Point Taken

I've been keeping this blog for years now.  To be exact, my first post was in February of 2007.  I began it to chronicle our life overseas, and that first post explained our choice to move to China.  I used it as a journal, to keep a record of our life but also to vent my frustrations and my explorations of this new and sometimes crazy place.

While in Venezuela, my writing was censored twice.  The censoring was both angering (free speech!) and exciting (how dramatic!).  I began to understand that people reading my blog could interpret my words as representative of American diplomats and possibly the US government.  But I had a rather academic and cynical attitude toward my need to post responsibly.

So, here's where we were lucky.

The latest couple to join our little club of expelled diplomats are leaving India amidst much press.  Their Facebook accounts were hacked into, and plenty of people are finding insult in the casual things these diplomats wrote online to their friends.  A rather angry someone put together a tumblr page called Racist American Diplomats where he highlights things this man and woman said on Facebook, and explains how offensive they are.

I don't know these people, but I can easily identify with the urge to write my thoughts and feelings in a friendly forum.  By definition, a foreign country will feel strange and unfamiliar - and it is typical to both love the place you live and also find it frickin' crazy.  But their writing is being used to portray American foreign policy as racist and to vilify these two individuals.

“To be sure, most of the exchanges are frivolous and typical of social media tattle. But given the sensitive positions they occupied in the US embassy, they are, particularly in hindsight, astonishingly offensive,” the Times of India said.

Point taken.  Nothing on the internet is private, and neither a blog nor Facebook are exclusively personal.  And, probably, just don't say things that could hurt someone else's feelings.

What We're Watching - "The Act of Killing"

We invited Dave's Indonesian language class over last night to watch The Act of Killing, a documentary about the death squads in Indonesia following a failed coup in 1965.

The film is visually and surprisingly beautiful, in a surreal way.  The story is gruesome and shocking.  Although the death squads have ceased, their leaders remain in power, brag about modern  extortion and exploitative power and glorify their history of murder.

The director has said that "the film is essentially not about what happened in 1965, but rather about a regime in which genocide has, paradoxically, been effaced [yet] celebrated – in order to keep the survivors terrified, the public brainwashed, and the perpetrators able to live with themselves".

It is less a story about the history of Indonesia or about the modern country, and more about how people live with themselves after killing hundreds people with impugnity.  Its heavy.

I am only slightly interested in Indonesia at this point.  Last evening's party included all people who are studying Indonesian, and me.  They asked if I was studying the language yet.  I couldn't think of a good way to say no.  Amusingly, the conversation soon moved to scuba diving - a great way to spend your weekends in Indonesia.  When asked, I shared my fear of scuba diving (no escape route!) and expressed to these childless new diplomats that I'd rather snorkel on top of the water with my kids.  Empathetically, one gal said she would rather just go down in a submarine - to which I had to reply that I doubt you could pay me to ride in a submarine.  Talk about missing an escape route!  The conversation turned away from me and my many fears at that point.  I may not have made the strongest first impression.

So, I learned that Dave's classmates are very nice but have very little in common with me (they looked confused when we pulled Felicity: An American Girl out of the DVD player).  I learned that Indonesia may have some issues with multiculturalism and revisionist history.  And watching a scene with someone driving a car, I learned that in Indonesia people drive on the left!  So, in Jakarta we will face some of the world's worst traffic and some of the world's heaviest pollution... all with the steering wheel on the wrong side of the car!

Our Week in Food

Alright, folks.  I'm no food blogger.  I have no idea how folks manage to both prepare a delicious meal for their family and take beautiful photographs of the process.  But we spent our holiday eating some really good food, and we stopped a few times to take photos of the deliciousness.

On Christmas Eve, Dave made a feast.  He fixed the best turkey ever and some madgood stuffing.  The rest of the food was simply color surrounding the turkey, gravy and stuffing.  Unfortunately, we did not photograph any of it - far too busy cooking it, and then feasting over it with friends.

But Christmas Eve was the last day with an agenda.  So, without anything better to do, we began photographing our food.

Christmas Day:

The roast was decadently good for Christmas dinner.  But it was even better on a warm roll with some gravy poured on top a few days later.  And the thing to eat with a roast?  Yorkshire pudding, of course.

Now, remember that amazingly good turkey we ate on Christmas Eve?  We ate so much of it that we had very little leftover turkey.  But there was enough to throw together a rather amazing turkey and mashed potato pie.

And once we finished the turkey, here's what we did with the leftover stuffing and cranberries.

