Visit from Ellie's Parents

 Last month my parents stepped onto their first overseas flight....destination....Indonesia. The flight was pretty uneventful until they arrived in Singapore. While they were waiting out their layover, Mt. Kelud erupted, spewing volcanic ash for hundreds of miles and covering many of the surrounding cities. Mt. Kelud is in East Java, about 150 kilometers from Salatiga where we live. That morning we noticed the house seemed extra dark. When we looked outside there was a blanket of ash over everything, and the world was silent. It was very similar to snow in a lot of ways, except that snow is clean and you don't have to worry about breathing it in. Several stores shut down and most schools closed. Unfortunately several airports also closed due to the ash in the air and my parents were stranded in Singapore for three nights. They actually enjoyed their time there however and were able to catch up on some sleep.

 Our car and yard covered in a layer of ash on the morning of the eruption. It looked worse a little later that morning.

Here we are at school (ours was the only school still open)

 Mt. Kelud, elevation around 5,679ft

When grandma and grandpa did finally arrive, the kids could hardly contain themselves. This is Blake the morning after arriving outside their bedroom door. He planted himself right there early in the morning, just waiting for them to get up.

A couple of weeks later Matt and I rented three scooters (for only $3.50 each per day!) and took my parents to the rice fields and up Mt. Merbabu, one of the volcanoes here (it is inactive, I might add)

 One of the rice workers. He was such a sweet man and kept trying to tell us about a nearby restaurant that was good

Dad on his scooter

 

 We saw this durian tree and my dad hiked down to it to get a picture. These are the HUGEST durian I have ever seen!

 This was the entrance to a village on the side of the volcano. I couldn't believe how steep it was here, yet people built their houses right into the mountainside. It was beautiful.

Another thing we did while my parents were here was visit Borobudur, a Buddhist temple that was previously one of the seven wonders of the world. It is only about two hours away from where we live.

 These guys were dancing a traditional dance in the yard of the temple. You can't tell from the picture but it was a HOT day! I don't know how they did it.

 It's crazy to think that this temple was buried by volcanic ash and jungle, and was eventually discovered by some villagers!

Before my parents left Indonesia we all took a trip to Bali together. The next post will include pictures from our trip to Bali.

Update and Pictures

It's rather incredible how quickly time gets away from us when we're busy.  We can't believe it's been 2 1/2 months since our last blog post!  Much has happened since then, so in the interest of not boring you I'll just do the cliff-notes version with lots of pictures.

First off, I have to mention how excited we are that the Seahawks are in the Super Bowl!!!  I have missed not being able to watch the games this season.  Even Ellie who doesn't follow football is missing the camaraderie surrounding the big games.  There are rumors floating around that there is going to be a Super Bowl party for all of the football fans here in Salatiga (there are actually quite a few Seahawks fans here).  We sure hope we can watch the big game, though to watch it live we will have to get up early on Monday morning!

For Thanksgiving Ellie transformed our living room into a cozy Fall oasis as we hosted the whole MAF team for Thanksgiving dinner.  Everyone brought their favorite Fall foods and it really was a wonderful time.  Nobody else wanted to take home the 2 turkey carcasses to make broth with, so we did it all ourselves and we still have gallons of frozen turkey broth in our freezer! 

Christmas was unique and lots of fun.  Blake was able to understand the birth of Christ this year and was really excited about that.  On Christmas morning I (Matt) went to the town square at 4 am for a city-wide interdenominational worship service.  What an amazing thing it was!  There were thousands of people packed into the square...sitting or standing on the grass...praising the name of Jesus.  It was a fun and unique experience for me.  I made it home at 6am in time to see the kids wake up and run out to see the presents under the tree!

This year Ellie and I started Unit 6 (out of 9) of language school.  Hard to believe that we are nearing the end of language study. 

Ellie's parents are coming to visit in mid-February and you can sense the excitement at our house!  Her parents are also putting the final touches on our crates (that have been sitting in their garage for these last 7 months) and those will begin their long slow journey to Tarakan next month. 

We had some wonderful Indonesian friends over for a nice long visit last weekend.  He invited me to begin playing badminton with him and a group of his friends at 6am every Sunday morning.  I happen to love badminton, but haven't played in years.  I'm nervous because this isn't an ordinary backyard badminton game...they take badminton very seriously in this country!  Indonesia is regularly one of the top competitors in the world in this sport, so I'm expecting a tough, but fun, experience. 

Below are some fun pictures of what we have been up to.  Enjoy!

For a dollar you can ride these fun electric 4-wheelers once around the town square.  The kids loved it (and so did we)!

 

We had the privilege of watching a friend's daughter get baptized recently.

