Mimi's Musings

2009-12-22T20:30:00.013+07:00

Egads! Yet again, time has flown by! Herewith, a few tales from the past six months…

From a Ramadan special overnight stay at the 7-star Emirates Palace, to sorting through garbage at school with our Green Team, the semester has been busy with a mix of work and play. Sam is playing lots of tennis, as well as soccer and basketball. He swam on the elementary swim team this fall. He most recently tried out for the elementary school play and was cast as the CHICKEN in Jack in the Beanstalk. I have high hopes for my boy!

Sophia keeps busy with piano and tennis, and making up plays with her friends. She also has a propensity to want to recreate anything she experiences: we recently saw an exhibit from the Guggenheim and headed straight out to the nearest art supply store to get paints, which we set up at home and proceeded to paint madly for an afternoon. The paints were then shelved to make way for her sewing gear. Then, after a trip to the mall for clothes shopping, she got it in her head that she wanted to sew a dress for her teacher’s little girl. I have NO talent in this area. Before I knew it, she had found an old piece of cloth and cut out two sides of a “dress” and there we were, sewing it together. Luckily, she was content to put it on her doll, instead of giving it to the poor little girl! Next up was her idea of converting her closet floor into a bedroom. This closet is tiny – the floor space is maybe 3 feet by 1.5 feet. She lasted half of one night, fell out and ended up in our bed. Most recently, after playing at a friend’s house with a balcony, she has been trying to get me to collect cardboard boxes (BIG ONES) so she can build her own balcony! Ach!!! Imagination is a fine thing, but I now dread the next great idea…

I have been to Turkey twice this Fall, once over the Eid break with the family and then again with the intrepid Grade 7 for our annual Week Without Walls trip. The trip with Sam, Sophia and Jared was a 10 on Rodgers family vacations. We hit Cappedocia, the region I have been back to for the past two years now. Sam was in climbing heaven, as each hike we took had loads of boulders, perfect for scaling and jumping. Sophia is one game little girl. She kept up with her big brother, undaunted by vertical climbs and dizzying heights.
She only balked a few times when it was time to come down! We rode horses in the valleys, rented ATV’s which the kids LOVED, and hung out in local cafes for hours reading books and eating chocolate gozleme, Turkey’s answer to French crepes. The highlight of the trip was the hot air balloon ride we all took as a family! On my return trip with the 7th grade a few months later, it snowed and we all had a huge snowball fight. On the days it did not snow, it rained; luckily, we all come from the desert where it NEVER rains or snows, so the kids thought it was the best trip EVER!

Traffic musings

I have commented on traffic in Manila and Jakarta and here is the take on car hell in Abu Dhabi. Basically, on the roads you see a disproportionate number of top of the line cars from Italy, Germany or any other kick-ass car-making country, ranging from mini sports vehicles to the biggest, most egregiously carbon-sucking Hummers I have ever encountered, usually painted in gold. This would not be so bad, if only the drivers had some road sense. The drivers only know two speeds: extremely fast and screeching to a halt. Even if they are approaching a red light, it is like a road race as each car jockeys for the best position at the red light. I can speed up to a light and still be passed by many cars, which then squeeze in ahead of me just before the light. Drives me mad. The other annoying thing is the way they zoom up your butt like a dog in heat, trying to sniff in places uninvited. I have recently bought a cute little Volvo, so I know my rear end is good looking, but yeesh! Enough with the snout in my rear! Often, you cannot even see the front of the car behind you because it is so close to my tail. The one good thing is that there are still stretches of road with little traffic, so you can really let it out – hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!

Go Green: UAE-style!

The other day I joined the 9th annual UAE Clean-Up event, sponsored by a highly regarded environmental group here in the UAE. I had high hopes, as I encouraged my middle school kids to meet me at 8.00 am on a Saturday morning, to help save the world. I have to comment on this event, as it was spectacularly awful. During the weeks that led up to this country-wide event, I made countless phone calls to the organizers, trying to find out where we would be meeting. Two days before the event, I was finally told to go to the Corniche, by the newly opened restaurants. This is a lovely area of public beach, cleaned by little Sri Lankan men each day, so it is one of the cleaner spots in the whole country. We met at 8.00, got our free t-shirts and caps (hmm….how much carbon output when into making those???).

Finally at 9.30, 30 minutes after the supposed start time and one HUGE unexpected downpour of rain later, one of the sheiks showed up to start the speeches. Yikes…another 30 minutes later, the speeches were finished, mugs were given out along with other various presents. Finally, we were ready!!!! We were given a glove and a bag and sent on our merry way, down the cleanest beach I have ever had the joy of cleaning. The four students I was with and I barely filled half of one small trash bag in our hour of searching. Upon return to the event center, I was horrified to see box after box of water bottles, juice boxes, and chips being thrown joyously out onto the beach. The event organizers and their little workers unpacked the boxes and happily gave us each drinks and chips to thank us for our lovely contribution to cleaning up the planet. Check out the photo of the trash generated from this event and then take a gander at the pathetic pile of trash bags the group was able to collect from beach litter. Meanwhile, camels are dying daily, due to ingestion of plastic waste out in the desert. Lesson learned: home grown clean-ups are best! Of course, as we were leaving the event, trails of empty chip bags and plastic water bottles lay strewn along the corniche – good thing the Sri Lankan workers were not far behind!

A bit of culture in our cultural wasteland…

Recently, I sang in Handel’s Messiah as part of the ACS holiday choir concert– we amassed about 60 people from the community, practiced FOUR times and put on quite a fantastic show, I must say, accompanied by a small orchestra of community members. It was a highlight to my Fall.

Meanwhile, Jared has been a busy boy – taking course for his masters, coaching a team of adults to run the Dubai marathon in January, going to Dubai for the rugby 10’s, attending the Killers concert, and generally giving up sleep in order to complete all the tasks he has set out for himself. A friend of ours recently wrote a poem about Jared – inside the poem was a hidden message, “Jared never sleeps”. It is true.

As we head into the Christmas season, we will head to the airport in a few hours, hop on a plane to Switzerland where we spend Christmas with Jared’s sister and mom and assorted in-laws. Then, to top it off, we will spend a week skiing in France – we are all so excited.

We wish everyone a happy and safe holiday season.

Summer 2009

2009-08-08T15:07:00.011+07:00

Ah, the Summer of 2009…fun in the sun, fog, rain and clouds. After a whirlwind visit with Erna in Williamsburg and then with my family in Baltimore, which included a fabulous cookout at Maija’s house (thanks for coming, everyone!), we spent almost the entire summer up on Nantucket, reconnecting with friends, playing lots of tennis, riding bikes, doing yoga, motoring in Jared’s mid-life crisis motorcycle side car, enjoying beach picnics which featured digging ever bigger holes and jumping off of the lifeguard chair.

Some highlights include playing in a mixed doubles tournament with brother, Richard. Having not played tennis together since last year, we did pretty well, completing 8 sets in one day. We finally got beaten in a three-set match, which ended as we were due at a cocktail party. Such are the delights of summer fun. I bought myself a bike, called The Commuter. It had a huge, comfy seat, and I could ride for hours without my derriere feeling a thing. I rode into lots of yoga classes and was feeling quite fit by the end of the summer.

We also tried to eat more healthy foods. Thanks to buddy Batia, I opened my pallet to beets for the first time since childhood and was sure I had contracted Cancer by the evening when my pee turned red!

The kids really enjoyed new-found freedom this summer. We extended our living room to include most of the village of Sconset, so Sam could ride all over to visit his various friends. Sophia spent another summer in the public park’s tree, fighting off strangers who dared to want to climb “our” tree. Richard’s girls came up again and the four cousins had a blast riding waves, creating and performing plays, riding up to the lighthouse on their own, and learning how to be independent.

It was a truly American small town summer: from the 4th of July bike parade replete with games in the church yard to a festival of lights in which we all partook by dancing in the streets, to attending the church and the old folk’s home fairs, where $20 got the kids two hours of fun, to Sophia sewing her own 1800’s style “poppet”, to homemade lemonade stands and walkie talkies serving as babysitting.

As always seems to happen in summer, I turned a year older and Sophia helped me celebrate by helping to organize a luncheon surprise party. Although I knew about the actual party, I was surprised when it actually occurred, as Sam, in his attempt to lure me into the living room had to resort to telling me he smelled smoke in the living room. I raced in and, thanks to my crappy eye sight, I saw flames behind the front door. As I began to panic, I noticed the group of faces smiling at me and a cake being held by a friend behind the door. After I got my heart to stop racing we had a lovely party, with entertainment by Sophia, in her Nantucket cheerleading dress. One of the cheers went something like this: Mommy works up high, Mommy works down low. Mommy works all the time….GOOOOOOOOOO MOM!!” I do tend to do more housework in the summer, as we have to leave behind our lovely maid in Abu Dhabi. The kids are not used to hearing me yell at them to clean up their rooms and take their dishes in and put their clothes away. I think we are all glad to be returning to normalcy!
Other highlights included a trip to Great Point and a climb up the lighthouse, a boat ride over to Toppers restaurant in Wauwinet, Sam and Sophia’s first real bike rides To Krisi’s house into the biggest wind of the summer, getting a pedicure and a drink at the Chicken Box with my GIRLFRIENDS, and being a witness to my Goddaughter Katrina’s baptism!

As I write this, we are sitting in the airport restaurant in Frankfurt, chowing down on Nurnbuger sausages. So much for the healthy foods of Nantucket. The countdown is on for schoolyear 2009-10. Stay tuned…

Time Flies!

2009-05-24T01:06:00.003+07:00

Egads! Is it really May? My new year’s resolution has been flushed down the toilet! Herewith, I will attempt to skim over the last five months, since my last batch of more than five minutes to ponder my life was way back in January.

Jared ran the Dubai marathon with brother-in-law, Sal! Awesome!

In late January, a colleague and I traveled to Doha to meet some of the education gurus du jour. We got charged up about standards and benchmarks and returned to ACS pumped and ready to implement. Doha itself was devoid of green, full of construction and cars, cars, cars. Not impressive at all, really, although the school American School of Doha was sparkling new and looked fantastic!

I kept playing lots of tennis through February and into March, at which point I managed to injure my foot in such a way that I had to take a hiatus from all sport for 6 weeks or so. I am just now getting back on the court and it feels great!

At the end of March, my FAVORITE band came to Abu Dhabi: Cold Play! It was one of the BEST concerts I have ever been to (Elton John came last year and was pretty darn amazing!). The venue was outdoors at the Emirate Palace, just like the EJ concert had been.

The most amazing part was that it POURED rain for the first 25 minutes of the concert. Who would have thought that a lightening storm and downpour would lead to tales of a great concert? Not only did the band make the best of the shocking weather, but they managed to weave in hilarious lyrics about the situation into their songs. After the storm ended, we were all soaked but felt cool and wonderful! At one point, the band walked out to a small stage in the middle of the crowd and we were standing only feet away from them. It was a fantastic event!

In Early April, we traveled to Goa, India for spring break. We signed up for a package deal through Expedia, a first for us. It was pretty much as I had imagined. A 3-star hotel (hah!) and flights through the night…all for a low, low price. After getting over the shock of the shoddiness of our lodging, we got into holiday mode. The kids did not even notice the crumbling walls and shoddy construction, although the constant presence of flies was hard to ignore. The really cool thing about our room was that it had TWO bathrooms! That should have been a hint that we would be spending many hours in them….indeed, Goa belly was had by most of us and we became good friends with the two toilets in our suite. But the beach was nice…the cows even came out for a visit on the beach each night at sunset and sniffed all around the lingering tourists. That was usually while I was receiving my daily massage out on the beach…it was a wee bit disconcerting to be sniffed by a teenage bull while I was lying prone and half naked in public!

Sam and Sophia also tried their hands (and entire bodies) at parasailing. They LOVED it and could not get enough of the thrill. We sent them up a few times throughout the week; I am convinced one of my children will become a stunt performer one day!

Other exciting events included a visit to a spice farm, watching Sam and Sophia wash an elephant while sitting on its back, shopping for our summer jewelry sale, and eating a variety of great Indian food. (I think it was the German place at which we had breakfast that caused me such digestive distress!)

Back to Abu Dhabi for the final few weeks of cool weather before Hell weather returned. Sophia turned 7 and had a slumber party with 6 screaming girls. I barely got out of bed the next day. Was I ever like that??? Sam turns 9 next week and wants a slumber party of his own. We broke down and bought the Wii game just today, so I reckon the boys will keep busy with that!

In our free time on the weekends, we have been spending lots of time at the club we go to. There is a small beach there and we have been watching the bay become a canal as the construction trucks dump loads of sand on the island across from our club. It has been fascinating to watch the process of an island being created where there was only water before. The worker bees spend days packing down the sand and now are at the stage at which they are constructing 20-story buildings upon the sand. At one point, Jared and I counted over 80 cranes on the horizon as we sat sipping our drinks. I dread to think what would happen if an earthquake came rumbling through.

At the time of writing this, there are 14 days of school left. We are spending most of the summer on Nantucket and the whole family is looking forward to sleeping in, playing tennis, going to the beach and climbing the tree!

A New Year Begins

2009-05-24T01:05:00.002+07:00

Alas, one of my new year’s resolutions is to keep my blog updated. After the dearth of postings in the last year, I have decided to try a new method: the short, more frequent bits and bobs. We shall see how it goes. Since it is only January 3, there is clearly not much to say, if I am only to report on 2009 thus far. I have spent much of my time at the tennis arena in Abu Dhabi over the last few days, volunteering my services at the Capitala Tennis tournament, featuring, as I noted in my December post, Nadal, Murray, Davydenko, Federer, Roddick and Blake. It has been fantastic to see them play from such a close distance. My head is exhausted from so much swiveling! This afternoon I head back for the third and final time to see how Murray fares against Nadal, the young 22 year-old stud. His game is truly astounding! Even Sam was able to sit for five hours and watch two matches yesterday, a tribute to the high entertainment factor of these tennis stars.

New Year’s Eve was somewhat subdued here in the UAE. Due to the distressing events in the Gaza strip, all live music events were cancelled in Dubai, leaving the Abu Dhabi Shakira concert the only live event worth attending in the whole country. We Rodgers were struggling to overcome jet lag, having just returned from the U.S., so we had a low-key evening with old friends visiting from our Manila days.

Shakira must have recuperated from her big night, as she was seated in the royal family box at the tennis tourney yesterday. The fans were heard alternating cat calls from “Rafa!” to “Shakira, I love you!”, to “Go Niki!” during the Nadal vs. Davydenko match.

On our way home from the match yesterday, both of our two decent radio stations were playing classical music, a sign that someone important in the UAE had passed away. It turned out one of the sheiks from a tiny Emirate met his maker over in London, thus beginning a period of mourning throughout the country, replete with 24-hour dirge –like music and three days of closed government offices.

It is to this dirge-like theme that I will drag my holiday-laden buttocks off to school TOMORROW. In sh’allah, I will be able to find the time to keep you posted on the comings and goings of the Rodgers clan in the coming year!

Photos from Christmas

2009-01-03T15:24:00.016+07:00

Sam and Sophia with Grandi on Christmas morning.

The Rodgers try their hand at skiing, to great acclaim! Rountop, PA ROCKS!

36th Street in Baltimore in all its splendor!

American Idol in Greer and Gero's living room!

Jared and Richard at Christmas.

Family on Christmas eve.

We run into Steffi on way back through Frankfurt.

Cousins at Christmas.

Happy New Year 2009

2009-01-03T10:46:00.002+07:00

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Alas, one of my new year’s resolutions is to keep my blog updated. After the dearth of postings in the last year, I have decided to try a new method: the short, more frequent bits and bobs. We shall see how it goes. Since it is only January 3, there is clearly not much to say, if I am only to report on 2009 thus far. I have spent much of my time at the tennis arena in Abu Dhabi over the last few days, volunteering my services at the Capitala Tennis tournament, featuring, as I noted in my December post, Nadal, Murray, Davydenko, Federer, Roddick and Blake. It has been fantastic to see them play from such a close distance. My head is exhausted from so much swiveling! This afternoon I head back for the third and final time to see how Murray fares against Nadal, the young 22 year-old stud. His game is truly astounding! Even Sam was able to sit for five hours and watch two matches yesterday, a tribute to the high entertainment factor of these tennis stars.

New Year’s Eve was somewhat subdued here in the UAE. Due to the distressing events in the Gaza strip, all live music events were cancelled in Dubai, leaving the Abu Dhabi Shakira concert the only live event worth attending in the whole country. We Rodgers were struggling to overcome jet lag, having just returned from the U.S., so we had a low-key evening with old friends visiting from our Manila days.

Shakira must have recuperated from her big night, as she was seated in the royal family box at the tennis tourney yesterday. The fans were heard alternating cat calls from “Rafa!” to “Shakira, I love you!”, to “Go Niki!” during the Nadal vs. Davydenko match.
On our way home from the match yesterday, both of our two decent radio stations were playing classical music, a sign that someone important had passed away. It turned out one of the sheiks from a tiny Emirate met his maker off in London, thus beginning a period of mourning throughout the country, replete with 24-hour dirge –like music and three days of closed government offices.

It is to this dirge-like theme that I will drag my holiday-laden buttocks off to school TOMORROW. In sh’allah, I will be able to find the time to keep you posted on the comings and goings of the Rodgers clan in the coming year!

