For Steve

I posted!

Juice

Watermelon Juice

This past month we have gone out to eat a couple of times as a family. My children laugh at me a little because I love the watermelon juice so much. They laugh that I say, "It's so refreshing." But really, it is sooo refreshing. One of the things i love about living in Indonesia is being able to order fruit drinks every time I go anywhere to eat. It is really great to have fresh juice and so many different types, not just apple and orange. My favorites are the ones that are just the fruit all blended up into a juice. This is how the watermelon comes out. It's not watermelon flavored, but actual watermelon juice. It's so refreshing, I can't think of many things better. (Wait, I think I already said that.) I thought very briefly about the problems I might cause by ordering juice when water had already been ordered for our children, but I just had to have some juice for myself. So I just plunged right in to whatever consequences might result, knowing that the juice was exactly what I needed at that moment. It was so much what I needed that I ordered another.

I also like this one - Avocado Juice

August flies by

Kids at the Charity Iftar eating

August has been busy with lots of visa interviews, a visit to Manado, and trying to find time to write my "EER". We also celebrated our first and only Indonesian National Independence Day on August 17th. There have been several opportunities for me to attend Iftars. During the month of Ramadan where Muslims fast during the daylight hours, some gather at the end of the day with family or others to break their fast with food and prayer. Our consulate holds a few of these and invites political, religious, or other leaders or students to join for different events. I went to one that was a charity Iftar with my family. We donated money towards gifts, food, and supplies for a school that provides education to children from poor families and then went to break the fast with them, hear their presentations, and give them what we brought. We went to one last year when we had just newly arrived, too. They are a highlight.
On August 17th we had a branch activity where we celebrated the Independence Day (66 years) and the birth month of the Primary (a lot more years). We had a good time. Our children dressed in some traditional clothing and modeled it with the other primary kids and then showed their talents. Our girls shared poems and baked goods. Our youngest played the piano in a last minute entry. (He had told us earlier that he would not be doing anything and we couldn't convince him otherwise, but he decided on his own while there that he could play something he had memorized.)
My EER is my yearly employee evaluation. It's a big deal since it's what is used to determine whether I get tenured and promoted. It is a challenge to write since I need examples from the past year that are good but it also has a word limit. It requires precise wording and a careful choosing of what you will put in and what you will not. My supervisor has a section and the principle officer (her boss) has a section and I have a section. I provided information to all and my proposed changes, etc. I have also been getting advice from others to help me make it good.

View across the sea to volcano "Old Manado"

Mt. Lokon still steaming

At the Yesus Memberkati Monument in Manado

The gas hose is going from the pump THROUGH the van 

A couple weeks back I went on a trip to Manado in North Sulawesi. This area of Indonesia is mostly populated with Christians, unlike a lot of Indonesia. It was different seeing churches instead of mosques but most things were pretty much the same. While there I ate sate (like a little shish-kabob) made from something that lives in the water and is like some kind of clam but in a shell more like a snail. I also got to do some pretty exciting things (besides working 10-12 hour days) like meet the governor of North Sulawesi and attend an event at his mansion. Before I came home I even had a chance to go out on a boat with a glass bottom and see the coral and fish in the coral and jump in the sea with goggles and a snorkel to explore around the coral. It was amazing.

The captain of our ship leading the way

Oh, I climbed with climbing ropes on an indoor climbing wall for the first time in my life yesterday. It was fun, but I spent most of my time "belaying" for all of my kids to climb. They had a good time, too.

Before eating a fish head

After eating the fish head!!

Summertime 2

In the month since I've been back in Surabaya, I have mostly been very occupied with work.
We are extremely busy during the summertime with tourists and people wanting to visit the US for various reasons. There is also a lot more to do when others are out on vacations or travel or transferring to other posts, which usually also happens in the summertime.

Monk

At work for me, this time is also busy because my first employee evaluation is due in August, 1 year after I arrived. This requires a lot of thinking and is critical to my being able to stay in the foreign service in the future, which I definitely want to do.
I am happy to say that after a couple of weeks being by myself in a too quiet home and watching Monk during dinner every night, that my family has returned. It has been amazing having them back. We are now busy getting ready for the kids to start school and planning ahead for the times they are out of school so I can take vacation time wisely.

