Friday Morning Chaos

 

This is was our lovely kitchen.  Very large cabinets, able to

fit a lot of dishes and food...maybe a little too much.

 

I opened the cupboard door to get some cereal and the whole entire cabinet came crashing down on top of me.  I was quite shocked and the screaming did not only come from the kids.  I felt a little bad for reacting the way I did.  The kids were so scared as they were right there in the kitchen with me, and I immediately took them over to the couch to comfort them.  We were all quite shaken up, but managed to have some breakfast and get out the door in time for school.

Obviously there is a bigger problem here.  Something leaking from upstairs

has slowly rotted the ceiling.  A little concerning!

 

We were well taken care of by wonderful people.  Dawn Meyers, who is quite resourceful I must say, took control of the situation and managed to get the word out to the people who needed to know.  Pa Bisner, the "jack-of-all-trades" maintenance guy, came to the house to take some pictures and help clean up.  A friend offered to watch Jolene and another friend had me over for some toast and tea. 

 

For now we will live without a cabinet.  The contractor will be coming on Monday and will hopefully look for the source of the problem and begin working on it.  I believe it may take some time, so we will be patient.  Surprisingly I am feeling a bit sore all over, probably from the effort put forth to actually keeping it off of me.  Once again, so thankful that it did not land on the kids.

First Days of School

 

 New Parent Orientation Night

Vince and his cubby

 



Vince at his desk

 



Alana and her cubby

 

Alana's classroom

 

Kindy Pod

They have one large area for the Kindergarten where they can play. 

The classrooms are off of the main area.  All the classrooms in Junior School

(K to Grade 6) are designed this way.

 

Jolene dancing to the music during dinner.

First Day 

All dressed up and ready to go.

 

Can't forget about Jolene!

Big and Mighty!  Ready to conquer the day!

Sweet and Innocent!

Doesn't want to be left out.

 

Vince's Morning Devotions.

A reassuring smile.

Doing her own learning at home on the ipad!

 

 

The first morning of school the kids were so excited.  They woke up at 5:40 a.m. with eagerness and felt ready to begin a new school.  School begins at 7:00, so we were there by 6:45 where I first brought Vince to his class.  Because all the kids had to wait outside the pod, a mother that I knew offered to stay with Vince while I brought Alana down.  I reassured Vince that I would come back.  It was so hard to leave him there.  I later found out that he was a little sad after I left.  I went down to Alana's class and all at once the confidence and excitement she had at home disappeared.  She kept close to me while watching all the kids play.  Because she was not ready to say bye I brought the girls upstairs to find Vince.  I found him in his classroom unpacking his bag.  He was so independent and brave as he worked away.  I could not fight back the tears as I was so proud of my little guy (I just made sure he didn't see me).

After giving Vince repeated hugs and kisses, I brought Alana back downstairs and into her classroom.  I gave her hugs and kisses and she reluctantly found a purple square on the carpet and sat there sadly watching me leave.  How can a mom not cry?

I was so excited to pick them up at 1:00.  When I asked them how their days went, Vince said, "It was AWESOME!"  Alana also said she had a great day.  Her hi-lite of the day was taking a morning walk.

 

Day 2 was not greeted with as much enthusiasm by Alana.  She cried when I woke her up and had to force her to get dressed.  After a tearful departure, I knew she was in great hands.  Ms. Sylvia and Ibu Cindy are her teachers and are absolutely fabulous.  She had a great day, once again.  Today she had ballet, which she will have every Friday.  I have a feeling Fridays might be easy days to get her to school.

Vince is pretty excited to join the basketball team that starts practices in the next couple of weeks.  He also had his first phys-ed class today and was happy to see that he has a male teacher for phys-ed. His other two teachers, Ibu Yuli and Ms. Kim, are also very wonderful teachers.  I am so reassured by the quality of teachers my children have.  They have been greeted with much love and warmth.  I do not worry about them during class time; it is recess time that gets me a bit worried.  It is difficult to establish friendships and I pray that they will find someone soon that they are able to connect with.   

Overall, I am confident that the kids are going to be happy here.  Alana may have difficult mornings, but I know that she secretly loves school.

 

Paul's first three days have been good.  He is still learning how things are done here and, from what I've heard, he will continue to learn every day of the school year.  This will be a challenging year, but I am confident that he can handle it.  His hi-lite of the first three days of school would have to be teaching Grade 11 and 12 phys-ed.  He was pleasantly surprised by their enthusiasm and willingness to participate. 

 

First three days are under our belt and we are ready to enjoy a nice relaxing weekend. 

Our School, Our Home, Our Neighbourhood

 

Some Pictures of the School

 

 

Family Pool/Offices

 

Outdoor Basketball Court/Senior School

Family Pool/Main Lobby

 

Olympic Swimming Pool

 

 Family Pool/Junior School Gym
 

 Obviously we enjoy the pool a lot.  We do plan on getting a few more pictures of the school grounds without the pools. 

Our New Home

 

 Upstairs to the Bedrooms

 

 Dining Area

 

 Kitchen (The oven is on the left and the gas tank is on the right.

The oven is big enough to fit one cookie sheet and absolutely no bigger.)