Farewell to 2008

2009-01-03T10:36:00.003+07:00

I am sitting at Dad’s kitchen table as I write this; amazingly, I have been in the US since early December. Thanks to a confluence of Muslim and Christmas holidays, along with the 37th birthday celebration of the UAE, our school has the entire month of December off this year! The family Rodgers is taking advantage of the good fortune to come Stateside and cavort with family, especially among little cousins.

Besides a fantastic visit to Amsterdam on the way west, during which Sam bonded with an old buddy from Manila, Sam and Sophia have had nary a friend nor cousin to frolic with thus far, and at this point they have each invented imaginary friends who kick the heck out of each other. First Sophia invented Flora and then, in response, Sam created Knuckles and his dog, both of whom torture and abuse Flora at every turn. It is time for some playmates! Jared’s side of the family will provide fun in triplicate as his brother’s kids arrive tonight. I, meanwhile, have been given the gift of time alone with Mom and Dad here in Baltimore, which has been fantastic!

As a quick update on the past few months, we returned to Abu Dhabi after a lovely summer on Nantucket. Summer was spent playing tennis, going to the beach and trying to ignore the scary news that accompanied the weekly reading of the Sunday New York Times. I hope this past summer does not turn out to be the last hurrah!

Our second year in Abu Dhabi has not yielded the tales of interest that last year did. When one arrives with a fresh set of eyes to a new location, unique observations abound. At this point, I have seen enough five-o’clock shadowed, dish-dash wearing, cell-phone clinging, dark sunglasses wielding young men to stop craning my neck and pulling my children closer to me each time they pass by. I still have to stare in disbelief when I see the black-clad local women float by in the mall, with diamonds dripping from their sleeves and other precious stones adorning their head scarves, but with no hint of a human being present underneath the garb. I do not care what cultural explanations are ushered forth to explain such dress styles; it seems absolutely archaic to me.

Most of our lives, however, are spent at our school. I am teaching the same curriculum for the second year in a row – the first time in my teaching career I have ever done such a thing! One would think it would get easier, but it is still quite an undertaking to deliver an exciting and challenging program to the little 12 year-old devils. I actually have the privilege of teaching the BEST 7th grade class I think I have ever had, which makes going to work a real joy every day. Jared continues to shape the minds of the 10 year-olds; they love him!

Sam and Sophia are in third and first grades. Sam is learning cursive and multiplication and Sophia is deciphering an increasingly complex variety of words and writing stories like a future novelist. Their lives mirror a typical American kid’s life, with sports in the afternoons and weekends, scads of play dates, Boy Scouts, piano lessons, and fun weekend activities like trips to the beach, the desert, or to our local club.

I have been playing loads of tennis. I am in a league and have a fantastic partner; we have a lot of fun and are undefeated so far. In January, Abu Dhabi is hosting a small exhibition tournament with some top names of men’s tennis: Nadal, Federer, Murray, Roddick and a few others will grace the center court at our city’s tennis arena (built four years ago and never been used! They are resurfacing the courts for the event!). I am on the list to volunteer my services for the event; my only hope is to get close enough to my heart throb, Rafael, to be splattered with his sweat!

Jared has been following a strict work-out regimen, replete with yoga, weight lifting, cardio moves and lots of grunting (not to mention sweat splattering!). Part of the paraphernalia includes a pull-up bar in the guest room. Sam and Sophia have figured out how to shimmy their way up the doorframe and grab onto the pull-up bar. You should see little Sophia’s burgeoning muscles! Jared is also working on a Masters degree in technology, in hopes of moving into a more tech-oriented position at school. More on that as events develop…

As you can see (if you are still awake), our lives have become quite…dare I say it…normal. The days of coups, floods, garbage crises, and eye-itching, lung-clogging air pollution are a thing of the past at this point. The challenges we face now look like this: Abdullah, our apartment manager is off to India for a few months, leaving us without a man to clean our car every day (egads!)…. traffic has gotten worse in the city; if we do not leave our house by 7.15 for school, it takes 9 minutes instead of 7 to get to school (oh, horror!)…. now that the weather has turned PERFECT, I can sleep sans aircon, which leaves us vulnerable to being awoken at 4.30 am with the morning’s first call to prayer (say it ain’t so!). With troubles like these, we really have no reason to complain (and I know people have a LOT to complain about these days).

As the sound of soft rain patters against the window panes, I will take a sip of my hot chocolate and bring my ramblings to a close. Dad, sitting across the table, is busily scribbling hand-written Christmas cards (sucker) and I need to go in search of some wireless internet to send my electronic creation off.

We Rodgers wish everyone a happy December and may good fortune shine upon you all as we enter cautiously into 2009!

Cooler Climes in Abu Dhabi

2007-12-17T22:58:00.001+07:00

November, 2007

Yes, we are still here!!! I have been unbelievably busy since we arrived and am ashamed to note that there have been no updates to my Bloggaroonie since last February!!! Since the quick intro from August I was thrown into the pit of life in a new, burgeoning school. In early November, I spent a lovely week in Cappedocia Turkey with 60 seventh graders. It was an amazing place to visit. I cannot believe that I had never heard of Cappedocia before I was told about this trip. It is a MUST see! I took my first hot air balloon ride at dawn and was graced with the most amazing spectacles of light falling on weathered formations of rock and small villages tucked in between. We had a week without walls, and it lived up to its name. Each day we would find ourselves hiking through beautiful countryside, and the kids would stand and present a topic they had researched there on the spot where the event had taken place. Makes one resent those walled in classrooms with lined up desks…

For the first time we are living in a place where we actually are compelled to stick around on a long weekend. In fact we are in one right now – it is the 36th birthday of this young nation and the folks are celebrating in style. Lights with the number 36 are up everywhere and people are out and about in full force.

Last weekend was thanksgiving and we had a few people over and prepared a nice, American feed fest. True to the rules of Thanksgiving, we did not stop stuffing our faces until we were bulging from every bulgeable corner of our bodies. For the first time in 9 years, I have a kitchen which inspires me (and has Aircon!). Jared and I spent the day caring for our turkey, baking cakes, whipping potatoes and cooking shrimp appetizers. A fantastic Thanksgiving.

Because it was a long weekend, we arranged to try our hand at camping – it is the big leisure activity in these parts and the season has officially begun with the onset of fantastic weather. We started out with a mini camp out – at a beach halfway between here and Dubai. Our friends told us they had been there last winter and it had been nice, but we had heard murmurings that things were no longer the same….. We arrived at our destination in late afternoon, and put our vehicles in 4-wheel drive. We floored it onto the beach in deep sand and I immediately got stuck – in our newly purchased (second hand)_ Land Cruiser. Not to worry, a little gunning by my hero, Jared, and we were set to go. We pulled up alongside about fifty other cars and were assured that they would be gone when night fell. Around us dune buggies were screeching up and down the beach, we told our kids to look both ways before they made the 20 foot trek from our car to the water’s edge. Above us ultra light flying machines were buzzing overhead – cool to see but it added to the noise pollution. Distressingly, as the light faded and the gorgeous full moon began to rise, the buggies began to accrue and rev their engines; florescent lights went on in makeshift bars down the beach (all illegal), and music began to pound out of immense loud speakers about 50 feet from our pastoral camp. We eyed one another warily and pondered what to do. After downing a few more beers, the men went to ask what time the music would end. It turned out the loudest group comprised a bunch of Omani men, here for a month of partying. They told us in no uncertain terms that the music would go until dawn. At last we decided to pack up and return home. It was clear we would get no sleep and the dune buggies continued to drag up and down the beach, while more and more cars were approaching, in anticipation of a night of illicit drinking. Sam and Sophia were beside themselves with disappointment and Sophia has slept in her tent in her room for the past week!

Not to be deterred from a foray into nature, we are trying again tomorrow with a trip up to El Ain – about a two-hour drive. Tales of wadis and quiet, open desert have tempted us to dust off the sand in our sleeping bags and pack up again. I have warm brownies resting in their Tupperware, freshly baked bread and chocolate chip pancakes ready for the morning after.

We actually have had two journeys into the desert since we arrived in August. One time we accompanied our new Dutch friends to a farm out in the middle of NOWHERE. It is amazing how you can be in the middle of nowhere in this country, and still find yourself under a HUGE electric tower. This farm housed not only horses, but also two cheetahs, a few peacocks, emus, antelope-like creatures and small deer. We saddled up Sam and Sophia on the smallest of the equine critters and headed out..under the shadow of the largest electric tower I have ever seen. You could hear the current crackling along overhead. Amazing. Every so often a group of camels and riders would saunter by, on their way home from race training. It was great to get away from the glitz of Abu Dhabi where all the local Emirates are unbelievably wealthy, and everyone else is living here to sustain these people’s lifestyle. In fact, the workers (waterers, highway workers, construction, day workers, street cleaners, hotel personnel, etc) live in sub standard housing outside the city. Each morning they are bussed in to work long hours and then bussed back to their barrack like shelters at night. I see lots of these buses with exhausted looking dark skinned men each morning being trucked in to work.

I mention waterers, because, it NEVER rains here. Not a drop from the sky since we arrived. Yet there are flowers, shrubbery, and trees everywhere. There is the most intricate underground watering system I have ever seen here. Everywhere you walk or drive, there is water in the streets and the grass is green and lush and wet. Little men in florescent green and yellow uniforms are pruning, watering and carting away unwanted rubbish. Anyway, back to desert trip number two. There is a population of expats here who have been here for years. We newbies were crying that we wanted to join their reindeer games and at last the invite came. An afternoon foray into the desert about an hour outside of town was on the table. There were 14 vehicles and we travelled in convoy the entire way there. Highway to local road, all beautifully tarred. In the middle of nowhere, we passed one of the prince’s car museum (our neighbor the rainbow prince!). We saw an immense pick up truck, the size of a small motel – it has a café inside the bed of the truck! Onwards we continued until suddenly we all turned off to the right and stopped. Our fearless leader got out of the car, swung open a gate and in we went. It was private property – a HUGE expanse of desert, but he had permission to enter. We drove about one mile turning this way and that, until we stopped at the base of the most beautiful sand dunes I have seen. All 14 cars parked next to one another (kind of sounds like the beach I just wrote about!), but we were the only humans for miles around. We had a lovely picnic, some of the wilder ones went dune bashing, the kids all were given glow sticks when the sun set, so we would not lose them in the dark desert. The sand was lusciously soft (and got everywhere!!!), the company was great – I met a few geophysicists, who later came to my science class to talk about geology and such. The people here are wonderful – massively educated and in professions which are very interesting.

Anyway, the night is getting old, and I must rest up for tomorrows camping expedition. I end with the note that I feel extremely happy to be here. I have learned something about myself. I like things that work, I like order and infrastructure. Coming here after nine years in polluted, overcrowded , dysfunctional Asian cities is like entering paradise. It is funny to hear people who have lived here for years complain about traffic and how life has gotten so much worse here. To me it is close to perfection. There is no traffic, compared to the standstills of Jakarta, the weather is as close to perfection as one can get at this time of year (sunny and 80’s in the day and 70’s at night), the people we meet are fun and interesting. We will probably never enter the world of the Emirates, but I like my life here and yearn for nothing. Last night we saw a high school drama production, which was one of the most entertaining pieces I have ever seen. That was followed by a bunch of us heading for drinks and a few shisha puffs out at the bay, at an outdoor bar, watching the lights of the city and the moon rise over the water.

Next weekend, we play in a Frisbee tournament in Dubai and I sing in the holiday concert in the Abu Dhabi Choral Group. I am doing the things I love – do not get me wrong, I would never regret the years spent in Manila and Jakarta, for I would not have the perspective on this place that I have now. We have had wonderful experiences, all fodder for my tales, mwahahahahahah!

And with that, I will go move Sophia to her bed and pack up her tent for the desert!

Arrival in Abu Dhabi

2007-12-17T22:57:00.000+07:00

August, 2007
Hello Abu Dhabi!

Wow! Upon first impression I was worried I would have nothing noteworthy to tell about this new post perched in the desert. Everything seems to work here and service comes with a smile. So the stories of rats, pestilence and bombs will have to change to tales of satisfaction and quaint vignettes of local spottings.

Among my first impressions here is the plethora of Pilipino workers everywhere from household help to fast food servers to service people in almost every shop in all the malls. I have not been called “mam/sir” for over three years – it brings a sentimental tear to the eye. I realize I have progressed (or regressed) from being “mam” to “Missus” to “Madam” over the course of our wanderings. That brings me to the best news yet: we seemed to have found our new magical sorceress in the personage of Nirosha, a nice girl from Sri Lanka. As a believer in first impressions and one who was lucky enough to buy the first wedding gown she tried on, I had the good fortune to hire the very first girl I interviewed. I should really say the first person, as many of the house help are men! Nirosha is 29, has a beautiful smile and a compelling giggle, which she employs regularly. Sophia seems taken, but Sam is still not sure – the nervous giggle sends him running for cover.

Our apartment is the size of a palace (this is a HUGE exaggeration, if you could see the real palaces which abound here!), but it seems quite large. We have a living/dining area of about 40 feet by 20 feet and if you are smarter than a fifth grader, you will know that covers a lot of area. Pardon the digression, but I had the misfortune to watch the show “Are you smarter than s fifth grader” the other night (you will read why in a moment) and was dumbfounded by the ignorance of our fellow Americans. I know they must screen the candidates first, lest they be able to actually calculate area and know how to count over a thousand, but the pace of questions, and the banter of the contestants with the moronic host was more than insulting.

So, back to the apartment…. We have four bedrooms and a lovely kitchen with lots of counter space – I would say I hope to be inspired to cook, but lovely Nirosha has begun whipping up delectable Indian food, so I may remain the lazy sot that has sustained me for almost a decade overseas. We have five bathrooms if you count the maid’s bath, which one should, as it is as beautiful as the other four. No balcony, but aircon (that’s AC to those of you Stateside) throughout the abode – a HUGE improvement over our other two Asian postings! All in all, this is a destination – we have purchased the fixings for guests, so let us know when you want to come!

As for safety…this place is among the safest (and most regulated and most “surveilled”) places on earth. If you take a photo of the wrong building you may be carted off and interrogated. I heard a story of a British man who gave a police officer the finger after not being able to pass him on the road. He was chucked in jail for three months and then deported along with his family. These, however, are among the measures, which afford us the luxury of not locking our doors at night. Speaking of locking doors, my security minded hubby felt compelled to double lock our door the other night and kept the key in the door for extra protection. When we left the next day, we forgot to take said key out of the lock. For those of you not in the know, such a manoeuvre precludes being able to unlock to the door when you return at night, exhausted from a day of shopping! This is precisely what happened to us. Two hours later and having used up a year’s worth of goodwill from our wonderful neighbour, the locksmith finally drilled out the final bit of the world’s toughest lock and our door swung open. This was when the kids and I were perched on the sofa of our neighbour and submitted to insult of the game show mentioned above.

Did I mention that we are in a totally new building and we are the first inhabitants of this apartment? That means there are NO holes in any wall, no hooks – everything is pristine and gorgeous. We got our shipment and among the goods are at least 20+ pieces of art awaiting hanging. I certainly hope we stay here awhile, as the damage we are about to inflict upon those empty walls will not be insignificant!

Speaking of damage…our shoes are suffering from an interesting phenomenon. As soon as you step out of our building, you and your shoes sink into deep sand. The owner has the clout and money to afford our own cul de sac for parking, but it is in the process of being built. Back in May, there was a lovely sidewalk leading up to our building, but the moment we arrived, the sidewalk bricks were ripped up and the bulldozers have been moving piles of sand ever since. We never know just how far we will have to jump into the sand pit each time we leave the place. I felt really sorry for the Crown Movers when they delivered the 129 boxes of our goods to our place, schlepping everything through the sand in 120 degree heat! Egads.

Earlier I mentioned the plethora of palaces dotting this town. We happen to live within a block of one of them. It is known as the white palace and it is HUGE – it takes up about four big city blocks, I am guessing. It belongs to one of the many sheiks; this man is known as the rainbow prince, because of his obsession with cars. Supposedly, he buys one of each color when he takes a fancy to a new model. He has the colors painted in the parking lot and his collection of cars sits in rainbow splendour. Speaking of cars, the SUV we bought from a departing teacher had a faulty window and was stuck in down position for about 10 days. Obviously, locking the door would have been ridiculous and so we never did. The back of the SUV was filled with old camping gear. Throughout the entire ten days of an open window’ed car, not one thing went missing – proof of how crime free we are here. I am sure there is crime, but I was pretty impressed with our ten day stint.

The interesting thing about getting around here is that there are really no addresses. For instance, to tell a taxi driver how to get to our building is quite a challenge, as it lies on a road with no name. Just recently, they changed all the main road names to names with numbers. I am slowly learning the numbers (it is easy, as it is basically a grid), but the taxi drivers still use the old names, which are all written in Arabic on the signs, and I have NO idea how to read the language. In addition, there are multiple 13 Streets, as each little block of housing has its own numbered grid, so if you want to go to the corner of 26th and 13th, there are several such corners. We new teachers are all realizing we can walk to each other’s homes, but for the first few days the bus driver would drive for ten minutes between houses, leading us to believe the place was more spread out that it actually is.

Have I mentioned how bloody hot it is??? No one would actually walk the hundred yards from one place to another at this juncture in the year. It is a heat I have only paid money for in spas upon entering a sauna. Truly breathtaking! I will say no more about it – it is like becoming a parent…you have no idea what it is like until you have experienced it.

