Friday 30 August 2013

transportation - check!


We bought a scooter today, which will be our main form of transportation while we are here. So excited, even though, we won’t be allowed to drive it till after we have been here for two months (so still three weeks to go, but who is counting, right? :-)

 inspecting it thoroughly before buying

first scooter we both own!

Thursday 29 August 2013

more new things

Today was another day filled with seeing new things.
Our language helper took us to a plantation and we saw lots of God's awesome creation.

 beautiful flowers

 weird looking fruit
 huge cactus

 We have really enjoyed getting to know our teammates and our language helper better

 this was the view from the plantation - not bad at all!

 on our way to the plantation we walked by a house that had totally collapsed and people were using it now as a place to dumb their trash

This struck me as a bid odd - a grave yard with a clothesline going right through it 
- well, as they taught us:
It is not wrong, it is different!


Wednesday 28 August 2013

unwanted visitors

This post was always going to be written, I was just wondering how long it would take for it to happen.

Today we had our first ant invasion and that in a place we would have never guessed.
We wanted to print out a few copies in order to get our driver licenses here and this is what we found...

yes, that is our scanner/printer and ants (and their eggs) have made it their home. 

Since cables are often just let down from a drilled hole in the roof, it apparently was an invitation to these little creepers to get right in there and get cozy...

A friend helped us to get the printer to a shop where they will try to clean and hopefully save it...

Tuesday 27 August 2013

some visual aids

Today we went with one of the ladies who is helping us learning the language to her neighborhood and we saw, smelled and heard new and unfamiliar things. 

So that you can imagine what it was like, here some visual aids :-)

 kids taking a bath (and most likely also skipping school as somebody told us :-))

 same water, a woman doing her laundry. 
We were told that some people, even though they might have a laundry sink or washing machine at home still prefer to wash their clothes in this public water because the like to hang out there with all the other people.
(I actually understand, this ladies soap smelled nice and it seemed very tempting to stand up to your knees in water while chatting to your friends)

 meat market - that was a test for my stomach, but the lady on the right did not seem to mind, 
she took a nap right next to her chopping block... hey, I am not judging!

 getting a haircut, who needs a closed room for that? totally overrated!

 typical neighborhood corner store

 little artificial creek running through this neighborhood

if you look closely, can you see what is "wrong" with this ladder?

Monday 26 August 2013

Stage 1

This morning we officially started our Stage 1 of Language study after finishing up with "warm up".
This week we get to go out with our local friends and helpers to experience culture events such as visiting people, driving in Public transportation, going to the market and so on.
We will try to take many pictures during those events so that we can learn words (right now mostly nouns, verbs and adjectives) from those pictures in our language helper sessions, which we will start next week. So exciting and so exhausting at the same time!

After enjoying some freshly made bread rolls for supper together (thank you Kristine!) we went on to file and plan (for the next day).  
We are already a good team!
(that is because it feels like Kristine is doing most of the work :-))

Sunday 25 August 2013

her own shop

Our neighborhood has lots of little stores and the name of one of them caught our eye.

she already has a store named after her :-)

Thursday 22 August 2013

painting, melons and a guitarist

Our internet was gone for a while but now it is back and I can finally blog again.

This week is our last week of warm up and starting Monday we will have language tutor sessions 4 days a week. We are looking forward to finally getting started on those, but we are also enjoying the last days of getting settled.

One of the things we did for making our house more into our home is painting Alia's room.
When we got here, her room was the grey color in the bottom that made the room very dark. So today we slapped a couple of light grey and light purple coats of paint on the wall, and voila, a girly room!

I am working on curtains right now - 
when they are done I am sure I will be so proud I will blog about it :-)

We also went to the market today, there are so many different new smells and sights to get used to. Since we cannot share the smells with you (and trust me, you don't want me to :-)) here you get to see an unfamiliar sight.

I didn't even know they came in different colors

Another new thing for us is that every once in a while a guitarist comes to our house and sings a song. It is generally expected to give about 20 cents for the performance. 

He sang very well, but I really wanted to ask if I could tune his guitar, but then again, that could have been really offensive, apart from the fact that I would not have had a clue how to say that :-)

Sunday 18 August 2013

a productive sunday

After going to church this morning and of course not understanding anything had a fairly productive Sunday with lots of chilling in between :-).

 Kristine came over and we made cinnamon rolls. It was the first time that I used a box oven (metal box you stick on your gas burner) and it was more or less a success.

