This is Asia

I drafted a long-winded post about the frustrations of my day, and how those frustrations are part of moving but also uniquely Asian.  It included a movie-esque dash through traffic and lots of forgetting things and spending too long in the car - a running theme these days.  But it has no real point, so I dropped it for the interesting part...

Between the treadmill this morning and having lunch with Dave at the embassy, the girls and I went for a second walk around the neighborhood.  Unfortunately, this one did not go much better than the first.  They didn't like how dirty things are, and they really didn't like how many people touched them or spoke to them in Indonesian.  Apparently crews of little white girls don't hang out among the street food sellers and the flower vendors very often.  Sophia showed us a chocolatey snack that she had Dave discovered over the weekend, and when I asked to take a photograph I discovered a camera-friendly neighborhood.  Here are some of my favorites:

I asked to take his picture above, and then he began posing as he added every element.

A neighbor stall, she was set up where we ate our snack.  Her food all looked delicious.

This is where she washes up.  This is why we eat street food selectively, and not from her.

These guys asked me to take their picture.  They are posing!

They offered Annika a flower as we left.

This is Lilly's shot, and I really like it.

Lazy Saturday

Dave had to work this morning, and so we took a lazy Saturday morning.

I'm not really the lazy Saturday morning type.  In previous lives, Saturdays fill me with energy.  I have Dave around to keep me company and to help with the kids, to corral them and make a whole outing worthwhile.  On Saturdays we explore or hike or socialize.  We are out of the house.

But this week has been long, and yesterday was exhausting.  I'm opening the curtains for everyone by 7:00am every day to make sure our bodies stay ready for school, and that we keep our early morning momentum going.  The bus will arrive around 6:30 every morning.  Yesterday we had two playdates and a preschool visit.  And we learned that in Jakarta, a family simply can not pack that many things into a day.  We spent over 3 hours in the car and had to grab lunch at a restaurant and drag the girls with us to the school visit because of the traffic here. 

So today, I stayed in bed as long as I wanted to, reading the New York Times and just enjoying how snuggly and comfy I felt.  The girls spent the morning with Captain Crunch and the computer, and everyone was happy.  By the time I broke out the coffee and the homemade bread for my breakfast, they were ready for second breakfast - because no one can turn down homemade bread.

On tap for the afternoon - bake chocolate chip cookies, and take them down to the pool where we'll meet up with another family and hang out with pizza, beer and chocolate chip cookies until its time to throw the kids in bed.  A perfect lazy Saturday.

Lemme Just Tell Ya

I worry that I've taken too negative of a tone in this blog.  I don't feel bad about it, per se.  I love using this as a bit of a journal, jotting down the stories as they happen. And I love using it as a connection to folks I won't see this month, a way to share my story and stay in your thoughts and prayers.  Keepin' it real, as they say.

But lemme just tell ya, we are having a good time here in Jakarta.

Our UAB arrived the day after the girls and I arrived.  This is huge news.  We have all of our clothes in our drawers - not just the same ones we've been wearing for the past 8 weeks.  That is awfully nice.

We have many of our toys on our shelves.  Most families only have what they carried on the plane, but we've got bags of princesses and American Girl doll beds.  And best of all, we have those boxes the UAB was delivered in.  These boxes are amazing - big and strong, and unfazed when three little girls pile inside and tip themselves over repeatedly.  No joke.  Good as new.

We have all of our high value kitchen items.  That is not to say we have our most expensive kitchen items, although its possible that is true.  More to the point, we have the kitchen items that we use every day.  We have our pizza stones, so we are set for Sunday night Pizza night.  We have our KitchenAid, so I made bread this morning.  Delicious.  We have our shredder and our own knives and our mixing bowls.  My kitchen functions as it should, and that is lovely.