The weather here is basically sunny all year and ranges to being HOT as hell to perfection in the winter months. Because there is very little rain, they have arranged for faux showers to occur here and there. I was at IKEA the other day and heard thunder! Sure enough, up above me there is a recurring thunder and lightening show, which repeats itself all throughout the day. This man made wonder includes rain showers as well; it is hilarious – you have a crowd of people sitting in an outdoor café (under cover of an air-conditioned mall), enjoying the sights and sounds of a summer storm.

Goodbye, Jakarta!

2007-12-03T22:33:00.000+07:00

May, 2007 Selamat Jalan dari Jakarta! (Goodbye Jakarta!) As I sit here on my twentieth day in lovely Nantucket, I am struck by the dichotomy of life in Jakarta compared to that in S’conset, Nantucket. In one city, a visitor is introduced to the depths of poverty and the crush of humanity, and as you enter the other extreme, you are brought to the pinnacle of decadence and ostentatious wealth. I have not written since the disastrous flood of February, mostly out of a sense of lingering despondence, as we served out our final months in Jakarta. We yearned for the day we would leave that metropolis for the last time and when it came, I expected to feel some sense of sadness and melancholy, but all I could do was whoop for joy as we took off on our Singapore Airlines flight. Unexpectedly, I did shed a small tear as the man at Jakarta passport control stamped my passport for the last time and asked whether we would be returning to Jakarta. Once we hit US soil, the madness of a Rodgers summer began. We are the family of schleppers…with our trunk filled to overflowing and leg room consigned to my dreams, we set off for our annual trek from Williamsburg to Nantucket (not as adventurous as the trip from Milan to Minsk, I am sure, but as of yet, no sitcom has been written about our trials and tribs). We actually had a stellar stay up on the Isle -the weather was gorgeous, we caught up with old friends, played tennis, spent time fixing the house, eating, cleaning, eating, cleaning, answering the phone, dealing with laundry and cleaning and eating some more. Welcome to America. Ride’em Cowboy (and girl!) After our luscious five week stay on Nantucket, we were treated to the crème de la crème of the summer: a week at Moosehead Lodge in Moose, Wyoming. Mom and Charlie have been regular visitors there for a few years now and this year we were able to make it a family reunion with brother Richard and his crew. This place truly has earned the name of dude ranch, as each guest is assigned a horse for the entire week. My equestrian chariot went by the name of Dutch and must have gotten fat waiting for me to climb onto his back. Since Sophia was too young by a year to ride, we took turns hanging out with her while the others went exploring. The landscape was spectacular! Under the shadow of the Grand Tetons, with elk, bison, antelope and other hidden wildlife, it was an amazing spot to roam. At one point, we rode through a herd of hundreds of elk with bison within a Frisbee throw. The food was magnificent, the weather perfection – all in all it was off the chart for a perfect family vacation. Sam now wants to be a wrangler when he gets older. He was able to ride every day, and had some interesting moments on his steed, Autumn. He only fell off his horse once, when the horse broke into an unexpected canter. He held a rein in each hand and spread out his arms, and began to list to the right… and slowly slid further and further to the side, until he finally toppled onto the ground below. Amazingly, the only part hurt was a scratch on the left elbow. The other priceless entertainment was a visit to the county rodeo. Along with the gratuitous bull riders and a bevy of small girls doing feats of equestrian derring do, my favorite event involved the budding broncho buckers, aged 3-6 years(!), riding on sheep. Each child would climb onto the back of a sheep, the gate would swing open and he/she would hang on for as long as possible. The average ride lasted about 3 seconds and then the poor child would be thrown onto the ground and often trampled by the frantic sheep! The best one was the little guy who climbed on with his head at the sheep’s butt and his legs straddling the sheep’s head. He lasted the longest! Even Sam and Sophia got involved as all of the kids in the stands kids ran onto the rodeo arena to chase calves while trying to grab a red ribbon off of their tails. By the time our kids realized the rules of the game, it was long over. Poor Sophia was still chasing the calves after the other kids had headed back to their seats. She looked up and upon seeing us wave her over, the promptly face planted in the middle of the arena - to great applause from the adoring crowd. On the Road Again We ended our romp out west and headed back east where fog caused our final flight back to Nantucket to be cancelled. After a long day of travel, we were forced to take the bus to the ferry and the ferry over to Nantucket for our final night on Isle. Thank goodness Sam and Sophia are such seasoned travellers… We arose in the morning and had our final meal at the Downey Flake diner – replete with impromptu live music from a barber-shop quartet. We are still not sure if they just wanted a free meal or were so inspired by the lovely food to sing, but it was great entertainment. We got in the car to head for the ferry and I checked the time of our ferry only to discover we had missed it! Alas, a beautiful day on Nantucket is a nice place to be stuck for a few extra hours. We made it to our destination, Jared’s aunt and uncle in Orleans on the Cape and had a lovely dinner and snooze before rising again and heading to our final Stateside destination: NYC. I already mentioned the dichotomy of travelling from Jakarta to Nantucket, but this last stop brought home the reality of reverse culture shock. We spent one night in the Manhattan Club in central Manhattan. After paying the bellhop an outrageous tip for his “service with an attitude”, we turned around the next day to switch hotels to the adjacent Park Central Hotel. We had to persuade grumbling bell hops to transfer our17 bags of varying size and weight from one elevator shaft to another (along with another monstrous tip). After a great dinner at a local diner (with white table cloths and tuxedo’d waitstaff), a visit to a street market, it was pretty much time to head for JFK and the inevitable strip search and delays and unfriendly personnel. Nothing was different this time. We stopped in Frankfurt to meet up with the other new teachers headed for Abu Dhabi and here I end this instalment and prepare for our coming adventure!

The Day the Water Rose

2007-02-17T12:34:00.000+07:00

The Day the Water Rose

I recently learned a new word in Indonesian: Banjir, meaning “flood”. Anyone who knows anything about life in Jakarta knows it involves risk of flood. I had heard tales of the Flood of 2002, the year before we moved to Jakarta, a flood which had our predecessors in a hotel for several days. I have kept that thought in my mind every February as the rainy season lubes itself up and dumps rain upon our little corner of the world, Kelapa Gading, a northern section of Jakarta, below sea level, I might add. Two years ago, I remember starting to move rugs and small furniture when I saw the water overflow the gutter outside our house. That was as high as it got that year. Enter February, 2007. It has not really rained much at all so far this year, and we were beginning to wonder if the rainy season might pass us by totally. In parts of Java there has been a serious drought for months and water has had to be trucked in to villages there. But this past week, that all changed.

On January 31 it rained much of the day and the water in the canals rose, as expected. By Thursday, it rained again all day and school was let out early, to help give people extra time fighting traffic and rising water levels. When I woke up on Friday, the water was lapping at our driveway. It was a school day and I wondered how people would get to school, so I phoned our new headmaster, in position barely three weeks, after the sudden death of our former headmaster. I asked him what the plan was and was told he would check it out. Thirty minutes later I received the news that school was canceled. By this point, the water was up to the front tire of our car and had filled the street up to our knees. We got the kids in order, moved rugs and a few other things to higher ground, and set out for school to help with any kids who might not have heard that school was closed. The road out front was in chaos. Cars were barely getting through, as the canal had overflowed hours before.

A few kids arrived on foot, after drivers had abandoned them a few blocks from school. Imagine how happy those drivers were to get a message, moments later, that they had to return to pick up their charges. A few kids had to stay for several hours, while their cars dried out. We began to worry that the water would continue to rise and that maybe we should move a few more things out of the way. Indeed, the level was creeping ever higher and was lapping at the back tires of the car by now. The girls who work for us, Sri and Asih, have been residing in our garage for two and a half years (the alternative being a small closet off the kitchen!), and it was clear that the water would enter through their room first, and that the hour was nigh. We frantically moved their beds, all of our storage boxes, and their few belongings into the living room up on chairs.

A few hours later, the water entered the garage and made its way back towards the kitchen. At this point, the hundreds of cockroaches who had been using our garage rent free for God knows how long, decided to evacuate to higher ground. Within moments they were crawling everywhere – the walls, the doorways, the living room floor. Sam grabbed our golf ball extender apparatus which is made for retrieving golf balls from ponds and such and began to thwack at the little buggers who tried to enter our realm. Jared would then try to grab them with paper towels and chuck them mercilessly into the toilet. He had a bunch of the critters fall through his shirt and crawl down his leg. Fun stuff. Sophia, our resident roach lover, would go up to the critters which had turned upside down, grab them by the wing and chuck them in the toilet. That’s my girl!

The day progressed with only a small change. It had stopped raining for the whole afternoon, but the water level continued to rise, albeit slowly. That’s when we heard that the unabating rains up in Bogor were causing more water to flow into Jakarta. We prepared to retire for the night and took one more look at the water level outside the house. By this point it was slowly entering up through the back terrace drain, and our downstairs bathroom had water seeping in through the drain and floor tiles. Clearly the ground was saturated and one more downpour would tip the scales. At that moment, we heard the pitter patter of raindrops on the roof. About two minutes after that, the water began to slowly wend its way underneath the front and back doors, in through the kitchen doorway and under the bathroom door. I went to bed and Jared stayed up for hours, keeping an eye on the rising water level and watching DVDs on the computer. Amazingly, we had internet and electricity throughout the night.

At 7:00 the next morning we heard a loud thunk, and in the next instant the electricity was gone. We went downstairs to see our murky living room full of about a foot of water. At this point the adventure lost its sense of fun and entered the realm of crisis. We decided it was time to evacuate to the school, which was a two minute walk on a normal day. Jared carried Sam over and they brought an inflatable boat back with them. Then we piled the important stuff (do you know what you would bring with you in an evacuation?) as well as Sophia and later me, onto the boat and floated over to the school.

We had heard that, due to the heavy rains in Bogor, the city was opening up a damn to let the water out and it would flow into Jakarta, likely causing the water levels to rise up to a meter higher. Luckily, this never appeared to happen. In Kelapa Gading, we stabilized at about 1 meter of flood in the road, with water lapping at the second step of our indoor staircase throughout the next few days.

At school, the local staff was hunkered down. Poor things, they were not allowed to go home to tend to their families. At this point, we thought of weathering out the storm at school and prepared a makeshift home in my classroom. Several teachers have apartments up on the second floor and they opened up their places for cooking and showering. We spent that whole day going between home and school bringing supplies from our bedraggled house. Just before dusk we got another scare of increasing water levels, at which point we rushed home to move still more things upstairs. By this point, we could barely see a thing inside the house and the entire second floor was filled with the flotsam and jetsam that we call our belongings. Now I do not purport to understand what the many victims of Hurricane Katrina went through, but this experience has brought me an inkling of the horrific conditions many of these poor people had to endure….for months!!!

By now it was Saturday night, and a truck was sent to take us all to higher ground at a hotel in the city center. We heard that life was going on as normal in many parts of the city and could hardly imagine it. We did, however, at school have cleanish running water and a generator with enough fuel to last two weeks. When the truck came and said it could take hours to get through to the hotel, we decided to tough it out at the school, along with most of the rest of the gang. About 6 people left that night and 10 of us stayed behind.

That night, the Rodgers family crashed on makeshift beds in my classroom, and I went to sleep with visions of rushing waters and earthquakes and other natural disasters floating in my head. Sometime in the middle of the night, we awoke to the sounds of the pouring rain outside. Moments later I heard Sophia wheezing, and it dawned on me that I had not considered the scenario in which someone gets sick and we might need to seek medical help! I tossed and turned until morning, determined to make it my mission to get the heck out of Kelapa Gading the next day. Luckily, the others were not hard to convince. We were promised that a truck would come get us by one o’clock. We spent the interim hours cooking food, talking to our maids, and making last trips home to grab longer term supplies. We ended up leaving all of the maids at the school – about 12 of them at last count. One teacher and his family decided to stay behind as well – he ended up being the mediator when food worries got the girls in a tizzy the next day. We left everyone with lots of food as well as a classroom of over 2,000 cans of food – we had just finished a school wide can drive, which was fortuitous.

Shortly before two o’clock that day, a military vehicle pulled in the school driveway. Our chariot had arrived! We clamored aboard, eight families and six children we were. We were off!! This truck would be stopped by nothing. Sure enough, we soon made it to higher ground, the nearest mall which was open and thriving. The driver turned to us and told us to get out…that was as far as they would go. But we were worlds away from our hotel – we could see the toll road up above us, but the access road to get there was totally submerged. We would have had to seek out eight taxis and beg them to risk their cars to get to the toll road and bring us to safety. There was not a taxi to be seen (above water level, anyway). A few frantic phone calls later, we continued our journey, with the military guys grumbling that saving us would take hours away from them returning to help more refugees (which was true!). We did, however, pick up a few more people from a floating taxi and brought them to the city center with us. Two hours later we pulled up in front of our hotel, the Sahid Jaya, a place whose former glory had faded long ago.

We checked in without further ado, and I raced upstairs to take a refreshing shower. I had purposefully waited to shower before leaving the school. Imagine my chagrin (and that is the mildest word I can find) when I turned on the faucet to see nasty brown water emitting from the tap. Jared, undaunted, cleaned himself with the foul stuff and then I decided what the heck, only to find that by that time the water had totally run out! When we asked downstairs what was up, they said some water pump had broken, but that water trucks would arrive soon. They did, and the water was still brown, but at this point I, the beggar, was not in a position to be a chooser.

We dined that night on snacks from the nearest Mini Mart and slept fairly well. At this point, a seed was germinating in my mind; that of taking refuge in Bali with the kids. With talk of more rain and potential threatened water quality throughout the city, I had images of huge cholera outbreaks and increased stress on medical care. The next day we spent hours getting our physicals at our local medical center. We needed this for our move to Abu Dhabi, and it was a perfect chance to get them done. The somewhat conservative doctor there thought Bali was a great idea, especially for the kids. We packed up once again and, leaving Jared to watch the replay of the Super Bowl at a local bar, the kids and I went to a friend’s house in a dry part of town …with clean running water. A pizza and a shower later, I was feeling much better. By now I also had the electronic Bali tickets in hand and had packed my bag.

It rained again that night and confirmed our decision to abandon ship. The next day we spent two and a half hours getting to the airport. A combo of nasty Jakarta traffic and some flooded streets made my last hours in Jakarta nail biting ones. We were in Bali by sunset and I spent the next day by the pool, watching the pool water lap at my feet, glad that it was not laced with all the bacteria and sludge of the lapping water of Kelapa Gading. At this writing, Jared and the two maids have cleaned out the bottom floor of our house, and though it still smells a bit, looks like normal. It continues to rain and water is slowly rising again, according to Jared. At this point, time will tell how the rest of this tale will play out.

My theme songs for this past week are two: one is the theme to the movie “Beverly Hills Cop”, thanks to the cheap light-up toy Sam procured outside our hotel in Bali. You twist the guy’s head and out blurts the theme song to “Beverly Hill Cop”! Needless to say, this melody has accompanied me throughout the past few days, unrelentingly. The other theme phrase comes from the movie, “Hoodwinked” at a point in which a hyperactive hillbilly character is hurling down a mountainside screaming out the words, “an avalanche is coming, and I am not prepared!” I close with a chuckle to myself at the ridiculousness of it all, as the only other option is to sit down and bawl my eyes out at the wreckage which now defines the lives of almost half a million displaced people in Jakarta.

Addendum: It is now February 17, and, with Valentine’s Day behind us, we have felt the love and are getting on with our lives. Our house is still in disarray, but we are healthy and lucky. On this final day of the Year of the Dog, I am troubled by how to help those victims of the flood, some of whom I know personally, who have lost everything. We are trying to raise money here at school, but, to my bewilderment, the giving is slow to come. I have decided to appeal to my outside circle of friends and family, many of whom can afford a nice lobster dinner on any given day, which could pay for a new set of furniture for someone less fortunate here in Jakarta. I am hoping to raise some money to donate directly to about twenty families whom we know have lost everything in the recent floods. The money will go directly to rebuilding their homes and providing them with food and furniture to begin to salvage their lives. These are people who work for the school, and to see smiles on their faces when told we can help them get back on their feet would bring me a much needed sense of happiness and satisfaction, knowing that we can make a difference in peoples’ lives. If you, Dear Reader, are interested in participating in this mini fundraiser, please e-mail me at jared_mimi@hotmail.com by March 1, and I can tell you how best to donate to this cause. It needs to happen quickly, as these people are already in the process of trying to rebuild. I leave you with that thought, on the eve of the Chinese Year of the Pig, 2007. Happy New Year!

Christmas 2006

2006-12-21T07:44:00.000+07:00

Their Eyes Were Watching God

I do not know if there is such a thing, but I think I have suffered from LDS (Light Deficiency Syndrome for years. Perhaps it is more like FAS (Frozen Ass syndrome), as it only seems to kick in in winter. Luckily, since we have been living near the Equator for nearly a decade, and missing out on winters, my syndrome been on hiatus for as long. We decided to come home for the holidays this year and landed in 70+ degree weather in Virginia a week before Christmas. By late the next day, it was getting cold. However, the first morning after arrival, I witnessed a scene which may have cured me of my malaise forever.

