Going on a Cicuk Hunt!

Zeph loves to hang out in our front yard in the evenings.  

He waves to everyone walking by and says, "da-da," which is the Indonesian word for "bye-bye." 

 And, as dusk approaches, he waits for cicuks (pronounced "cheechucks"= geckos) to come out.  Then, when he spots one, he grabs a broom (just like Grandpa Wally and Uncle Jared taught him to do) and chases it down...

...until he get's it (with help, of course).  In this case, 

Uncle Jared was the hero who snatched that little cicuk up!

Z is equally intruiged and freaked out when he has the chance to touch the little guys.  

 After looking at the cicuk for a minute or two, Zeph chooses a place to put him down and let him run away.  After all, cicuks eat mosquitos!  AND, if he get's loose, we can enjoy catching him again another day!

Daily Life

Here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse into life here in Salatiga...

In the mornings, Ibu Endang (pictured cooking below) and Ibu Yanti (pictured holding Zeph) come to help us with cooking and cleaning and child care.  

In case the idea of having house help is a foreign idea to some of you, "helpers" or "pembantus" are an Indonesian cultural norm for most of the middle and upperclass Indonesian population.  Pembantu's are paid the average working wage and the "pembantu position" is considered an upstanding job.  Since daily life requires so much more work here than it does in the US (read: everything is cooked from scratch. dirt and bugs abound. laundry takes forever. etc.), we are very happy to support the Indonesian economy and benefit from the company and hard work of such dear ladies.  Ibu Endang and Ibu Yanti are welcome additions to our home. 

We enjoy lots of stir-fried vegetables with various rice dishes for lunch each day.

Zeph is continuing to adjust to his new care givers and two of his favorite activities are (1) to be carried around in a selendang (pictured below) so that he can be a part of everything the ladies are up to and...

(2) to be taken on a motorbike ride.  This scares mom and dad, so it doesn't happen often, but in the picture  below, the ladies were taking Zeph to buy a papaya from the fruit stand up the street.

   

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This weekend, we enjoyed swimming and dinner at a near-by hotel.  Beautiful, hey? Come join us!

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And, in the evenings, Zeph's favorite activity to to listen to dad play the guitar. Z sometimes likes to dance his heart out and, othertimes, just wants to sit by daddy and watch. :)

        

Sunday Adventures

NOTE: This blog post is STOLEN from my brother and sister-in-law's blog (www.goingtopapua.blogspot.com) for your enjoyment!

This past Sunday we visited a small Indonesian home church with a friend. After the service, there were some "special" games for the kids. You may remember the relay race where you have a bucket of marbles in the middle and you have to race to bring them back, one by one, to your team's bucket? Well, it was like that with a twist: the marbles were live baby eels, slimy, squiggley, slippery, not-quite-big-enough-to-bite-off-your-finger eels!

Eels in a bucket make playing Monkeys In a Barrel look like a piece of cake.

The eels proved to be more than a handful.

Counting each team's plunder.

The best part about this game is the clean up. All the eels get tossed into the frying pan and viola, you have an after church snack! Unfortunately we didn't get to stick around for that part of the activity. Instead we headed to our next adventure at the river where most of our city's water is processed. It also serves as a laundromat, swimming hole, playground, fishing spot and shower.

Most Indonesians value light skin the same way we value a nice tan. This lady uses an elephant ear leaf to stay out of the hot Indonesian sun.

Groups of kids up and down the river search for small fish and shrimp to add to their collection. The river weeds you see in the background are fried up into patties and sold at riverside vendors.

Wouldn't you do more laundry if the laundromat looked like this?

Jacinda and Zeph cool their feet in the frigid (below 75 F) water.

Teresa insists that yes, it IS cool to carry your helmet on your purse everywhere you go and no, she didn't just forget to leave it with the bike.... probably.

Sweet nephew Zephaniah

Zeph is still figuring out what face to make when we say "smile." Almost there buddy.

Jared spotted this cool chameleon hunting grasshoppers.

He wasn't such a fan of being held up by his tail.

Language School!

As you can tell, we have been very busy with language school this month, thus the lack of posts on our blog! Hopefully, as we get into the swing of life here, we'll be able to send more frequent updates.

In the mean time, we've reached a break between units of language school, so I'm excited to catch you up on our daily activities. Starting Monday, Matt will be in unit 2 and I will be in unit 5, out of 9).

The first three units of language school require 4 hours in class. Much of the time is spent listening to and repeating after the "pelati's" (teachers) and learning pronunciation and sentence structure. Homework includes finding people to talk to each evening to practice newly learned vocab and it also includes writing in Indonesian about an experience that you had that day.

Units 6-9 require 2 hours of class each day where students read about and discuss topics pertaining to various aspects of Indonesian culture. Emphasis is on sentence structure, proper grammar, and increasing vocabulary. Each evening, homework includes interviewing friends and neighbors about cultural questions and then writing a one-page essay. About once a week, each student is required to present their daily essay in front of their class.

Here's an example of what our daily schedule looks like...

As you can see, Matt is fitting in a few hours of Advancing Engineering Consulting work in the mornings and evenings. He's appreciated the opportunity to continue developing professional relationships which will, hopefullly, open doors for starting a branch of Advancing Engineering in Indonesia in the future.

Right now, our biggest prayer request would be to have wisdom about how to be good parents and good students. Sometimes that feels impossible.