I mean, I was proud of the turkey and mashed potato pie.  That was delicious.  But let me tell you how amazing this breakfast was.  First, we made the stuffing into patties.  Yep - that's lightly fried stuffing.  Amazing.  And then, we poached eggs.  I know, right?  We poached eggs!  Okay, so we put these beautiful poached eggs on top of the stuffing patties, and then topped the whole thing with a dollop of gravy and a good spoonful of cranberry sauce.  This breakfast is the entire reason I am looking forward to next Thanksgiving.

And here's the other thing we did over the break.  We cooked.  We ate.  We played with toys.  And we puppy-sat this little cutie.

Charades

We enjoyed a quiet holiday, just hanging around at home and puppy-sitting for a friend.  Lots of walks and snuggling the puppy and playing with our new toys.  So, by the time New Year's Eve came along, we needed a plan to make another evening in the house feel like a party.

The whole family played some of the new games we'd gotten for Christmas while we ate taquitos.  Then we had a Munny decorating contest while we ate pizza rolls.  Mine won for cutest.  I was going for scariest.

And before the cheese plate and the movie-in-our-jammies completed the evening, we played a rousing game of charades.  We found a charades clue generator online and the four oldest of our family went round and round guessing clues like knee and umbrella. 

Little Annika was never invited to the charades stage, which she clearly saw as an oversight.  So, upon her insistence, we gave her a round and prepared to help her with the clues.  But while Dave and I were preparing, she stepped up on the stage and began dancing her heart out.  Clearly, what our 3-year-old saw was not an organized guessing game, but rather a game where someone dances around while everyone else yells at them.  And so she did.  And so we did, applesauce! peanut butter!  pinky toes!

This child has an amazing amount of confidence.

A Brand Spanking New Year

I've never been one to put much weight on the significance of one day.  Why is New Year's Day any better a day to stop eating garbage and begin hitting the gym?  But some little bit of holiday magic has burrowed itself in my mind this year, and 2014 feels like a clean slate.  Here's a quick run-down of the year I'm bidding a fond farewell:


January - Brand new to Caracas, we marveled at the city and its beauty.  We clicked with friends, neighbors and co-workers right away.  The girls struggled to feel comfortable at school - a problem that never really disappeared.  But outside of school, we all felt at home surprisingly quickly.

 March - Our various shipments all arrived within a few days of each other, making us feel that much more at home in our condo.  A party at school allowed us to watch Lilly with her friends, and see her maneuvering deftly through the social challenges of being the new kid in 2nd grade.  A party at church helped us to notice what amazing people we worshiped with.  Soon after, we began talking about building a small group with two other families.

May - The rainy season began, and we saw some torrential downpours out our windows.  We learned the hard way that if we don't close our windows when we leave the house, our floors may be flooded when we return.  We had been in town long enough to spread our tentacles a bit further - we began exploring.  Sophia and I traveled back to the states when my grandfather died, and upon our return we were happy to come home.

June - A challenging school year ended for both Lilly and Sophia, and the girls of the family headed back to the states for 6 weeks of touring the midwest and hanging with family and old friends.  Lilly casually defined summer last night as the time you travel to family.  Dave stayed in Caracas, climbed to the top of the Avila and hiked to the base of Angel Falls.

August - We came back home to begin a fresh new school year, where Lilly made close friends right away and Sophia had a fabulous 1st grade teacher.  Dave came back newly confident in his job, a leader in his quickly changing office.  And I came back to deepening friendships, looking forward to becoming developing friendships with Anne and Christophe and to enjoying my last relaxing year with Annika still at home with me.




September - Totally uneventful.  We settled into routines, began swim lessons and piano lessons, waited in long lines, and we put together a video on why Santa should visit Caracas.






October - We flew to the United States, lived in a hotel near the State Department for about 2 weeks, were assigned a post in Jakarta, moved to a furnished apartment and got the girls settled back into their old school, sold all of our things, said good-bye to those new friends and hello to old friends and to the fall.  We became closer to people not by relaxing with them and building a friendship over the next year, but by relying on them.





December - We traveled, we baked cookies, we had school parties and a church pageant, we cooked and we ate and we enjoyed new friends.  And then, beginning Christmas Day, we relaxed.  We just relaxed.

Maybe its the beginning of a new year, or maybe its just that I spent the last week relaxing and eating and walking and just hanging out with my family.  Maybe its that most of the To Do List for closing down life in Caracas and opening up life in Virginia is now complete.  But either way, up until this week, I had no interest in Jakarta whatsoever.  My current city and my past city took up plenty of my energy and July was plenty far away.  But this morning, Indonesia seems worth looking into.  I'm wondering about the weather and the landscapes and the travel we expect.  I'm wondering about the shopping and the available groceries and the restaurants.  And its probably about time - school applications are due in less than a month.  We had a great year this past year - a year full of surprises and adventures and good friends and loads of good stories.  But I'm glad its over, and now I'm looking forward to the adventures of 2014.