Sam and Sophia have spent their entire lives living and playing near the Equator and do not know what the word COLD really means. This morning, they got up, and, having experienced Nana’s house only in summer, wanted to go outside on the deck. Equipped with the first cup of hot chocolate they had ever held, out they went, dressed in sweaters and socks (They still cannot get used to wearing shoes!). After a few big breaths of cool air, Sam, undaunted, decided it was time to become “Explorer Boy”. He came inside to get a plastic bag, as he wanted to collect winter things. For the next hour, I watched my two young, innocent children romp around the yard, collecting dry leaves, pine needles, acorns, and pine cones, yelping with joy. I came inside and drank my own cup of hot chocolate and heard singing coming from the yard. There, sitting on the cold ground, was Sophia, collecting dead leaves in her bag, singing a made up song about how happy she was. Having observed this beautiful, naive display of pure joy of my children, I was reminded again that God is to be found in the little things.

The Highs…

It has been an amazing semester at school, sprinkled with highs and unbelievable lows. We began the job search, which is exciting as well as quite stressful, not to mention exceedingly time consuming. Stay tuned in February for an update on that front. For October break, we had the chance to travel to Hong Kong to see friends, who left NJIS at the end of last school year. It was a long trip, made longer as we had to overnight in an airport hotel in Hong Kong before we could take the ferry to Shekou, China, where they now live. The ferry was fun for the kids, but daunting for us, as we passed factory after belching factory. Indeed, the entire time we were in Shekou, we could taste the chemicals in the air. The Pearl River Delta has contributed to the mounting pollution levels in the Hong Kong area, and nowadays there is a constant haze over the city. We could barely make out the buildings only one block away.

After a fantastic visit with our friends in Shekou, we headed back to Hong Kong and made our way to Hong Kong Disneyland. What a hoot that place is; a mere fraction of the size of the U.S. Disney parks, it is a popular spot for locals and foreign tourists as well. Luckily, Sam and Sophia having never experienced the indulgence of a U.S. Disney park, did not know what they were missing, and they absolutely adored the place. We must have ridden the Buzz Lightyear ride over 40 times and Space Mountain enough to have traveled to Mars and back.

Upon return to Jakarta, it was back to the educational grind, broken by occasional jaunts out of Jakarta. We did a big house party weekend up in the Puncuk, which is a mountain just south of the city. We rented a big house with a pool, and Sam and Sophia spent the entire two days naked, romping in the pool and running around the house. We cooked sausages and marshmallows on the grill, slept with no aircon, and fed grasses to the neighborhood goats. All in all, it was the perfect recipe for a chill-out weekend.

….And Lows

As November reared its head, the rainy season began to dribble raindrops upon our welcoming heads. The stench outside our house had become unbearable; I had to hold my breath every time I approached or left the house. On a fairly normal day near the end of November, our lives were changed forever. We were about to start an all faculty meeting, when our beloved school director was struck down by a massive heart attack and perished before our very eyes. I will not go into details here, but it was a tragic, harrowing and unforgettable experience. I have never been so close to death, especially in the days that followed. As good friends of our director and his wife, we helped settle the affairs over the first few days. I know there must be lists on the internet of what to do when a loved one dies, but we did not even have time to look. Nine days after Buck’s passing, we were joined by friends from all over the region in a memorial service which celebrated, remembered, and honored his wonderful life as a stellar father, inspirational leader, and dear friend, not to mention a kick-ass golfer and hockey player! That evening, we all gathered at a friend’s house to celebrate our coming together, toast Buck, and tell stories. We were reminded of the circle of life, as Leah, our pregnant colleague, got her first birth pangs and set off for the hospital. Fifteen hours later, her son was born. It is truly amazing how life ebbs and flows.

Oh, did I mention that days after Buck passed away, Jared was scheduled to fly to Singapore and run his eighth marathon in as many years? Well, he was, and he did. I accompanied him for the first time in many years and was there at the finish line, to take a picture of a man who looked like he was taking a walk in the park! Seriously, I have infinite respect for this man, my darling husband, who can train in the cesspool we call Jakarta and run a marathon in one of the harshest marathon climates, right on top of the Equator in Singapore. He ran this one in four and a half hours, which was a great time. Two more marathons to go and one of Jared’s life goals will have been reached. Then it will be time to move to a Spanish speaking country, so he can work on goal number two: to become fluent in Spanish!

Back to the Banal

Going back in time a bit, I reflect upon the more ordinary, yet meaningful events over the course of the past six months. For this next image, how I wish you, dear reader, could actually see this in person! Lately, in the malls around town, hedonism seems to have become de rigueur in the form of massage machines. Foot massages, massage chairs, and the most entertaining device: a saddle-like contraption which quivers, vibrates, and shimmies while you sit atop, looking like a satisfied bucking bronco rider. Colorful advertisements featuring beautiful women riding these quivering, shuddering instruments take a backseat to the image of real girls, the Indonesian salesladies and even salesmen, who climb atop and peer down at curious bystanders, looking infinitely content.

A few months back, Sam, who is now six and in Grade 1, lost his first tooth. It became loose on a Thursday, and he wiggled it and wiggled it for about a day and a half until it came out with a tug by brave Daddy. He was so excited, especially when the Tooth Fairy came and left enough money to buy some candy at school the next day. Let’s hope he continues to brush regularly, in order to keep those adult teeth flourishing!

Speaking of teeth, I recently had a tooth go bad on me and had to have an emergency root canal. It was AWFUL, but when I wrote my dentist in the US about the experience, he conceded that emergency root canals the world round are nasty affairs. I returned the next week to have the first part of my crown put on; a scary prospect in any country. Finally, a week after that, I returned to have the final piece inserted. I had to stifle a laugh. I already have one crown, made in America, which set me back over $4000 last summer. This one, with the root canal, cost a mere $500, but as I run my tongue over it, there is really no comparison. The U.S. made crown feels like a normal tooth, whereas the Jakarta-issued molar is quite inferior. The happy news is that the tooth has been pain free for months now.

Back in mid-September, I took a two-day course to get certified to teach yoga to kids. It was hilarious, being with a group of adults, treating each other like 4 year-olds. “Let’s all jump like monkeys” and so forth. Now I am a bona fide yoga instructor of 4-14 year olds, with lots of fun filled moves in my back pocket, along with matching music and visual image stories to enrich each session. I tried out my new skills at a local yoga center with Sam and Sophia among the little yogis. They loved it!

Unfortunately, a few days after this intense course, I woke up one morning with an intensely sore throat. After a few days with an excruciating esophagus, I thought it time to take myself to a doctor of some sort. Jared recommended I try the emergency room at our local hospital. I strode in at 9:00 on a Saturday morning to find the emergency crew sitting and chatting at the desk while watching a bunch of workers clean out the air con units which were spread out all over the emergency area floor. I held my throat and said “Sakit” which is sick. They dropped everything and within 7 minutes I had my vitals taken and the head doctor had looked down my through with an Ace Hardware issued flashlight and declared my throat to be “red”. Three minutes later, I was staring at the medicines assigned my body on a receipt page. Out the door to the cashier – they punched in many buttons and out came the bill….approximately $17 for the visit and the medicines. Off I went to the pharmacy, where they had already ordered my meds. Four minutes later I was out the door. I could not help but compare this experience to the one I would have had in the U.S.. First, they may have laughed me out of town if I arrived in the emergency room with a sore throat. I would have waited for hours to be seen, and the medicines alone would have cost much more than my entire visit did in Jakarta. Anyway, for simple sicknesses like the one (I think) I had, I know that antibiotics will take care of it. For anything more complicated, I fear for the type of care I would get.

Every year, there is massive forest burning on the island of Sumatra. The last time it made the headlines was in 1998, when we still lived in Manila. This year, the bad fires came again. As far as I know, no airports were closed, but the pollution levels were so bad in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore that outdoor events had to be cancelled. In Jakarta, we also felt and breathed the affects. Sophia had a bad asthma attack and had to go to the hospital for emergency help. She was on a nebulizer for a week. “Nebulizer” is still a word underlined in red (not recognized by Microsoft application WORD), but give it a few more years and this machine may become a household word, given the number of children struck down with this awful breathing condition. After about a month of smoky air (added to the already disgustingly foul air in Jakarta), the fires abated and we were back to breathing a bit more freely.

A Dose of the Disgusting

I mentioned the stench outside our house. Each of my blog entries must delve into the day to day disgust I experience living in Kelapa Gading. Interestingly, there was a newspaper spread not so long ago about how Kelapa Gading could be compared to Singapore and is worthy of a visit; a stroll down the long, traffic free boulevards with canals gently flowing brings renewed energy to the soul, yadda, yadda, yadda. Clearly, that journalist was either on heavy hallucinatory drugs or else bribed up the wazoo to be encouraged to write such a tale. In reality, there is less traffic in our area than in downtown Jakarta. There are indeed “Boulevards” which look great on photo paper, but once you begin to walk anywhere, you need to attach the mask to you nose, in order to keep out the unbelievable stink of the waste, pollutants, and decaying matter which can be found filling those lovely canals. The other day, I was crossing one of the foul excuses for a waterway, and saw a local man fishing. Not only is it inconceivable that any living creature can survive in such a putrid environment as one of those canals, but that a human would endeavor to actually consume anything caught in such a place lends a new sense of urgency that we need to address POVERTY now!

Speaking of addressing issues, (did I mention it is 3:00 a.m. as I write this…jet lag has settled in as I sit in a cold, dark room in Virginia, having traveled halfway around the globe to be with family this Christmas season), I recently saw the movie “Inconvenient Truth”, the Al Gore rant about the coming demise of our Earth. I know he is right and it makes me sad. Being back in America, the land of the worst polluters on the planet also makes me sad. What will it take for the average Joe America to WAKE UP and stop consuming!? Thanks to media brainwashing and our insatiable desire to keep up with those elusive Joneses, I fear it will take much more than a simple compelling film which I keep calling “Inconceivable Truth”. Enough soap boxing, but if you are in America, reading this piece, please do your small part to conserve energy, and do not fall for the brain numbing sales hype of each and every unnecessary item you think you yearn for; we can be happy with a fraction of the junk we think we must acquire to be fulfilled. Okay…done. Merry Christmas!

Ah, yes, back to the stench. Have you ever leaned over your sink while brushing your teeth and inhaled strong rotten egg smell? That is my experience every time I rinse at my sink in Jakarta. It is amazing how that smell manages to permeate my bathroom which is filled with lovely soaps, fragrant deodorizers and incense, all battling against the beast that dwells within my pipes. When I shower, it smells like the green slime is pouring out of the aforementioned canals over my…. well, I think you get the idea…. Now it may sound like I am complaining (which I actually am), but we really do enjoy our lives here in lovely Kelapa Gading (remember, our boulevards are among the most lovely in Southeast Asia!). Without these extremes, I would really have nothing to write about. Also, I am in perfect shape to become a contestant on Fear Factor; rats, roaches, slimy waters….bring them on!

Here’s a good one: Sam and I were sitting out in front of our house one afternoon, holding our breath, of course, to avoid inhaling the foul odors of the gutter which runs in front of the house, when Sam saw a rat skitter by. “Oh”, he exclaimed, “Mom, that was a pretty small one!”. Indeed it WAS a fairly small critter, compared to the cat eating monster rats we usually see sauntering down the streets at all hours. I have taken to walking down the middle of the road, so as to avoid encounter with these city dwellers. Luckily, they have stayed away from our house for months now, or else have learned to tiptoe about, as I have not heard them dancing above my head in the ceiling for ages. I would love to say I miss the pitter patter of the rodents, but I do not…..

So now it is almost 4 a.m. and the micro brewed beer I have just consumed is making me sleepy, at last. I shall put this away for now and post my tales in the morning. I wish any and all readers a joyous holiday….remember, joy can be found in the smallest details… a “winter collection” of dried leaves and pine needles, the joy of brushing teeth over a stench-free sink, a simple cup of hot chocolate. Be thankful for what you have and for your loved ones. Enjoy; every moment you have is precious!

Summer, 2006

2006-09-03T15:01:00.000+07:00

Summer Sojourn, 2006

As I sit here reflecting upon my dream vacation of this past summer, in the planning for over a year, I must write some thoughts before they float forever out of my head. This definitely reads like a travelogue, replete with hotel names and culinary details. This is so that I do not forget the particulars of our journey, and if you, dear reader, are inspired to try any of the places we stayed, they are all to be recommended!

We departed Jakarta on a nice, hot, smoggy day in mid-June in the evening. After a quick stop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, we headed for Amsterdam, tucked into our tiny coach class KLM seats. Sam and Sophia, our star travelers, settled down and slept for almost the entire trip which was fantastic, as it was quite boring (no individual screens with fun games and movies!). We arrived in Amsterdam at the crack of a new dawn and had to wait there for three hours until taking a puddle jumper over to London. We managed to explore most of the airport, run into other international teachers from Syria and drink lots of coffee. Did you know that you can deconstruct Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” while peeing in the toilets of Amsterdam’s airport?

After a forty minute flight to Heathrow, we piled ourselves and our gear onto the Budget rental bus and went to pick up our car, a great deal Jared had found on the internet. Lo and behold there was lots of red tape and small print which doubled the price of the dang car. In addition, even though I had called our credit card company in advance to let them know of upcoming charges in Europe they had shut down the account. So there we were, Jared frustrated, me a wee bit tired, Sam and Sophia totally hyper…they disappeared into the bathroom with two other kids for a few minutes and I soon heard the howling of…..was it one of my children? Yes, indeedy! Sure enough, darling Sophia had managed to get her tiny finger smashed in a closing door. It looked wretched. I thought we would have to head for the nearest emergency room. Based on the tenor of her screams, I knew it was bad. She is the bravest one in the family when it comes to pain. But our travel angel must have intervened as a few minutes later her sobs ceased and the finger, now a swelling purple blob, looked like it may not need medical attention after all.

We packed our gear into every last crevice of our nice shiny Peugeot and off we went around the M25, shooting off to county Suffolk to meet our friends. We were among the last of the England crowd to arrive. We pulled into the town of Worlington in the early afternoon and managed to find someone we knew before we pulled out of town (that’s how small it is!). We were taken to our lodgings, the home of a good friend where we were sharing space for the next few nights with another family. When they all returned from their day’s outing at Cambridge, huge hugs and kisses were exchanged and the games began. They did not stop for the next 43 days!

After a beautiful run along a lazy river, passing by local red-faced boys clutching fishing poles and cold beers, Jared and the boys headed to the local pub to watch the England vs. Trinidad and Tobago soccer game. We then met at a nearby Indian restaurant where I was having a nice meal until some evil chili seed made its way into my mouth and wreaked major havoc with my taste buds and entire esophagus. And the establishment did not even serve Lassies to help cool the burning! The nerve!

The next day was spent running, playing with the kids on the local playground where we had a wonderful picnic, and then getting ready for the big gig at Natasha’s Dad’s house. The place looked fantastic: a beautiful garden, a tent raised for the occasion with lovely flowers, tiny lights everywhere, and the most important ingredient (besides the scintillating guests), wonderful summer weather! We laughed, drank, ate and danced our way through a brilliant party in honor of the coming together of two dear friends, Natasha and Nigel.

A new dawn and we packed up our gear, loaded into the car and headed cross country to Leicestershire where we checked into a lovely pub, the Cheney Arms in the town of Gaddesby (a real “don’t blink or you’ll miss” it kind of blip on the map). As we gathered downstairs to drink a pint or two, Sophia made friends with a little boy out in the parking lot and she pushed him around on his little red car. I love the way English families bring all the babes along to watch the debauchery. A bunch of dads go into the pub to suck down a few pints and yell at some sporting show while the moms and kids sit outside and suck down their own nectar and watch the kids play in the parking lot. We definitely fit in with the local culture. Sam and the men were played Boules in the back yard of the establishment. Later, after a meal filled with meat and heavy side dishes, we rolled ourselves upstairs to bed. It was just about mid-summers eve and it did not get dark until almost 11pm!

Sunday morning: we arose, stuffed ourselves full of a farmer’s breakfast (including blood pudding!), and lined up in our convoy ready to forge forth to a centuries old church near Barkby, a village nearby, to witness the christening of George, the adorable baby boy of Natasha and Nigel. He was perfectly behaved and gurgled and cooed at all the right moments. After a blessing of the marriage of the happy parents, we all strode out, up the hill, around the local cricket field to an outdoor stable area where a gorgeous afternoon tea was presented to the guests. After about 8 glasses of champagne, countless tea sandwiches and luscious strawberries and cream, I gathered the kids from their impromptu soccer field and we all stumbled home. Sunday night and the pub kitchen was closed! Filled with champagne bubbles and cucumber and chutney sandwiches, I crashed and Jared and the kids had potato chips for dinner.

The next day dawned to perfection. We consumed another calorie-filled, oil laced farmer’s breakfast and headed out for a hike across the fields and over the famous turnstiles of back country England. Most fields were filled with wild flowers and cow poop along with cows and or sheep. At one point we had to cross a field of rather belligerent looking bovines. Unsure if I was viewing balls and testicles, I averted my eyes from the creatures and we tiptoed across the field. Later in our wandering, we came across a beautiful snake just after a pheasant crashed out of the brush and sent us all but sprawling in shock.

Alas, it was time for our stay on the British Isles to come to an end. An uneventful ride to Heathrow and a short flight to Amsterdam brought us to the continent and land of Euros. 35 of them got us a taxi ride to Erica’s place in the “Oude Zuide” hip district of Amsterdam. She and Tomas were there to greet us and the revelry continued. Sam, Sophia and Tom picked up like they had never been apart. We sat outside with Erica and popped our first bottle of champagne to accompany some scrumptious Dutch cheeses.