On a different note, we've been enjoying Salatiga's reletively temperate climate. We arrived just at the end of rainy season and have experienced a few torrential downpours. The other day, Jared (my brother) and I got caught in a massive rainstorm on our way home from school. We were both riding on the back of our freinds' motorcycles. Jared managed to stay somewhat dry as he rode throgh the streets on a moped with an umbrella. Hilarious. I, on the other hand, got soaked.

It's Good to Be Home

We're here and we're getting settled!

After a couple of days in Jakarta (Indonesia's extremely urban capitol city on the island of Java), we flew to Salatiga, central Java where we will be living and going to language school for the next 10 months.

As many of you know, this move has provided an amazing family reunion for me (Jacinda). My brother and his wife are also in-route to work at Papua Hope School where Jared will teach PE and Teresa will be the school nurse. They've been here in Salatiga for one month and are soaking in culture and language; they have been incredibly helpful in introducing us to our new surroundings.

Also, my parents (who have been missionaries in Indonesia for 34 years) flew from the island of Papua to the island of Java (about 2000 miles) to welcome us and help us settle in.

Right now MAF has so many new families in language school (NINE vs. the typical four or five), that there are limited housing options, so they've asked Matt and I and Jared and Teresa to share a home, which we've been happy to accept.

Here are some pictures of our first week in Salatiga...

Here you see neighbor kids, Teresa, Jared, and Matt in front of our new home.

Zeph didn't waste any time making new friends! A little girl named Puput and her little brother, Diki, live just down the street from us and they come over to play almost every day.

Over the weekend, we took a family trip to JoJakarta,about a 3-hour drive away. We stopped at the grounds of the famous Borobudur temple on the way there (it's way in the distance behind Zeph's head below). :)

Here we are enjoying lunch together:

Mmmm... fresh coconut milk:

Highlights/Praises from the past week:

• we have had lots of wonderful babysitting help from Grandparents!
• we are starting to learn our way around town
• we hired a babysitter to help watch Zeph while we study...this is a huge answer to prayer and also a significant, thus slightly scary, change in family dynamics for all of us.
• Matt completed his orientation for unit one at language school and Jacinda tested into unit four (out of nine).
• Jacinda had the chance to attend the monthy neighborhood women's meeting and enjoyed meeting lots of new friends...and loved the SWEET hot tea that was served, too.
• We've felt very loved and welcomed by the many missionary families that are currently in Salatiga.

Prayer requests:

• that we would all smoothly adjust to our new work/life demands...especially that Zeph would feel comfortable with his new caregiver.
• that we would be able to ingest all of the new terms and concepts that we will be inundated with as we start language school on Monday.

Thank you all for partnering with us in this journey. We love and miss you all and can't wait for you to come visit! :)

From the Taipei airport

We are nearly to Jakarta! I'm [Matt] writing this from the Taipei airport on a layover. One more flight and we'll be in Indonesia!

Zeph did even better than we could have hoped on our nearly 15 hour flight - he slept probably 12 hours of it. Here's one photo of both Jacinda and Zeph catching some Zzzzz's:

In Taipei I thought I'd help Zeph release some energy by playing guitar while he danced - nothing says good morning like jazz hands at 6am!

Christmas Adventures

Hello! It's been a busy two months since we left Uganda and we've been missing from the blogging scene. Our time has been spent visiting friends and family as well as preparing for our upcoming departure to Indonesia.

Here are a couple of pictures to bring you up to speed...

On December 13, we said goodbye to our Uganda family, who we love and miss very much...

Then, we drove to 4.5 hours to kampala, where the international airport is located...

We flew through Brussels, Belgium and on to New York City where we spent 5 days reconnecting with precious friends. From morning to midnight we were so busy catching up with people that, most of the time, I forgot to pull out my camera! Here are a couple of shots that I did manage to grab (with Blake, Phillip, and Pippa as well as some of my college-girls-Adrian, Amy, Kate, and Sarah). NYC friends, thank you for taking time to make us feel loved! We felt so at home that it was really hard to leave. You have a very special place in our hearts.

We had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas in Idaho with Matt's family...

Zeph was our little drummer boy...

And, after Christmas, we started our Northwest tour...which I'll post pics of soon!

Obsessed with Power

I have been teasing matt that he's become "obsessed with power" these past 6 months, that is, if power=electricity. :)

The good news is that Matt's hard work has paid off! All 8 SharedSolar systems are now operational and are providing dependable electricity to a couple hundred people in rural Uganda! Zeph, Emmanuel, and I decided to join Matt on Friday to take a look at each system and help with photo-documentation for Matt's official report. I won't bore you with all of the pictures of the technical details (sorry, engineers...Matt will have to fill you in on that later). But, I will share some of the fun snapshots taken along the way...

...we piled into the care for the 1.5 hour drive (which Matt has made almost every week day)

See the way those matoke bananna trees flood down the hillside?

Boys bringing home supper:

Here's Zeph exploring the system in Ruhirra

We walked through this corridor on our way to the market in Nactunda, where SharedSolar has a system set up. The brick walls were so picturesque!

Zeph's favorite activity, of course, was finding lots of other kids to play with...

...and spending as much time as he could with his best friend, Emmanuel...

It was a beautiful and exciting day marking the completion of Matt's project.

We only have two days left in Uganda and we are cherishing every moment that we have left even as we also look forward to what lies ahead.