Week in Review

This week in review:

We had a good Family Home Evening on Monday that our oldest conducted. We watched the old film about the First Vision and talked about it's significance. It was one of the better ones we've had in a while, in my opinion because we had about five minutes of peace and good discussion.
For this day and all other days this week most of it was about learning more Indonesian: trying so hard to do the homework and listening labs and keep pace. I am not able to spend as much time as I want to sit down and memorize more words. There are so many words that I recognize and should know but have not yet become part of me. Hopefully this will come sooner than later.

On Tuesday we had a film about the crazy time in Indonesia when power changed hands from Sukarno to Suharto and then a lecture from someone who worked for the US Government in Jakarta during that time and later served as ambassador to Indonesia. It was very interesting and informative.

On Wednesday, I had a scheduled break from language training to do "administrative work." I decided that this would be a good time to put in our passport applications for the children since they all had an early out day and they have to be there in person. We trekked down to DC for the task after getting everyone from school. I thought it would be faster to go by car and park nearby and we made it in about 20 minutes. Parking the car reminded me of the movie "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" when he drives up to the parking garage and the attendant takes the key and tells him he'll take good care of it then proceeds to take it for a joy ride. The obvious difference here is that I wasn't worried about them taking our old minivan for a joy ride, so I left the car with the attendants. I then saw across the street in big letters, "Passport Office," and was happy that it was so easy to find. After waiting in line for a little while we realized that they did not have the ability to do photos there, (we thought they would at this particular office), so we left and went down the street to get them for everyone and returned to find the line had grown. After finally arriving at the window, we were asked if we had an appointment, (the answer was no), and found out that that office is for issuing expedited passports for people who need them within days and that the office we were looking for that accepts applications for special passports like the ones we were applying for is in the office building we were in upstairs. Frustrated from going to the wrong place and waiting so long, but grateful that we were now on the right track we went to the right office, which was also much nicer and much less crowded. We put in our applications and photos for 10 passports, (a diplomatic passport for each member of the family plus a regular tourist passport for each of the children), with a very patient and methodical employee. The great news is that the kids were relatively well behaved, their pictures are pretty good, and we got it done!

Thursday and Friday were more intensive language study days. Then after work on Friday, Amy picked me up from work and we drove straight from there to Gettysburg, PA. Because of traffic it took us more than 3 hours instead of less than 2. But we made it and swam in the hotel pool which was a fun experience since we had to get our swimsuits on and run across the parking lot in the cold to get to the building with the pool. We were the only ones in there the whole hour we were there. We had a good time even though the kids were complaining a little about the hotel being older. We tried to explain that there are not many places that will take 6 people in a room and wondered when they became hotel critics. Hmmm....

Saturday we had a lot of fun. We went to the Gettysburg Visitors Center and watched a film and saw a "cyclorama" of the battle and also took a look at the other exhibits. We then went on the auto tour and up the lookout towers. It was a nice day and interesting. We then drove up to Hershey, PA and went to Hershey's Chocolate World. They have a free ride that tells about Hershey and their chocolate and has some really corny music and chocolate candy at the end. Our kids liked it and wanted to go more than once. We also did a chocolate tasting that was pretty fun where we tried different kinds of chocolates: listening to the sound it makes when broken, smelling it, letting it melt on your tongue and describing the different characteristics it exhibits. We also learned a little about the different chocolate contents and different types of beans and where they're from. We had a good meal that night and then swam in that hotel's pool, which also required running outside in our swimsuits.

We came home this morning, a 2 1/2 hour drive, and went to church in the Young Single Adult ward in our stake for sacrament meeting because Amy and I had to give a talk in that ward.

What a week!