We spent the next few days shopping for clothes made for the western figure, visiting museums designed for kids, taking in a canal cruise, eating and drinking and running along the canals to even out the caloric intake. Alas, our delicious visit chez Erica had to come to a close and we packed everything into our new (continental sized) Peugeot and headed south, with handy Map Quest print outs in hand. Ten hours later, sun almost setting and about 100 Euros poorer, thanks to the outrageous price of gas and French highway tolls, we crept down ever shrinking roads until at last we reached our destination – La Ferme du Lac, in the middle of nowhere (actually, about an hour south of Limoges) – PERFECT! Wolfie, the big black lab was there to greet us, along with the gang from England. Communal rejoicing, followed by wine and beer and a nice home cooked meal by the British owners of this cozy retreat had us all sleeping well that night.

We arose at a civilized hour and lingered over breakfast before breaking camp, as it were, and lining up in our by now organized convoy. We were off!!!!! Off to the chateau Marvaux, near Bergerac in the Dordogne region of France, purported to be a mere hour or two away. Four and a half hours later, our exhausted and overloaded convoy limped into the driveway; after having fallen apart at the first roundabout from La ferme du Lac. We had stopped for a McDonalds break followed by the biggest grocery shop of the summer – enough to feed the mouths of about 16 of us for at least a few hours.

The chateau Marvaux was marvellieux! It featured four fully equipped apartments, a nice swimming pool, fully outfitted outdoor area with badminton net and grill to feed the multitudes, which it did. We proceeded to grill and feast for the next seven nights with numbers of our crowd swelling to a height of 23 once all had arrived.

One night we journeyed out to a nearby farm for a home cooked meal featuring a variety of succulent animal parts, prune aperitifs and luscious sorbets for dessert. Even though most French food sounds unpalatable on paper, the actual gastronomic experience was quite fulfilling! Although it had taken almost an hour to decipher conflicting directions to find our way to the farm, we were home in a matter of minutes in the pitch dark that descends on the area after sunset.

A few more days were spent at the chateau, taking gorgeous runs and walks in the day, and engaging in evening activities ranging from quiz night to a scavenger hunt to rip roaring games of Capture the Flag to cheering on the French (or not) in World Cup soccer games.

After a week of decadence, it was time to load the car and head east. Ten hours, another monstrous dent in the wallet, and several geographical changes later, we hit the triangle where Germany, France and Switzerland meet. We pulled into Basel as the light was fading and the Portuguese had just beaten France in another World Cup game. Horns were honking everywhere and we thought we were improperly following the street signs and stoplights … until we noticed the Portuguese flags hanging out of the honking cars!

We schlepped our belongings up to Jared’s sister Megan’s place, a nice apartment overlooking a beautiful park. Jared’s mom had just arrived from the U.S., and we all had a tasty dinner (prepared by Megan’s Significant Other, Salvadore). That night we spread out all over the apartment and settled down for a restful sleep, but I seemed to twitch awake each time the local bus cruised to a stop just outside the window. Indeed, the noises from outside are so outrageously loud that Megan and Sal actually pay less rent than everyone else in the building for the inconvenience.

Not to worry; the next day we were off to the Black Forest…more specifically Breitnau, just above Hinterzarten. Breitnau is so small, I had a hard time locating it through Google, as there are other, bigger Breitenau’s in the world! Our friends Mark and Klaus who live in the area had kindly found the best place for us to spend the bulk of our holiday. Three weeks at a German farm: cows, chickens a few pigs tucked away, clean mountain air and two small children to boot!

The farmer’s wife, Astrid, is one of the nicest people ever. She opened her home on our first evening to nine of us for a barbeque. Her husband, Oswald, spent the evening grilling and the rest of us chatted in a mix of German and English. The kids all sat together and made animal sounds at each other, as a roaring lion is pretty much understandable in any language!

From then on we got into a routine of going to bed late (it was still getting dark after ten!) and rising late, lounging at breakfast and then carrying out the day’s plan, be it a beautiful hike in the area (straight from the farm!), a walk into town, a train ride to Freiburg (site of my junior year abroad!) to eat bratwurst at the market square or climb the cathedral tower, a drive to Feldberg for a gondola ride or Todnau for a really exciting alpine “Rodelbahn” – a 3 KM sled ride down a mountain!

The eating and drinking continued at the frenzied level of our French days. I could not get enough of the German wurst and beer! We spent one day visiting the relatives of Sal, Megan’s Swiss/Italian boyfriend, who live on the border of Germany and Switzerland. German, Italian and English flew around the table set for about 18 of us. Good food, good chatter, good people; it was a very lively day as members of three generations from a variety of families gathered for a Sunday meal.

As our three weeks came to an end up on the farm, we packed our bags and prepared for yet another stellar adventure. After regrouping in Basel, Erna, Megan and the four Rodgers climbed aboard a Swiss train bound for Brusio, a tiny spot in the far southeast corner of Switzerland. We had to change trains several times as we climbed higher into the Alps. Our last train had two passengers cars called the “panorama” cars – they were open air, so you could smell and see everything around you!! We passed a few glaciers, spectacular alpine lakes and forests on our way into the hamlet of Brusio.

Megan’s host mom of many years ago, Catherine, was there to meet us. We crossed the street and were at the rectory of the church over which she presides. We had a tour of her vegetable garden and sat down to a lovely meal of fresh foods from the garden and nearby butcher. After another incredibly satisfying sleep, we arose to take in our surroundings. We hiked a bit along a mountainside and descended to the local lake which was alpine green and FREEZING! Megan scraped the bottom for clay and gave herself a mud bath, much to Sophia’s amusement. Sam and Jared swum around, undaunted by the cold. Erna and I drank coffee in the café just above the lake and took in the view from there.

In this part of the world, you can’t go wrong in your choice of activity: it is all so beautiful (I am quickly running out of adjectives to describe the pulchritude!). Another gorgeous evening meal, followed by a restful sleep and we awoke to our final day in Brusio.

We took the train over to the next town where we met Catherine and ate at the pizzeria on the town square. I had the perfect pizza: arugula piled high with shavings of parmesan and slices of prosciuto ham placed all around with a layer of mushrooms. I do not care for mushrooms as a rule but this had to be the best pizza I have ever consumed! Something about the fresh air (and perhaps the accompanying red wine!) made it the consummate meal. After stuffing ourselves to the brim with helpings of ice cream, we all waddled back to the train station, bid adieu to Catherine and climbed into the “panorama” wagon of the train for the spectacular ride back through the mountains.

Back to Basel by nightfall where it was hot and humid. We spent the next few days at the local park frolicking in the summer heat (something like 44 days of record heat and no rain; the Europeans were beside themselves!). Alas, our vacation began to wind down as we put Erna on the plane home, said goodbye to Megan and Sal and their dog Dyla and headed north ourselves.

We stopped by Mark and Klaus’ lovely home in Donaueschingen for a night with the kids. We took a stroll to the local Biergarten where the kids played on their own for over three hours (!!!) while the adults imbibed and chattered. It was pitch dark when we set out through the park back home. Mark, once an Eagle scout, always an Eagle scout, had two flashlights which were wielded by Mark and Sam. With dark woods on either side of us and the occasional specter of a bike in the distance we crept through the park, bravely. Home again, home again and a few drinks later it was time to crash.

The next day we set out for our final destination, Walldorf or was it Walddorf? I had located the wrong town on the map and luckily called my friend, Inge, before we set out for Walddorf, only 45 minutes away. Instead we were supposed to head for Walldorf, which ended up taking us four hours!!! Thanks to summer highways work, the traffic was atrocious. On our final approach to Walldorf, we passed over 12 kilometers of stopped traffic going the other way. An unbelievable accident involving multiple trucks had occurred at 9 o’clock in the morning and at 5 pm they were still clearing it up. I can only imaging the frustration of the people stuck in that traffic for the entire day!!!!

We pulled up to Inge’s suburban pad – a new home with three floors, multiple bedrooms and a great yard, a growing phenomenon as the earning power continues to expand in Germany and fields get converted into suburban neighborhoods. Children and playgrounds abound in this area, so Inge’s three children are set for years of fun! It was great to see Inge after almost ten years; our appendages totaled two hubbies and five children which changed the nature of the visit. A lively time was had by all: again great meals, fine wine (thanks to Manfred’s visit and gift of a few bottles of his family label!), fun games with the kids including the local playground tour!

Friday, July 28, a sad day… up early and time to head for Amsterdam for the evening flight home. Miraculously, our journey was traffic free and we reached Amsterdam in record time. Over four hours early for our flight, we headed to the biggest park in Amsterdam, bordering on Schipol Airport, where we watched planes zoom overhead on their way to the runway. We rented a canoe and paddled about for awhile, before it was time to drop off the car and head to the airport.

But one last small adventure awaited. I had mistakenly thrown away the piece of paper which had the directions to the car drop off location. Stymied, we stopped at a bar and called the guy. He said we were so close by, he would come get us and we could follow him back. 45 minutes later, no guy and we called again. By this time, he was angry as he had not been able to find us. We got directions from him and set out. After stopping at the worlds LONGEST red light for about 20 minutes as we watched one car slip through each 4 second green light, we FINALLY realized we really had no idea where to go. Time ticking, stress building, we asked a man at another car place if he new the address. He kindly offered to lead us there, which he did – thank goodness!

We pulled up and the man in the booth was livid. He screamed at Jared and we all shrank back in horror. This was the worst kind of girlie man you would ever hope to meet in your worst dreams. Hairy face, red fingernails, long hair, flowing clothes, big hairy hands, high heels and a screechy voice. Luckily Jared had Sam and Sophia to help temper his temper. He offered the kids candy and a little wooden clog key chain and we were off to the airport in time to make the flight.

All went fairly smoothly and before we knew it, we had landed in Jakarta and were speeding down the highway towards Kelapa Gading and Sri and Asih! Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Thus ended the summer holiday of the Rodgers family, 2006. The stories will be retold, pictures revisited and memories ever present in our minds to relive and bring a smile to our faces. As I write this, we have just returned from a frolicking meal with the new teachers to our school – it promises to be another lively year. More tales to come as the next holiday season approaches and I find myself with a few hours to spare!

Christmas, 2005...ho ho ho!

2005-12-19T16:58:00.000+07:00

2005 continues

2005-12-18T22:00:00.000+07:00

Summer 2005 and Beyond

After my last posting in May, things got crazy and I am just now sitting down at Christmas time to take stock of the last six months. Our summer was spent in the U.S. visiting friends and relatives. We invaded a good friend from the Manila days in Washington D.C. for four nights – and we are still talking! Four children, four adults and the heaven sent Filipino maid for four days is a recipe for chaos or one big party. We chose the latter. Trips to the zoo, runs along the rail trail to Georgetown, a visit at the local Montessori school, two barbeques, lots of gifts and games and ‘Do you remember…” conversations, and we were off to Baltimore to hang with the Gatchell side of the family.

A good friend of mine offered (was actually coerced by me!) to have a gathering of Baltimore buddies at their new pad, replete with pool and gas grill. We were a party of about 12 adults and 12 kids. For some reason, Sam was reluctant to join the party and spent the first hour sitting in the basement in front of the TV, while everyone else laughed and frolicked in the pool. Eventually he came out and whispered to me that he was ready to swim, but he wanted to swim naked. I asked my hostess friend and she said, No prob! Off went the clothes to the astonishment of the older kids (aged 9-12). After about ten minutes Sam asked me why all the kids were giggling at him. Duh, said I – you are naked, Boy! Off I went, shaking my head to get some dinner. When I returned awhile later, what do you know? Every kid was naked and screaming with delight as they took plunge after plunge off the diving board.

As for my family, everyone seems to be doing well, even after the passing of the family matriarch in January. With the big house cleared out and my aunt settled in close to the rest of the family, things seem solidly in place there. It was great to see my brother and his two growing girls, now 4 and 6 years old. Austin continues to be leader of the pack, as the other ankle biters look on in awe.

However, once we got up to the beach in Nantucket, Sam and Sophia, who are used to year round swimming, took the lead in getting Austin and Emory to take the plunge into the Atlantic. Seeing my three-year old riding the sizeable waves on her boogie board, laughing with glee, was a sight to behold. Many sand castles, beach cookouts, yoga classes, lobster dinners, and a big Rodgers’ family reunion later,
we found ourselves heading back to the mainland on the slow boat from Nantucket. Another American summer vacation well spent: with our belts loosened, digital camera full of memories, and giggles still resounding in our heads from good conversation had with family and friends, we headed south for one last hurrah with Jared’s mom.

Back in Williamsburg we spent a week with Nana, who by the way, had earlier spent six days with her grandchildren while Jared and I tried to get things fixed in Nantucket. We relaxed, swam, slept and went to doctors, and spent too much money at Target; all the usual itinerary items for expats who come home for the summer. We managed to spend more money on medical bills in one week than in the entire year spent in Jakarta – by about ten times!! Each time I return from a summer in the U.S. I wonder again how people do it back home – then I remember: credit cards and debt. Ouch!

By the end of July we were experiencing reentry into the teaming, stinky lovable city of Jakarta. On our trip back from the airport, I watched clouds of toxic cotton candy swirl by, fed by constant trash burning and factory belching and felt the usual trepidation about living in this city.

As it turns out, I have had hardly a moment to think about the pollution further. We have had the busiest semester on record, I think. I decided to take on an extra class at school and am now teaching middle school science along with math. It is incredibly fun, but SO much work, as I have not considered the size of the universe nor touched a microscope in decades! Needless to say, I am learning (or rather relearning) a lot!

In addition to school stuff, we managed to travel to Singapore for a wedding, Bangkok (and Phuket) for a week over the Ramadan holiday, and then Jared ran his seventh marathon in Singapore a few weeks ago. The trips were fantastic, and although Jared did not exactly get the time he had hoped for in his marathon, he now has seven marathons under his sexy belt – an admirable feat!

Before I babble on about our Fall goings-on, I have been collecting a few tidbits of life in Jakarta for the past few months which I will insert here.

One amusing tidbit comes from the pirated DVD culture. I do not think I have spent more that 1 dollar for a DVD in the 8 years I have lived in Asia. You even get extra entertainment thrown in when you turn on the subtitles. I have no idea what kind of people get paid what kind of money to write these things, but they are often more entertaining than the movie itself. Here are some examples of some translations I can remember:

From a Sex in the City episode. Mr. Big asks for “Corn flakes and juice”, which is transcribed as “white flange and jurge”. Huh?

In another Sex and the City episode, they talk of “Angioplasty” which comes out as “angel plastic”.

And then there is the story of “Elizabeth Taylor”, aka “Lesbian’s tailor”. Definitely chuckle-worthy.

Another memory involves a rainy Sunday afternoon as I was working in my classroom and Jared was on his way home from the mall with the kids. I heard some sort of commotion outside my window, but could not see what it was. It turns out, just as Jared had turned into our village, a blue bus (awful little minibuses with no windows or doors which careen to and from the mall) had slammed on his brakes and skidded over the embankment into the nasty canal waters below!

Jared reported that he saw two missionaries emerge with Bibles in hand and scrabble their way out. Other passengers followed. No one seemed seriously harmed, but the driver tried to get away. It was not to be... a posse of guards and other enraged citizens ran after the “(drunken?) driver and beat him up to keep him from running away. It took about a day for the blue bus to be retrieved from the canal; it was a sight to behold!

A tale in a similar vein: we have a South African friend who was driving himself one day (a rare occurrence) in his leased BMW. He entered a traffic circle, got cut off by one of the oh so skilled Jakarta drivers, skidded up against the guard rail, and flipped his car! Within moments a crowd had gathered and the men were gesturing for him not to move. Ten minutes later a group of burly lads had flipped the car over and he was ready to go. He did manage to get in touch with his leasing agency, and a representative magically appeared within moments and sent him packing before any more people got a look at his “boulé” (foreign) face. That very afternoon he had a brand new BMW delivered to his front door. He declined the car and has been taking taxis ever since.

Just outside the ashram building where the Art of Living folks gather (my yoga place) there is a tiny canal which you can only cross when a road crosses it. There are actually men with wooden boats who will charge 5 cents to pull you over in their craft from one side to the other, if you are too lazy to walk down to the next road crossing. They spend most of the day dozing, waiting for customers, but they are ever ready to pull you over the six feet from one side to the other. It is a scene out of the middle ages.

This place teems with humanity. I was walking home the other day (it takes about 1 minute to walk the half a block home), but I never forget that I am in Asia. I pass smells ranging from decaying rats, to fetid water, to oily cooking smells from the lady who has her food stall on the corner, to occasional wafts of some kind of plant, striving to survive and send out its signature scent.

As for sights on this diminutive jaunt, they range from passing roly poly Asian kids playing badminton in the street to men on bikes laden with their wares cruising along, yelling out their particular song to advertise soup or chips or ice cream or bread. I often see the clothing man, a roving boutique for the poor maids, some of whom get one day off per month. The fruit vendor is a fun one – I am always ready to purchase fresh mangoes or strawberries.

But the woman on the corner is the best. She, her husband and their little dirty, but ever smiling 5 year old girl, work from 6:00 am until 5:00 p.m., cooking fish, rice, mystery meat and veggies for all the workers in the village. It is a place of neighborly congregation and we all greet one another as we pass by each morning. Most afternoons, as I stroll home, I will see maids out sweeping the streets, drivers washing cars, cars returning home from work, horns blaring so the maids know it is time to open the gates.

