Lost in Bali

In retrospect, it was ill advised.  Since we drive in Jakarta, we rented a car and decided to drive ourselves around Bali for a week.  If we can handle the throngs of motorbikes and one-way streets and impromptu police blockades in Jakarta, we can handle the rural roads of Bali.  This was true - the driving was simple and smooth, and renting a car was a fabulous choice.

We erred when we did not ask directions.  We checked the calendar for the name of our guesthouse, plugged Lihat Sawah into Google maps, looked that it seemed generally in the right region, and took off for the small town of Sidemen.  The main part of town straddles the Sidemen Road, which has a reputation for cutting through some of the most dramatic rice terraces and mountain views of Bali.  As each road we drove became more lovely than the last, we kept assuming we were on the right track.  Ah, this one must be the Sidemen Road!

But as it turns out, none of them were.  Google maps has a great sense of direction, but a false idea of how wide the roads are.  She has gotten us into trouble in Jakarta before, driving us down roads which were clearly not meant for public use.  This time, we drove on roads which were clearly for public use.  The public just did not constitute very many people. 

I will admit.  It occurred to me that we were on the wrong track well before I admitted it to Dave.  But by the time I had this hunch, we were driving on roads where people mainly walked and passing gorgeous scenery in late afternoon's golden light.  Late afternoon's gold light ought to be a bad sign for drivers potentially lost in rural Indonesia, but it made everyone in the car sit up straight and stare out their windows instead. 

But then, the road ended.  No joke.  We drove around a bend on a road so narrow that we thought it had to be the driveway to our guesthouse.  Google maps claimed we were only a few minutes away, so we kept going.  But as we rounded the bend, the road gave out entirely and turned into a rocky walking path.  We could not drive any further.

I stepped out of the car to peek around the bend.  The drive must just be in disrepair, I thought optimistically.  The girls got caught up in the excitement of being lost and tumbled out of the car after me to search for clues.  Around the bend, the road fully became a walking path and passed nothing more substantial than a small temple.  Dave called the guesthouse, and the girls and I gave in to the temptation of the rice terraces.  They climbed and wandered through, and I pulled out my camera to learn that a person simply can not take a bad photograph in Bali.

Dave spent quite a bit of time speaking with the guest house managers, who insisted that they could not offer directions until we could tell them where we were.  He then spoke with any local person who happened by.  As luck would have it, plenty of local people happened by.  And each of them, when told where we were headed, simply pointed down the dirt path and said we were headed in the right direction.  Having answered the question succinctly, they gathered their things and continued on their way.

Having explored enough, and becoming wary of the waning light and the still missing directions, we piled into the car again and backed slowly down the road until there was space enough to turn around.  We spent an amusing thirty minutes or so driving until we reached an intersection, and then stopping to ask someone on the street for directions to Sidemen.  Everyone seemed to know, and cheerfully offered their help.  As it turned out, the road likely did go on to our destination.  But since it did not take cars, we had to drive around the mountain to reach a road that did.  It was not quite dark when we pulled into the guesthouse, and the vistas had been no less dramatic the entire ride.

We did eventually find the Sidemen Road.  It paled in comparison to our back alley wanderings.

I won't bore you with a travelogue of the entire trip.  But as Bali does not provide a bad photo, I have posted the photo journal.  Our first few days we spent with a friend who lives near Echo Beach.  It was the most luxe place we stayed the entire time, and each member of our family so dearly enjoyed her company.  Echo Beach had crashing waves and black sand, was fairly empty and was strikingly beautiful.

The next few days we spent in Sidemen and its surrounding area.  We wandered the rice terraces some more, hiked the small mountains, and explored a water temple clad in our swim suits.  This part of western Bali near the volcano were truly striking and every vista appeared oversaturated with color and light.

We finished our trip with a few days in our own private villa, just steps away from the beach of Sanur.  The villa had a pool and we relaxed.  The beach had no waves, which the kids found endlessly enjoyable.  We tried jet skiing, took a glass-bottomed boat to the reef for a bit of snorkeling, but mainly just hung out on the beach until we were tired of hanging out on the beach.  Then we hung out in the pool at home.  We ate, swam, sunblocked and slept.  It was delicious.

The Morning Routine

The day begins for us at 5:40am, when my alarm goes off.  The sun has already been up for a while at this point, which makes waking up much easier.  Back in August, the sun woke up at 5:40 along with us and the dull gray morning light made morning feel far too early.

I wake up the older girls while Dave gets himself ready for work and Sumi fixes breakfast and lunch for everyone who is about to leave.  With her help, my job is simply to keep the kids awake and on track.  Within an hour, they have finished all of their chores and are running around in the front yard while they wait for the bus.

