New Years in Indonesia
We celebrated the New Year with our friends, the Willis family, at the embassy vacation home up in the mountains south of Jakarta (we went there with them in September, as well). We spent Friday (Dec 30) – Monday (Jan 2) there and had a great time. The air is so much cooler and cleaner up there, and it is great to go and just relax. The kids had a great time wandering around the property, swimming in the frigid pool, and playing games inside and out. We took the boys’ Playstation 2 and everyone ended up playing the dance game quite a bit, too. Nash is the reigning expert in our house – that boy’s got rhythm.
On Saturday we drove a short ways away to a place we had read about so that we could go on a short hike to some waterfalls. It ended up taking longer to get there than anticipated (traffic was rerouted because the President was headed to the presidential vacation house, so we had to take the long way around and it took forever. As soon as we found the correct place to park for the trailhead and got out of the car, it started raining. As we were walking past all of the stalls selling everything from produce to flipflops on the way from the parking lot to the trail (there are little stands with people selling stuff everywhere in Indonesia) we rented some umbrellas from some kids about Grant’s age. They ended up accompanying us on the whole hike and would carry the umbrellas for us if the rain let up and we didn’t need them for a while. I think it was about a 4 mile hike round trip to the waterfalls (there were actually 3 of them). Part of the hike was miserable and we were all soaked and a bit cold by the time we got back to the car, but we were glad we went. On the way back to the house we stopped at a road side stand and bought some avocadoes and bananas.
On Saturday night (New Years Eve) most of the kids tried to stay awake until midnight, but Nash was the only one who made it. Nash and the adults went to bed that night by about 12:30am and like most nights, we slept with the windows open – all of the windows have screens and, more importantly bars on them. The exterior of the house is pretty well lit and there are about 3 or 4 US embassy trained guards there, so we all felt fine about sleeping with the windows open (the bars on the windows are bolted in and are impossible to get open without making a lot of noise). I slept pretty soundly for most of the night so I missed most of the excitement I am about to tell you, but Heidi and our friends Dave & Jenny told me that at about 4:00 am, they all awoke to the sounds of footsteps – people running quickly from the side of the house to the back of the house – and to the sounds of the embassy guards yelling at someone. We found out the next morning that the guards had seen 2 people on the property near the house, probably trying to figure out if there was any way to get into the house and steal anything. We were grateful that the guards were there to patrol the property and to scare off the would-be burglars.
When Monday morning came, none of us were really ready to go back, but we left by about 9:30am to beat the traffic going back to Jakarta. We spent the rest of the day Monday taking care of things around the house, including taking down the Christmas decorations.
Yesterday (Saturday) we went to a place called Mangga Dua,w hich is a huge shopping mall consisting of 2 buildings and about 4 or 5 floors per building. You can buy all sorts of things there. We ended up getting 2 more of the cars (one for Nash and one we’ll save for Mallory when she is older), some birthday presents for the boys (MP3 players), and Heidi got a new purse. On the way back to Pondok Indah, we stopped for lunch at Chili’s (the only Chili’s in Indonesia is in downtown Jakarta, and hadn’t eaten there yet).
Today has been a pretty normal Sunday. Church was back to a normal 3-hour schedule now that most people are back in town. This afternoon Heidi has been making some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies with her $12 can of pumpkin (she finally found some canned pumpkin at one of the import grocery stores and they charge a pretty penny for it).
Well, the boys have had the last week of school off, so they have spent lots of time at the house swimming and riding on their cars in the house, as well as going to a movie, getting together with the Willis family again one day, etc. I think they will all be glad to head back to school tomorrow (including Heidi).