But it gets better.  UAB is not the only place we are rocking this move.  We got amazingly lucky on the household staff front.  A fabulous friend (who I have not even met yet!) connected us to someone who left this summer.  We bought her car, hired her driver and hired her housekeeper.  It has been such a relief to begin my time here with our car seats installed in our car, and which we have stocked with sunblock and bug spray.  Further, to begin my time here with a driver who understands a fair amount of English and knows to buckle Annika into her car seat before he closes his door.  He knows the city, and he is familiar with every common Embassy building.  He is lovely.  But the icing on the came is Sumi, our housekeeper.  Sumi makes me so happy.  Some of you may have caught by now - I am super picky about my housekeepers.  I like my house the way I like it.  I'm picky that way.  Further, I'm in the house all day and I don't want someone getting in my way.  Sumi is nothing but great.  She is good company.  The girls enjoy being with her, and are comfortable asking her for help.  She is a quick study, paying close attention to what I like and listening to my preferences.  And she is certainly smarter than me.  Each time I have gasped at something she has done (oh no!  you can't wash that!) she has a great answer (actually, you can wash it if you take it apart, like this).  She makes my life here so much easier, and that will be so much more true when life actually gets busy.  When we are juggling school for three kids, snacks and lunches packed, drop-off and pick-up schedules for each and a start-up music class business she will be amazing.  She will already know the girls and me, and she will be familiar with our likes and our dislikes.  We are so lucky.

Beyond that, our apartment is nice;  our building is lovely;  our sheets are comfortable;  our wi-fi works consistently;  both girls have spots at the coveted campus of the coveted school; we have made friends, and feel confident that we will make more;  our house is lovely, and so is our neighborhood;  Dave has a cell phone and knows how to get me one.  I could go on.  No joke.  We should get an award for how smoothly this move has gone for us.  The temporary housing is a bit of a drag.  But honestly, I believe the girls' commute to school will be shorter from here and it is lovely to begin the tour so close to the embassy.  Dave is usually home by 4:30 in the afternoon and we can easily pop in for a training or just for a lunch with Daddy.

Life is good.

Blame It On the Stress

So, this happened...

Alright, so we faced the day of briefings and too much information and meeting lots of nice new people.  We felt pretty good.  I felt so good that I made my first supper in Indonesia.  I asked the housekeeper to chop the onion, and then I threw the beef and the tomatoes in the pot myself and I fixed an old standard - pasta with bolognese sauce.  I got the meat sauce all prepared, and then turned the heat up on the burner to high.  This way, I could turn off the heat when I left the apartment in a few minutes.  The sauce would continue to cook for quite a while, but I wouldn't be leaving the apartment with the stove on.

And so, I left the apartment.  With the stove on.  And not only on, but on high.

The girls and I went down to the pool, where we chatted with the neighbors and burned off some steam.  They were stuck at the embassy for hours today, waiting at Daddy's desk while I sat in briefings and he manned the visa window.  They needed something kid-friendly.  I expected Dave to arrive home from work soon, and then planned to escape back to the kitchen to boil the water for the pasta.  Dinner would be ready on time.

Dave never showed up, which raised my stress level.  We were leaving the pool at about the time we usually eat, and I hadn't begun to heat the water for the noodles yet.  We would be eating late, which throws the entire evening off.  And where was Dave?

We opened the door to the apartment, and it was full of smoke.  No joke - I have never seen this much smoke.  Streams of smoke gushed over the sides of the pot.  This was a mess on so many levels.  So many.

Level #1 - This is only temporary housing, so we don't have a normal household full of things.  That is to say, there is not one fan in our apartment.

Level #2 - This is super-secure housing.  Also, this is a super-humid environment.  Our apartment is not designed for us to open our windows and let air through.

Level #3 - We are still new to this super-secure housing.  I don't even know where the keys are to half of the doors which do open.

So, we scrambled to open the sliding glass door in the living room.  It opens directly to a courtyard.  I could not get the screen door open for the girls to set outside in the clean air, but I could get the other doors open.  They sat next to the door, suddenly very aware of the smoke and taking frantic and overly dramatic gulps of the air on the other side of that screen.

I closed the bedroom doors.  Each of them has a humidifier and an air purifier, so thankfully I knew we could sleep safely tonight.