At Kenjaran in Surabaya

When I have been home with my family we have played games, watched movies, gone to the mall and out to eat, and so on. One special treat since they have not been in school is that each one of my children has come to lunch with me at work once. I loved having them do that. They are all awesome kids.
I have also had fun with a new Ipod touch and I upgraded our internet recently, too.
This month is also Ramadan here in Indonesia so we'll have events like Iftars during the month and then a break at the end of the month when it ends.
Time sure flies!

Summertime

Okay, so I guess I need to do another long update since it's been a long time since the last post.


The week after the last post was extremely busy at work due to people being out and high-level visitors in town for government meetings. I was involved in these and also trying to get things ready to go on vacation to the states. We left to the U.S. where I spent 2 weeks of vacation time with my family and a week of training in DC before coming back to Surabaya.
It was time well spent. I had a great time in Utah which made it a little hard to come back, particularly since my family was still there.

Things I did while in Utah:

• Temple session in Salt Lake Temple
• Temple session in American Fork Temple with my wife, we were the  witness couple and my Dad officiated
• Baptisms for the dead in Salt Lake Temple with my son and nephew
• Completed the Ragnar Relay, over 190 miles for our team of 12

• Freedom Run 10K with my son
• Timponogos Cave with my family and my brother and his family
• Fishing with my parents and a couple brothers and family - I caught a big trout

• Set off fireworks
• Watched parades, one in Provo and one in Lehi
• Swimming
• Went to the Manti Pageant with family and friends
• Sleeping in tent in Manti and battled mosquitoes
• Saw and slept at my wife's sister's nice new house in Provo
• In Utah for the birth of my new nephew, who I got to hold a few times
• Helped lay sod at my brother's
• Mowed my parent’s lawn a couple times
• Had a barbeque and home-made ice cream
• Watched "Uptown Saturday Night"
• Bought new laptop battery
• Got some new clothes
• Bought a new pair of shoes

• Attended the temple sealing of friends from Salt Lake in the Salt Lake Temple
• Ate sister-in-law's homemade salsa - mmmm
• Slept in numerous places, including: parent’s bed, parent’s guest bed, in driver’s seat of rental van, on floor of North Summit High School gym, in tent in friends’ backyard in Manti, in sister-in-law's new house on daybed, in father-in-law’s guest bed, in hotel in DC, in wife’s cousin’s home on air mattress, and of course on the airplane
• Went to DelTaco drive through for ½ lb. bean and cheese burrito with green sauce
• Had ice cream from BYU creamery
• Went on tour of Welfare square with family
• Attended church at parent’s ward, brother’s ward, sister-in-law’s ward
• Kids won ice cream and hamburger from gumball machine in restaurant in Manti
• Played board game with brother and friends
• Played phase ten with friends and a million mosquitoes in Manti
• Sunday dinner and chatting with wife’s family
• Ride up American Fork Canyon to a reservoir and Jeep ride
• Shakes from Dairy Keen in Heber and Iceberg in Alpine
• Saw Whitehouse and Renwick Gallery in DC
• Experienced near freezing temperatures and 90+ degree weather (a little)
• Spent almost 50 hours actually in the air, not counting time in-between flights, at the gate, going through security and getting to/from the airport
• Went through about 10 security checks at airports.
• Drove thousands of miles in rental van
• Watched Movies in the theater - Kung Fu Panda 2, 17 Miracles
• Went to Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point
• Went as a family to Boondocks - played LaserTag, Miniature Golf, Video games together

Am I forgetting something?

It was exhausting and fun and refreshing. Can't wait until next summer!

Update

Time for an update and to catch up a little.


Week of April 17-24

Huge grains of sand in Lombok

Almost like quicksand

- Had a good time taking a couple of days and the weekend to go to Lombok and also celebrate my daughter's birthday. It was Easter weekend and we had a good time at the beach, eating at new places together, having an Easter egg hunt and watching some DVD's we had just purchased. I loved the sand at this beach, it was in large round grains instead of small squarish ones and it was white. Even in the heat of the day it felt fine on bare feet and was pretty soft. We watched some DVD's about the history of the United States of America and felt very proud to be Americans.

