Jakarta Staycation - Day #3

Our second day of exploring our city had less the feel of adventure that yesterday did.  Today reminded us more why we don't set out to explore this city very often.  Everyone slept late, after a tiring and late night last night.  We ate a good breakfast to prepare for the junk we would eat in the city, and did not leave the house until 9:30.  We headed toward Monas, Indonesia's National Monument.  Its located directly across the street from the embassy, yet we have never been.

An hour of typical traffic later, we were circling the large park that surrounds the monument.  Each gate we reached seemed locked.  But no matter - these types of things mean very little here.  Clearly they don't want us using this gate today.  We reached the final gate, and it was open far enough to walk inside.  It was staffed with enough guards to explain that the monument is closed on Mondays. 

We felt a bit bruised being turned away, but headed instead to Masjid Istiqlal, Indonesia's National Mosque. It is fittingly located across the street from Monas, and so only took us 20 minutes to drive there.  The mosque was built in the communist influenced 1950s and is the largest mosque in Southeast Asia - the third largest in the world.  It felt large and grand, boxy and not beautiful.  But certainly it felt like a house of worship.  We were guided through the mosque in bare feet and wearing loaned robes.

 In perfect Indonesian fashion, the mosque neighbors the grand cathedral - dating back to the early 1900s in its current form.  A couple were being married in the cathedral, so we only peeked creepily through the windows and snapped quick photos from outside.  We didn't want to interrupt, and we were hungry.

We headed to a Chinese restaurant close by, one recommended for its Xinjiang food.  The food tasted less Xinjiang than Indonesian-influenced Chinese, adding to the general feel of the day.  We then explored Jalan Surabaya, an antique market.  Sophia studied everything, intent on spending money, and thus set a tone of fascination among everyone.  We explored the walls lined with typewriters and ancient cameras, wayang puppets and batik chops until we were too hot to explore anymore.  At which point we headed to what is said to be Jakarta's best coffee shop across the street.  Also closed today, because it seems the owner did not feel like coming to work.

No matter - a coffee and a few donuts later at a swell shop around the corner and everyone was ready to head home.  And this is Jakarta to me this year.  Not particularly impressive but still entirely enjoyable.

On Staycation Day #4, I'll go to the office while Dave takes the girls to a water park.  I think I'm getting the better part of this deal.

Jakarta Staycation - Day #2

After a Staycation day at home yesterday, we headed out into the wide city to explore this morning.  We brought a few cameras along with us.

We began our day at Jakarta's Textile Museum - a fabulous collection of hand painted batiks from across the island and across the nation.  Every one was beautiful, and poorly lit.  They were housed in a magnificent old colonial building, with huge windows and gorgeous light.  The buildings were surrounded by gardens.  The plants were sparse, but they included cotton and indigo, completing the story of how batiks are made.

From the textile museum, we walked.  We walked into a fabric market, where we bought cloth for our Christmas dresses.  We walked into a food court, where we ate a variety of Indonesian dishes, finishing with root beer floats from A&W.  We walked across and through loads of traffic.

We sought out a coffee shop, getting frustratingly lost along the way.  Coffee is one of the many pleasures in Jakarta.  The island grows some of the best coffee beans in the world.  The city sells primarily instant coffee, but has some coffee shops tucked away in little corners of the city which are well worth seeking out.

And after walking to these sights, we walked back to the car.  This time, we took the quieter roads, where we found laundry and puppies and children and life.

As we neared the car, we crossed a bridge.  Lilly noted the obvious drought conditions.  Sophia noted the goats, the chickens, and the puppies.  Annika noted the little waterfall coming from the homes.  And Dave noticed the skyline.  I couldn't capture the homes or the puppies, because they were on the other side of the water.  But the skyline is pretty fun.

We went home dirty and exhausted, stopping at a movie theater on the way - because it was a Sunday, and Sunday night is movie night in our house.  Pizza for supper and late to bed.  This is what school breaks are made of.

Jakarta Staycation - Day #1

School entered October Break on Friday afternoon.  Nine days without an alarm waking us up at 5:40am.  Nine days without homework or packing lunches.  Nine days without strict bedtimes or to do lists.  Ah, I feel relaxed just writing that out.