The moment they step on the bus, I move back inside to get dressed and brush my own teeth before I need to wake the littlest girl.  If I'm lucky and noisy enough, that littlest girl wakes up on her own and that morning time is sweet.  Another round of breakfast and brushing teeth while Sumi makes another lunch, and then we walk up the street to her school.  The tropical morning feels a bit sticky and a bit sunny, but also vibrant and fully awake.  We chat with the gardeners and the bajai drivers, and we see ladies selling vegetables on traveling carts.  Sometimes I can forget that I live in Indonesia, but not on the walk to school.

I chat with her teachers and her classmates for a moment before walking back home.  I've been awake and busy for 3 hours by 8:30 in the morning, and my day has just begun.

Losing My Baby

A little while back, my plan for the morning was to take Annie for a walk.  I had been busy with the odds and ends of moving and setting up home, and although she had asked for walks before, I had always said no.  So this morning, I had made no other plans.  I dressed for walking in the tropics, and I told Annie our big plans.

Her friend Benny had come over with his nanny.  They try to get out in the morning, and had stopped by to say hi.  I said hi to Benny and to his nanny.  And then I told Annie the good news.

Hey, Annie!   We’re going for a walk today!  Do you want to get ready to go?

Annie:  No, Mommy.  I want to play with Benny.

Me:  I know, its superfun to play with Benny.  But you’ve been wanting to go for a walk, too.  Maybe you can play with Benny later.

Annie:  You should go for the walk, Mommy.  It’ll be fun for you.  But I’m going to stay here and play with Benny instead.

And that’s the moment I realized it.  My final baby is growing up, her world is getting bigger, and she has begun that slow and inevitable slip away from me.

I dropped her off at school today.  Her first day was on Wednesday, but her school has this lovely policy of inviting the parents to stay for the child’s first two days of preschool.  There’s no need to make this transition any harsher than it needs to be, right? they said.  Yesterday, and the day before yesterday, we went to school together.  I watched her teacher interact with her classmates; I saw the library and the music room; I observed what excited Annie most, and what intimidated her.

And then this morning, I left her.  She was unfazed, happy with the new toy she had found.  She promised not to tell me anything about what she does at school – she said it would all be a secret.  No tears from Annie.  But I cried the whole way home.

Explorers

After a lazy Saturday of hot tea and the New York Times, followed by a birthday party and then movies after the kids went to bed, we all woke up full of energy and ready to explore again.  We jumped on the train and rode North, to the last stop. 

We explored Kota, the old Dutch city.  We sold it to the girls as a ghost town, and so when we disembarked the train to this hodge podge of traffic and riot of colors, the girls felt they had been misled.

Fatihilla Square, the main square of old Batavia, was touristy and surrounded by beautifully restored colonial architecture.  It was covered with little stalls selling flip flops and cheap jewelry and renting brightly colored bicycles with matching sun hats.

They felt misled.  So we stopped for brunch before moving on.  Cafe Batavia was lovely.  We plan to return to Fatihillah Square partly because all of the museums were closed today (for Eid al Adha, a Muslim holiday which involves slaughtering goats and cows on the side of the street, in the middle of the street, in parking lots...) and we are a museum family.  But also because Cafe Batavia was so lovely.

 
I would return for the ambiance alone, but they also happened to serve a delicious brunch.

After eating, we were able to follow through with our ghost town promises.  Kota is not a ghost town from the Old West, where the entire city has been abandoned to dust and tumbleweeds.  The city was built by the wealthy Dutch a few hundred years ago, and eventually abandoned by them.  It has since been taken over by the city, and most of the beautiful old buildings and canals have crumbled.

We wandered this area for quite a while, and eventually ended up in one of the city's shipyards.  The area was fascinating and full of color and life.  We hopped onto a very small boat with a man and an oar and very little wiggle room.  He scooted us around the harbor a bit, and we enjoyed the glimpse into life on the harbor.

We ended the day with ice-creams on the terrace of Batavia Marina, watching the yachts parked in the water and resting our tired feet.  We walked back to the bajai, rode back to the train station, were lucky enough to grab seats on a rather full train, and then took a taxi to get back home.  Despite the rather long journey home, we all finished the day energized for more explorations through our island and this country.

Symmetry

I spent this morning with a hot cup of tea and the New York Times on my iPad, snuggled in a comfy chair in our family room, surrounded by a crazy mess of toys.  Most of these ragtag toys spent the better part of this last year in a shipping container stored somewhere in Miami.  Dave and I quietly noted the one-year anniversary of our expulsion from Venezuela this week, amid the business of our life in Indonesia.

I enjoy the symmetry of this.  We learned we were leaving Venezuela on a Monday, and we were on a flight out of the country by that Wednesday morning.  Prior to that Monday, we had a normal weekend, where we likely spent our Saturday morning reading the news with a hot cup of tea in a room filled with toys.