The other day our neighbor pulled up to turn into his driveway, but forgot to put on the parking brake. Before we knew it we heard a big crash as their car smashed through out gate and crumpled the iron structure. Hmmmm, thought I…our first accident in Asia and it clearly was not our fault. Sure enough, the old Chinese mama of the family tried to deny they had done anything wrong, as our gate had been broken the week before. Yes, we had had a tiny piece which had since been repaired and she thought we would shrug off a destroyed gate.

I let my maid deal with the big mama while I looked on in disgust. Hard to know which language to argue in. My Indonesian does not take me that far, even after a year. Amazingly, the family got the gate repaired within the week. I take back all those nasty thoughts I had about these neighbors, who, by the way, I had never set eyes on in the year we have lived across the street from each other! They are both HUGELY overweight and probably only walk from their car to the front door, all behind their gate, so I never see them. The Asian crisis was not really a financial one, but a dietary one, as the rising middle class has forsaken rice for Dunkin Donuts and fast food.

It is basically the same with all of our neighbors. I recognize maids, but never residents. One wonders why Sam and Sophia have so few friends. Most children in these parts live sheltered lives behind walls, going out only to be tutored in extra languages or math or maybe music. I know there is a tendency to over schedule our American kids, but these little guys here seem to undergo a dearth of exercise, in lieu of academics and musical pursuits.

In the week it took the gate to be fixed, I actually never saw it, because I had treated myself to a yoga retreat for four days. It was with the same group I worked with back in February, The Art of Living. I am still convinced it is NOT a cult. They have not asked for money, nor asked me to sign over my house or give up any part of me. The leader, the guru in India, truly seems like a good person, whose main theme is for us to strive towards peace and happiness in our lives. It works for me. I had a nice inward journey to my inner self. I thought I might find as yet undetected depth, but it seems I am really just who I appear to be. After silence for three of the days and lots of meditation, I emerged, cleansed and ready to take on the holiday season.

It is now December 17 and my gifts are wrapped and my desk is cleared. Such is Christmas here in Indonesia. We will be spending it in Bali and although we have had our Christmas tree up for two weeks, we will celebrate early in Jakarta and save a few surprises for Bali for Sam and Sophia. The idea of Santa is a bit nebulous over here. He has visited the school, but the kids knew it was really the headmaster in costume. Another impersonation was put on by a good friend at a Christmas party. He totally fooled the kids and they are sure Santa was the one who doled out the gifts. I am not sure how Santa will find us in our Bali hotel room on Christmas day. As the kids are still young, I may just try to ignore that small hole in the story. Without chimneys in these parts the whole story has to be revised anyway.

I wish anyone who has read this far a good sleep, as you may need it now. Also a happy holiday – take it easy, don’t let the preparations bog you down. It is just another meal and an excuse to be nice to one another, things we should do every day. Enjoy all the moments of your life and live each one to the fullest, whether it is over Christmas dinner or during a long dull meeting at work. As a good friend of mine likes to say, “Feel the Love!” Cheers.

Tales from 2005

2005-05-29T13:25:00.000+07:00

Art of Living

In early February I decided to join a class billed as a yoga course. As making yoga a part of my life has been an ongoing goal of mine this year, I thought I darn well better sign up. It turned out to be less physical yoga and more breathing. Midway through the four-day course, I felt like I was becoming a brainwashed member of a cult. This form of breathing was actually designed by a guru named Sri Sri Ravi Shankar who lives in India and has an international following in the hundreds of thousands. There are Art of Living centers all over the world (check your local directory!). Some of you readers may have heard of him. He is quite well known and supposedly a reincarnation of a wise soul who has been teaching for centuries!

I was calling friends and families and telling them they HAD to look up their nearest Art of Living center and get to the basic course. I still have the same advice, as what I got out of it was amazing and inspirational, but it is much like attending a religious retreat. You return with the fire of whatever message is in your heart and as the days go by and the intrusions of every day life keep knocking at your door, the effects begin to wear off.

During these four days I had to eschew alcohol, meat, sugar and caffeine. The headaches were so bad that I have since given up coffee, not wanting to ever have to go through the trouble of detoxifying off caffeine again. A healthy diet, mixed with the amazing breathing exercises they taught us, intermingled with a few yoga moves truly did transform my energy level and outlook on life. I did not feel stressed at all, I had tons of energy and felt great.

Interestingly, about a week after the course ended, I got terribly sick – lost everything in my tummy and then some for about three days. About three other people who took the course had the same reaction. The doctor we visited was familiar with Art of Living and said she sees this happen all the time. A reaction to detoxifying my entire system; it was ugly, but again, it made me realize how TOXIC I must have become.

Enter the Chinese New Year

In mid February we got five day weekend thanks to the timely arrival of the Chinese New Year. The cool thing about living in Indonesia is that, although the religion is predominantly Muslim, they accept all religions and we get just about every religious holiday you can imagine: Pentacost, Nyepi (the Hindu day of silence), Chinese New Year, Muslim New Year, Mohamed’s birthday, Buddha’s birthday, the list goes on and on.

We decided to use the time to take the 3 hour train trip to Bandung, a nice mountain getaway. The train station was not as bad as I would have thought. Lots of poor people hanging about, but the trains were basically on time. We had sprung for the 1st class train for about $7 per person round trip. It is about the distance between Baltimore and New York – for $7 round trip!!! The train had aircon, a small restaurant and nice seats. The scenery was spectacular as we wove in and through mountains. When we arrived the air was luscious! We did not even have to sleep with a fan, let alone a rumbling aircon unit.

Our friends teach at a school up there so we stayed at their lovely home, next to a babbling brook – and a clean one at that! No dead fish floating, old refrigerators lounging or local people washing, as is usual in city waterways. Activities in Bandung include visiting the outlet malls – we got some clothes on the cheap from all the big name brands back home (Esprit, Old Navy and the like), then one day we drove up to the top of the local volcano. It was not active, so we were allowed to hike into it. We got a guide (or three!) and off we went in drizzling weather which was actually kind of nice and cooling.

When we got to the crater, we could see areas where steam was emitting and sure enough, they will sell you some eggs, which you can boil in the open bubbling pools of water. We did, and the kids thought it was really neato keen! We ate the eggs later, which may have been a mistake as Sam was sick the next day. The jury is still out on the cause of that one, however, as Sophia and I got the same bug days later.

One night in Bandung we went to a restaurant which I had thought was called “The Pig” – that’s how it sounded when my Indonesian friend recommended it. And when I mentioned it to the people we were visiting, they said, oh yes, it was a great place and made a reservation. So off we went for the long trek to “The Pig”. Now I thought it was kind of a strange name, being a Muslim country, where eating pork is absolutely forbidden, but maybe someone had a sense of humor. We drove and drove up and down and over mountains and eventually began a final climb to our destination. I kept seeing signs for “The Peak” and sure enough, when we reached the top, there we were: The Peak Restaurant, one of the premier dining spots of the area. The chicken and fish were delicious!

Ahoy, Maties!

When we returned from Bandung things began to happen fast and furiously at school. I had signed on to help direct the school play. It was a frivolous affair, something called “Jolly Roger and the Pirate Queen” – nothing anyone has ever heard of, but full of wit, fighting and lots of shouts of “Ahoy maties!” and such. We basically had no budget and this being my first drama stint at a small school, it was interesting to see how it worked. We have TA’s who managed to build our entire set and supportive teachers who helped the kids collect their own costumes. Definitely a home-spun affair, but all in all quite a bit of fun. We turned a bunch of pathetic thespians in the making into believably scary pirates by the time opening night rolled around. We charged $5 dollars per ticket and managed to cover our costs and donate over $1,000 to Habitat for Humanity in Aceh!

Leavin’ on a Jet Plane

Then came the month of March and Jared and I dusted off our luggage. He was off to Manila to play in the Manila 10’s rugby tourney. Fun was had by all and injuries were kept to a minimum. Then two weeks later, he set off to Bali to play in an international Ultimate Frisbee Tourney. Again, fun was had by all.

Meanwhile the kids and I took off to a place called Pelabuhanratu – yes, I was quite proud the day I learned to say that one! It is a nice beach getaway about four hours drive from Jakarta. If you can manage not to lose your mind or your breakfast on the way, you arrive ready for a nice relaxing time. However, the normal trip there is fraught with traffic, nasty spewing pollution, twists and turns up and over mountains and sloshing stomachs to accompany the twisting and turning.

We had hired a school driver to take us there (Jared was in Manila). He was supposed to arrive at 5:00am so we could miss the traffic, but the guy thought I meant 5:00 pm (yeah, right. I made sure he understood I meant morning, but this is a typical example of saving face when someone makes a blunder). So he arrived by 7:30 am and we were all steaming mad, but could not show it, cause that’s just not what you do here. Of course we hit traffic and had a hellish ride there. A few gin and tonics later, sitting underneath a palm tree swaying in the breeze, watching the waves roll in, I had mellowed out, and blocked out the memory of the trip.

We had a houseboy who got us fresh food each day and would grill it for dinner. The kids spent the days in the pool screaming and leaping with glee. My favorite moment (or hour) was spent getting a massage on a little open hut on the beach, where I could watch the waves and our crowd having a laugh down by the water.

The only bummer about these short weekends is that just as you have sunk into true bliss, it is time to pack up and head home. The ride back pretty much sucked and we returned home ready for another G & T. As part of the anxiety building in the hours before we left the hotel, I totally FORGOT to pay my bill!!! We were halfway home when I remembered and I was horrified! How uncivilized!! Luckily, the owner of the place lives in Jakarta and a few e-mails and a bank transfer later all was right again. We have since decided a flight to Bali is a much better way to spend a weekend. More on that later.

So as the month continued to March along, I got my papers in order for a jaunt to Vietnam. The regional teacher’s conference was held in Ho Chi Min City where Jared and I had gone six years ago. Interestingly, not a lot has changed in the interim, which I was happy to see. When we explored the country for 5 weeks that summer, we loved the way things were –no fast food chains, the local food was fresh and delicious, the people were friendly, but pushy about doing business with us. By this visit, I found less beggars on the streets, and the people to be far less pushy about getting me to buy their wares. I got the impression that the economy is perking along well and that the people in general (how many did I see in the space of three days? Not enough to speak with any authority, but here goes) seemed prosperous.

I saw lots of colleagues from schools all over the region – mostly people from the Manila days who have moved on. I’ll save the gossip for private e-mails – heck, any web browsing fool can read this BLOG!

The day I returned from Vietnam, I discarded my dirty clothes and packed up clean ones to prepare for departure to Yogjakarta – yes, another strange sounding place in this beautiful land. I was about to embark on a five day class trip with 39 little 6th graders and 3 teachers. Valium in hand, we set off for the airport with all the little ones in tow. Almost all of them were going away from their parents for the first time. Cell phones in one hand and Gameboys in another, they bravely faced the dangers of leaving home for the first time. All in all, the trip was a success, so I cannot regale with tales of woe and torture.

The only moment which gave me pause came at 5:00 am one morning as a bevy of screaming girls told tales of ghosts in their rooms. Now ordinarily I would not give such fears the time of day, coming from a culture where we do not believe in such things. But in this country, ghosts are a reality of every day culture. Even the male guide we had along took down the scary picture of three women who stared at him in the hotel room and stuck it in his closet. Amused, I checked to see if I too had such a picture in my room. Sure enough, those three ladies were a wee bit daunting as they stared at me while I lay in bed, but to cover them with a towel or stick them in a closet – come on!!!

The other interesting tidbit was the arrival of hundreds of male members of the PAN political party – yeah, the group who wants all foreigners out of the country, etc. etc. They were the slimiest bunch of politicos I have ever seen: greasy hair, big paunches, chain smokers and smelly to boot. I shared a few packed elevator rides with these guys, so this is first hand observation! We shared a breakfast venue with them and could barely breathe through the cigarette smoke at 7:00 in the morning!

Bali-bound

Onto the month of April and the arrival of our school Spring Break. Finally a chance for the four Rodgers to get away together. We had a great week in Bali, met with friends, went to the water park (see December stories of our Bali visit for the stories – they were repeated in April!), and ate good food. For the last few days we splurged at a five star hotel on the quieter side of the island.

All was going swimmingly well, the kids were enjoying the kiddie club, giving Jared and me the chance to go running or read by the pool. On our last full day there, Jared had gone into town and I was playing with Sam and Sophia on the playground. A heated game of tag with Sam was underway and just as I turned around to taunt him into running faster, I turned back and WHAM – smacked my face into a protruding roofline whose height I had miscalculated. Suddenly the “fun” in the day came to a screeching halt.

Luckily, I kept my screeching silent so as not to alarm my kids. Blood began spurting out of my face from two deep cuts. I wandered about for a few minutes wondering where to get tissues to stop the bleeding. Gradually, a small crowd began to gather and finally the people from the clinic arrived with a first aid kit, with absolutely nothing helpful inside. I asked calmly for someone to get me a tissue and five minutes later I had a wad of paper towels thrust in my hand. They all sat there staring at me, seemingly clueless as to what to do.

I had a feeling the wounds were deep enough to need stitching, so I was put in the hotel ambulance and sent over to the local “hospital”. I took one look at the doctor in charge – his shirttails were untucked, he had sweat pouring down his face and he looked a bit daunted by the idea of stitching me up. I must have used every word of Indonesian I know to get across the idea that a cosmetic surgeon was in order. A few phone calls and about an hour later, I pulled up in taxi (Jared having been able to since join me) at the big hospital in Denpasar. Dr. Riasa entered the room and my fears melted away. What a hotty!

Within 30 minutes I was on the operating table and an hour after that he had stitched me up beautifully and we were on our way back to the hotel. I kept wondering what it would have been like if I had had such an accident in the U.S. Most likely I would have had to wait hours for the proper doctor, had to fill out a myriad of forms and met with some overworked doctor with little bedside manner. Did I mention it was a national holiday and that this man had been called into work to stitch me up?

Now it is almost a month later, the stitches are gone and I can barely see where the cuts were. Alls well that ends well. I had a baby in Manila, stitches put in my face in Bali and both events, I must say, were really quite professionally performed!

Stay tuned for a few more “end of year” tales before we head home for the summer!

Goodbye 2004...hello 2005

2005-02-09T14:23:00.000+07:00

My cup runneth over….

We left off at the end of 2004 with Thanksgiving events in Jakarta giving us perspective on all that we have to be thankful for, as well as our anticipation of Christmas holidays to come…..

Bali-bound!

As soon as Christmas vacation started, we closed up shop at school, bid our maids goodbye and headed for the airport, prepared for the holiday madness which inevitably plagues airports around the globe at this time of year. Alas, we arrived to see nary a soul….I am still not sure why this was so, but it may have to do with the fact that this is a Muslim country, coupled with the fact that it is rather expensive to travel by air. All I know is that our air travel was totally stress-free – unlike the tales of horror I heard about Christmas airport delays back home in the U.S. during the holiday period. Shudder, shudder!

After an hour’s flight we descended into Denpasar and began our three week vacation on the sun-drenched, culinarily scintillating, relaxing, self-proclaimed “Island of God”. Our three-star hotel was clean, friendly, and full of partying Australians. I have hilarious pictures of Sophia strutting her stuff at the pool bar, watched by a crowd of muscled Aussie construction worker types. Sam took to them as well. One guy had his surfboard in the pool one evening, and he helped my kids pose on the board while he pulled them shrieking with glee around the pool. All in all, both age groups enjoyed themselves. I think we may have even fostered thoughts of nesting into some of those preening male peacocks!

The biggest find on Bali was the WATERBOOM Water Park! What a BLAST!!!! At western prices, the place was never too crowded (by Asian standards, anyway). This park has been open only a few years and may well be the best water park I will ever visit. Trees and greenery abound, luscious small huts with cushions are scattered about for our lounging desires, the food was actually quite delicious; the hot mocha was to die for – move aside, Starbucks!! The kiddie pool was most excellent with lots of small slides, water spouts and a HUGE cup which would dump water on the unsuspecting as well as excited groups of thrill seekers every three minutes or so.

The actual slides offered something for everyone. Our kids spent hours running up the five-storied edifice, jumping in their inner tubes and roaring with glee as they swished down the slides. I can’t wait to introduce them to downhill skiing…The narliest slide was aptly named “Smash Down” Not for the under 4-foot (thank GOD!) and not for the faint of heart – this thing got you going so fast and at such a steep angle that you actually were in free-fall for a moment or two. By the time I hit the bottom, water rushed up inside me so far, it almost came out my nose. ‘Nuf said!

Shopping: yeah, lots of it and all unbelievably cheap. I don’t know if I will ever be able to pay full price for anything ever again. I can see myself trying to bargain with the Target cashier in Virginia next summer as I bring my piles of new clothing for Sam and Sophia up to the register. I remember working as a sales clerk as a teenager in Baltimore: one day an Asian woman tried to get me into a bargaining conversation. I was totally appalled at her gall. Only now can I understand where she was coming from!

Food: amazing! There is a place called Jimbaran Bay – it is a huge beach which transforms itself each night into the world’s largest outdoor beach restaurant. The area is comprised of about 50 roadside shacks, all selling fresh fish to be grilled to perfection. Out on the beach you see thousands of tables and chairs with glowing candles as far as the eye can see. Wandering musicians comb the beach, looking for willing ears. They will try to play anything. I will never again be able to hear the Beatles “All My ‘Lawveen’”: again without thinking of the rag tag group of musicians who played the song for us!

