Easter
We had a quiet Easter. We had district conference so we didn’t have anything special at church regarding Easter. I did find a ham for a small fortune and made potatoes, rolls and pies. We had the Willis family over to join us after church. We certainly had a feast. Those kinds of meals are really appreciated by all around here. The pleasure we get out of simple things.
Some friends of ours who have recently been to the states brought us some Easter candy, including Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs! I am hoarding the other package of 6 we didn’t eat on Easter.
I forgot to buy Mallory an Easter dress, (what’s wrong with me?) and Saturday afternoon I remembered so Luke and I stopped off at my favorite store (for Mallory) after a movie and Luke picked out a cute little pink stripped dress for her. She looked adorable and of course she loved it. When I brought it home she put it up to herself and walked all over the house like that.
I tried to find the boys new ties for Easter, but no luck. Maybe I’ll pick some up in the states this summer and save them for next year.
Mallory and Shoes
Mallory needed some new sandals. Because I had no idea what size she wore, I decided to take her with me to the store. That was a joke. This is a girl who rarely goes out because everyone mauls her. She doesn’t like to sit in her stroller at all and normally, I would just put her in there and walk around with a screaming child…thinking, she’ll get over it. Not here. No one ever lets their child cry. If the child lets out the tiniest squeak, the child is given anything he wants. So, walking around a mall with Mallory screaming and struggling to get out of her stroller brought several harsh stares from people. The only way I got her to stop was to finally get to the shoe store and put some shoes on her. She was all smiles then and wouldn’t let me take the shoes off. I finally found some that fit her and she loved them. She then saw some flip flops. She grabbed them and I put them on her. She thought she was so cool. I asked for her size and when I got them, I put them on her feet and she continued to parade around the store like she owned the place. Glancing down at her feet and admiring herself and then making sure everyone around were watching her. She was hilarious. She still loves them and had to show all of our staff as soon as we got home.
Another great thing about this place
I discovered something fantastic here. Going to the spa is wonderful and cheap!! I have had several pedicures (have it done the same time I’m getting my hair colored...it’s great) but I’ve never had a facial or anything. I went with a friend today and had my eyebrows waxed, a pedicure and a 2 hour facial all for the wonderful price of $25! I believe I’ll be doing that more often. Anyone that comes to visit…that’s the first stop.
Bikes
We have a dirt bike path just a block or so from our house. I think Creed wrote about it previously. Nash often goes there with his friends. Normally, our driver or guard go with him but a couple of weeks ago Nash was with 3 other friends and they all went without an adult. They came back all muddy and very upset. Apparently, a group of Indonesian boys were there and started bullying Nash and his friends. Rocks were thrown, words were yelled, the Indonesian boys were knocking them off their bikes. It was quite dramatic. Luckily, our driver and guard went out into the street as the boys were chasing Nash and his friends. Nash learned not to go without an adult. Funny thing was that all the bikes were muddy and so were all their shoes. Not too long after they came home and our gardener was scrubbing every ounce of dirt off the bikes and shoes! I don’t think our bikes have ever been so clean!
Family Fun Fair
The school sponsored a Family Fun Fair a couple of weeks ago. It was a great activity. The boys had so much fun with all the carnival games and treats. Everything was about .50. The school owns several of those huge blow up slides and climbing walls and things so they were all set up and were being run by the high school kids. The boys loved spending the day there and seeing all their friends. I enjoyed the real snow cones and decided my little hand crank snow cone machine just doesn’t do the job here. I need a real industrial one!! We would be the most popular family in the neighborhood.
Makassar
This is Creed. I just thought I’d put in a word or two about my trip to visit our dealer in Makassar last week (one of two dealers I have been assigned to work with on their customer satisfaction scores). Makassar is a city of about 1.5 to 2 million people on the southern end of the island of Sulawesi. I was amazed at how modern it made Jakarta look. Despite how big the city is, I really felt like I had taken a step back in time – infrastructure, buildings and the city in general were all really run down and old. Makassar has a long history as a large shipping & trading center for the region. At one point in the last 50 years it was an international port, but apparently the customs officials demanded excessive bribes, which made it much less economical for shipping companies so a lot of the shipping shifted to other ports, which put a lot of customs officials in Makassar out of work. (This is an example of typical, short-sighted, self-interested behavior that ends up hurting the people in the long run – seems to happen a lot here). The dealer there is good, though, so we had productive meetings. In between meetings the dealer took me to places to eat that are pretty famous in Makassar – a seafood restaurant for lunch (and using the word restaurant is very generous – it was more like a diner), a Chinese restaurant for dinner, then a small shop to get some noodles with a certain kind of pork for breakfast. The seafood was pretty good. We picked out the fish (on ice in coolers at the front of the store), though I didn’t really recognize what kind of fish they were, then they cooked them up for us. At the Chinese restaurant we had some strange looking fish sausage shaped into the form of a baby chick, then boiled in broth. And when they served the noodles for breakfast, the dealer made sure to tell the waiter to serve mine without the complimentary piece of intestines. Let’s just say I am glad that I didn’t get sick from the food I ate on that trip. It was interesting to see a different area of Indonesia and to see how things differ from Jakarta. I’ll probably go back there 2 or 3 more times this year to work with them on their plans to improve customer satisfaction.
