Nasi kuning

A couple of days ago our car needed to go to the garage to have a part changed and on the way back Alia, our friend that helped us get back home and I stopped at a warung (small cafe/shop) to eat what is in this town a traditional breakfast.

Nasi kuning means yellow rice, and I guess the name needs no explanation since the rice is yellow...

It comes with a pickled egg, a chicken leg and what is best explaied as shredded beef.

First you wash your hands in the little bowl of water that is provided with each meal

And then you decide to eat with cutlery or to just dig in with your fingers.

Its a nice little meal, and since I like meat for breakfast, I liked this. 

Anne prefers bread with nutella... there's unfortunately no warung that sells that here though...

It is now officially less likely that we'll get killed in traffic!!!

Which means: We bought a car!

First we had to transfer US dollars from our Norwegian bank account to our friends account here in AP. So basically we had to buy dollars with our kroner, and then use those to buy rp here.

Then we went to the bank, and got it all in cash

Its the first time I have been holding that many millions in my hand

When we got to the sellers place, they wanted to count it... we sat there for quite a while watching them trying to count many hundreds on banknotes, before...

...a clever employee (who deserves a raise for this) brought them their counting machine. The machine counted everything in a minute or two, and probably saved us an hours wait.

When the counting was over, the seller probably felt rich and I felt broke, but very happy to have a car because traffic in this town is absolutely insane!
Every single day we see things happening which is just pure luck does not end in a death. Driving on the wrong side of the road is very normal, kids think it is cool to drive their bikes with the lights turned off at night, stopping at red lights seem optional, cars only stop for bikes if not doing so ends in a horrific accident, vehicles in the left lane who are blinking left might actually turn to the right right in front of you, and so on... 

I actually to some degree enjoy the slightly organized chaos type traffic, but sometimes it is just plain dangerous.

 So we decided, and I assume most people understand, driving around town on a motorbike with four people on it was not the way to go, especially since two of those people would be our kids... hence that, we introduce the Toyota Kijang!

For those who couldn't care less about cars; here's a cute picture of Max

Question

I took this picture in a grocery store today, and my question is, which chicken do you think is the most expensive? The fat ones on the left, or the skinny ones on the right?

Most of you probably guessed it just because I bothered asking the question, and yes: the one on the right costs about 20% more...

Why? According to people we have asked, the higher price, and lower weight, is worth it because the skinny one apparently tastes a lot better.

I still haven't had the chance to compare them, so I guess I'll have to take their word for it.

(By the way: usually you'll find a selection of chicken hearts, livers and feet next to the whole ones)

ikan bakar

Today we went to the beach with lots of friends for a swim and some grilled fish. Its about 40 minutes drive from our house. There are other beaches closer, but this is a particularly nice one.

Just a few meters from the water, we parked all of our stuff and set up camp next to this cafe/kiosk.

They had a cooler full of ice and in there they had fresh fish, shrimp and squid

When we had ordered, they fired up the grill

All the guys, from at least 7 different countries

The finished product, served with rice and usually chili sauce, but not for me... I'm sorry, but I still really don't like chili

Before and after the food we swam in nice, warm water. The snorkeling is amazing, its like being inside one of the tropical tanks at an aquarium. 

Here you can see how close our table was to the beach.

Sooo... does anyone want to come and visit?

Alia, our little traveler

Our daughter Alia has had a life on the move...

Since she was born we have lived in 6-7 houses in 3 countries, and even though she's only 2 years old she has flown 46 times and visited 11 countries.

The good thing is that she seem to love it. When we flew back to Asia earlier this year, we had 4 flight connections, and after every single one, she looked at us, and asked "nohh ma?" In her kind of German that means "one more time?" When we said "yes, we still have to fly again," and went to the next gate, she ran around jumping and pointing at the airplanes outside while singing "fyhh!! fyhh!" (It supposed to be "fly," but, hey, close enough for a two year old) 

And also, for a while after we had moved back to AP, she would ask for "fyh" (Airplane, in her version of Norwegian) everytime we left the house.

Also, when we play volleyball on sundays, next to our organizations hangar at the airport, she jumps and screams of joy every time she sees a plane land or take of, or if she gets to go to the hangar and look at the stuff there.

Today I was showing her a map of the world, and...

She pointed at Australia and said "Alia!" with a big smile.

(She also pointed at Saudi Arabia and said "mama"... not quite sure what that means..

Then, later on, when she was allowed to play with the ipad, she immediately opened her travel app, and is now packing virtual suitcases and helping people through security.

Anne and I are just very happy that she doesn't hate traveling, because we are probably still going to be doing a lot of that...

what a day right now looks like

We arrived in our new home city three weeks ago. We have been busy getting our apartment set up and dealing with the effects of all of us adjusting to being back here (which mostly consists of being tired, sweaty and/or grumpy).
This is just going to be a picture dump of what we have been up to.

A 'normal' afternoon might look like this:

 There seem to be an average of 2-4 power cuts a day here (that means no Air conditioning or fans in 35 C heat, food will rot in your fridge, no internet, in some cases no running water etc.) - so having a generator is great. Our friend's generator has been acting up for some time and after trying many different things to fix it we drove it across town to a specialized generator fixing store.

 Driving here is not anything like driving in our home countries 

and it can cause some serious road rage

the generator store

The guys new exactly what was wrong with it, did not even have to unload to fix it

 We also had to drop by the guy who is building some kitchen counters for us since our apartment does not have a real kitchen

 it is still really challenging for us to communicate complicated things like kitchen design in this language - we hope the counters will fit :-)

 Alia was more thrilled to be in the wood shop than it looks like

We also went to look at a car that we possibly might buy.

Thanks to the Norwegian government which gives money to every child born in their country, we can afford to buy a car here, which is great considering that the alternative would be all four of us on a bike with Max not wearing a helmet yet since he cannot even hold up his own head yet. 

Well, thank you, Norway!

"Fishing" and a very cool dinner

Today we saw something that we had heard about, and that was the "fishing" that sometimes goes on in the... well, ditch, quite large ditch, with a strong current, outside our house.

First we noticed a guy pulling some wires around at the side of the road

So, after parking the car, I went back out there to have a look. I asked if i could take some pictures, and the guys had no problems with that.

The wires the one guy had been pulling around were attached to this little generator... do you see where this is going?

Yes, exactly, they had a metal rod they were sticking down into the water, basically zapping the fish so they would float to the surface.

And when that happened, the other guy would catch them with a little net.

Unusual, but effective. I didn't actually see any of the fish they caught, because I had to get ready to go to a dinner we had been invited to.

We had been invited to this couples house. 

This is a family from a village far into the mountains that had the gospel shared to them by people from our organization many, many years ago. They now have a thriving church and have sent out many missionaries of their own. This couple have moved into town to have better access to the material and help they need to do translation work that helps the outreach program going on.

It is so cool to see these guys serving the Lord, and it is an honor to be able to call them our co-workers, and we hope, Lord willing, to someday be able to help them in their work, we just need to get this language study done. Now how is that for motivation to get cracking on new vocabulary?