn't often that we get to spend an entire day together sans kids. It was a last minute decision to go (as in like an hour before we left) but it wasn't hard to know what I wanted to do -- DRIVE.  I love being in the car and I love seeing new places but doing it with kids in the car raises any and all suicidal tendencies I have inside of me.  Our kids are pretty amazing 99% of the time...and then there is the 1% of the time, when we are all in a car together, and let's just say their angelic qualities don't quite shine. So...we rarely go for long car rides.  Unfortunately that means we haven't gotten to see a lot of the sites/towns near us.  There was a town about two hours from us that I have wanted to see, so off we went!

It was a gorgeous drive!  It would have been nicer if it hadn't been so foggy, but still, I love the views!

We had our Indonesia guide book with us and we saw that not far from where we were heading was one of the only Hindu temples in West Java. After three years of living in India, we were naturally curious.  Hindu temples are amazing to look at!    

We found the place and got to take these cool bamboo rafts across a small lake to the island where the temple was

On our way over, we had a lot of laughing and hollering and "Hey Mister!"'s coming from this group of girls ("Hey Mister" is what most Indonesians say to foreigners -- it is often the only English they know and say it to women as well as men.)

View from the dock

When we got to the island we were very surprised that the beautiful temple we were expecting was just this

With a tiny little god inside

So, it wasn't much to see but the experience was worth it.  At least there were some cool trees.

And, if all things work out, all of us will be going to India this summer for three weeks and we'll get to see plenty of cool temples there.  After our three minute look at the temple we walked around the tiny island a bit.  The rice paddies were truly stunning!

Afterward we drove onto the town we wanted to see and visited THE MOST AMAZING hotel EVER...I didn't take pictures but we are trying to make it work to stay there for a night...so stay tuned!

So all in all in was an amazing day out and it is good to remember what we are like as a married couple -- not just co-parents.  AND it was great to see all the amazing sites right near us -- we were only gone for about seven hours and saw so much!  Can't wait to do more of it!