Over the past two weeks, we have moved into our permanent housing in Jakarta, and we have received all of our shipments.  Just this past week, I unpacked the last box, leaving the house in a fun state of disarray.  When our boxes came from Virginia, we all felt happy because now we had the tools to bake better cookies and the books we had been reading for the past year.  But when our boxes arrived from Venezuela, it felt like Christmas.  We found things we had forgotten we ever owned, and things we didn't realize were not sold.  Lilly and Sophia dug through boxes of old toys, frequently shouting I remember this!  I loved this toy!  By and large, the toys that didn't sell in Venezuela were those missing bits or those showing wear - they were the toys most played with by our family, and the ones most well received when they arrived.  Having a messy playroom again makes the house feel so much more like home, and the girls are again able to play undisturbed for hours.

The past year has been one of amazing, and sometimes rather exciting turmoil.  We have felt people's love and prayers for us, experienced the amazing generosity of near strangers and been comforted by God's clear plan for our life.  We loved our time in Venezuela, and we were sad to leave.  The country has suffered over the past year, and it hurts our hearts.  We felt incredible welcome back to Virginia, which feels more like home now than it did when we lived there in an overstuffed little house two years ago.  We steeped ourselves in our church and our school and our friends.

Jakarta is the new.  We have been here for two months.  But today, I feel at home.  At least as at home as I felt that weekend in Venezuela.  We have our house and our things, and the messy comfort that comes from being at home.  The girls feel comfortable in their school;  they each have good friends.  Dave has figured out a good commuting routine to the embassy, which makes all of us happy.  I have good friends, and enough time to begin exploring the roads, shops and bakeries around our house.

We have had an awesome year.  And now I'm looking forward to two years of quiet Saturday mornings, with a cup of hot tea and surrounded by messy piles of old toys.

Exploring Jakarta in Photos

Jakarta is not a beautiful city.  It is huge and dirty.  It is full of nonsensical traffic rules and rude motorbikes.  It has very few beautiful buildings and even fewer parks.  So much of the city seems to be under construction, and so many roads offer detours instead of a simple tour around the block.

 

It took some time, but I think we have come to terms with the fact that Jakarta's beauty takes some searching.  We went out exploring today, looking for the new and the exciting;  looking to enjoy our new city.  And we found plenty.  I didn't hear any of the girls complain about the garbage on the street or the noise of the traffic.  They didn't mind the crowds, although they still don't enjoy strangers talking to them.

  

Make no mistake.  This city is no less dirty now than it was when we arrived.  We found a park to explore this afternoon.  The lovely waterway above traversed the length of the park, and then kept going under a bridge and off through the city.  It was lovely, until you looked at the water...

  

No, I think we have just reached our new normal.  Riding in the car doesn't make us sick anymore, and we no longer expect our streets to be free of garbage or our sidewalks to be whole.  Thirty minutes in the car is a short drive, and we count stray cats out the window when we get bored.  We've discovered that the city is full of good food, and we have yet to find a restaurant that we don't all want to return to.  Sadly, the street food has not lived up to the restaurants.  We rarely choose to eat street food, because we can see where they wash the dishes.  But upon a recommendation, we stopped at this food stand.

 

The atmosphere was kind of fun - very urban tropical, there was no forgetting that we were eating in a big Southeast Asian city.  They offered one dish - chicken with sambal and rice.  No silverware, but plenty of napkins.  The girls were not impressed.  The chicken had bones, and how could they eat rice without a fork or spoon?  Dave and I got the hang of it pretty quickly, and were sucking the sambal off the bones by the end of our meal.  The girls finished their chicken only on the promise of ice-cream later in the day.  Things are still new.

 

Pockets of beauty showed up all over the place - in doorways and roofs, little statues in windows and plates piled into towers in restaurant windows.  The park was lovely, and led us to the animal market.  The animal market was wild.

 It was surprisingly easy to leave without a new pet.  With the exception of the placid piles of soft bunnies and the rows of cages of birds, it was hard to justify most of these animals spending any time in a cage.  And you had to wonder - how did they come by these monkeys and squirrels?  We saw a surprising number of animals we did not recognize at all, and a surprising number of fully grown cats.  We saw only two cages of puppies, and those broke our hearts.  The black lab puppies were sleepy and looked so much like our Millie that it made Dave and I sad.  When the little dachsund in the cage below noticed us paying attention to the Millie-looking puppies, he perked up and begged for attention.  The poor little fellow wanted some loving more than anything, and I couldn't even fit a finger through the cage to scratch his nose.    We couldn't pay for these puppies.

I am happy to say that the girls finished the day feeling that the outing was a great adventure.  It is nice to feel settled enough that we can begin to explore our city, and such a city for exploring!  There may not be much beauty, but there are surprises around many corners.

