Thanksgiving the Indonesia way!

Well there is no "Indonesian way" to celebrate Thanksgiving....there is no such thing here!  For the people in our neighborhood, it was just another day.  But not for us!
We missed being with family a lot today.  It is the first major holiday we've missed with them.  Thankfully, we had our new MAF friends and fellow Americans here in Salatiga to celebrate with!  We all got together at our friends Daniel and Joy's house.  All in all, we were 11 adults and 10 kids.  (if I am counting right.)  Of those 10 kids...5 of them were babies!  (by the way, we have like four or five more MAF families coming to join us soon.... almost all of them have babies....it's going to be baby mayhem!!)

The food was nothing short of what you would find at a Thanksgiving table back home. What an awesome treat! The food was, however, much harder to make!  There were no wal mart pumpkin pies or anything like that, but the ladies (and respective house helpers) stepped to the plate and made some awesome stuff!  And the Bizztro, one of our favorite restaraunts here, stepped to the plate by selling and cooking a turkey for us....and they cooked it to perfection!  How special.


So all of these pictures were taken at some point today.  Most of them were taken at the Thanksgiving event at our friends Daniel and Joy's house!



Link to album (ipad users?!)

While I am at it, we would like to show you a few pictures from a wedding we were invited to a few weekends ago.  It was November 13th, our 7th anniversary!  It took place in the morning, so what a fun way to start our anniversary!  A friend in the neighborhood invited us to this "pesta pernikahan" or wedding celebration.  It was set up in our neighborhood and all we had to do was walk over!  What an amazing experience.  We showed up at the time our friends recommended, and we were among the first ones there!  Oops.  So they sat us near the front right by the band and MC's.  The MC's, from what we understood, made good light-hearted fun of us quite a bit....comic relief.  Our MAF friends Daniel and Becky and their kids were invited too.  They came a bit later than us.  They and their four kids were ushered up near the front also just on the other side of the iasle from us. Apparently if you are a foreigner, you will be seated near the front at these weddings!  So we had a great view of the ceremony.  It was really neat, and the native Javanese dress and traditions were really interesting.  There was food, speakers, prayers, ceremonys, etc.  No dance floor however.  Here's some pictures we took...



Link to album (ipad users?!)

Later in the day some friends babysat for us and we enjoyed a fun date at one of our favorite places here...the Bizztro.  What a special anniversary!

The weekend again! Another week of language school down. We love the change of pace on weekends because the weeks can get pretty busy with language school, the kids, and homework!

So two afternoons ago, Heather and some other ladies from MAF met here to pray together. Elise was taking her nap, so I strapped Ian in the front pack, and we just set out to walk around the neighborhood. I can't tell you how much Ian likes riding in the front pack. He loves to be up front and center, being able to see everything. He waves his little arms around in excitement. So as we walked along the road, a neighbor of ours was showing his cow to a potential buyer! (Not something you witness every day right?!)


It was a seemingly "well to do" husband and wife looking at the cow. The wife spotted Ian as we walked by and started getting excited. I stopped briefly to wave and say a few pleasantries as is "sopan" or polite here. I noticed the lady had taken her cell phone out and was taking pictures. I came a little closer and said "silakan" which means "sure, please do". She handed the phone to her husband and she jumped in the picture with us. After a few shots they traded places and the husband jumped into the photo. This would seem super strange back home, but here it happens all the time! I was kicking myself for violating my "always carry the camera" rule....I would have loved to have a shot too.

As I continued down the block I stopped and talked with several groups of people, almost all of the conversation was about Ian and their kids! I realized that my precious little son strapped to my chest is the best possible little ice breaker!

Here's a little bit of what we've been up to lately, in pictures....

These first several are from our outing today.  While most of you were watching game seven of the world series, we struck out to head downtown, taking advantage of the "kid window" when both kids are happy and travel well.  I think we left home around the fifth inning, which for us was about nine thirty AM.



Heather had Ian in the front pack, and I was carrying Elise.  We have to walk about a half mile to catch the "Angkota"...the little blue bus we mentioned in an earlier blog post.

Elise and Ian looking cool on the Angkota.  Ian's doing his best P-Diddy impression.  

After a while downtown, Ian konked out in the front pack.

School kids "pulang" or going home.  Kids go to school six days a week here.  They seem to go home pretty early.  But I think they start early too.  This is a society that likes to get up early!  It seems everyone is up and at 'em before five AM.  Not me.