I also cut Erlend's hair and gave him a motorcycle helmet cut :-), now he has the hair cut, the helmet, the only thing missing is a bike.

Alia loves the feel of it 

We also had our friends over for dinner and now after cleaning up it is time for a shower and bed, that is if little princess finally goes to sleep....

Saturday 17 August 2013

Independence Day

Today this country is celebrating their Independence Day, so we went to the city square to watch some kind of ceremony or parade (they were not really moving a lot (more marching) but for a lack of a better word...).

lots of marching, saluting, and people fainting because it was so hot

 While we watched Erlend bought me a balloon, that man sure knows the way to my heart :-)

after all the "parade" was over we were asked if we wanted to meet and shake hands with the mayor - sure we did! 

We even got invited to have lunch at the mayor's house


Alia fell asleep on the way home


this is a meal that Erlend got to enjoy with all the men in our little neighborhood yesterday evening, 
it is a specialty for this holiday 

Thursday 15 August 2013

warm up

I have not been blogging the last two days because I could not move a lot due to a pinched nerve. At some point I was just a sobbing, curled up, unable to move wimp on the floor... not fun.
Since I cannot treat myself I took lots of painkillers and a friend also took me to a Japanese massage place where a tiny Asian lady squeezed my back with an impressive amount of strength. I am not quite there yet, but feeling much better.

These few weeks after getting to the country are called "warm up" in the program we are doing and our main goal is it to get our ears tuned to the language, get familiar with our neighborhood and learn to use public transport and go shopping.

Today two ladies from our team and I went to buy some paint and curtain fabric so we can make our house into our homes.

Part of the way to the store we drove in one of these things. I forget what they are called but basically it is a bicycle with a seat in the front.

it is always fun to hang with this awesome friend!

Monday 12 August 2013

great view

Today was one of the few days since we have been here, that the weather was good enough to see the the mountain that is close to our city. It is called Mount Merbabu (over 3000m high) and actually it is an inactive volcano. That explains the name which means Mountain of Ash.

can you see it in the distance?

Saturday 10 August 2013

Alia special

I know, I know, we are one of those parents who love posting pictures of their kid, so WARNING:
If you get annoyed by that, just don't read this post, ok?

To all others, I have a few cute pictures to share and progress to brag about :-).

While Erlend and I are trying to understand and learn as much culture and language as possible, we sometimes forget that everything is new for Alia, too.
She has done so well with the transition, we are very thankful and proud of her.

Here some pictures of what Alia has mastered in the last two weeks:


 making friends quickly and being ok with being held by anybody

 chilling in a high chair

 eating rice porridge

 sharing things

falling asleep in public transportation

Friday 9 August 2013

more visits

Today we got to visit even more people. Our friendly neighbor lady (I have the feeling that I will be writing a lot about her so I will just call her Ibu S. from now on - Ibu is kind of the word for Mrs. or a respectful way to address a woman) came over to our house and told us that she wanted to take us to a few neighbors houses to visit them and wish them a happy holiday and, of course, to eat lots of food.

It was lots of fun (and a bit awkward because of our lack of language) to visit everybody.

we were very thankful that our co-workers, 
who already speak Indonesian joined us and translated a bit for us

When we went to the different houses we noticed that Ibu S. would go to the elderly people living there and bow down and hold their hands and whispering something, then the old people would whisper something back.
As far as we understand, this holiday has something to do with forgiving each other and so we think that Ibu S. always asked the hosts for their forgiveness for anything that they had done wrong to them.

It will be so nice when we understand a little bit more about this culture.

Tonight we were invited to a game night at a American co-workers house and after visiting so many people today it was nice to not have to think too much about cultural do's and don'ts. 
It can get really exhausting when you always have to check how you are sitting (for example, it is considered very rude to sit in a way that the sole of your foot is showing or you are not supposed to cross your arms in front of you body...). Of course actually being able to speak to your hosts is also always nice :-).



Thursday 8 August 2013

visits

Today we visited a local family which is THE thing to do during this holiday. Our host is the favorite driver (you can rent a car plus driver for a whole day here for about 30 Euros) of our whole organization here and he invited a whole bunch of us. Apparently it helps your status among your neighbors if you know lots of "whities" especially if they all come over to your house :-).

you all sit on the floor (sometimes on sofas if they have them) and they give you looooots of food (crackers, cookies, rice, chicken and soft drinks)

When we came home from our visit at Pak W.'s house we did not feel like retiring for the evening yet so we asked our German friends who moved here just a week after us if they wanted to hang out.