Level #4 - When in a crisis, I operate well.  I switch into problem-solving mode and fix as many problems as I can.  It wasn't until I had opened the two unlocked windows and turned on the bathroom and kitchen fans that I realized the next level of mess.  The apartment has smoke alarms and fire safety sprinklers.  Should those go on, my most valued and most comforting possessions would be soaked.  As would all of the embassy's furniture.  I would have to face the building staff this evening, and then the embassy staff tomorrow with a very embarassed look on my face.  And without my favorite pillow.

Thankfully, the smoke detectors failed this evening.  No one will learn about my mistake, unless they sniff the air in our living room.  With the crisis averted, the windows and doors are once again closed to the humid night air.  The smoke is gone, but the scent may linger for quite a while.

On the plus side, we got to take an evening walk to McDonalds.  We learned that their spicy chicken sandwich is actually spicy, and that the french fries come with seasoning salts.  Fun!

Briefed

The last few days have been filled with briefings for me.  I did the community briefing, the medical briefing and the safety briefing.  We toured the elementary school and met with the counselor, so we can call that the school briefing.  Also, I made it to a large and clean grocery store on my own, so lets call that the shopping briefing.  No - that's going too far.  The shopping briefing was my initial visit to a grocery store, and I only retained very murky visions of expensive cheese from that visit.

That's kind of how briefings go.  People in charge throw a lot of important information at me, and I take notes and do my best to remember all of it without wanting to cry.  They are actually very useful and generally kept professional and possibly even light - they're just a bit overwhelming, and sometimes scary.  During the safety briefing, I kept reminding myself that we are much safer in Jakarta than we ever were in Caracas, and that all of these precautions only make me safer.  All the same, thinking about what to do with my kids in the event of a biological attack on the embassy made me want to cry.

So, at this point in the week I have a few new fears - dengue fever chief among them.  I have a longer to do list - buying buy spray is one of them.  But I also have a few more connections, and I feel a bit more confident.  Having been out of the apartment a bit more has built that, no doubt.  Being able to rely upon our driver makes exploring more manageable as well.

Each of my Concentric Circles is growing stronger, as I am feeling confident in more and more places.

Our entire family enjoyed the school tour this morning.  Its a cheerful and bright place, very kid-centric and very welcoming.  Our tour began in the library, and the girls could have stayed there all day.  We saw their classrooms, or at least their hallways and the clusters for their grades.  Everything we heard about academics was on target, and felt fabulous.  I did not leave feeling comforted about all of the scandals surrounding the school.  In fact, I left feeling as if things are much messier than I had first suspected. 

My quick analysis is that our school is a very difficult places for teachers and staff this year.  But that it will be a comfortable place for students.  That each teacher came to this place because they love to help children learn, and that this school has a wonderful learning environment.  I plan to be as involved in the school as I possibly can, and to keep close tabs on my children there.  At the same time, I feel confident that they will have a good year.


In fact, my quick analysis is that we are all going to be really happy here.

Concentric Circles

I have moved enough times now to know how to approach each piece.  I know moving, and I know myself well enough to see that I am in that Concentric Circles stage.  The more frequently I have moved, the more firmly I need the Concentric Circles stage.

In this stage, which begins upon arrival in a strange land, I get comfortable with one thing at a time.  The first circle is my home - getting everyone's beds made and making sure we have comforting food in the cabinets helps me to get comfortable in that first circle.  We hand-carried both bedding and peanut butter in our luggage, which made the first few days feel cozy and warm.

The second circle could be my neighborhood.  Just going for a simple walk around the block, or to the nearest something cool.  On our walk through the neighborhood last week, we discovered a very cool antique market.  We also discovered that the garbage and the motorbikes made the girls uncomfortable, so we scaled back.  Back to a smaller circle.  We spent a lot of time exploring our building - its pool, its basketball court, its paths for biking, the little shop downstairs.  We stayed comfortable in this little circle.  Happily, as we drive more, I am noticing the girls identifying nearby places they want to explore.  They recognize that little antique market as something cool.  And they noticed new things as well - There's a Dunkin' Donuts down the street?  We should go find it!  We will dive back into this circle soon.

