Afternoon at the Lake....

Today I went to the beach with my family here. My bro H has a boat so I had the opportunity to try water skiing again for the first time in over ten years... There was some reaquainting necessary with how to get up... So there were a few spills... In my defense the water was rather choppy today. But the weather and the views were fantastic! We bbq'ed burgers and soaked up the sun! Fun stuff!

More wedding photos...

The first photo is myself with three of my sisters. The next is myself with my youngest brother J. I think the next photo is self-explanitory. The fourth photo is of all the Moesker women (minus my sister Marsha who had already gone home). Then you have my folks. Then my bro who got hitched and finally my littlest sister Julia. Doesn't she look fine?

Wedding day!

So this morning my younger brother John married his sweetheart Daylinn. It was a lovely wedding and the bride and groom made no secret of the fact that they were thrilled to be married.

The photo above is of all of us siblings with spouses. Only my hubby Hugo and our kids were missing... :-(

Don't they look happy and beautiful?!

So I've been in Canada for one week now. I think I'm getting over the culture shock. You know what bugs me? I go into a store and I see something that I'm looking for and it seems to fit the bill and so I buy it. But then the next three stores will have a different version of the same item including possibly one I like better than the one I purchased... ugghhh... I'm used to only possibly finding one single version of something I need and I buy it. The array of choices to be found here is astounding! Then there are the public washrooms in places like malls and airports... CLEAN! Toilet paper and soap provided and you don't have to pay!

The roads here are so smooth... Actually the runways are smooth also. When I left Sentani we literally bounced our way into the air. When I flew from Vancouver to Kelowna in exactly the same type of plane, boeing 737, I barely felt a thing!

People drive fast... need I say more...?

It's been great to see the folks again. It feels like I haven't been gone three years. Except that my parents have better furniture now and my baby brother is an awful lot taller... :-)

As I flew to Kelowna I couldn't resist taking a photo of the rockies still covered in snow.

That second photo there is of my baby sister and me. Freakish isn't it?

White Rock...

Today I had the chance to reminisce with friends (the Hoff family) at White Rock. We walked along the waters edge before feasting on fish'n chips and then ice cream cones. It was a lovely sunny day, but I kept my sweater on and the many in bathing suits probably thought me odd....
P.S. Yes Mom, I streaked my hair... :-)

So I'm Canada eh...

Yup, I'm in Canada right now. It's a little surreal really. It rather feels like not much has changed. There are some new buildings and such and people's kids are bigger, but it feels the same. I'm loving the mountains and the crisp air. Every night I go to bed with ice blocks for feet... I'm not used to a dry climate with temperatures below 20 C...
It is fabulous to see friends and family again though. No pictures... yet... Just lots and lots of shopping and visiting.... :-)

Kawin...

It seems that Ice has been "kawin" with her boyfriend. Kawin is what they do here when they can't afford to get married. Basically they move in together. Her family and his family had talks. His family admitted that they wouldn't be able to pay the dowry for a marriage but that they could manage to pay the dowry for "kawin". Ice would dearly love to get married, but she's realistic (plus she feels that as a woman her opinion is of no value and that she must just do what the men in the family say). So far her "husband's" family has not paid the dowry. Not sure what the holdup is. In a situation like this, the couple is not supposed to have any children until the dowry is paid. Hmmm.... who's gonna control that??? Should they have children without the dowry being paid, the children belong to her family and he has no rights to them whatsoever.
So why didn't they just wait until the dowry was paid? Well, it turns out that this guys' older brother also had his heart set on Ice, in spite of the fact that he has already been married and has two children. His wife left him a while ago and lives with someone else. Ice has no interest in this fellow and decided that it would probably be best to let him know very clearly, sooner rather than later, that he has no chance. Turns out, Ice's sister, who is actually married but not living with her husband, likes this older brother.... What a soap opera...!!
I really wish that they would perform some sort of ceremony when a couple is "kawin". I think it would be good for the couple to promise in front of the members of their church and their pastor, that they will be faithful to eachother, just as you would in a marriage ceremony. The thing here is that the people really want to have the whole package. Ritha was actually kawin with her husband for 10 years before they actually got married in church. The "whole package" means, they want to wear the special clothes-he a dark suit with white gloves, she a white dress, they want to have the big party with lots of food and of course there is the government paperwork that has to be filed which also carries some fees with it.
One can still see the clinging to the old ways in spite of the fact that they have the Bible to guide them in their lives. But the truth is that we do the same in many things as well. Just maybe not such dramatic things...

A frightening event...

