We’re not in Kansas anymore…

8 of 10 on the first day!

The first week of school was a bit of a blur. The kids are great, Rob’s classes are amazing, the students are engaged (though for me, they’re 2nd graders, so they’re only engaged for about 10 minutes at a time), and the schedule is doable. Thank God it’s over! We both hate the first week—filler activities, pre-assessments, forgetting names, missing yard duties, and everything that comes with first week jitters. But anyway it’s behind us and we ALL made it!

The weekend was great. Friday night, we ditched out on the First Friday party to celebrate Rob’s birthday at a Dutch restaurant at the Supermal (yes, it should be spelled with 2 “ll’s”, but it’s not!). On our walk home we were nearly scared out of our shorts as we noticed the leaves on the grass moving. After stopping and trying to figure things out, we noticed that the leaves were actually toads out for their evening meal. This motivated the kids to come home and watch “The Princess and the Frog” before bedtime. The frogs have become a great incentive tool as we persuade the kids to walk back up the hill to the Supermal to shop.

Saturday was spent as most Saturdays are spent—errands. We’ve decided, though, that errands are REALLY difficult when: your mobile phones aren’t charged and don’t have credit, you don’t have a car, and you don’t speak Bahasa Indonesian (the local language). First, the phones. Urgh. We bought pay-as-you-go cards because the money is supposed to last a long time and they are really easy to find. Unfortunately, we had been receiving the occasional text messages in Bahasa. No biggie. Except… we must have inadvertently responded to one and now we’ve been bombarded with text messages that has depleted our credit.

250,000 Rp. = $25

Second, we don’t have a car, a driver, or a driver’s license. This is not a big deal except it has limited our range of travel and exploration to the areas we can get to on foot or places that we already know. The first time I got in a car, I hadn’t figured out the exchange rate yet so when the driver told us that we owed him 15,000 Rp. I nearly flipped my lid. But then I realized that it was only about $1.50 and that was after a 10 minute drive. Not bad.

But there’s another problem about not having a car—we end up schlepping a lot of stuff around! After a wonderfully exciting 5 hours at the Supermal, Rob and I decided to reward the kids with the things they had been asking for since Grandma and Grandpa left—bean bags! OK, fine, we can handle bean bags. At the “Bean Bag” store, we noticed that the small, cute, soft and cuddly bean bags were like 1,300,000 Rp. Yes, I said 1 MILLION, 3 HUNDRED THOUSAND Rupiah (though that’s only about $130.00) and the gigantic, easy-to-wash, and not-so-cute bean bags were only 700,000 ($70.00). So, we got 2 mammoth, colossal, and I mean freakin’ HUGE bean bags. At the register, it occurred to Rob and I that they would never fit in a taxi. So, we decided to hoof-it home! Yup, through the packed Supermal, the crazy gringos slogged their big ass “Santa” bean bags. Through the mall, and the traffic, passed the frogs (that we NEEDED to watch), passed the laughing guards who protect our complex, and into our home. We need a car!

The third rather big challenge here is we don’t speak Bahasa Indonesian. All we can say is “thank you” and between the four of us, can probably count to 5. This is OK as we’ve done a great job getting around with broken English, charades, and a lot of business cards. We’ve been able to order dinner, price out a new car, buy a couch, and grocery shop all without knowing more than the cordial Indonesian head bow and “thank you.”

Our lack of Bahasa came to a head after a rather exciting day at school on Monday. Let me detour here for a minute and tell you about the crazy day we had. Tuesday is Indonesian Independence Day and the way the school celebrates is by getting the local and expat staff together in the gym for the “Merdeka” games. “Merdeka” is the Bahasa word for freedom so it’s a great way to commemorate their freedom from the Dutch. In any case, the gym is packed with people all decked out in their red and white clothes to play silly games like: balance the rice basket on your head, tug-of-war, and cross-dressing soccer. It was a hoot to watch and next year we’ll be prepared with tennis shoes and gym shorts. At the end of the event, winners are given huge bags of food and everyone walks away with a goody bag—an SIS tote bag with a traditional Ramadhan dinner. Awesome. But the kids had no idea we’d be going to the “Merdeka” games. I had forgotten about the games when I had promised the kids a trip to the pool. Oops. So, to make up for my tactical error, Rob and I decided to take them to McDonald’s for dinner.

Bubur Ayam Soup?

We need to learn Bahasa. Except for the things we ordered by picture: Xavier and my cheeseburgers, Anouk’s spaghetti, and Rob’s Big Mac, we had no idea what we were getting. The ketchup is substituted with chili sauce, most meals are offered without French fries but with rice, noodle soup and fried chicken drumsticks are on the value meal, and napkins are a commodity. It was definitely a night to remember. Our Indonesian cultural experience ended with a long walk home past the frogs as we counted the bats we saw flying overhead. We read our Indonesian fairytales for kids and called it a night.

The way Google celebrated the day

Happy Independence Day Indonesia! It’s been quite a ride already.

FYI—we are all a “Twitter” as our mobile twitter account is all hooked up. You can follow us on a more regular basis by logging on—http://twitter.com/teach4Travel.