Week of April 24-May 1

Madura Education Outreach at Public School

The first 3 days of this week I had to go out of town for Education Outreach to Madura. Madura is an island that is right off of the island of Java, where I live, that has it's own history and culture and language separate from Java. For a couple of years now there has been a bridge that connects it to Surabaya, so it only takes a little while to get there and took me a couple of hours to get to the city where I was starting the three days of outreach. Every morning and afternoon I went to public schools or pesantrens, Islamic boarding schools, to talk to them about education in the United States. Every time I have done one of these I have been treated like I'm some kind of rock star; all the kids want to say hi, shake my hand, get their pictures with me, etc. It's pretty fun. It can also be a lot of work and sometimes I get asked by people questions that I have to use all my skill to answer. Some of them are a little easier to answer like one I got from one of the leaders of the Islamic community in Madura about something he read that said that the U.S. needed a new enemy after the fall of communism and so it chose Islam and he wondered if that is true. This one was easy to answer not true, but the idea behind it that even leads them to consider something so absurd also needed to be addressed. This is one of the reasons we do outreach.

Good times doing outreach in Madura

May 1st was my wedding anniversary and my wife and I just spent some time together but didn't go anywhere special. I am happy to be with her and think she is the most awesome person. We spent the day at a district conference for our church, which was kind of a treat because it was different from our normal Sundays.

Week of May 1-8
The great thing about this week was that near the end of the week my parents came for a visit and over the weekend my daughter was baptized! We were all very excited to have them come and felt very honored to have them here for our daughter's baptism. We didn't think they would be able to make it and had reconciled ourselves to that so when they did actually come we were so grateful and excited.
My daughter's baptism was great. There was another young boy of the other counselor in our branch presidency who was also baptized at the same time. So we did the baptism and confirmation in English and they did it in Indonesian. It was a great experience and even better since my parents were there.
Oh yeah, and the 8th was also Mother's day and I had my mom with me! Happy Mother's Day to her and my awesome wife, who is a great, hardworking, smart mother.

We hope the tiger's sedated

Week of May 8-15

Throw me a banana!

This week was really busy at work but I don't remember much else besides having fun with my parents in the evenings. They couldn't stay awake very easily after the sun went down, and it goes down at 5:30 pm! On Saturday we went to Taman Safari together and had a good time seeing the animals and spending time with each other. We also got to see the mud flow on the way down; it's a huge area that was covered in tons and tons of hot mud from inside the earth, whole villages destroyed, after a company drilled in the area and something went wrong. Too bad it rained at Taman Safari the day we were there and some things were cancelled. But we were able to stay for the new night show based on Indiana Jones. They conned us in to sitting in the front row and were kind enough to ask if the children were afraid of explosions and that if they were that we should move. All of the kids said that they were not afraid of explosions, or eruptions, would be a better translation. Anyway, about halfway through the show I understood why they were smiling when they asked about it after water erupted from a "water well" on the set and came down right on us. It kept coming and coming and coming. It must have gone on for a full minute. We were completely soaked and did not, of course, dry off at all. Made for something interesting to laugh about later.

Week of May 15-22

Golfing

I had a day off this week for an Indonesian holiday so we celebrated my birthday and did some things with my parents. Thank you family for making my birthday celebration a good one. My dad and I got professional massages, a first for both of us, we hit some golf balls with two of my children, and then we all went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants and had the missionaries come along. It was a very memorable time. I had no idea that it would take an hour to massage my neck and shoulders, which is what I ordered. They also massaged my back, head, a little on my arms and legs, hands and feet. They popped all my fingers and toes! When I was getting my back/shoulders massaged it was all I could do not to scream out in pain since they press so hard and keep going on the same spot. Even though it seemed to help my muscles it makes me think twice about going again. Owww!
It was hard to see my parents go since the time seemed to go so fast, but it helped knowing that it wouldn't be a really long time before we saw them again. I think it is helpful for them to have spent some time with us to see where and how we are living so they can understand us, especially my children, better. I'm so glad they came.

