Back in Asia + Zack's First Day of School!

I'm a little behind on pictures!
These pictures took approximately a hundred million years to download and now it's almost 9 p.m. which is later than I've stayed up in nearly 2 weeks.  So this update will be bulletin style:

               The Hong Kong skyline from our Victoria Harbor window.

Sleepy Gabey

Gluten free items at the buffet!!!

Victoria Harbor

Star Ferry Hong Kong

Playground at the Hong Kong Zoo

Beat the Heat with gelato

Our very own pool in Indonesia!!

Zack's birthday dinner!

Happy 5th Birthday, Zack!!!

Our house!

Zack's first day at school!

He settled right in

First order of business: compare shoes

If you've never lived 2 years in India you will not understand our excitement over dinner at Wendy's.  

Zack is taking to school swimmingly.  He is bubbling over when I pick him up, but happy to be back with us.  I think it's great for him.  We'll see when the first "I don't want to go today" happens.

And your daily dose of Thurow boys:

Poll of the Day by Zack:

"So, where does God poop?"

Our answers:
Mama: "Probably in his own special toilet."
Zack: "I think in the sky in the water."
Gabriel: "On the floor."

Feel free to add your own answer.  Other questions this week have included, "what does God have for dinner?" "when I grow up will you die?" "since Daddy is old and is going to die soon will I go to work?"  "Does heaven look like my bedroom?"

Goodnight from Jakarta!

Successes

Each little success as we set up life feels like a massive victory.  We accomplished so much today!

1) Meal planning.  I feel like I have a good system set up for school lunches and I'm in the process of coming up with creative dinner ideas.  Food life would be a breeze if we ate like "normal people" but between the gluten free and paleo needs/wants of our family it's a bit more complicated.  I'm cracking down on the boys with the motto: eat what's put in front of you!  Zack is taking to it quickly and easily. Gabriel, being so much like his mother, might starve to death.  We'll see how the battle pans out.

2) Car.  We looked at and made an offer on a Nissan Sunny.  Our offer to the local broker has been accepted, but now we have to wade through Embassy paper work.  I'm praying for transportation of our own by next week sometime.  For now it's taxis, which brings me to victory #3.

3) Language.  I gave directions home today completely in Bahasa.  I think I'll have a much easier time with Indonesian than with Hindi.  It's easier to learn a language when you can read it!  I'm already learning so much vocab just from grocery shopping.  Mangga, susu, telur, roti, bersu, etc...

4) School.  We met Zack's teacher today and Zack got to wander around his classroom and find his name on his cubby and backpack hook.  He is very excited.  I am relieved because when the reality of school hit him he got very nervous.  After hearing about his daily routine, seeing his teacher, and familiarizing with his room he was beside himself with excitement.  He will be helping me pack his lunch and snack today.

5) Groceries.  I have a nice system set up now.  Thursday will be my commissary grocery day and Friday will be my local grocery day.  Tuesdays and Thursdays Gabey and I will go to the American club after dropping Zack off.  We can hang out, swim, play, and hit up the commissary.  On Fridays we can make the short walk from Zack's school to the Lotte Mart, then taxi it home (for now; we'll be driving once that car is finalized!).

So, life is shaping up.  I'm trying to cut sugar out again and I'm fighting off "sugar flu."  The boys are *always* hungry so I think they're going through the same thing.

Stay tuned for pictures of Zack's first school day tomorrow!

Indonesia

  It's a familiar smell.  Stepping off the plane and into developing Asia, you can never mistake that smell. It's indescribable.  Something like a mix of spiced smoke, humidity, and maybe a touch of arsenic and methane.  It's not good or bad.  It just is.  And it never leaves you.
 
  Here we are again.  New country.  New home.  New language.  New has become an old routine.  We're making a house into home, finding food to satisfy our difficult diet, scouting out a community and learning a new map.  It isn't easy, but there's a rhyme and reason to it.  The embassy definitely makes life in a foreign country much easier than it otherwise could be.