Other typical Bali activities included boogie boarding with Sam and Sophia. She is one ballsy chick – undaunted by just about everything! Whatever big Bro Sam tries, she will do, too. Jared was able to let go of her and watch her ride the kinder waves to shore all alone. Speaking of alone, we also rented horses and rode along the beach which was SOOOOO cool! Sophia had been dying for a horse ride (having only been able to find elephants to ride on as of late!), so she was thrilled to be able to climb onto “Spirit” and trot away. On the way back, she was able to ride all on her own and really got a charge out of it (luckily the horse did not feel the urge to charge!).

Other fun beach activities included a multitude of pedicures and manicures and even a hair-braid for Sophia. She loved it. By the end of the 30 minute braiding session, she was just about asleep on the shoulder of Mary, the hair gal. I took it upon myself to “adopt” some of the MANY, MANY women selling their nail and hair services on the beach and bought them clothes for their kids.

Vacationing in poor nations presents a strange paradox: here we are, bent on enjoying our three weeks of down time, relaxing and forgetting the stresses of school, etc. and in our faces are the faces of these poor women, working their butts off to make ends meet. During our first week there were practically NO tourists and I wondered HOW do they make ANY money to feed their kids? The women had between 2-4 kids each – nothing egregious, but they had a hard life, walking the beaches every day, pleading with tourists to pay for a manicure, some fruit, or a knitted hat (just what I need on Bali!). Even though a visit to the beach is “free”, we spent at least $10 each time we walked upon the sand: buying a wooden box here, renting a boogie board and umbrella there, acquiescing to a foot massage or buying yet another pair of knock-off sunnies.

The other, rather shocking thing about the beach life was the unbelievable amount of trash on the beach and in the water. Piles of small juice bags, or plastic bags, shoes, bottles, wrappers of all sorts were floating in the sea and washing up on the sand. Each day there were people out trying to clean up, but the trash never disappeared. We did take one day and explore the OTHER side of the island.

The other side, a phenomenon known as Nusa Dua, is an area built expressly for tourists maybe 15 years ago. Nary a piece of trash is to be found, no frothing dogs, only an occasional beach hawker, and perfectly groomed sidewalks and roads. And along with that you see throngs of Russian and Korean tourists splashing about, care-free; no paradox here! Sad to say, I was totally sucked in by the cleanliness and beauty of it all and we have made plans to return to Bali in April and splurge at one of the five-star hotels in Nusa Dua. I do feel as though I have sold my soul in a way, but I keep promising myself we will visit our Christmas stomping grounds and look up Mary, Bella and Sulee on the beach with good intentions to buy them some more clothes for their little children.

Return to Jakarta and 2005 begins….

Completely relaxed after our sojourn to Bali, we returned to the pollution, noise and jobs in Jakarta in early January. I really can’t complain…it was good to be back, back to the rats scratching in our ceilings, our water tank which insists on loudly overflowing each night at 3:30 am, and the screeching nannies next door, who start playing at ungoldly hours with their charges. We brought back Erna, John, and Megan, who had joined us in Bali for our last week. They have definitely gotten a good taste of our lives in Jakarta, including a meal at our favorite Chinese restaurant as well as a two-hour traffic jam on the way home from a look-see downtown --- ah….Asia!

Tsunami…

Now that it has been almost a month since the world’s biggest disaster to hit in years, I have gone through multiple stages of shock, mourning and reflecting, and I do not have the energy, nor the desire to expound here. I will just tell one tale of a friend who lived through it in Puket.

Our single friend, Jack, who is in his first year here, comes to Jakarta quite green from the white bread state of Connecticut. Jack was in Phuket for a week of Thai boxing. He got up on December 26 and decided on this morning to go for his run NOT on the beach as usual, but in the hills behind his hotel. After a 40-minute run, he returned to the hotel and noticed water in the streets. He wandered down towards the beach and learned then about the tsunami which had hit about 20 minutes before.

At that time he saw no wounded, only a few people wandering about in shock. As the water had receded, he and some others crept closer to the beach and he began to see signs of devastation: overturned busses, obliterated shops, and huge concrete walls tumbled down. He noticed the tide was WAY out, so he and a few others walked out towards the receding water (No, Jack, NO!!!). Clearly, he had not learned life lesson #17: run for your life when you see a receding tide! Sure enough, he looked again, and in came wave number two – he turned and ran for his life and was able to climb high enough to watch the water surge past him.

In the end, he was fine. He stayed for a few more days and then headed for Bali, where we drank margaritas and toasted our good fortunes. It took several more days of texting and phoning throughout the region to learn that all of our friends were fine and accounted for.

As for the rest of it, never believe someone when they tell you that relief agencies have enough money and no longer need monetary donations. This thing will take decades to recover from and every agency worth its salt will need truckloads of cash to help in the rebuilding of lives and businesses! Save the Children, Doctors without Borders, Habitat for Humanity, Unicef, you can choose your favorite charity, but any donation you can make, WILL make a difference – I don’t care what that idiot, Bill O’Riley says!

Wayang Kulit: leather puppets?

Waywhat? Yes, Wayang kulit…an ancient Indonesian art form which I had not encountered until about a week ago. Otherwise known as shadow puppetry, this form of entertainment goes hand in hand with a gamelan (orchestra) concert. A typical Gamelan (from what I can discern) is made up of about 20+ metal xylophone-esque instruments of all sizes and tones, about 50+ brass pots for banging and about 12+ HUGE gongs in the back. In addition, there is a small wooden xylophone, one wind instrument, one string instrument, a zither and a few sets of smaller xylophone-like instruments, with LOTS of “keys”.

We were invited to an American woman’s home, Kitsie is her name. She came to Indonesia on a Fullbright grant about 10+ years ago to learn Gamelan and ended up marrying her instructor, learning both Indonesian AND Javanese languages and collecting her own entire set of gamelan instruments, which almost fill the living area of her substantial home in Jakarta. She plays the last instrument I described, the xylophone with lots of keys – the length of a set of piano keys. She used both hands with mallets in each hand and played the notes with incredible skill and speed.

Kitsie is a teacher at another international school in Jakarta and offers Gamelan courses to expats. This evening was the culmination of the semester long class, and she had brought in professional gamelan players from Solo and Jakarta. Her entire living room was filled with her instruments, as well as a lighting system, speakers and the singers: three women, dressed to the nines and about four men as back up to the women. The singing was the scratchy, abrasive type you think of when you think of Asian opera type music. I personally did not enjoy the vocal part, although I was transfixed by the instruments when they were all played – the sounds penetrated me to my core and although I could never pick out a melody, per se, the overall effect was powerful.

Wayang and the Dhalang

In concert with the gamelan performance, Kitsie had hired an excellent Dhalang. I don’t know the translation for the word, but the man was a puppeteer and story teller rolled into one. He came from a family of dhalangs, and had begun manipulating puppets and telling stories when he was about 4 years old (get going, Sam!). The average Wayang performance lasts for about 7 hours! With NO intermission!!! Yes! And this night was no exception. At about 7:30 p.m., the gamelan played the overture for about 30 minutes, and the dhalang prepared his puppets behind the white screen. Onlookers were invited to sit anywhere, in front of or behind the actual screen. I sat behind the screen. Here, I was in the midst of the gamelan players and could see the movements of the dhalang as he moved the puppets across the screen. He had a long- sleeved coat on and long pants, a microphone tied around his neck and the room was a balmy 85 plus degrees! He did have a man who sat behind him, fanning the back of his neck and helping to organize the puppets. Although he only used about 20 different puppets, he had brought along over 80 which served as decoration on either side of the screen! At 8:00 the dhalang began his performance and it did indeed last until about 3:00 am! He performed without a break – told the story with many asides and added bits of his own choosing and maneuvered the puppets across the screen for seven hours!!!!!!!

Most wayang stories are taken from one of two famous Indian tales, the Mahabharata or the Ramayana. He had chosen one which involves a woman in her seventh month of pregnancy. The synopsis takes up about two small pages, and yet he managed to draw out the story into SEVEN hours of talk and show! The unique thing about these performances is that each dhalang tries to bring his or her own philosophy and moral message to the chosen tale. He used humor, current events, and timeless anecdotes to bring his message to life. He chose this particular story in honor of our American colleague and friend, Alicia, who is a gamelan student of Kitsie and is in her seventh month of pregnancy!

Directly preceding the show, Alicia underwent a seventh-month ceremony, which involved her having seven sarongs wrapped around her naked body. With each new sarong, she was doused with rose water. At the end, her husband took a machete and attempted to chop a coconut which would tell if the baby was to be a girl or boy, and then the entire clay pot of water was poured over Alicia! With the splashing water came coins and bits of hard-boiled egg to signify money and good health! I don’t think I grasped all of the meaning of this ceremony as it was all spoken in Indonesian, but you can always do a Google search to really get the details. Seventh-month ceremonies are performed in many countries, interestingly.

Speaking of being in the Indonesian language, the dhalang performed his SEVEN hour tale in Javanese, which is only spoken in central Java and not generally within Jakarta. Kitsie, having learned Javanese over the past ten years, took it upon herself to translate the ENTIRE performance into English on a big screen in the room. Most of the guests were expats, and would have been clueless as to the nuances of the story without her translation.

This night was one of the most fascinating nights I’ve spent in Indonesia thus far. I have to believe the the Fullbright folks were spot on when they chose Kitsie as the recipient of the scholarship so many years ago!

I am writing this on yet another holiday here in Jakarta: this one is called Idul Adha – not sure what it means, but it is meant for the slaughtering of goats. I have not heard any desperate bleating in my neighborhood today, but Jared did see a truck full of the nervous critters driving by early this morning. And with that, I leave you until our next adventures have come and gone…stay tuned for Chinese New Year in February and our train trip to Bandung!

December Musings

2004-12-16T14:36:00.000+07:00

Assorted creatures

About a month ago, I noticed an increase in the number of roaches roaming our ground floor. There was almost always one skittering under the refrigerator (which sits in our living room, by the way!) or crawling behind the door in the TV room. One night, I saw about 8 of the buggers before skittishly heading to bed. Sure enough, there were more upstairs. Roaches comprise the number one item on my list of creatures I cannot abide in my house. I have managed to accept salamanders, tolerate ants and endure the occasional mouse or rat, but I still am unnerved by a dashing roach. The funny thing was, as this night wore on, I found myself ceasing to yelp with surprise and disgust each time one crossed my path, and instead I would calmly go get a hunk of tissue and try to catch the thing with my bare tissue-filled hand. I got at least five of them – the first EVER roaches I’ve caught without wielding one of Jared’s dress shoes for maximum protection. You, dear reader, may not appreciate my success story here, but this evening was one of the defining moments in my stay here in Jakarta. The next day we did have the exterminators come and my maids tell me that hundreds of roaches curled up and expired that day. Yuck.

As a follow up: we have seen far fewer of the little creatures as of late, but the other night I saw one skittering along the counter. I yelled for Sri and she came out, took one look at it and grabbed it with her BARE hand! Wow!!! She is my new hero and I gave her a big fat raise for that one! That is a fantastic skill to be able to put on a maid’s resume – “can catch running roaches with bare hands!”. The funny thing is, after the night of infestation, I had become so adept at killing them myself; yet after a week or so of seeing none, I became all jumpy again. Hmmm, to be infested or not to be…these are the questions I ponder…

We also had a small colony of roaches living in our downstairs bathroom. There was one hole in the corner, in which you could almost always see two little roach antennae poking out. Even now, Sam enters that room with caution, sweeping his eyes around for lurking creatures.

Shipment Arrives!

So the infestation night turned out to be good timing, as our shipment from Manila, which took a mere four days to get here, finally arrived after three months of living here. Yes, thanks to the endless layers of burocracy and bribes to be paid, one cannot accept a shipment until the work permit has been processed. This, of course, takes weeks and weeks, and then a few more…It landed us right in the middle of Ramadan (the month when Muslims starve themselves!), so my expectations of the crew of men unloading our container were low. However, they did surprise me. There were about five guys, and they did a great job in the late afternoon (they had to be sooo hungry!) unloading and lugging our stuff all over the house. So now, a few weeks later, I feel settled in…finally!

Upcoming Holiday

We are headed for Bali this Christmas and I am trying to get reservations somewhere without having to give out my credit card details…I am very jittery about releasing credit card numbers in Asia. Bad experiences abound…So I have been back and forth with dear Ryan, the nice Hindu man from the hotel, about how to prepare payment, etc. I just have to paste a part of an e-mail, because the language is precious. Herewith, a message from Ryan Tanjung:

Dear Margareth
Greetings from the Magic Island of The GOd, hope you and your beloved one is fine.
thank you for your email and all your calculation is right.

Ifi can suggest you its better to do it by the conventional ways it more safety and confertable and you just fax the tranfer recipe to 62-361-730518 after the process.

I will send you the invoices this afternoon trought email.

Should you need further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me at your connivance.

With very best personal regards
Ryan Tanjung

We’ll send word after our three week stay on the Island of GOD!

Local services leave much to be desired

The opulent, recently renovated home of a student from our school burnt almost to the ground on Thanksgiving night. We all saw the smoke as we drove to dinner and hoped it was not one of our own. Sadly, it was. They lost everything, from the Jim Thomspson silk curtains, to my student Natasha’s uniforms and text books, to the priceless works of art adorning the walls. And do you know how they deal with a burning house here? Once someone noticed that the house was on fire, the fire department was called. So far, so good. After a time, a total of nine fire trucks pulled up, NONE of which had water in them. There is no such thing as a fire hydrant here; all water is brought along with the trucks. So once it was confirmed that yes, there was a raging blaze, two trucks set off to get water. When they finally returned, it was time to pay each man a bit of incentive money, the equivalent of about $1 each man. They then set to work in an attempt to put out a roaring fire which by now consumed the entire upper floor.

Of course the trucks soon ran out of water and by the time they went to refill, the fire had burned itself out, along with the help of the owner of the house who was helplessly dragging buckets of water over from a neighboring house. At one point, Natasha tells me, she noticed the firemen spraying precious water reserves on a man’s house who lived next door. Turned out, he had paid a way higher amount (at least $10) to have his house sprayed with water as protection from the fire! As for recourse, it seems one could most likely sue the construction company or electrician who put in faulty wiring. A leak in the roof allowed water to drip through, which caused a spark which set the surrounding timbers alight. Here in Jakarta, however, it’s pretty much tough tiddlies for the family. Insurance, you ask. Probably not. Time to hit up on friends and family and start over again.

I read a story in the newspaper yesterday about how one deals if their car gets stolen. First you must pay about $2500 to the officials (a.k.a. police) to open the case. Then, if you actually want your car back, you must pay up to 25% of the value of the car! And this is WITH insurance!!! The day after, I read a hot denial of this by a group representing the police!

Trip to Singapore

To celebrate the end of Ramadan, we were given a week off of school. Our maids traveled home with Lebaran gifts, extra money from the Rodgers family and other assorted goodies. We fled to Singapore. We spent a delicious week on the equatorial island and enjoyed every moment. Some people may poo poo Singapore for being too clean and sterile, but that is precisely why we love it. Coming form Manila or Jakarta, it is so nice to go places and have services work, be able to use a credit card without wondering how many people have written down the number, and to actually be able to drink water out of the tap!!!!

All in all, it was a fairly hum drum vacation. We stayed with a British friend whom we met in Manila four years ago. Her son Tomas is now five and he and Sam got along fantastically. Sophia just tried to keep up and enjoyed watching the movie classic, Peter Pan about five times a day. Jared and I took the three kids to the Singapore Zoo, which is a fabulous attraction. Sophia had been yearning to ride a horsie for weeks, so we promised her a ride in Singapore. Unfortunately, it began to rain when it was time to line up for pony rides, so the only creature she got to ride that day was an elephant. In fact, my kids have been on two elephant rides in the past month, yet we struggle to find horses to ride. Such is life in Asia!

Another hilarious outing in Singapore was to a place called Snow City! Yes, you can actually pay money to ride a black inner tube down a small hill of manmade snow, indoors. We rented all the gear; boots, mittens, jacket and lined up with two hundred Asians, all clad in identical, smelly winter garb. We were the ONLY white people in the place. The doors opened and we swarmed in, grabbed inner tubes and made our way up the stairs to the top of the hill. There, we all lined up – about 10 people across, and at the count of three, the men up there would push everyone down the hill. Screams and swirls and bumps and …crash! You are at the bottom and it is time to collect your tube, find your small son and haul your asses up the hill again. Sam and I had a blast and Sophia and Jared took on the mountain as well. It was only as the crowd thinned out that we were able to get the four of us together and go down as a family. By that time, poor little Sophia’s mittens had come off and her hands were FREEZING!! That was the first time she experienced freezing temperatures. Sam is hooked and can’t wait to go skiing…someday!

Other than that, we spent our days riding bikes along the beautiful beach paths of the public parks, exploring the Science Center, shopping at Borders Books, and hopping from playground to playground. We look forward to our summer stopover for more clean air and neat pathways!

Thanksgiving and Beyond

After six years of less than satisfying Thanksgivings in Manila, I know what to expect in an Asian country. This year, however, the entire faculty (about 30 of us) got together and catered a dinner at a teacher’s house, all for the price of about $10 per head. We had all the fixins…sweet potatoes, veggies, mashed potatoes, turkey AND ham, pumpkin and apple pie for dessert. Prior to dinner, a famous Thanksgiving proclamation of Abe Lincoln’s was read aloud and later we all wrote down what we were most thankful for…and then they were read aloud…oops. I wrote that I was most thankful that I do not live in the same country where George Bush is president. It got a lot of laughs and some uncomfortable looks from the conservative right in the crowd. Oh well.

