Carrefour Ho!

So guess what we did today? You guessed it, more shopping... There are a gazillion stores here and if you're just new you don't know who has what and for what price. So today we went to Carrefour. This is a new gigantic superstore. It is like Superstore only with way more choices in electronics, TV's, washing machines, fridges, excersize equipment, toys, food, clothes.... and on and on. We bought a microwave finally. We settled for one with a big old dial on it. We figured that would probably stand up to the humidity better than a digital one and if it did break Hugo should have no trouble fixing it. Although we did get our one year warranty card and receipt officially stamped a number of times... Official stamps are big here. We also got a cordless phone as the one we have now might have spent some time in the ark... Then, this evening, drum roll please, we received a brand new fridge. I'm still in shock. I think the freezer is actually going to freeze things... I'm having trouble containing my excitement here... I think that all the other families are going to be green with envy as it has, are you ready, 12 cubit feet of storage space!!! For here, that is HUGE!! Most people only have a little freezer inside their little fridge that will hold maybe a loaf of bread. So things are definitely looking up. We have the basic amenities now.
Here in Indonesia a huge part of daily life is your relationships with those around you. Bartering is a big part of that. There are so many little shops and food carts around that you wonder how they all survive. Those who run them make relationships with people who will come back to them because of it. Stores like Carrefour are destroying that aspect of the culture. There you throw an item in your cart and pay what the price tag says. Therefore throughout the day you will interact with a lot less people. I really notice the relationship thing. I have had a couple ankot drivers strike up a conversation with me and ask me about what we are doing here and what my name is etc... They will even bring me closer to the insanely steep path to our house than the other ones. They are building up a relationship with me and so next time I need an ankot, I will hopefully look for them. There's also the guy we get our water and gas from and the guy that we buy popsicles from. It is a really neat part of the culture here.
I haven't talked about the climate here at all. There is definitely some humidity here, but not nearly as much as Papua. It also cools down quite nicely at night. We are kind of in the mountains here so that's why it's also cooler than Jakarta. Also because we live like a foot from our neighbours, we don't get that much sun in the house. This helps keep the temperature down especially downstairs. Because we are so close to those around us, we do have these shear kind of curtains in front of the windows all the time. This does offer some privacy. I thought it would bother me a lot more than it actually has. We really don't hear our neighbours much at all. We hear other things more. Like last night across the river there was another independance celebration. There may have been 50 people there (we could see it from our roof) but they had the speakers so incredibly loud that it was crystal clear in our house. We all joked about the "free" concert we could "enjoy" last night...