Variety is the spice of life

Monday was Labor Day. Since I work for the U.S. Government I get U.S. holidays off work. We took advantage of the day to go outside of town to a park "Taman Safari" where you can have a Jurassic Park-like experience driving through electrified enclosures with wild animals wandering all around. The one with the very dangerous animals like bears, lions, and tigers had double gates, electric wires we drove over, and signs letting us know we should not roll down our windows or get out of the car. I couldn't help but think about the movie and all of the problems that happened when they got out and the animals mixed that weren't supposed to and I wasn't arguing. It was a really fun experience. After that we even rode an elephant and a camel, watched white tigers eat chicken while we ate, got pictures with live animals, and saw a couple of shows including one where some owls swooped down to scoop up live mice and eat them.
Tuesday and Wednesday were work as usual, and usual has been very busy lately. I stayed extra late one day to try to get some things done and only took a little chunk out of it. On Tuesday night we had two of the full-time missionaries for our church over to have dinner with us. It's great to have them over.
On Thursday I got to fly to a nearby island to visit an american in jail to make sure all is well, make contact, etc. It was awesome to be able to do this. I expected to just go in and meet with him for a while and maybe talk a little with the police, but shortly after I got there I was sitting in the office of the head of the police with about 5 others from the force like the detective and investigator, the american and a friend of the american. Then they all just turned to me to start. I had to come up with something fast. They were very nice and accommodating. Part of the fun of it is the challenges along the way. We had a couple of power outages, the places to eat near the police station were closed because everyone else was fasting for Ramadan, there was a huge rainstorm that made it nearly impossible to hear the person sitting next to me and the storm also caused a delay for my flight home causing me to leave at about 9 pm instead of 5 pm.
On Friday and Saturday I got to relax with my family since I didn't have to work because it's one of the biggest Indonesian holidays of the year. I drove, yes I drove, our family to the mall. (The driving and steering wheel are on the opposite side from the U.S., traffic is heavy and they don't really look at lines.) Luckily, the only issue was whenever I went to turn on my blinker I flipped the left side which made the wipers go on. We went for a tiring, sweaty walk in the heat of the day to a restaurant that ended up being closed but made it good by picking up some ice cream at a little store near our home. We played a couple of games of Monopoly. We also went out to the school field near our home at night to play tag, a modified version of capture the flag, and have skipping races around the track. We had fun.

Sunday was also a little different since I was sustained to be the Young Men's President in our ward. Later I was set apart, which is the first time I have been set apart to anything all in Indonesian. And I went to the YM meeting. Luckily the outgoing president was willing to still teach the lesson he had prepared. I might be in trouble very soon since my Indonesian still leaves a lot to be desired. I am just relying on the blessing during the setting apart that my Indonesian would be smooth so I could do my calling.
I've always said I like variety and this week certainly had it.