The kids sat at the kiddies’ table; each had a nanny to help make the mandatory Indian hat with feathers and cut the turkey. Not quite like the good old days when I was a kid and had to cut my own meat, but Sam and Sophia had a good time. Instead of preparing a Thanksgiving play after dinner like my cousins and I used to do, the kids at this festivity gathered round for a viewing of The Incredibles. Welcome to the new millennium!

So as I finish this up, Christmas is around the corner. As usual, when I am teaching full time, I have no time to think of Christmas cards or catch-up letter until AFTER grades are in, class parties are finished and the last of the tacky gifts have been thrust into my hands. Jared, Sam, Sophia and I have managed to set up our Christmas tree, replete with blinking lights and our ever-growing collection of ornaments. I made it to a local Christmas bazaar (yes, there are Christians here!) and bought some fantastic batik stockings!! Another Asian Christmas without the cold, snow and ice. YEAH! Jared admits to yearning for the traditional White Christmas, which we grew up with, but I have managed to make due with equatorial Christmases. Think of us, sipping tropical drinks, frolicking on the beach and wandering about in sundresses, as we head off to our backyard playground of BALI. I say this to try to entice any of you readers to think about heading this way!!! We are returning to Bali in mid-April and would love to have some company!!!! Heheheheheh

Selamat Hari Natal!!!

Cousins Nantucket

2004-10-21T15:11:00.000+07:00

Ready, set....Starve!

2004-10-17T13:49:00.000+07:00

October 15, 2004

Ready, Set……Starve!!!!!

Having only been in Jakarta for two and a half months, I have not yet gotten ‘round to learning the ins and outs of the country’s reigning religion: Islam. I am still trying to figure out how to make my driver understand where I want to go and my maids stop allowing Sophia to eat candy from strangers in the park!

I do know, however, that today marks the first day of Ramadan. It is a time for inner reflection, devotion to God, and self-control. Muslims think of it as a kind of tune-up for their spiritual lives.

Just a word about the religion I have experienced…we have two lovely girls who work for us: Sri and Asih. Sri is 23, married, yet estranged from her husband, who, I think has returned to Hong Kong. She is fiery, has pretty decent command of English, controls the discipline of Sam and Sophia, flirts with the neighborhood vendor guys on her off time, and always seems to be menstruating. I say this because when a female is menstruating, she may not visit a mosque or participate in prayer or other religious occasions.

Asih, who is about 18 years old (!!) is a practicing Muslim, never seems to menstruate, prays five times a day, tucked away in her closet, fully covered in a white shroud, and is never seen flirting…she was off last night to the mosque to help usher in the season of Ramadan. According to the rules, the girls were up this morning at 2:00 am, cooking a meal. They then prayed (except for Sri, who is off the hook for one bloody week), and returned to slumber until 6:30. They have not eaten today, and as of 6:00 pm, they can take their evening meal. This will continue for four weeks. I understand that by the end, the entire country is in a state of limp listlessness, yet somehow they will find the energy to start gathering families together a few days before the final day and prepare for the mother of all celebrations on Idul Fitri, which marks the end of Ramadan.

Scrapes and bumps….

The other day, I was in traffic with Herri, our driver, on my way to JIS, the BIG and prestigious international school in town, and in the middle of a chaotic traffic circle, another car began to scrape along the side of the car. I yelled at Herri to stop the car and the other guy was able to back up a bit and disengage from my passenger door. We all pulled to the side of the road, I kept my head down and let Herri deal with the situation. Both men got out, sauntered over to the side of our car and began to negotiate. 15 minutes later, after some argument and rubbing of the bruised door, money was exchanged and we were on our way. I could not wait to find out what had happened. It was obviously the other guy’s fault and lo and behold, he did admit to that. He paid Herri a fair amount: Rp 10,000, which is a bit over…….ONE U.S. DOLLAR! Herri figured it was enough to cover the cost of touching up the scrape. Sure enough, when he picked me up later, I could hardly find the spot!!!!

Another anecdote about cars….. because parking spaces are so few, people just park wherever there is space, even if it means totally blocking people in legitimate spots. But the obvious solution is to leave your inconveniently parked vehicle in neutral, so that those who are stuck can simply push your car out of the way. Some may ask WHY we need a driver in this city…. There you have two good reasons…dealing with fender benders and getting out of parking lots!

Animals, animals, hey…..don’t kick my car!

Last weekend we headed up into the mountains to the South of Jakarta, to the Tamin Safari Park. We had heard it was worth visiting and it actually turned out to be a great day!! After inching along in mountain traffic (we later learned the heavy volume was due to people traveling home for one last hurrah before the start of Ramadan), we headed up the last tiny road to the entrance. Along the road, vendors were selling huge bunches of bright orange carrots. They looked delicious, so I had Jared buy some. Little did I know that they were supposed to be food for the safari animals!

We entered the park and right away saw a bunch of zebras. We were in a line of cars and busses, inching our way up a steep incline. The busses had a tough time, because every time a car would stop to feed or look at an animal, the bus would have to hang on the incline, impatiently honking his horn for cars to keep it moving. The animals are quite well-adjusted to the loud snorts of car horns, I must say. Since the animals get fed yummy carrots by all the human gawkers, they are quite willing to come up to the cars, stick their heads in your windows and salivate all over you. We even had one excited zebra kick our rear light out!

The really cool part was the “African” section. We had to close all windows for this. There were beautiful Bengal tigers, lions, bears – a real Oz! Sam and Sophia loved it. After the 45 minute safari, we entered the amusement part of the park. Kiddie rides were available, animal shows, Asian style, where the well-being of the animal is only secondary to entertainment value.

We decided to check out the Wild West Show for kicks and grins. It was hilarious! There was a scratchy audio tape in Indonesian which screamed out the loose plot line of the story, but the real action involved people riding across a plot of sand on horses and pretending to shoot at each other. There were good stunts of people falling off of balconies, off of water tanks, explosions of fire inside banks and saloons. Good stuff. But I think the most entertaining part of the show was…..the Rodgers family! We were the only white people there, and everyone around us was transfixed on our tableau. Sam and Sophia were perched on Jared’s lap and there must have been hundreds of photos taken of us during the show. If I had a rupiah for every shutter click…..

It is late on a Friday night and I am burning the midnight oil and Aircon here at school. Time to mosey on home, and take in some slumber in order to gear up for another day of fun and adventure in lovely Jakarta!

Ohmygoddidyouseethat?

2004-10-05T11:19:00.000+07:00

Omygoddidyouseethat?

September 25, 2004

I just realized recently that we have been in Southeast Asia for a long time. The “OOH, AH” factor died out long ago. This I know from the new arrival of Rob, a nice American, fresh in from Boston. He is one of the new teachers at the school this year and every time I go out with him and his seasoned traveler wife, Laurel, we are both amazed by his view of the world. He sees EVERYTHING!
Just yesterday, during a ride back from the drivers license bureau (a story in itself), Rob noticed the following phenomena: we were inching along in highway traffic and suddenly a man crossed multiple lanes of the highway, with a tray full of eggs. Rob could not believe his eyes. I, hardened woman that I am, did not even notice…of course people around here roam the highways in traffic. They are hard at work, earning money selling water, peanuts….eggs..
Then further on down the road, we were inching along under the highway, and we saw a man on a motorcycle with two car size tires around his waist. I am really glad Rob pointed that one out, because it was the first time I’d seen that. The guy must have stepped into the two tires, pulled them up around his waist, climbed onto his cycle and motored off.
Then, moments later, Rob exclaimed, “No way, did you see that!? That guy just jumped off the bus in moving traffic?” Yeesh! Tell me something I haven’t seen thousands of times. Busses never actually stop here, and there have not been doors on the public busses since they were built, say 15-20 years ago. The only way to get on or off is to jump when the bus goes slowly enough not to get you injured.
The third phenomenon was something I was told about. Another amazing motorcycle sighting: this one had two guys on the motorcycle: as extra passengers they had tied three live, bleating, angry sheep onto the vehicle. Two were fighting to get out from between the men and the third one sat in front of the driver, while the guy tried to maneuver through nasty village traffic.
Finally, I offer a snapshot of the drivers license bureau: about 8 of us went down to get our licenses. We paid BIG bucks (about $10 each) to have a guy go with us and help facilitate the chore. So we sat around, and moved from window to window while he delivered papers, and yelled at the men doing their jobs. It took an unprecedented 60 minutes only from start to finish. Amazing. But even more amazing was that no one asked any of us if we had existing licenses from our home countries. It appears that if you have the money, and perhaps a white face around here, you can just get whatever you demand.
The nastiest thing about the drivers license bureau were the rows of pictures depicting injured victims of car accidents. From far away they looked like food offerings from a Chinese restaurant – you know how they show you the pictures of the food, so you know what to order? But as you got close, you realize they are pictures of smashed heads, bloodied limbs and other assorted broken body parts. I guess this is meant as a last ditch effort to make one rethink getting on the roads around here. By the way, did I mention that none of the motorcycle drivers here wear helmets? Life in Asia is far less precious a commodity that it is in the West. Sad, but true.
One of these days I will write about the beautiful sights of Indonesia, but I have not yet encountered one, living here in Jakarta… this morning we woke up and discovered a pile of mosquito netting and some of the rubber edging around the screen door on the floor near the kitchen door. In our house, we actually have a screen door and a wooden door, separating the living area from the kitchen. It became clear that a rodent of some size had eaten through the rubber edging and the mosquito netting, and attempted, unsuccessfully to scratch his way through the wooden door into the kitchen. The most disturbing part was that this creature was chewing FROM our living area. How the heck did he get in? We searched all possible entries and sure enough – next to the front door, he must have pried open a section of door which was a bit loose, chewed through the screen and entered the house. After cruising around, and unsuccessfully exiting, he found another screen to chew through and escaped through a cantilevered window. So now the mosquito infestation becomes secondary to rat proofing our happy home. Luckily, due to aircon and mosquitoes, we always sleep with our doors shut, so wandering rodents will not be able to visit my sleeping beauties.
And finally, to end on an upbeat note: a tale or two about those beauties. Sam and Sophia have been watching inordinately large amounts of TV as of late, in part, I think, because their toys are still locked in storage in Manila. Yesterday, however, after a marathon bout of vapid cartoons, I implored Sam to turn off the nasty machine and play a game with me, and he said: But mom, I don’t want to have to think.” Ah! Four years old and he already knows that TV is mind-dumbing machine.
At a bit over four, these are some of the cool things Sam can do: he can whip my butt in UNO, he can do an array of jig saw puzzles, he does flips (and has for months now) into the swimming pool, plus he can now dog paddle the entire length of the school pool. Just the other day he managed to climb the entire height of the climbing wall at school, and he is a great “goalier” when we play floor hockey in the gym.
He can write an m and M and r and R and explain how it is done. And finally, he is learning some Indonesian, and shouts out “Selamat Pagi” to all he sees each morning as we walk to school. Good stuff.
Sophia, on the other hand, in the depths of toddlerdom, has a wicked pout when she does not get her way. She and I go head to head on who can come up with a bigger pout, complete with crossed arms and loud “harrumphs!”. Physically, she is doing great – she tries to keep up with Sam and is becoming a fast runner, is working on her flips – she stands on the headboard of our bed and tries to hurl herself over onto the bed. At the moment it looks like a fast summersault, but given a few more weeks of practice, I think she’ll start getting some air!
She, too, is learning Indonesian. I dread the day she begins to speak better than I do! Some of her favorite foods are a “wamwish” which means, licking butter off of a piece of toast, “chicken on the bone”, which shows her cannibalistic side, and hard boiled eggs! Sam is just starting to eat vegetables – he seems willing to do many things if I tell him it will make me proud of him – is that considered child abuse?
As for me and Jared, he is discovering golf again. A game of nine holes can take up to 6 or 7 hours, as the travel time to and from the course can be a bit unruly. I am making do with running and have recently started heading up Wednesday night community nights, during which time we play badminton. I brazenly challenged ANYONE in the upper school to beat me, so I am hoping for a decent game one of these nights. So far, I am undefeated.
It is election day here in Jakarta, and we have no school. I have saved a mountain of work for this day, so I better get to it!

Until next time, CHEERS!
Mimi

Taking the Indonesian Plunge

2004-10-05T10:59:00.000+07:00

Taking the Indonesian Plunge

August 15, 2004

Here we are in Jakarta, Indonesia, embarking on adventure # 2 of our international school teaching careers. We arrived on the afternoon of August 1, bleary-eyed from about 36 hours of straight travel, yet excited to have arrived. Our arrival was made easy by a friendly luggage porter, who whisked us through customs and out to the waiting throngs of the Jakarta International Airport. In the distance, I could see an upside down sign with the letters NJIS on it – our welcoming crew was there.

We piled in a car and took off for our northern suburb of Kelapa Gading, which means “coconut” something. We got to our house to find very sparse furnishings – luckily beds for all of us were there, with sheets and pillows, which was all I really needed in the first day. The first week here was spent setting up house and getting acquainted with the school. Poor Sam complained of tummy pain on the second morning and sure enough, as we piled into the van to head for school, Jared saw a funny look in poor Sam’s face and he hurled his breakfast all over the street, in front of the other new teachers who were waiting in the van. Jared set off with Sophia, while Sam and I regrouped at the house. After about 10 minutes, he was ready to go – what a guy! Now that we have our refrigerator stocked with YAKULT, a nasty sugary drink full of bacteria-killing bacillus which the kids LOVE, we’ve had no further problems.

Nyamuck: A fitting word, I think for mosquito. Whereas I babbled about the prolific ants in Manila, here is it an abundance of mosquitoes. They are a different beast from the kind, slow-moving creatures of Manila. There, we could grab them with one hand. Here, it is as though they can read your mind. They seem to anticipate our every move and as the hands come crashing together, the ‘nyamuck” deftly moves aside and I swear, I have heard one laugh out loud at my pathetic attempt to end its life. We could not figure out how they were getting in the house, although it is clear that they begin their lives in the nasty open sewer drain running in front of our house – YUCK! On the third day, we discovered a window which was wide open with no screen! We took care of that, but still they came. Just yesterday, we discovered yet ANOTHER window with no screen and no glass – add that to the list of items to be taken care of. The maintenance dudes have managed to lock down the opening to our well, which sits prominently in our back terrace. I could see Sam and Sophia prying it open and plunging to their deaths. The myriad of other death traps about the house are being taken care of…huge gaps in the stair railing to the second floor for Sophia to squeeze through, low railings on the four second floor balconies for her to climb over, an incredibly steep back staircase for her to fall down head-first, and more! A good chance for mom to take a deep breath and call upon the Gods of safety!

Sam and Sophia: They are settling in really well, I must say. Thanks in large part to the yaya culture of Manila, they have taken to our two “pembantu” or maids and upon being left with them, manage to have a great time playing at home and on the school playground. There are a few other kids of teachers with whom Sam and Sophia have bonded as of late, which makes the transition all the better.

Asih and Sri: Our household saviors! Asih, I am almost ashamed to say, is all of 18 years old and Sri is a mature woman, divorced, of 23. They are great! Asih speaks no English, which makes it even more imperative for us to learn Indonesian, but luckily Sri has a good command of the essentials, so we can survive day to day. I said to Jared the other day – there are not many places you can just settle into, without having to know when or where the trash in emptied – it just gets magically taken care of, along with many other daily household chores.

The other side of the coin is, of course, that Jakarta really is a third world city. The electric power supply to our house is minimal. This we discovered the other night, when the pizza delivery boy informed us, while dropping off a tasty pie, that the electric cable connected to our house was glowing! We quickly shut off all power and let Sri deal with the emergency. She deftly handled the calls to the school and the electric company. Two hours and many mosquito bites later, we were up and running again at a cost of five dollars, paid to the electric company dudes to put some tape around the wounded cable. That ought to fix the problem! Since then we have managed to blow out an entire electric socket and two power strips. Needless to say, we have also invested in two fire extinguishers and some smoke alarms, not to mention the small saw blade Jared has under his pillow, in case we need to carve our way out the doors. Every door has its own lock and key and all the screens are reinforced with iron bars, so escape from the second floor is a challenge!

Le Club Casablanca: We have sunk in a chunk of change to join this club which offers a gorgeous swimming pool, a fantastic workout room, massage facilities, a play room, yoga/dance room, tennis courts, badminton, and a small golf course. It is a five minute drive from our house and will become, I think, our home away from home.

So although school has not even officially begun, we are getting settled quite nicely. I signed Sophia up for an American-based school just down the road, which I think she will like. The folks at the nearest Starbucks already know our names (and probably cringe when they see our kids in tow – after a visit with S & S, piles of muffin crumbs are sure to litter the area!).

Unlike my first month in Manila, oh so many years ago, arriving in Jakarta has not afforded me the culture shock I experienced back then. The only differences are left-hand side driving, a foreign language which must be learned to communicate properly, and less Western products. We are definitely living a more “local” life here. MacDonalds and Starbucks cost almost more than they do at home, and Indonesian food is cheap and delicious. Most expats live about 1 hour away, although in distance it is only a few miles. Traffic here is even more horrendous than in Manila, plus the distances are greater.

It is Sunday afternoon, and I am FREEZING in the computer room at school. I’ve managed to lose my house keys and classroom key, which I’m sure will impress the powers that be. It’s time to close this installment of tales and I apologize if they are a bit long-winded.

Until the next time, selamat pagi, selamat siang or selamat malaam, depending what time it is as you read this!

Cheers - Mimi