What We've Been Reading

 Way back in February, I commenced Indonesia 101.  I took just over a month to read an article with the history of Indonesia, and its taken me another 2 months to get halfway through The Indonesia Reader.  I'll admit - its not as compelling as I expected it to be.  An interesting concept, the editors pulled together historically significant pieces of writing on Indonesia.  Many of these writings are centuries old, and the vast majority (at least that I have read so far) were not written for the readers' enjoyment.  A comparable selection on US History would include the Mayflower Compact, treaties with American Indian tribes, maybe the Federalist papers - and still, these writings would be much older.  So, I feel like the book is greatly expanding my knowledge of the country, so it is well worth the read.  But its taking some time.

 So, just so y'all don't think I'm not attending my studies at all, I thought I should post some of the things our girls are reading.  When I built my Indonesia bookshelf, I did not limit it to books for grown-ups.  In fact, one of my favorite ways of preparing the girls for a move is loading them up with books on the new place.  Our two favorites have been The Dancing Pig by Judy Sierra and All About Indonesia by Linda Hibbs.

The Dancing Pig is a Balinese folktale which has captured Annika's imagination.  It only just left her book rotation.  You see, Annika is in that fun stage where she wants to read the same books over and over again.  So I have The Dancing Pig practically memorized, and I must admit to liking the book more the more often I read it.  I enjoy the characters and the clever conclusion to the book, but I'm also enjoying the little bits of culture sprinkled throughout the book.

All About Indonesia is our newest find, and the current household favorite.  Its a thick book without one storyline, so its an easy one to pick up and read for only a moment or two.  Each page or two will describe a different part of life in Indonesia, with lots of photos and illustrations and an engaging layout.  Also, its a much easier read than the reader moving through so slowly.

Feeling Worried

Alright, here's where we stand.

We drive away from Virginia in less than 6 weeks.
Its an easy pack-out, and so the next month and a half is primarily filled with shopping, spending time with friends, and End of School What Not.  Its nice to be at this stage and feel we have enough time to do everything we want to do.  In that sense, life is relaxing right now.

Sophia has a spot at school.
This is such a relief, because if she had not been offered a spot at this school, I did not know what I would do.  I had no back-up plan.  I was already scaring myself with the thought of homeschooling her until a spot opened up in the middle of the year.  Scary.  The school which accepted Lilly has also found a place for Sophia.  Phew.

Sophia and Lilly have been placed at different campuses.
No more worrying about whether or not Sophia will go to school.  On to worrying about Sophia and Lilly attending different schools.  To be clear, they will attend the same school.  The school has two different elementary campuses.  One is nearer to us, and has a wonderfully dear reputation.  This is Lilly's school.  The other is further from us, and is the site of the recent sex abuse scandals (add that to the List of Things to Worry About).  The school has a strong reputation for academics and for attracting and keeping good teachers.  I am under the impression that the difference between them is the difference between Strong and Super strong.  I am more worried for the girls.  They derive comfort from being together, and they enjoy being members of the same community.  I enjoy them being members of the same community, both sharing stories and anecdotes that build into a more cohesive picture of what life looks like inside their school.  They fight like wildcats, but they also sit next to each other on the school bus.  It makes me sad to think of them beginning life at a new school, alone on their journeys.  Also, it would be a logistical mess for me.  Not only is each campus over 35 minutes from our home, they are each probably an hour from each other.  And it seems too early and too traffic congested a time in my life to have my 3 kids at 3 different schools.  I am worried.

I will begin offering music classes in the fall
This is ambitious.  But riding off of my success in Caracas, and knowing that beginning classes in the fall saves me some money and paperwork on the business end, it seems worth trying.  I'm looking at this as a marketing term - offering one class during the week, allowing plenty of families to drop in and try the class for free, and hoping that word of mouth will add on extra classes in the winter session.  But starting a business in Jakarta from Arlington is more difficult than it may seem.  Well, it may seem difficult to most of you.  Its more difficult than I expected it to be.  Gathering data on the competition, researching location, these are all nearly impossible from abroad - but necessary for building a business plan with a budget.  And this is the time for both a business plan and a budget.  So, as it stands today, my budget doesn't go into the black until the spring session, and then only just barely.  This has me worried, because although it would be a worthy hobby, I was hoping to run these classes as a job.

Our housing looks lovely.
We've seen photos of the inside, a floorplan, been connected to neighbors and learned a bit about the neighborhood.  The commutes will be rough for everyone, but it should be a very comfortable place to live.