We chose not to travel this week, mainly because we don't know our budget for the next year.  Dave is bidding on his next job, lobbying for where we will move come summer.  Some jobs will pay more than others, and some jobs will come with significantly more expenses than others.  So we stayed in Jakarta this week, along with only very few of the girls' friends.  I've got no music classes and I'm not teaching Sunday School this week.  We don't have a full schedule of playdates or lessons.  And we do have a few national holidays.  What better week for a staycation.  And so - Saturday was Day #1 of our Jakarta Staycation.

As befits day #1 of a staycation, I was still wearing my pajamas at 10:00 in the morning.  Dave woke just before 6am to watch the Cubs play baseball.  The girls biked to the French bakery to buy fresh croissants when I woke up.  I read a borrowed  book from my neighbor, and enjoyed a slow morning with fresh coffee and hours to read.

The afternoon was just as luxurious.  A neighbor invited a few friends over, and so I didn't fix lunch, but I did enjoy good company all afternoon.  Friends of Sophia came over for supper, but the adults had all enjoyed the late lunch with the neighbors.  We were talking about cut apples, popcorn, and wine for dinner when a friend of Lilly's tracked me down.  Lilly had been swinging and she fell.  She hurt her head.  Her friend was concerned.

And the relaxing day immediately took a chaotic turn.  Dave and I discovered a tremendous bump rising on the back of Lilly's head.  We brought her a bag of ice, asked her to lay down, and called the embassy's Medical Unit to learn when we should panic about a head injury.  Nurse Stephanie asked whether she could focus her eyes (yes), whether she felt lethargic (no), and whether she had vomitted (no).  She confirmed the ice and said to call her back if anything changed.  Breathing a sigh of relief, we hung up the phone.  And Lilly threw up.

The neighbors gathered up the children, adults and dogs playing throughout our house and drove them home.  Their daughter came over to feed our kids cereal for dinner while Dave and I raced Lilly to SOS, an international medical clinic.  We arrived before 7:00pm to a nearly empty clinic.  We sat in the emergency waiting room for 10 minutes before being ushered to a bed and a doctor.  The local doctor checked her eyes and her bump and asked a few questions to validate what we suspected - that she was fine.  He sent us to the cashier with a card alerting us to symptoms of head trauma.  We paid 300,000 rupiah - a bit more than $20 US - all to reassure us that our daughter was well.  We went home relaxed and relieved, and considering how this would have gone in the U.S.  A vomiting child with a throbbing goose egg on the back of her head is reason to race to the emergency room, but the emergency room near our house in St. Louis would have cost us both multiple hours and well more than $20, especially with a hunch that we did not face an actual emergency.

Indonesia may not be the country for a true medical emergency.  But it is a fabulous place for a false alarm on a Saturday night.  Bonus points to Jakarta - I have learned to truly enjoy my Cubs games with a cup of coffee and a fresh croissant.  Staycation Day #1 was truly local and fully exciting.

Love

Things I loved in America this summer:

• The big, big blue sky.
• The vast, vibrant green rising to meet the sky at the horizon.
• The horizon!
• Driving fast with the windows down and the radio on.
• Target
• Guacamole and barbeque and salads and so much delicious food.
• Family and old friends.
• Talking about Ferguson and Charleston and diversity and privilege.

Things I am loving about Jakarta now that we are home again:

• My bed and my schedule and my food.
• Ibu Sri, our housekeeper and Pak Adi, our driver
• Fabulous coffee and bright flowers for sale at good prices, just down the street.
• How the many individual friends that I remembered over the summer actually coalesce into one pretty fabulous community for our family here.
• The lazy end of summer, giving us hours at the pool and afternoons watching movies with friends and evenings to crash on the couch or mornings to sleep in and naturally recover from jet lag.

It was so good to spend our summer in the United States with our family again this year.  But truly, it is good to be home again.

A Chilly June Morning

I'm sitting in the kitchen of my family's house in the midwestern suburbs.  It is 7:30 am and the light is still thin, the air is still cool, the house is still quiet. 

This, I love. 

This, I have missed.

We spend every summer with our family in the American Midwest.  And every time we return, I am always struck by something new.  Sometimes I am able to anticipate what will strike me.  I have been looking forward to a morning like this for months now.  Days in Indonesia are the same - temperatures always in the mid 80s, with humidity always in the mid 80s. The sun fills the house by 6 in the morning every day, and noisy children invariably follow its trajectory.  The only question is whether or not it will rain, and then for how long.  I didn't mind the Indonesian heat when the U.S. was buried in snow, but I began to miss seasons when spring hit the midwest and Facebook posts showed friends in jackets on back porches enjoying the warm evenings with a chill in the air.