Some MAF friends of ours here had a birthday party for their son.  Elise had a blast playing with the kids and doing some of the activities they planned.  The kids loved the "painting wall."  Elise was into her masterpiece.

Rainy season is here!  Every afternoon for the last several days we've gotten some rain!  We got rained on on the way home from a coffe shop on Friday.  Heather and Ian stayed dry under their umbrella.  Elise stayed dry in the jogging stroller....but I didn't!  

A little over a week ago, we had a few extra days of a break between "units" at language school.  We took advantage to travel and see some of the island of Java.  We went to a little beach town called Jepara north of here.  On the drive, we saw some things that, let's just say we didn't see every day back home.....

A school bus?

There's lots of little busses with wild paint schemes and spoilers on the highway.

Lots of trucks have guys riding on top.  Really?  Not legal in the US!

It's amazing what you will see on people's scooters.

And of course a cattle truck.

Working in the "sawah" or rice fields.  

Then.....the beach!

Ian enjoying the scenery from his shady spot with his "go-pod".

A newly maried couple on the beach wanted Heather to rub her tummy for good luck! (We didn't really understand why, but Heather kindly obliged.)  And of course she wanted a picture

What a fun, quick trip!  On the drive home we stopped at a store in Semarang, a larger city.  They happened to have pumpkins!  We got a couple for Elise to decorate....

We are definitely missing all the sights, smells, and tastes of fall back home! 

Last night, we said goodbye to our new friends Sean and Becca and their three cute kids. They are finished with language school, and headed to serve with MAF in Kalimantan Indonesia. They were so helpful to us when we arrived, spending countless hours showing us how to live here. Scouring my computer for a picture of them all I can find is this picture of Sean from the going away party for them at our house last night (which was really fun).



Oh wait here is a picture of them.



That's Becca and Sean in the back, Sean is the tall guy, and Becca is to the right of him. They are standing with a couple other students and all of our teachers or "pilatihs" at language school. We love our pilatihs. They are such a fun, positive bunch. And they are so patient. Could you imagine teaching people your language all day every day?! They do a great job. It was a very funny moment on Friday when Heather and I were in language class, and Sean and Becca rode off on their scooter after their last day. Sean let out a "waaaa-hooo!" that could be heard throughout the whole school. The look on the teacher's faces were priceless. In Javanese culture (the people native to this island of Java) it is polite to be calm, quiet, and anything but boistrous. And Sean seems like he is a guy who doesn't mind breaking the rules from time to time in good fun!

Speaking of language school, Heather and I just completed our first "unit" of language school (8 more to go!) That is, if we pass our unit 1 evaluation tomorrow (knock on wood!). It is such a relief to be done with unit 1....it is such a challenging time. We were just adjusting to living here....while beginning to grapple with a language we knew nothing about. It feels so good now to have four weeks under our belt, and to be able to actually walk up to and begin a conversation with people in our neighborhood.

Our school takes a few days break between units. It is a welcome change of pace and it gives students an opportunity to head out and check out nerby cities in the island of Java and to get more experience talking with the locals. So we're going to do just that! After our evaluation Monday we are going to strike out for a two night excursion to a nearby city. We're pretty excited. And it is our first trip like this as a family of four!

For lack of time I am going to skip putting the token photo slide-show up right now, but hope to do that soon. Instead here's a short vid I took of Ian today!

The other night Ian was on a roll, laughing at just about everything. Here's a couple videos of the action!






After posting those videos above of Ian laughing, a lot of people said Ian's laugh really reminded them of Elise laughing at the balloon when she was a baby that we posted a long, long time ago. For kicks I went and looked that video up and here it is......I think it's amazing how similar they sound!



We are about to finish our second week of language school. It is very challenging! Indonesian or "Bahasa Indonesia" is supposed to be an easy language to learn. So I'm glad we aren't learning any of the difficult ones, because we feel like we're barely hanging on! Fortunately, alot of the students who are farther along tell us that is how we are supposed to feel in "unit 1" (there are 9 units). This is called the "survival unit".

After the first week of being humbled daily in class and butchering the language on the street trying to talk to people, I was encouraged when our trash lady came by on Saturday. (yeah that's right, I said trash lady. Did I mention things are different here?) I was really encouraged to have a really basic conversation with her and actually understand the general gist of what she was trying to say. We are blessed with many people who we run into every day who are very patient, know we are students, and want to help.