Funny Story

So, here's a crazy story for you.  Oh, its so wild I don't even know where to start.

Lets start with Saturday morning.  That is, this upcoming Saturday morning.  Saturday morning will be the first Free Demo Class! for my new music center in Jakarta.  Its super exciting and I'm wringing my hands in nervousness, because I really need this class to go well.  I need it to get well because my entire marketing strategy here is to run such a good class that everyone wants to bring their friends.  You see, I don't have supersized goals and running just a few classes a week will max me out.  Also, I keep my marketing small by necessity.  I am in Indonesia on a diplomatic visa, and as such I do not have permission to work on the local market.  My classes may only be offered within the diplomatic community.  Now the diplomatic community is fairly large in Jakarta, so the market is still satisfactory for my small goals.  But advertising becomes the challenge - no mass marketing anywhere, because no good to have someone call up interested in class, only to tell them that they're not invited.

So, that's fun.  But here's where it gets funny.  Because of this crazy work situation, there are actually two people on staff at our embassy for whom a large portion of their job is helping folks like me find and keep gainful employment.  In short, its on their job description to help me market my music classes to the broader embassy community.  Nice, right?  So, I made ads and I made a release strategy and I asked for their help with the ads and the release strategy.  And they said the ads were so beautiful.  And then my ads were never shared anywhere.  No joke - not anywhere.

So, that's fun.  But here's actually where it gets funny.  You see, having a successful demo class for me means that enough families walk away wanting to register for the class.  Because this is the only demo class I have time for before my session begins.  So far, I do have families coming to the demo class (hooray!!).  But so far, its a small class.  So, I need these families to walk away from Saturday morning's class thinking That class was fabulous!  I need to find some other folks who want to sign up!  So, I need to run a really super-fabulous class.  Now, I've got to say - this doesn't make me too nervous.  The music curriculum I use is top-notch, and it is hard to go wrong with them.  I've run classes before, and I get energy from interacting from the kids and the parents.  I can be charming and musical and fun.  And I've got boxes of brand new, high quality musical instruments stacked in my office alongside the pretty songbooks and CDs for the upcoming session.  I don't have a lesson plan, though.  You see, I left my lesson plans in Venezuela.  That is to say, I have built a strong demo class and my notes for it stayed in Venezuela when we left.  Now, don't worry.  They were packed up and shipped out, spent the better part of the past year in a port in Miami, and are now in Indonesia.  I was expecting their delivery today, when we received the rest of our shipment and moved into our house.  We did move into our house today.  And we did receive the bulk of our things.  But our shipment from Venezuela did not clear customs.  And so although I have our beds and our plates and our towels, I do not have my music class notes.

So, that's pretty fun.  But here's the funny part.  You see, building those notes takes time.  And I only have one day between now and my demo class on Saturday morning.  In that day, I need to find the cereal, the cups and the bowls before the kids can eat breakfast in the morning.  I need to (no joke) move the furniture around in the office so that I can use both the computer and the printer at the same time before I can print the handouts for the flyers.  I need to run to Carrefour for plastic bins before I can take my instruments out of their boxes.  And all this with Annika by my side, because each time we move she is afraid to be left alone.  Which leaves precious little time for writing a super spectacular lesson plan for Saturday's class.

So, that's fun, too.  But the really funny part is still coming.  You see, we're doing all of this on empty.  There was no time up until now to prepare for the class, because there has simply been no time so far.  Last week, we kept kids home sick 4 out of the 5 school days and then we lounged around watching movies over the weekend because the kids just hadn't kicked that nasty stomach bug yet.  This week, that nasty stomach bug jumped over to Dave, our housekeeper and myself.  While we were moving.  And this little move meant packing everything from our luggage, everything that we had ordered to be shipped here directly, and everything from our air shipment into a few provided boxes and hauling them across town in a miniature mini-van and a luxury shuttle bus as well as accepting our shipment from Virginia and giving back all of the sheets and towels and bowls the embassy loaned us originally.

So, that was really fun.  But here comes the funniest part.  I am no longer sick.  I woke this morning with a solid stomach, and although I have very little appetite I also have no bad feelings when I do eat.  My energy level is slowly returning to normal, and clearly my mind is alert.  Those of you paying attention will notice that I'm posting this around 1:00am Jakarta time, even though my alarm will go off at 5:30 in the morning.  The sun will be up, but only just barely.  Just to make your picture complete, I'm sitting in my pajamas on top the boxes stacked to completely fill the floor space in my kitchen.  I'm doing that because it was the only place I could find to plug in my laptop.  So, I'm hunched over the counter in a box-filled corner of my kitchen wearing my pajamas and staring red-eyed at the screen.

No, the really truly funny part is that I have entirely lost my voice.