We are so thankful that we have both Norwegian and German co-workers here, 
it definitely helps the homesickness.

Wednesday 7 August 2013

Idul Fitri

Today marks the beginning of Idul Fitri, the most important holiday of the year here, you could compare it to our Christmas. After a month of fasting they now celebrate, tonight with a parade, fireworks and drums and they will continue to celebrate by visiting family, friends and neighbors.

Since we have only been here for a few days we don't know much about what is going on, but we understand that it is also a time when everyone apologizes for whatever they may have done wrong.

I think officially people celebrate for about a week, but our neighbor told me today that it might also go on for much longer, if they feel like it.


the parade with a boat float going by our house

Erlend went to the boss of our neighborhood today to as this is expected from everybody who moves to a new area. Erlend was told that, even though we do not speak the language yet, we are expected to walk around the neighborhood and smile and greet people because that is seen as the polite and respectful thing to do. We are looking forward to the day when we can communicate with words and not just smiles...





Tuesday 6 August 2013

learning with hand and feet

We were sitting outside our house this afternoon after our first trip to town by ourselves (well, with two other newbies). Two girls, who had been at our house before, came by and colored a bit. I wrote down some numbers on a piece of paper and asked them to read them to me. (not with words, I just pointed at it) One girl, little Runis, read them in English to me and I was impressed, but really I wanted to hear the numbers in "our new language".  

They were more than happy to say them to me and even wrote them out for us.

 We had bought a book that is originally meant for people here to learn English (and Mandarin), but it works the other way around, too, so I brought it out and we had lots of fun pointing at pictures and them saying the words. (the girls rolled on the floor laughing when I used the word mustache and baby Alia together )
We are not technically supposed to try to speak this language yet, because we are still in the stage where we should just tune our ears to the different sounds (and boy, some of them are different!). But I still had a go at repeating some of the words and the girls would not let me get away with any mispronunciation - they will be great language helpers! 

While I was talking to the girls, our neighbor came over as well. She is a very friendly lady (and our landlord or is it landlady then?) who loves to hold Alia and the fact that we don't understand a single word of her language does not keep her from chatting away while using all kinds of gestures.

We ended up using google translate to chat a bit with her and she wants to come again to talk and even take us to the other neighbors so that we can "talk" to them as well.

We are so happy that we are finally here and can learn this language, but we realize more and more that there is a loooong road ahead of us. We have to swallow our pride, be willing to make a fool of ourselves, work really hard as we will be learning bit by bit.

Please pray for us and our language learning - we need God's grace and your prayers A LOT!


Sunday 4 August 2013

out and about

Today we went our for lunch with a family who has also just arrived here. The wife grew up here so she speaks the language already which helps a lot when you go to a restaurant that does not have a menu. It was either one bowl of soto ayam (chicken soup), or two soto ayam or three... well you get it.

the big plastic containers have different kind of crackers in them that you can also have with the meal
(the Asian kind of bread basket if you will :-))

 chicken soup with rice and bean spreads, and optional some pickled eggs on a stick

 
if we look a bit squeezed that is because we were, there were 21 people in this mini van

Friday 2 August 2013

Guests

Today we enjoyed having our first guest for lunch. Cinta is going to help us with language and culture study and we are already getting along great (she is a Bayern München supporter, what more can I say? :-)).
After lunch I saw that there were a few young girls hanging out in our front yard, they wanted to see "the white baby". I asked them if they wanted to stay, hang out and color a bit. They did and so we spent the next hour outside sitting and watching them enjoy some fun coloring stuff I had bought at IKEA for exactly such occasions.

Thankful for the friends we are making!

everybody always takes their shoes of in front of the porch - learning little things like that everyday

Thursday 1 August 2013

immigration

Today we had to go to a bigger town to get our immigration finalized. I was so impressed how smooth everything went. There were 4 of us who needed to get all their papers in order and we were in and out of the immigration office in under 20 minutes.

We used the opportunity to get some shopping done there. At the mall Alia decided to completely soil herself from head to toe, so we had to go and buy her something new as I had forgotten her change of clothes. I thought "wenn schon, denn schon" (sorry, that one is untranslatable) and we got her a nice "Batik" dress that is very customary to this area.

She still sticks out and turns a lot of heads because of her white skin. Thankfully she does not mind all the attention, check squeezing and leg rubbing

(and yes, that is a McDonald's sign in the background)