This week I decided to put Marc and Brynne on antibiotics. Brynne’s bacterial infection has reoccurred and Marc has been complaining off and on of a sore stomach (we know he has drunk tap water a few times...) for a few weeks now. So I talked with the doctor’s assistant from the kid’s school. She recommended different antibiotics for the both of them. Brynne’s comes in enormous red capsules; suspension antibiotics are only recently making an appearance here and are very limited and expensive. So I have to open up the capsule and empty out the contents onto a piece of paper. It is a fine white powder which I then divide into three even piles. One pile I mix with yogurt and give to Brynnie. The rest I put back into the capsule for the next dose. Quite the procedure. Marc’s antibiotics come in a pill like a large Tylenol. For 10 pills it cost $2,000 Rupiahs, about 25 cents canadian!! First I have to split it, then crush the half and mix it with yogurt. For the both of them I have to do this twice a day. Hopefully these antibiotics will cure whatever ails them….

These are two things that I think we North Americans are missing, but which Indonesians find very practical. Who loves to bend over when sweeping the dust into the dust bin? Never bend again with the long handled dust pan!

Note the strainer that goes into your kitchen sink drain. Never worry about losing your wedding ring down the sink again!