  We had a wonderful social sponsor who met us at the airport, brought us home, and helped us get set up our first week.  Zack will start school on Wednesday; he meets his new teacher tomorrow.  His 5th birthday came and went; it was a little sad not to celebrate with friends, but a couple small parties back in the States helped ease the loss.
   Gabriel has his heart set on a remote control Lightning McQueen car he saw at a toy stall.  Perhaps for his birthday.
   John starts work tomorrow.  We're keeping a very early schedule as the sun rises around 5:30 a.m. and sets around 5:45 p.m.  Traffic is terrible after 8 a.m. so embassy people start work early anyway.  It's 8:05 here and I already feel like I can barely keep my eyes open.  I hope to have more energy as a routine forms.  I am recovering fairly quickly from jet lag, but I'm sure I'm still feeling some effects.

I hope to post more in the coming days, but now time and energy do not allow.  It's tough just to keep up with life and basic communication with family right now.  We're working on car and house help right now.  Setting up life in general.  It's a process.

Hong Kong (Briefly)

We made it.  We're alive.  The boys were great.  Hong Kong is not my scene.  At least not after 17 hours of flying with only a 20 minute "break" to sprint to a San Francisco connecting gate.  Maybe it will be better in the morning.

Wedding Weekend

   It was a crazy, but fun, crazy-fun weekend here in Boulder, CO!  We had the rehearsal and wedding for Ryan Rhodes (Johnny's best friend of 15 or so years) and Allie Mohar and the whole Boulder gang was there.  This was Johnny's middle school/ high school crowd and the gang we always hung with when we came down to escape Laramie.  I've loved these guys since I first met them the Spring break Johnny and I came out to meet the family the month after we got married.  Jason even made it from Vienna!  We're talking lots of nostalgia and emotion here!  Uncle Mike and his girlfriend, Amber, also came up from Texas for the wedding!

   Needless to say it was a packed weekend.  We left Sheridan for Ft. Collins on Tuesday and spent time relaxing, hanging with Ryan, and seeing an old friend from Hillsdale, Matt Erikson.  On Thursday we switched to a hotel in Boulder, much closer to the wedding venue.   The rehearsal took place Thursday afternoon and the boys had a blast playing with the wedding party at the rehearsal dinner.  The flower girl, Mckenzie, is their newest buddy.

   Friday we spent the day hanging with Mike, Amber, and their friend, Kevin.  The afternoon dissolved into chaos when I dropped Johnny off at the wedding, rushed down to Pearl Street for some gluten free cupcakes, dash back to the hotel to gather my dress, get Gabey in his suit and get Zack back to the venue in time to get his dashing ring bearer tux on.  Gabey and I went to battle over whether or not he would wear his suit and he ended up winning.  I was so disappointed; I was so excited to see him in his adorable little 5-piece suit.  He had been super excited to wear it, but changed his mind at just the wrong time!!  Oh well, after considerable stress I got Zack to the wedding just in time.  Best man Daddy got him suited up and the fun began:

 My handsome little ring bearer

The handsome groom and his grandma

Stoffel and Mother of the Groom

Best man (I agree!) and Maid of Honor

The most adorable ring bearer in wedding history

The lovely bride

  Zack approached Mckenzie and informed her father that he had been promised a danced.  He danced with his lady and then proceeded to work it on the dance floor for the next two hours.  He danced me into the ground!

  Gabey spent the evening playing with his iPod and climbing on lion statues outside.  He is a quiet soul; big parties are not his scene.
   Zack was so hyped up that he was up with night terrors until nearly 3 a.m.  I finally got him to wake up at 2:30 a.m. and he instantly calmed, took a bath, and slept pretty soundly until 8 a.m.  Zack always gets night terrors after a big, exciting event or when John goes on a trip.
   Today we had a breakfast with Ryan, Allie, and other wedding party people and we all had to say goodbye. :(  Those are always the worst parts of any trip.  We look forward to seeing our friends again soon.  Remember, everyone, there is an extra bedroom sitting empty in Jakarta.
   We spent the rest of the day with Mike and Amber and now we're packing up and getting ready to fly out tomorrow!
   I seriously doubt I'll have time to blog again before we go so here's my goodbye.  It's a 2 day trip to Jakarta.  We'll be traveling via San Francisco and Hong Kong.  We'll be saying goodbye to America for two whole years!  Give us a couple months to get settled and then come visit.  I'll be missing everyone so much.
   Goodbye, friends, family, and America!  I love you!  See you Jakarta.

