Rats!

The exiting thing last week was that we found out what has been making noise in our ceiling for a couple of months. We all had our guesses: a mouse, a bird, a lizard, a gecko, nothing. But we had a trap put up there to catch whatever it was (someone went up before that to take a look and told us it was a small tikus, which could be a big mouse or a small rat). Anyway, as you may guess by the title, it was a small rat. The great part about it is that it does not wake us up at night anymore and we don't hear anything scratching around up there anymore. The bad part is that it sat in a cage in front of my house before someone came to take it away and kill it! The bad part about that is that I went to look at it and I thought it was kind of cute in it's own way. It definitely has beady eyes! Anyway, that was about the most exiting thing to happen around here and is still a topic of conversation for us.

The actual rat, and a random snail friend in the corner.

Now the only thing we hear in our ceiling is an occasional drip from the rain. It's rainy season here right now, which does not mean that it is cold. The temperature is pretty much the same as always. The difference is that usually every day it rains for a couple of hours in the early afternoon, maybe again around sundown, and then often during the night. The ground is always wet and mud is abundant. Sometimes we have floods when the rain is particularly heavy which makes traffic even slower. It took me 1 1/2 hours to get home from work a couple of times last week. If there isn't much traffic, like on a holiday, it only takes about 1/2 hour for me to get to work. Most of the vehicles on the road are motorcycles and the rain doesn't stop anyone from driving them. They just put on their rain gear, take off their shoes or sandals and sometimes even drive with their feet up high on the stem  of the bike below the handle bars. Motor bikes still get around faster than the cars since they weave in and out of traffic and cars, not just down the lane between cars but also between the cars as in the tiny space between the back of one car and the front of another until they're at the front of the light. Many of them then don't even wait for the light if there is one and just go if there is any break in the traffic and they think they can make it. It's pretty cool but also a little scary to watch sometimes.
Church is sometimes a bit challenging too. Today none of the Elder's Quorum presidency showed up (it's been weeks since they've been to a priesthood meeting). Today is supposed to be the lesson taught by the presidency. Since I conducted the opening of the priesthood meeting I felt like I should help out. I asked if anyone had been asked to teach and no one (out of the 5 in attendance) spoke up. I was pretty sure that no one had been asked so I started a discussion about something that seemed relevant. It seemed to go okay, but I did get a lot of looks like they were really concentrating to try to understand me. I wish I could speak this language better, and I'm sure they think the same thing!

Surprise

Kind of a long week this week for some reason. By the time it was Wednesday, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't Friday. And that was despite the fact that I had Monday off work for Martin Luther King, Jr. day!

But, the beginning and the end of the week were the best part of the week for sure. Amy and I went on a daytime date on Monday since the children were in school and I had the day off. We went to lunch and saw a movie together. It was fun. And the end of the week we celebrated my wife's birthday by opening presents, going out for banana splits as a family (same place as last blog post), and going out to eat a meter-long pizza as a family. We had a good time.

Mmmm . . . . Mango Gelato

My wife was happy that I finally surprised her with a present thanks to a good friend. She is very hard to surprise for a few reasons. Usually since I always come home after work if I can help it, if I try to go anywhere to shop she wonders where I am and what I am doing not coming/being at home. If I order on-line she might get the Email receipt of the shipment or it goes to our house and she gets it before I do. She usually gets the mail before I do. She can see if anything has come out of the bank account and where it's gone to. This year things are a little different since our mail and packages are delivered to my work twice a week and I access the bank accounts from my computer at work. Add to that our friends willingness and suggestion to do the shopping for me and ship it to me and I have the perfect way to overcome my previous challenges with creating a surprise. My wife has been talking for months (if not longer) about having an iPod to listen to while walking and running that is not so bulky as her phone and she can pick the songs more easily than my old one she's been using. Surprise! Happy birthday. I hope you enjoy it.

It's fun to surprise people. I'm not exactly sure why that is, but I have loved it for a long time. I remember when I was young leaving things for people at their doors or surprising them with some kind of service. I try to find ways to do this at work also. The best things are not things that people expect you to do, but little things that they are not expecting. Just doing something unexpected for the benefit of someone else gives me a thrill. I am not always the best at doing this. Some people I know are practically experts at noticing something small someone else needs and doing it. I admire them a lot and wish I was better at this because it is one of the joys of life. Is this just me or do you enjoy this also?

Short post

Not sure I have a lot to talk about this week. Things were pretty normal and work was not overly busy. A lot of people missing at church this week; maybe they're all sick? It is still about the same temperature it was when we arrived, just more rainy. The couple of times a day it downpours cools the temperature a little - to about 90 F. I conducted our church meeting in Indonesian today, also. But not much out of the ordinary.

Anyway, one thing I can say for certain is that I love it when my wife comes to my work to have lunch with me. This is one of the unexpected benefits of my wife choosing to be a stay-at-home mom and having all of our children in school. It means that sometimes she can come to my office and have lunch with me. It's the best. This week we went to a place where we have been before called Harvest that has good sandwiches and calm American music playing in the background. We ordered our own sandwiches and we ordered one banana split to share. If you're not really specific about things here you can be surprised. This time was no exception. We ordered our meal and dessert and a few minutes later a huge bowl of bananas, ice cream of different flavors, shavings of chocolate, and whipped cream showed up, . . . before the meal. We both looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and said at the same time, "Well, I guess it's dessert first!" It was delicious.