That next circle would be the school or the embassy - a close community.  Both of these institutions will be communities for us here.  My first visit to the embassy last week left me intimidated and overwhelmed.  I pulled back.  Seriously, y'all.  We have spent a lot of time in this apartment.

But today we returned to the embassy.  I had a few briefings I needed to attend, so we joined Dave for lunch and the girls hung out with him while I took notes in various board rooms.  The meetings were helpful - I learned interesting things;  also, many other people looked lost and jet lagged, and that made me feel better.  Really, that made me feel way better.  And during this afternoon, we met a few other families with kids the same age as ours.  We ended our day at the pool with two other families, each of the kids splashing in the pool with a friend and all of the grown-ups gathered in groups chatting.

I used to enter a new social setting and feel the need to make friends with everyone immediately.  Because without friends, I am extremely lonely.  A day without talking to anyone is a bad day for me.  But having moved a few times, I have come to relax and allow the whole process to happen more organically.  Well, organically for an expat - which means that when I'm in the same room as someone else with kids, I purposefully talk to them and arrange another time to meet up.  Soon.  This counts as organic in my world.

Over the last few days, my circles kept falling in on each other.  It seemed like venturing out met challenges that someone did not want to face, and so the girls and I stayed in.  And this became daunting, because we will only live in this apartment for another 7 weeks or so.  That is a long time in many ways.  But as far as building my concentric circles, it is only a few weeks.  I have very little energy for challenging explorations and hard-work friendships in a neighborhood I am going to leave in a few months.  That is to say, if getting to know this neighborhood was going to be challenging and time consuming, how much harder would it be to move and have to start all over again?

Today I feel buoyed.  I think we have three circles now - first our apartment, then our building with our neighbors, and now the embassy.  Tomorrow we will visit the older girls' school, adding another circle.  And soon we will explore the neighborhood on foot, buoyed by our successes and confident that something good lies around the corner.

The Neighborhood

We went for a walk yesterday after Dave came home from work.  It was the first time the girls and I had left the apartment, after spending the day lazily reading, or unpacking and swimming.  Since we woke around 5am, the day was plenty long for each piece.  Until this walk, I had never heard a negative word about Indonesia.  But this current neighborhood made a very bad impression on both Lilly and Sophia.

The sidewalks are dirty are broken.  Frequently, they smell.  People don't wait in line at the playground.  Well, my kids do but no one else does. 

There is garbage everywhere.  This canal was so filled with garbage yesterday that we could not see the water.  No joke.  Apparently someone cleaned it out before I brought my camera this afternoon.  I guess that is heartening.  But my girls simply find it disgusting.

I have plenty of memories of life in Asia, so none of this surprised me.  In fact, I enjoyed the color and the difference.  I found pleasant surprises, like how the heat doesn't seem particularly bothersome most of the time.

Lilly noticed the feral cats everywhere.  I think she found it partly charming and partly disgusting, these wild cats roaming around like rats.  She found our courtyard much more charming, and spent much of this afternoon reading on a blanket in the grass.  They didn't join me on the walk today, and were much happier.

Amusingly, Lilly struggled with what she found unfamiliar.  I expected the neighborhood to be difference, but have been frustrated by things which I expect to be simple.  I suppose these are actually the same feeling.  I went into Starbucks for an iced coffee, because at 2:00 this afternoon I could not imagine staying awake for another 7 hours.  But although Starbucks looks nearly identical to the Starbucks in Arlington, I couldn't find iced coffee on the menu.  And after I ordered, I couldn't find cream on the shelf.  And it just felt wrong.  It feels right that I can't give directions to the taxi driver.  It feels wrong that I can't quite figure out how to get an iced coffee at Starbucks.  It feels right to be worried about street food and shocked by the hygiene there.  It feels wrong that I can't remember the words for hello, good-bye and thank-you.