Pack Out

   For home leave we have two pack outs, one that packs up all our belongings at our original post and one from our home leave spot that repacks our UAB (unaccompanied air baggage).

   Our home leave destination is John's parents' house in Sheridan, WY, so at the end of our stay there we repacked the UAB shipment that had arrived from Delhi and added a few things we had purchased in WY or had been lugging around all summer.  It was a nice load off.

  Unfortunately, the pack out itself was not so cathartic.  You may remember from the previous post that we had a little stress over the scheduling of this pack out.  John had to spend quite a bit of time on the phone getting things straightened out.  We thought all was well until the movers showed up at 8 a.m. the rescheduled morning (Tuesday, 8/21).  Let's just say that these two young men were not among Sheridan's finest sons.

   In India the movers took 45 minutes to completely pack and process our UAB.  I didn't even unpack the boxes from India and what was left to be packed was considerably less than what we had packed in India.  I even did some of the pre-packing, putting all smaller items into two large duffels.  Despite all this the entire process took 2 1/2 hours.  Their idea of thorough packing was to throw everything into boxes and dump packing peanuts over the top.  I even had to walk them through the inventory and sign out process.  Needless to say I was practicing my yogic breathing exercises the entire 2 1/2 hours.

But we got through it!  John's parents drove us down to Casper, WY to meet up with John and we said goodbye. :(  Then we headed down to Ft. Collins, CO to get ready for the wedding.
We picked up John and Zack's suits yesterday and we have the rehearsal tonight.  The boys love hotel living, but I am way more than ready to settle down into real life again.  4 days until Indonesia!

Blips

  Those of you who work overseas, perhaps particularly with State Department/USAID, will understand and perhaps share the somewhat fatalistic attitude many of us expats take towards a smooth transition between countries.  You find yourself utterly shocked if something does indeed run with perfect precision.  What?  My tickets were all correct?  My UAB went where it was supposed to go?  My HHE wasn't filled with water?  My house is *ready*?  WHERE ON EARTH IS MY PASSPORT?!?  It's an exciting game of roulette.  What will go wrong on this trip and will this be the time we finally crack and end up in a mental institution?
   You reach the point at which some of this stuff just doesn't phase you anymore.  It's expected.  You just deal with it.  I've come to label these inconveniences as "blips."  Just one more blip on the radar screen of our pack out/move/R&R/home leave.  Most of the blips we've faced thus far have been extremely minor, usually nothing more than dealing with us being seated on the other side of the airplane from the kids or airlines refusing to acknowledge that our whole itinerary is international and this include one bag free of charge.  Yesterday's blip was a little bigger.  While Skyping with my mom I got a rather distressing phone call from the moving company that was supposed to pack up our UAB today.  Turns out they would not be coming because USAID HR had just contacted them for the first time on Friday evening (as in 2 days before) to tell them that they needed to do the job today (8/20).  So the company was completely unprepared and hadn't even received the shipping supplies they needed from USAID.  We would have to reschedule.
   Part of me feels like I should have been more panicked, but, like I said, it's a blip.  John got it all sorted out and they'll be coming tomorrow morning instead and our plans to leave for Colorado late tomorrow morning should still work out.  Another blip eliminated!


   So instead of pack out today we went to the fish hatchery in Story, WY and fed trout.

We also played on the nearby playground.

Grandpa caught a 10 lb. walleye!!  I know what we're having for dinner tonight!