Happy New Year

Over the new year holiday both last year and this year we spent time on the beach and time in the rain. But this time it was a lot warmer and less family. This year we went to Bali over the weekend and had some fun as a family.

We went whitewater rafting, rode elephants, swimming, boogie-boarding on the ocean waves, eating at a lot of different restaurants, going to church with a very small group of members of our church, visiting an organic restaurant we had to walk through rice fields to get to, playing games together, talking, watching a Balinese play at night, seeing a man fire walk on burning coconut shells, walking, riding in the car for hours, and taking short plane trips to and from as a family.

View from organic restaurant

Fun and memorable, along with a little fighting, yelling and missing other family and friends. We couldn't even get on the Internet much at all and so couldn't call people, text, Facebook, Skype or anything. Sorry.

Some of my best memories from the weekend are the times we spent eating together talking and playing 20 questions as we ate. Some of the places were quite an adventure. At this one place that had Mexican food, and barbecue ribs, you had to fight for a place. Not sure how to describe it except that at the front of the restaurant it is just open to the sidewalk and street like no wall or door or anything on that side. This is not too uncommon around here as so many things within walls and under a roof are open to the outside too. But it was very crowded the first time we tried to go and just as crowded the next time and people waited in line for 1/2 hour or more just to get a table. To me this said that it must be pretty good and worth trying for. So we started standing in line. Well it's a little hot and the kids are getting tired and the everyone is antsy to get a table and we're right next to the barbecue where they're grilling ribs which is at the front of the restaurant and it's a bit of a challenge. In order to eat you have to wait in the aisles near the tables and when someone finishes their meal you better hurry over and sit in their spot, even before they're dirty dishes, etc. are cleared off the table or you will be waiting a lot longer. So we stood in lines and kind of schemed, helped some, watched others, and kept a close eye on everyone eating their meals of burritos and BBQ spare ribs in order to get our turn. I spotted some people who were finishing up at a table that would be perfect for our six but it was in the other aisle and a man who started waiting at about the same time was standing near it. I had moved over closer to that one and we both did a sort of slow dance getting closer to the table so I decided to ask him how many people in his group, not wanting to give up what would be a great spot for us and thinking that I could be helpful to him to also get what I want. He wanted the same big table and the big one next to it for his group of 16! I protested that his whole group of 16 was not here before our group of six and some of them may need to wait. (The restaurant probably only holds about 35 at a time.) I think I got him on that one and he was civil enough that he allowed me to hustle onto the bench a couple minutes later when the people there stood up. He got the larger table next to us at almost the same time, but that left some of his group standing. They got lucky and were able to order first, and they ordered enough for the whole group! Oh well, at least we were sitting and it wasn't too long before we could order. As happens all too often, some of what we ordered was "out" but we got most of it, avoided being in the downpour of rain that started while we were waiting in line, and enjoyed eating it. It was an adventure in eating, for sure.

Inside Mexican/Ribs place with random people

In Indonesia, people smile and say hi and seem friendly, but when it comes to driving, getting off airplanes, and getting a place in a restaurant, they have a unique way of both going with the flow and getting what they want even if it means edging you out. For us to go with the flow we also have to squeeze in, push to the front, jump out first or whatever it takes, but smile as we do it. Then no one things anything of it and it's all good. It's  just a different kind of polite than we're used to.

Happy New Year.

Puzzling

It's been another crazy couple of weeks.

Making mango hard tack candy

My supervisor was out of town the last couple of weeks, so it was just me in the consular section to manage all of the interviews, U.S. citizen services, managing the consular section, etc. My days were very full as many people were trying to get visas to go to the U.S. for the holidays and U.S. citizens trying to get their passports renewed or extra pages before traveling for the same time period. One day last week so many people were on vacation from our small post that I was technically the one in charge of the whole consulate. Good thing everyone pretty well knows their job and nothing really exciting happened. I mostly just had to sign more papers than usual and remember combinations and passwords. On that note, I counted up in my head today something like 17 passwords and/or codes I have to know just for my work. That doesn't count my own personal passwords and codes for my own Email and bank accounts and so on. After 4 months I pretty well know most of what is essential for me to know and I'm starting to work on really doing it right and well and more quickly. Sometimes things don't go as I would like and people complain, but sometimes I do things exactly right and people complain! It's been fun in its own way to be the only one I can go to and to have to just figure it out. But it will also be very nice to have my supervisor back to take a little of the pressure off.

Cheese Puzzle - difficult!