 

Playroom
 

 

 Living Room

Alana and Jolene's Bedroom

 Vince's Bedroom

Master Bedroom

 

We really like the house we are living in and are so grateful for everything that is already provided for us.  Because this is the first time the school has rented this house out they bought a lot of new things.  We were blessed with a brand new fridge, stove, washer, tables and chairs, coffee table and couches.  You may look at the pictures of the house and say that everything is so clean and bright.  Bright?  Yes.  Clean?  For now!  We have wonderful white curtains, white couches, white bed sheets and white comforters.  Maybe they got us mixed up with someone who doesn't have three young children. 

 

Fun in the Neighbourhood

 

 Vince loves to bike around the neighbourhood!

 

If he's not biking, then he's got the scooter.

We bought Alana this new bike.  She loves to put things

in her basket and is so proud to be biking it around.

 This is our closest park to play at.  One slide and two swings.

(Just to let you know how safe it is, during our second week here our dear friend

Claire had to get stitches from the park bench.)

 

 Jolene's favourite mode of transportation.

 

Biking with friends

One family in the neighbourhood set up a swing set with two swings,

a slide and a two seater swing in their front yard for any of the kids to use.

 

We are so blessed to be living in a neighbourhood with so many kids to play with.  Vince, Alana, and even Jolene have been able to get out and see their friends while biking and playing.  This is a very wonderful thing, but because they are still transitioning, making friends can be a bit of a tricky thing. 



 

Enjoying the Rain

(and this isn't even rainy season)

 

 

 

We may not bother with showers or baths during the rainy season...

just send them outside with some soap and shampoo and they're set!

 

 

Getting to Know this New Country

We are having an interesting time getting to know this new country that we are living in.  Here are a few of our experiences.  If I had pictures to go with each one of them I would post them, but sometimes words have to be enough.

Since we got to Indonesia the Muslims have been in holiday mode to celebrate Ramadahn.  Last week was what they call Lebaran.  We decided to head to the mall!  Shopping during Lebaran is like shopping during Christmas.  It is not something I recommend.  However, we did manage to buy a few things, including a bike for Alana, a shelving unit for our kitchen (which was nicely stored in a box for us to assemble - fun times), and a few groceries.  The tricky thing about buying all this was that we came with a family of five who also bought a shelving unit (not nicely tucked inside a box) and some groceries.  We managed to fit all of our items plus 10 people into a small car.  Not the most comfortable drive home. 

This is the vehicle, now imagine all the above mentioned inside of this.

 



Since coming to Indonesia we went from having no internet and no cellphones to wifi for our laptop and ipad, and two new cellphones.  We are loving this internet thing.  Communicating has become so different for us now, but it is so wonderful since we live so far away from loved ones.  Along with our internet package comes cable, but we have not had any success with getting it set up, so Paul decided to call the cable company.  He got through very easily to customer service, but had no luck with talking with someone who spoke English.  Vince had a great time watching his dad repeat "Is there anyone there that speaks English...cable broken."  He laughed even harder when Paul reached for the ipad to use google translator where he typed in what he wanted to say and repeated the words in Bahasa.  I was impressed with Paul's persistence, but it did not pay off, they eventually hung up on him.


Paul definitely has embraced this culture as he wants to try new things right away and figure things out for himself.  Thus, his grocery adventure.  He took Vince and Alana to Hypermart (the name fits as it is a busy place) and were dropped off at around 6:30.  Grocery shopping takes longer right now just because everything is so unfamiliar, so by 9:00 I finally texted to see if they were almost home.
The answer I got back was "ummm....almost."  He was just checking out, which I thought was a good thing, but checking out takes a very long time (not as efficient as back home) and since he was taking the taxi home it took even longer.  After he found out where the taxis were he also found a line with 40 people.  They were home by 10:40.

BlueBird Taxi

 

 



My grocery trip this past week was a little eventful as well.  I went shopping with a friend, putting my complete trust in her knowledge as she has been living here for a whole year.  With our carts full of groceries, she brought me all over the place trying to find our way to the car.  If only there was actual video footage of us you would be able to see how silly we really looked; going up hills with gutters,  going up escalator ramps with no magnets for our carts to stick to and down ramps with no traction therefore almost hitting a van   I'm sure those guys in the parking lot were laughing at us.

We have also been able to enjoy some of the nature that Indonesia has to offer.  Paul was able to see his first (and hopefully last) cobra while golfing.  Golfing in the rough has a whole new meaning here.  We enjoyed the challenge of getting a gecko out of our sink without actually having to touch it.  We actually have enjoyed these little guys in our house.  The kids think they are cute and consider them our pets, especially the tiny ones.  We have also been able to enjoy authentic coconut drinks while lounging at the pool.  One of the teachers climbed all the way to the top, threw some down, then used his machete to cut the tops off.  He came prepared with straws for everyone to enjoy some coconut milk.

One of our little pets

School starts late this year and we have taken advantage of the downtime.  We have enjoyed our mornings at home and have used the pool a few times as well.  We are getting to know new people in our neighbourhood and are spending a lot of time with our wonderful friends, the Huizenga's.  We have been blessed so far with many wonderful people who are willing to help us out as we figure things out here. We are getting a little anxious for school, which is starting on Wednesday and praying that everyone adjusts to the schedule; 7:00 start time means early, early mornings.

 

Driving down one of the main streets

Visiting the Living World Mall