I have missed that chill.

Life in Jakarta is good.  It took the better part of our first year, but I feel like I've found my footing and am living a life beyond just keeping myself and my family afloat.  I am looking forward to a more outward focused second year.  So, returning to the U.S. does not have the pang of homelessness that it sometimes does.  It just fills our family with joy, in so many expected and unexpected ways.

Things said by my children over the past few days:

I don't think I've ever seen such green grass in my life - and so much of it!

The sky is so big, so blue, and so bright!

Target!  Oh my goodness, this place is amazing!

Do you know where my jacket is?

You've got to try these strawberries!

This burger tastes way better than Carl's Jr!

I wish we lived here, so we could see our family every single day.

We are filling our summer with family and friends, loads of fresh fruit and plenty of burgers.  We are driving fast, with the windows down and our sunglasses blocking the glare of that bright sun.

The Two Income Family

I've been working for a week now, and I'll admit it.  Its kind of awesome.  I'm loving being in an office, on a good team and with a real responsibility.  I came in with experience, and people treat me as if I have something important to contribute.  I'm not kidding myself - my job only has limited importance.  Still, it is so nice to feel qualified and valued as a contributor.  After 10 years, I feel experienced as a stay at home mom, learning how to keep my family healthy and balanced, safe and happy amid eight moves.  That is not nothing, and it builds my confidence.  What also builds my confidence?  Walking into an office with a job to do, and getting it done well.

Okay, that well part hasn't happened yet.  I have yet to finish a day of work feeling that I finished my work, and did it well.  I know that will come, but at this point I'm still working on balancing my family's time verses my office's time.  Even though I'm only working 20 hours per week, this balance is proving to be a greater challenge then I had expected.  When the school called me this afternoon telling me to come pick up Annika immediately, I had 20 minutes left on the clock but not even 50% of my work completed.  After a quick chat with my counterpart, she took over my project while I flew out the door.

And then spent the next 85 minutes crawling through traffic to reach my neighborhood.  A drive that can take as long as 3 hours in extreme traffic, the commute has so far only taken me 40 minutes.  Living inside America, those numbers likely make no sense.  In Jakarta, they are routine.  The 3 hour commute only happens under extreme weather, but the drive can easily vary from 30 - 90 minutes with no explanation. 

I needed to hurry, because the school had lost power and canceled school, effective immediately.  Without a housekeeper to call and pick up Annika, she was left sitting at the school until a friend could turn around and retrieve her.  They arrived nearly an hour after they picked up their own child.

There are so many successes in this story.  My co-worker easily picked up where I left off, and didn't question my racing out the door.  My driver focused on the traffic, so I could focus on calling and texting and getting Annika out of the closed and powerless school as quickly as possible.  My friend canceled her lunch plans to return to the school and bring Annika home with her.  Even though I arrived late, I still arrived home before the older girls got off the bus.  All success.

If this had happened on my first day of work, I would probably be writing this in tears.  After a week, I'm willing to chalk it up to life in Jakarta, where school can be cancelled immediately, where I can easily be over an hour away from my child, where everyone else has a nanny to pick up the slack.  And where I can lean on a friend I've only known for a few months.

And bonus - now I've got a paycheck coming to compensate for my lost time!

Back to Work

Today begins the next phase.  I am out the door in an hour to begin my new job at the embassy.

The job will go well.  Its a good team, interesting work, a good fit for me personally and for my experience and talents.  I'm not nervous at all.

The house and the family make me cringe.  Is this the right time and the right choice?  Should I be so worried about not being home when my kids climb off the bus?

It is certainly no coincidence that last night I felt painfully homesick.  Homesick for Virginia, where we lived in a house and a neighborhood and walked to school every day and felt like comfortable and cozy members of our community.  We have never felt like that in Jakarta - not like comfortable and cozy members of any community.  At least not yet, and we know that Jakarta is a hard nut to crack.  People go at least a year, if not more before they stop feeling overwhelmed by this city.

Add in the new job with the new commute and the new need to have my hair look nice in 55 minutes...

Fifty-two minutes?  Holy cow!  I'd better get started!