This week has flown by. It is hard for us to believe we have been in Jakarta for 7 months already. Before we know it, we’ll be talking about moving back to the US.
The boys had Monday & Tuesday off school at the beginning of this week. Tuesday was a national holiday – the Muslim New Year – so I did not have work. The Muslim New Year falls at the same time of year as the Chinese New Year, which seems to be a bigger deal here than the Muslim New Year. A sizable portion of Indonesians are of Chinese decent (15%???), but there is a history of discrimination against ethnic Chinese, even to the point of violence against people with Chinese ancestry (as recently as 1998 there were riots in parts of Jakarta, with ransacking / looting of shops and homes in areas densely populated with the Chinese). Anyway, this year several shopping malls and restaurants decorated for the Chinese New Year – a sign that relations between the Chinese and the other ethnic groups in Indonesia are improving.
So on Monday evening we got together with two other families in the ward for a Chinese New Year Dinner (the family who hosted it lived in Hong Kong for 3 or 4 years). They do a lot of Chinese New Year traditions, but the ones we did with them that night were: a 7 course meal, tying a wish to an orange and lobbing it up into a big tree, and envelopes with money for the kids. It was good food and we had a good time learning about Chinese customs.
Luke’s birthday
Wednesday was Luke’s 6th birthday. We kept things pretty low key that day – served him his favorite meals for breakfast (scrambled eggs & sausage) and dinner (stroganoff), and then had cake & ice cream and presents for him. On Friday after school he invited his entire Prep Senior class plus a few other kids to a birthday party at a place near the mall here that hosts kids’ parties. They did tons of different types of games with the kids, fed them some dinner, then had cupcakes. On our way home from the party Luke said that he had a great time, but that it was not his favorite time ever, because in order for it to have been the greatest day, he would have had to have been all alone in a really beautiful place eating really good food. It was interesting to hear what his version of paradise is.
Last day of baseball
The last baseball practices and games were held this week. All of the boys have enjoyed it (some more than others, and some more at some times than at others), but we are really looking forward to having our Saturday’s free now. We’ll have to see who will want to do it again next year.
Grant’s quote
Tonight as we were trying to get the boys to finish cleaning up their toys and get upstairs to bed, Grant and Luke were arguing over something and I asked them to stop arguing. Grant persisted in telling me something that Luke was doing was wrong, and that by the time Grant was Luke’s age, he wasn’t making those types of mistakes. I told Grant to try to be a little more understanding of his brother and told him that we all have our challenges. Grant went up a few stairs, turned around, and said, “well, Dad, I am at the point in my life where I don’t have any” (meaning challenges). Oh, how I wish that were true (not just for him, but for me, as well). For the record Grant is a very good kid, but is not without his own challenges.
