Tashkent

Tashkent

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Back to our regularly scheduled program...

It's been a whirlwind couple of months!  We had guests, a big Christmas Eve bash, Christmas, a trip to Bali, school re-starting (kindergarden and homeschool pre-school), and massive flooding.  This included 10 days of no internet, so I'm giving myself a pass on my horrible blogging inconsistency.

Our friends, Jason and Martina visited from Vienna over Christmas.  They spent their first week on a small island southeast of Bali then spent Christmas and New Year's with us.  We hosted a big Christmas Eve dinner which included a couple of very tasty duck.  Duck is now our new obsession.  I used the carcasses to make broth and the fat to make a host of other things and we were in duck heaven for almost a month with fried rice, Pho, and various other soups and stir fries.  I just bought another duck today to start paradise over again.


More wonderful friends, Ryan and Allie, came to Bali for their honeymoon and we met them in Denpasar and all shipped down to the same small island (Nusa Lembongan) Jason and Martina visited. We spent a wonderful few days lounging on the beach, riding scooters, eating delicious food, and relaxing.  I left my phone behind and enjoyed the days of technology purge.  The only drawback was that I had a cold which, rather than getting better, started turning into bronchitis while we were in Bali.  I was down for the count by the time we got back to Jakarta.

But I've recovered now and the boys and I have been working on getting back into our school routine.  Gabey and I take Zack to school around 7:20, then we spend our morning with various fun activities.  We might stay at school for a bit and peruse their wonderful library.  We might head down to the club where we sometimes swim, sometimes Gabey plays in the playroom while I do yoga at the gym.  Sometimes we have grocery day.  Sometimes we visit daddy.  It's a tough life.

Two weeks ago the whole of Jakarta suffered a massive storm with terrible flooding.  Tens of thousands were displaced.  We were stuck for two days and we lost internet for 10.  We lost electricity, but our compound has an excellent generator, so it was only out for a few minutes before the generator took over for a couple days.  Some people are still living in shelters, refusing to leave until rainy season ends.

Traffic has been getting steadily worse since we arrived.  Jakartans confess that this year is considerably worse than last year and I have noticed a change for the worse just in the past month.  It is to the point that we can't leave our house from about 4:30 pm until 9 pm.  I had to go to rehearsal at 7pm on Wednesday.  I left at 5:40 and arrived to my rehearsal (5 km away) at 7:20 pm.  If I felt safe enough I would probably walk next time.  I will actually consider taking an ojek instead of driving next evening rehearsal.

But, really, traffic is the only real negative here.  We've settled into a really nice life.  The boys have great friends, I have a wonderful Bible study, John is enjoying work, and we all have a such a great time together.  We miss everyone so much, but life is good.