We got to go out to dinner with Pak Bangbang, Ibu Agnes and their 3 girls.  Ibu Agnes watches Callie and Eva while Ellie and I are at school.  She's incredible and we couldn't survive language school without her!

Beautiful children watching us ride the 4-wheeler around the town square.

The International School here has a large playground that the kids call "the park."  It's a great place to get some energy out and meet with friends.

Eva is always an instant celebrity. 

Waiting for our order of "sate" at our favorite sate place.  Sate is barbequed beef or chicken skewers served with rice and a delicious sweet peanut sauce.  It's cheap, fast, and oh so delicious.  This place has become a regular stop for us on the weekends.

Gee, Matt and Ellie sure have lost a lot of weight living in Indonesia...

Parades!

You just never know what you are going to encounter when you make a trip into town here.  Today was our first experience of the Muslim New Year.  It is a national holiday here so we got to stay home from school, which was nice!  We thought we would try to get downtown to get some shopping done since that can be a bit of an ordeal when we're in school.  It isn't far from our house to the center of town, perhaps 8-10 minutes on a normal day. But this day, as we found out, was far from normal.  As I rounded a corner we saw what looked like a large group of kids parading down the street up ahead of us.  They were all wearing really neat traditional costumes, playing drums, and moving slowly down the road.  I thought that if I could just get around that one group of kids I would be able to continue on the road, but I soon discovered, as I inched ahead at walking speed, that we were caught in the middle of about a 1/4 mile long parade of school kids.  In fact, we were now part of the parade!   The people walking were taking up one whole lane, and there was oncoming traffic trying to go the other way, so it was a mess.  We ended up just becoming part of the parade as we drove along with the walking kids.  What else could we do but take pictures out our window, wave at the kids, and enjoy the experience!

 

We finally did get through that first parade, but we soon saw the road was blocked off further ahead for more parades.  We saw it in time to make a U-turn and find a back way to get to town.  Once in town there were also parades going down the main street (our only way out).  Realizing that we were stuck we decided there was nothing to do but enjoy the festivities!  After our shopping was done I was able to utilize Googlemaps on my phone to find a back-way out of town, but it took us over half an hour to get home instead of the usual 8 minutes. 

We learned two very important lessons today.  First, avoid going to town on any national holidays.  Second, you never know what you're going to encounter when you go out here, so the best policy when encountering an "inconvenience" such as this is to take a deep breath, pull out your camera, and join the fun.  After all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
- Matt

The Beach!

After three months of working hard in language school, we decided it was time to do something special with the kids. They have been such good sports about us being in school, so on our last break before starting Unit 4 of language school we drove to the beach! It was great to spend some uninterrupted quality time with them and we all had a blast. The kids loved playing on the beach and it was Eva's first time experiencing sand. She loved it!

We went with a few of the other MAF families as well and at night we built campfires on the beach, roasted marshmallows, and went searching for crabs. There were quite a few crabs, both small and medium sized. We used flashlights to shine down in their sand holes and sometimes were able to see them hiding in there.

One of the days we were there was a national holiday in Indonesia. We didn't really think about what that would be like for us.....but we soon found out. The beach was crowded and once people spotted our blondies...well...let's just say that we were kind of in the spotlight. Everyone wanted pictures and we could see people spot us and start coming over from way down the beach. Most people were very polite about it and some were even trying to be discreet, like taking pictures of their friends with us in the background...it was kind of funny. Eventually though, on this day in particular, it started to get a bit overwhelming. We finally reached a breaking point when a man in his late teens/early twenties, cigarette in hand, came over and without asking, planted himself next to Callie and had his friend start taking pictures. She was trying to play in the sand and it was making her uncomfortable. I politely told him in Indonesian that she doesn't like that and asked him not to do it, but he wasn't listening. Then he went over to Blake while he was getting a bucket of water and tried to grab him to get some pictures......and MOTHER BEAR came out. I firmly told him that he MAY NOT do that. He started laughing...maybe because he was embarrassed or maybe because it was funny seeing a blonde white girl speaking his language, but either way we were out of there. Again, most people were very sweet and just thought the kids were super cute. They are not used to seeing blonde hair, blue-eyed kids. This was just one man that was not being respectful, so we left. The next days were much better and there were not many people.

We had a great time overall and wish we could have stayed longer!

 Matt, Blake, and little Ellie (our friend's daughter)

 People trying to take pictures

 

The kids sharing their sand toys with some adorable Indonesian kids

 



MAF Blog Post

I (Ellie) have had the privilege of occasionally writing for the MAF blog entitled "Moms on a Mission." Here is the link to my latest post if you would like to check it out:

http://www.mafblog.com/moms-on-a-mission/healer