We keep meeting nice people.
A gal from my Bible study moved to Jakarta in January, and has been sending me lovely reports back every few weeks.  A friend from Caracas connected me to her good friend in Jakarta, who has been lovely about sending info from the school and answering questions.  Our social sponsor seems fabulous and connects me to other families when she can't answer a question.  The web is ever growing.  Besides which, Dave knows a number of people from language class who will arrive around the same time as us.  I'm feeling more confident that we will be surrounded by good people during our first few weeks at post.

There is so much good, and I'm excited about what's coming up.  But I'm nervous about music class, and I'm really worried about school.  I pray that God is preparing the perfect place in school for each of my girls, and anyone else praying the same for them would be amazing.

Getting Excited

Okay, I admit it.

I'm getting excited about Indonesia.

We've been connected to a handful of people now, and they all seem very warm and welcoming.  They all seem happy.  We've received our housing assignment, and even seen a blog posting with photos of the interior.  We've been reading, and both the history and the region are wildly interesting.

These are all good reasons to be excited.

But here are the two reasons I am the most excited.

#1 - A housekeeper and a driver
We have already bought a car and hired a driver.  He comes very highly recommended.  In fact, we were first keyed into him because a friend said I think her driver is looking for work.  Do you want me to connect you?  So many people have commented on how good he is.  Having a driver is lovely.  Traffic in Jakarta is said to be amazing - a huge time suck.  Being able to amuse myself and be present with my family during the hours we spend in the car will be such a gift.

We have not yet hired a housekeeper, although we're chatting with a few folks.  But we will have a housekeeper.  And that means that all of the mundanity that fills up my days... well, a lot of the mundanity that fills up my days will be handed off to someone else.  Sigh.  I'm feeling relaxed even thinking about it.

#2 - Feeling at home again
We were cleaning up this evening, and I put the homework stuff away in the homework box.  The homework box is a flimsy canvas carton that belongs on the floor near the dining room table.  It holds all of the girls' workbooks, their pencil and marker boxes, and some basic art supplies.  It is a poor substitute for a desk.  But in a few short months, once we've moved into our new home and received all of our things, we will once again have a place for everything.  We will eat off of our own dishes and find a place for all of our kitchen tools... inside the kitchen.  We will have our books on the shelves, instead of in neat piles next to the bed.  We will build our home rather than deal with our hotel room.  Our hotel room is lovely - I've no complaints about our lodging these 8 months.  But it hardly feels like home.  I'm looking forward to being at home.

Annika's prayer tonight

Dear God,

Thank you for our things.  And tell Jesus to give us more things.  And on our flight to Indonesia, help us to have fun.  And tell Jesus to help us remember our luggage on our flight to Indonesia.

Amen

Feeling Less Funky

It seems that posting yesterday had a normalizing effect on me.  Everything made me seethingly angry yesterday (beginning with the guy who changed the channel at the gym - come on, man!), but  I'm feeling much more resilient today.  I'm also feeling buoyed by a fabulous piece of new information.

More in an act of fear and distrust than in a decision to be pro-active, I contacted a preschool in Jakarta.  I looked at the list and the map, and I emailed the school that looked the very best - my absolute top choice.  I sent some questions and asked for more information, and was wildly comforted by how she replied.  More than comforted, I'm feeling excited by what she said.  I asked some pretty specific questions about how they run their classes and the choices they make in their curriculum, and she had well-thought out and extensive answers.  I told her where we'll live, and asked how much the traffic would impact my choice.  She said I was right to be worried about traffic and its impact on my life (sad, but not surprising).  She also said that she is right around the corner from us, that loads of kids from our neighborhood attend her school, and that many of the moms will walk or bicycle their kids to school.  Hooray!  She also promised that a seat would be available for Annika in August and said not to worry about making a decision in advance.  Hooray!

The school costs more than we budgeted, which means we will take her advice and shop around a bit.  But we just bought a car there, and that is coming in under budget.  Hooray again!

Feeling buoyed by this success, I'm now ready to attack that moving To Do List.  On the list for today - learn how nervous I should be about Lilly and Sophia's school.  They have found a spot for Lilly, but are making no promises to accept Sophia.  I know others are in our same boat, so I'll contact the embassy to learn whether or not I should worry.  Also on the list for today, do a bit of research for music class.  Things are in place for me to open another Music Together center in September, but the home office wants me to submit the location within the next few weeks.  Happily, we have been paired up with a very nice family who live in our complex and have offered to answer any and all questions.  The gym at our complex looks to me like a fabulous spot for music classes, so I'm hopeful that her research will be simple and I'll be able to cross another line off of my list.

Thanks for the words of support yesterday - feeling much less lonely today.  Thanks to the big coffee on the table next to me, I'm feeling much more energized as well.  And thanks to spring sports, I have no time to be bored today.  Its a busy season!

In a Funk

I'm in a bit of a funk this week.