We got any of our last minute preparation done for Christmas in time to make it enjoyable and memorable for our children. Thanks to my wife and on-line shopping, she pretty well had it all organized and under control. We just had a bit of a scramble for a couple of gifts that were taking a little more time to figure out and we had some unexpected visitors over this weekend. We planned on having the missionaries from our church who are serving in our church branch come over and also my supervisor who was just getting back from out of the country on Christmas Day. They came, which was great, but we found out that the President of the Indonesia mission of our church was going to be in town for a change in our branch presidency. We couldn't imagine them having Christmas dinner by themselves in a restaurant so we begged them to join us for dinner and they accepted. We had a good time talking, eating turkey, potatoes, coconut cream pie, and so much more. That was on Christmas Day. Earlier that day, I had an interview with the mission president and, probably luckily for this branch and my family, was called as the 1st Counselor in the branch presidency and not the president. The president has been the president of this branch a couple of times before and the other counselor has been the branch president as recently as about a year ago. We'll have fun doing our best to build up the leadership in the branch and reactivate people.
Our children were happy with their presents, we played games, watched videos, made candy, ate candy, put together puzzles, went to the mall, played Christmas songs on chimes, and had a good time. One of the best things this last week since my children were out of school was that one of them came to lunch with me every day last week. It was fun to introduce them to "Es sop jambu merah" which is a bowl full of shaved ice and strips of red guava on the bottom. Very refreshing in the 90+ degree holiday season weather. Yeah, the temperature really doesn't change very much around here except that it's a little more rainy right now. Anyway, I really enjoyed eating lunch out with them and showing them where I work.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Mall Week

Let's hear it for another 4-day week! Tuesday was a holiday, (Islamic New Year), so it felt a little like I had two Mondays this week and two Saturdays. Made for a little disorientation, but I can certainly live with it. For some reason this week was mall week for me. I was there a couple of days this week and several hours altogether. On Saturday, my oldest son and I were there from about 10:00 until about 1:00 and then we went back for a couple of hours that evening! We looked around, ate, got haircuts, got lost, discovered places and stores we didn't know existed. We thought we had entered another dimension or something. We even decided on a whim to try a little fish therapy place in the mall. For less than $3 each we put our feet in a pool for 15 minutes that had ultraviolet light shining in, and the best part, hundreds of little fish that eat the dead skin off your feet. I was the first to put my feet in and within 2 seconds my feet and legs were completely covered in little brown fish who were literally nibbling at my toes. I almost couldn't stand it because it tickled so much. It was decent entertainment, that's for sure. And I'm not sure I've ever cared about this, but I think my feet really are softer and more beautiful like the signs promised! The only troubling thing about it is that I couldn't help get an image in my head of piranhas and how grateful I am that these fish aren't larger, have bigger teeth and like live flesh.

Fish therapy - yummy dead skin!

Okay.
In other news, today I gave my first talk in church in Indonesian. I was assigned to speak for 15 minutes. After writing my talk out and making the Indonesian sound reasonable, I had no idea if it was that long and didn't have time to do anything about it. I only had past experience to go on knowing about what needs to go into a talk to make it that length. I was a little worried when I saw that I was the last speaker since I don't feel I am quite to the level of being really good at flexible with my talk in Indonesian yet. But in the end I had almost exactly 15 minutes to speak--just what I was assigned. And the best part is that my talk with a couple small items added in finished just in time! What's even better is that I think that they even understood me.

Starting the holidays

I wasn't feeling very well last week and must have fallen asleep before posting anything. In fact, my wife and I have talked many times about how since moving here we feel tired and go to bed earlier than we used to. I'm not sure all the reasons, but some of it, I'm sure, has to do with the timing of day and night. Every day, all year, the sun comes up and goes down at just about the same time. It comes up around 5:30 in the morning and goes down around 5:30 at night. Every day. I think I already said that. I remember in winter time at home in Utah, when the sun goes down earlier it just felt like time to go inside and when it's dark and when it was dark and I was home it was so easy to get sleepy. And when I was on my mission in Russia it was hard not to feel sleepy in the wintertime when we rarely saw the sun. So that's one thing, but really it starts getting light even earlier. Now we are getting up before the sun comes up, like around 4:30 a.m. to exercise, study scriptures, eat breakfast, and so on and then, for me, get to work by 7:30 a.m. You might say, "duh," when I say this might also be part of the early evening sleepiness. But I still think it has to do a little with the sun since it comes up so early.

On other notes, my favorite holiday came and went. It was a little different from other Thanksgiving Days I have had, but it was still good and much better than the last one. (I had "swine flu" over last Thanksgiving and really missed everything and felt like I was dying.) This Thanksgiving my wife made pies and I made the turkey. Thanks to my mom sending an oven bag, the turkey was still nice and moist and tasted pretty good. All of the food tasted good. We had the missionaries over and I think they enjoyed having a traditional American Thanksgiving just as much as we did. Even the missionary from Canada enjoyed it; he said they have pretty much the same there.
I finally got my bike tire fixed and have been able to ride it a few times. I even rode a little with my two youngest who just learned how to ride a couple of weeks ago! My oldest son and I have gone two Saturdays in a row exploring around on our bikes. We rode over to a nearby neighborhood where there are a few cattle and goats out in the empty spaces where homes haven't been built yet. The last time we went for a ride we were very hot, since it's always around 90 degrees, and it felt nice to cool off with a swim in the pool near our home.
Is it really December already?