Mallory’s emergency room visit last Saturday was just the first in a series of interesting events in the past few days. On Monday morning on the way to work I was in a minor traffic accident. Luckily we weren’t going too fast – it was stop & go traffic on the toll road and we were stopped but the truck behind us wanted to go. My driver got out of the car and yelled at the driver of the truck that hit us, and then we headed into work. Fortunately nobody was hurt and the damage to our car was minimal.
That same morning Heidi got a call from the school saying that Nash needed to picked up and taken to the doctor. The school nurse told Heidi that Nash would likely need stitches – he had fallen and hit his knee on something at the playground and had a 2 inch cut just below his knee. Luckily, when Heidi took Nash into the clinic, they told him he probably didn’t need stitches – they just bandaged it up.
On Wednesday on the way to work (I was driving with a different driver this time), a policeman on the highway waved at us to pull us over. As we stopped at the side of the road, the driver pulled out his vehicle registration and I noticed him grab 20,000 Rupiah (about $2.30) from the cupholder (where he keeps a stash of cash for tolls & parking). I saw him talk to the cop, who said that my driver hadn’t signaled when he changed lanes or something very minor. My driver had his back to me as he was talking to the cop, but when he got back in the car, I asked him if he had paid the cop. Sure enough, he had given the cop 20,000 Rupiah. I have heard this is very commonplace in Indonesia, but this was my first experience with it.
Thursday evening we went to the school to see Grant in an Earth Day program. Grant's class, Grade 2, and the Grade 4 class sang a bunch of songs and had a slide show or two, and a couple of kids talked briefly. Afterward we were going to go outside and hug a tree, but it was raining so we decided not to.
On Friday afternoon I was in a conference room for a meeting. Just before the meeting started, someone noticed a picture on the wall starting to sway. It took me a few seconds, but then I noticed everything shaking, too. It was definitely a small earthquake and it didn’t last more than 20 or 30 seconds. I read a news article today that it was a 5.6 magnitude quake with an epicenter at the southern end of the island of Sumatra, about 160km away. I don't think it caused much damage anywhere.
Saturday was nice because it wasn't too busy. We had a few things to do in the morning (doctor check ups for Nash and Mallory), soccer practice/game for Luke, and then in the afternoon Nash’s friend came over to work on their science project for school.