Dave took - and passed - his Indonesian exam last week, during the girls' Spring Break.  We spent last week relaxing together, eating well and traveling and generally living a relaxing lifestyle, very present here in Virginia.

With the return to school and to work, with the completion of language training, and with our weekly countdown entering the single digits, it is now time to put my head into Indonesia.  We pack out in 8 weeks, and we'll drive away from Virginia the day after. 

But I'm having trouble becoming pro-active about our move.  Annika and I lead a very slow life right now, where I don't accomplish and we just explore.  We go to the gym and to music class and to soccer practice, we spend some mornings in coffee shops and some mornings at museums.  This morning we've been playing games at home.  This is the life I chose when kept her out of preschool this year.  I don't really have a lot that I need to do for this move, and so this luxurious lifestyle can remain for probably the next 4 weeks or so.

But that may be a problem.  Because now that my head is entering into Indonesian mindspace, with little to do I'm simply growing worried.  And unfortunately, there is plenty to worry about right now:

- Our preferred school for Lilly and Sophia has not yet offered us a spot for the upcoming school year.
- This preferred school is currently embroiled in a rather horrendous abuse scandal.
- I'm feeling a bit queasy about any of the preschools I've seen.
- I'm having trouble imagining life in this city, a large Asian city with a tremendous traffic problem and very obvious poverty.

And with those very real worries, I'm beginning to build on some not-so-real worries.  Because I've got lots of time but not a lot of normal conversation going on this week.  So here are some of the second tier worries:

- The church may be lay-led, meaning they don't have a dedicated pastor.  We attended a church like that in Shenzhen, and we found it very challenging.
- We've hired a driver and have a recommendation for a housekeeper.  But how does one go about hiring a housekeeper via Skype?
- We are late in the game to apply to other international elementary schools.  And should we decide to do that, most of the other schools are either very far away or on a southern hemisphere schedule.
- I've begun opening a music center in Jakarta, but don't have good answers to this next round of questions.  Where will we meet?  How much will it cost?
- We don't know what we still own, and what we ought to replace before we leave.
- We don't know...

Lets be realistic here.  The list could go on and on with meaningless things that we don't know.  And realistically, I know that we will be fine.  I keep hearing marvelous things about Indonesia, and that families are very happy in Jakarta.  We have been connecting to a number of people there already, who are friendly and beautifully helpful.  We will continue to connect to more people as we get closer.  Realistically, I'm not worried about Jakarta.  We will be fine.  Its a great post.

But this week I just can't knock this funk.  I can't knock this feeling that I should be gaining more control over our life in Jakarta, and that I need to be more pro-active researching my fears and fixing our problems. 

But, sigh.

Realistically, that's not going to happen either.  I don't have much disposable time, and Jakarta is still on the other side of the world and populated by strangers. 

Its time to come to peace with the unknown.  Sigh.

Such a Week!

It frequently happens that after I've been in a new place for a few months, I grow bored.  I'm not involved in anything, have nothing for myself on the calendar.  I have no responsibilities for anything except my children.  When that happens, I usually rush to find a few productive ways to use my time and am quickly too busy.

I'm surprised that its taken so long to reach this point.  I suppose that hanging out with a 3 year old, I was more able to enjoy my free time.  Or it could be that hanging out with a 3 year old, I have no time to myself.  Bored as I may be, there are no windows of time to fill with projects.

Still, I volunteered for a few things which all began this week.  The sun came out as well, and this entire week has flown beautifully past.

It began with a Shanghai Reunion.  Last week, two of the gals from ladies' Bible study in Shanghai met me at a boutique hotel in DC for a weekend full of good food, good conversation, plenty of walking and loads of the Spirit.  I came home so refreshed and eager to be with my family again.

Sports practice began this week, with Sophia playing softball and Lilly progressing in soccer.  Practices take over two evenings every week, and games will be our Saturdays for the rest of our time in Virginia.  I write it as drudgery, but we really enjoy the excuse to spend so much time in parks, on playgrounds and on the sidelines of some really fun games.

I took on a few volunteer projects, both of which require my concentration and my internet connection.  My concentration is only available in the evenings, and then it is fleeting.  Sadly, my internet connection fades most evenings and these projects are moving slower than I anticipated.


But even so, the relaxed tone set by the girls' weekend has lasted through the week.  Maybe because of the lovely spring weather, we've all been more cheerful.  Maybe because music class finished last week, and Annika and I had more free time.  We explored the National Gallery on Wednesday and we went back into the district this morning for an amazing morning of coffee, chocolate croissants and the Young Readers Center at the Library of Congress.  Someday I will have a home, and it will have a room very much like the Young Readers Center.  Bright and cheerful, with high ceilings and cozy chairs, and just the right number truly fabulous books.  It doesn't get much better than this.