Hi! I’m back again. I hope that all you dutch readers enjoyed Hugo’s blog. He’ll try to do it regularly so that if you don’t understand much English you can still follow along with our adventures.
We have completed the first week of Unit 2 and it is a lot harder than unit 1. Less singing and more homework. But at least we don’t have to introduce ourselves every morning any more... And we are learning a ton of new words.
The rainy season has officially begun. We have been dumped on a few times already. And when it comes down, it comes down. It’s really rather torrential. We can just about surf down our gong. Time to get some poncho’s…. We still have a serious water shortage. Apparently it can take a month after the rainy season begins before the water reaches wells…
There are some old wives tales here in Indonesia which are really rather well, humorous. I don’t want to belittle the people or their culture as they are great and we love living here, but some of the things they believe to be true are really rather silly. One of the things is that wind is BAD. It will make your lungs sick, apparently. Therefore, whenever riding a motor bike one needs to wear a jacket or a vest; which strongly resembles a bullet proof vest. For the longest time I wondered why people wore those vests… Also, while riding an angkot, no matter how hot it is all windows must remain closed as wind is BAD. The air we breathe otherwise is fine, but if it is moving fast it is BAD. I guess the makers of the (bullet-proof looking) vests would like people to continue believing this….
We have made good friends with our neighbours now. There are two different families that we talk with regularly. There are four of us families living in a circle here. Like a mini cul-de-sac you could say. The one couple is Opa and Oma of the one family. The other family is mom (her husband died 4 years ago) with two sons and her married daughter (who is pregnant) and husband and child. They live in a house with one window. That window is in their tiny front room which is where they usually visit with guests. It’s quite humbling when your neighbour says that her house is “jelek”(old/ugly) compared to yours and here you were getting periodically down because your house is not nearly as nice as all the other MAF families houses. Quite humbling…. I have to say that I’d rather live where we live than in one of the other houses because we have great neighbours and hardly anyone comes to our door selling stuff. The other people, because they live in a more open area, get a lot more people coming to ask for money or trying to sell stuff. Anyways, because these neighbours are so happy to talk with us, we are getting in lots of language practice each day.


This completely unrelated photo is of a horse and cart that we often see on our way to school in the morning...