Love in Jakarta

At the end of this week we took a special trip and went to Jakarta as a family. We had some fun together on Saturday and it seemed like everyone liked Jakarta. It's a huge city and you can find anything there. We did have to stay at a budget hotel since it is nearly impossible to find a hotel that will let 6 people stay in one room. We had to book 3 rooms! They almost gave us 2 on one floor and one on another until I pressed them to change it since there are only 2 adults in the family. We were supposed to have connecting rooms, but they gave those away somehow before we checked in. At least we were on the same floor! We had a good time seeing some friends who just arrived in Jakarta and going to Kidzania on Saturday. Then on Sunday we had a special treat being a part of an historic day for the Church in Indonesia. Elder Bednar of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came and organized the first stake in Indonesia! We felt how significant and special it was to be in that meeting, even though it didn't affect the branch or city where we live since it only includes West Java and Jakarta. But it was a good meeting and a good experience for our children. We are very happy for those who now have the blessings of wards and a stake in Indonesia.

May 22-29
My family went home Sunday night and I transferred myself to another hotel closer to the Embassy and then stayed the whole week to work in the consular section at the Embassy. I wanted to forge a closer connection to the officers and section there in Jakarta since we need to work with them frequently and don't want to be forgotten. I hoped to pick some things up that would help our section now and in the future and perhaps give them some help also, which I think was accomplished. It also was a fun experience staying at the hotel where I stayed. That was an amazing hotel, the Mandarin Oriental. I could go on and on about how nice it was, but I really enjoyed the room, the view, the bed and pillows, the desk space to work on, the friendly service, the cool gym equipment and workouts I had there, and the cool "rainshower" shower. I definitely want to go back. But I was happy to get back home after being there for a week and see my family again.
On Sunday I had to teach a lesson about temples for our combined Priesthood/Relief Society 5th Sunday meeting. I think I was tagged for it, even though it may have been a struggle for everyone to listen to my imperfect Indonesian, because I have been to the temple way more than anyone in the entire branch since the closest one to here is in either Philippines, Hong Kong or Australia, which are all very far and expensive to get to. I was happy to do it and there were some good questions, and a lot of hope that someday there will be a temple in Indonesia since there is a stake here now.

May 29-June 5 (today)
The greatest part of this week is that there were 2 holidays, one U.S. and one Indonesian. So I worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday. It felt like I had a lot of Saturdays: Saturday the 28th, Monday, Thursday, and Saturday the 4th. All of them felt like a Saturday and it was nice. But the days I had work, work was extremely busy and will be for the next little while. There certainly is not even a second of sitting around; it's a challenge even to keep on top of things. Even though it is really challenging and there are some extremely frustrating and not-fun things, I still think I have one of the greatest jobs ever. I really like it. Anyway time has really been flying.

To me it's pretty easy to see why I have missed so many weeks writing in the blog. Hopefully it won't go this long in the future since there is already so much I leave out. Good times.

New Normal

Lately I keep thinking about my "new normal."
It's things like how I feel cold if I'm in an air-conditioned building for too long and need to go back outside to warm up. Or how I never think about the weather anymore except to notice when it's raining, but not really about any forecast. The only time all the motorcycles and different roads and traffic seem strange is at times like these when I'm really thinking about it. I don't blink an eye about seeing a palm tree, they're everywhere! I kill spiders now (almost) without any hesitation. The open buildings here where inside and outside space really seem to blend is also barely noticeable. My wife mentioned the other day how she marks time differently and has a hard time now comparing when something happened here compared to previous years because there used to be seasons where here there isn't much change, except more rainy or more dry. Our months are all getting mixed up.

Kahyangan Restaurant

Also part of my new normal is my kids growing up. We went to a swim meet much of the day Saturday. It was pretty fun to watch but a lot of sitting around, too. It was fun to see my child compete. Hope he had fun.
My wife and I went to a restaurant by ourselves that night. (That is also a new thing with our children getting older. We can leave them at home sometimes.) They put us in the corner of the restaurant, which is pretty much all outside, in a little hut with pads to lean on, sitting on the floor, fish swimming around underneath and around us. It was awesome having a nice quiet corner to ourselves. I ordered some baked fish and rice and we shared some mango juice and had a good time talking. This is the kind of normal I hope will always be.