Today I had a strange experience that could have been a really nasty one. Just before noon I was in the kitchen stirring the granola I was baking when Ice came to me and said,"Ibu, did he come with Bapak (man/father)?" I looked at her and wondered what in the world she was talking about. She looked away from me and repeated the question. So I went around the corner and just about walked into a guy standing there in my living room! I assumed that he had just entered the house, however, I was wrong. Ice had been cleaning in my bathroom when she felt an odd sensation that she usually feels when someone is trying to get into her house. So she stealthily exited my bedroom and suddenly there in Mikah's room (which is on the far end of the house away from the front door) was a guy looking through her desk drawers. Ice remained calm and simply asked him what he wanted. He replied that he wanted Bapak and Ibu. She managed to get him to walk down the hall (although she said he did bump into the wall alerting her to the fact that he was intoxicated). She was afraid that he would run away so she kept near him while allerting me to his presence. I asked him what he wanted and he mumbled something about having a need as his dad is sick. (His Dad actually died many years ago and is a former MAF employee) I escorted him outside where Ice told me that he had been looking in Mikah's room. I asked him if he took anything and he said he didn't. He did have a Bible in his hand, not sure why... I calmly told him that it was not cool to just go into people's houses and that normally one would call the police if someone strange was in their home. I told him that he should go home and sleep and if he needed something to go to his relatives. During this whole event I had no idea of his identity. It was only afterwards when I questioned Ice about him that I figured out who he was. A nasty guy who's sister worked for our friends in Nabire. He had kicked her out of their mother's house (just down the road from here) in spite of the fact that she gave him money and she continued to give him money even when she moved to Nabire with our friends! Thankfully, he was too intoxicated to be violent and thankfully he did not manage to take anything. You may wonder why I did not call the police. Well, had I done that, I would have had to try and keep the guy at my house until they came and then have to deal with the police. In addition, the police most likely would just arrest him, beat him, throw him into jail until he sobered up and then let him go. I don't see any good coming from that either. However, apparently we are supposed to go to his family and tell them about this. But I know that he has already caused his mother and sisters so much grief that I'm not sure I want to add to it.
As I am writing this, Hugo is installing a second slide-lock on our front door and I will now be more vigilant than ever about locking it. Thank God nothing bad happened. However it does leave me feeling rather uneasy in my own home. Not such a nice thing...

This is what we do for fun around here....

In honour of two Canadian families who are repatriating soon, we had another hockey tournament. We had four teams with the Canadian players evenly distributed throughout the teams... :-) We played four games over an evening and a morning. Our team ended up being in third place. But it was fun in spite of the myriad of bruises over my body...

Now I just want to say

GO CANUCKS GO!!!!!!!!!

Blockade...

Yesterday some friends of ours attempted to go to Abe. However, the road was blocked. A group of inebriated locals had decided to block the road with fallen trees and burning tires. They were demanding $ before allowing folks to go through. If refused, they would wave their machetes around threateningly. The police were dispatched and asked the locals to clean up the road. They refused and so the police began shooting in the air. That had no effect so the police shot one of the men in the leg. He was taken to the hospital here in Sentani where he died. Probably more because he had more spirits than blood in his body than because of the wound. Upon hearing the news that their comrade had passed on, the men at the blockade became even more angry and threatening. I'm not sure how the whole thing ended, but it probably ended in arrests. There is so much more I could say about events like this, but I fear that I should not. It just makes me feel incredibly sad that these kinds of things happen with local folks...

Going to school...

Ritha has been going to school all year to become a teacher of the Protestant religion. Kind of a funny title, but she's going to a government school and according to the government there are only five religions. We have an older desktop computer in our office that Ritha can use whenever she needs to prepare her assignments and use the internet and print things. So she does. She has been getting some very good marks on her assignments and the teachers are making her prove where she got her info etc... So annoying for her! As if she isn't busy enough already! The problem that most of the other students run into is that they have to use internet cafe's to surf then net and type things up and there are times where there is no internet or there is no power. Like the other night. The power went off. Here they say "lampu (lights) mati (dead)". But Ritha was at our house so first she used our laptop and then when it got dark we put on the generator and she could keep going and print upon completion. She had only received the assignment that day and it was due the next day. Not sure how her classmates were supposed to complete their assignments....

The first two photos are of the view from our room. The first is part of Jayapura and the second is the view out to the ocean. Then you have the pool. Behind Hugo's chair is a little patch of beach sand so you can pretend you're at the beach... There was some problem with the umbrella, the only one remaining of the original three... But these guys got it fixed so we didn't have to bake in the sun.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/04/29/soldiers-riot-jayapura-assault-media.html

Follow the link to read about the "activities" that occurred earlier this week. There was a bit more to the story than I had heard and wrote about.... Isn't that always the case?

Rumah Makan 89

Hugo and I just returned from a two-night get-a-way in Jayapura in celebration of our upcoming 12th anniversary. Our first night we ate at a "swanky" restaurant called Restaurant 89. Not sure why... The cook works right at the entrance so you can watch him and his underlings, with their odd longish hairdo's, as they prepare your food. In the second photo you can see my noodles on the green plate waiting for their turn to be fried. I ordered one of my favorite dishes, ifu mie. It means vegetables over noodles. The noodles are fried first, very yummy (don't think about the oil... don't think about the oil...) then some shrimp and some chicken is fried up, then some veggies, and then the guy uses his spatula to get seasonings from different bowls, and then adds water and cornstarch and finally, an egg "whipped" with chopsticks. He then pours the lot on top of the waiting fried noodles. So yum! Hugo ordered nasi goreng (how boring) and fried shrimp (they were good but we missed some sauce to dip them in...).

Our children were in the very capable care of our good friends Jan and Dini.

More on our adventures tomorrow....