Sunday...

Yesterday we had a more quiet day at home. Hugo did go out to meet a guy who makes furniture. He lives not far from us and we’d like to get some things made. He also met our water and gas guy. Here we only drink bottled water. Our kompor (stove) and both showers each have their own bottle of gas. So we’ve bought another full bottle in the event that one of the other ones runs out. Also we had arranged on Friday that our landlord would come at 9:00 am to install sinks in our bathrooms. Well, he showed up at 11:00 and together with three other guys installed a sink only in the downstairs bathroom. The drain for the sink is a pipe that goes beside the toilet and the idea is that it will go down the shower drain… Nice… I think we are going to add some piping so that it goes all the way to the shower drain because now there is always dirty water on the floor. Later on we got the story that if we want one upstairs we have to pay for it ourselves. This is also the case if we want a flush toilet downstairs. There is a small possibility that we will be moving so we’re not sure about spending any money on this house until we know for sure.
This morning we went to the local international church which meets at the Bandung Alliance International School (BAIS) where the kids will go. We went there just for today because we aren’t sure yet where the reformed church we want to attend is and it is not so easy for us to get transportation with our limited Indonesian. There is a guy next door to us who is willing to drive us around, but we have to meet him yet. Anyways, at church we met an Indonesian guy who is 24 and was adopted by a British fellow 10 years ago. He considers himself a Christian but says that he doesn’t know much about the Bible and maybe we could teach him. Okaaaayyy. We explained to him that he might want to go to a different church as the international church is not a church that teaches on specific passages of scripture. There is a good possibility that he will attend church with us. We’ll see what happens there. He told us that his biological family is muslim and when he was ten he heard about Jesus and didn’t want to be muslim anymore so he left home and lived on his own for five years before being adopted. His father is coming back from Britain tomorrow and he says that he will introduce us to him. I did verify that he was adopted by English folks with one of the teachers from the school. Normally, when you meet an Indonesian they will not come to your house right away. Usually you need to know them for 3 months or so. But because Joseph is familiar with the western way of life, he did come and visit with us for a while. But he did ask us when he should leave, which I thought was very nice. He took Mikah and Christiaan home after church on his motorbike and then also Aidan after Aidan got up the guts to go on the bike. Christiaan was standing on the front and the other two were on the back. They thought it was great. It is quite a walk to the school from our house so we are thinking about either renting a motorbike or buying one. I think that it will be too much for Aidan to walk all that way twice a day and be in school for the whole day every day as well. At the school/church we met both Mikah and Christiaan’s teachers and Mikah saw the inside of her classroom. It is not very large, but it is a nice room. School starts on Tuesday of this week.
We have only been here a few days but we have already acquired more language. This is very exciting as there is a chance we could skip out of Unit 1, if the teachers like us enough… and if we pass the test too of course…
Tomorrow I’ll have to teach my Ibu’s how to use my washing machine, which is up on the roof by the way. Apparently it is too complicated and fancy for them. It is exactly like the one that I had in Sentani, so not too complicated at all…. Just a lot of work as the washing tub and spinning tub are two separate tubs (make any sense?). So this week we hope to get a few more things that we need like a microwave. I tried to heat up my “oven”, which is a metal box that you put over one of the burners on your kompor and it started to smoke and stink so I quickly turned it off. Later I found out that it is a new “stove” so we need to take it, the kompor, and the gas bottle outside and put it on high for about 5 hours to burn off any paint and chemicals that are on the inside. Okay, I guess that’s going to have to happen this week sometime too. Anyways, with only two burners on the kompor and this interesting oven thing, we think that a microwave would be quite useful. I also don’t have hot water at my kitchen sink so I need to boil water if I want to do dishes with warm water, which I do. Sometimes I feel like we’re camping out here.
Time to hit the hay! Till tomorrow! Thanks to all of you who have sent us notes! We love to hear from you, it’s really exciting to get email… Once we know our mailing address we’ll post it for you.