I don’t feel as if much went on, at least nothing too exciting. The volcano in Jogjakarta erupted, but as Clark put it, ‘It was a dud.’ We were kind of disappointed it wasn’t a bit more exciting. I guess the ‘keeper of the mountain,’ an old man that was appointed by the Sultan a long time ago, was right. He wouldn’t leave his home on the mountainside because he said it wasn’t going to be anything big. Maybe he does know what he was talking about. They wrote an article in the Jakarta Post about him. He says that he feels ‘at one’ with the mountain and he knows what its plans are.
Nash had his science fair this week. He did a nice job. They had a bit of a problem getting the hot air balloon to actually float for very long, but they were good at explaining why it wouldn’t float to all those that came to the booth. He ended up being at the school that day from 7:00am until 8:00pm. He was totally exhausted after it was finished.
I went with a friend to order a planter. She is Indonesian and her husband is from Michigan. Her son is in Luke’s class. She had a beautiful wooden planter box on her back patio. It was obviously an antique. I asked her where she got it and she said, ‘I will take you there.’ I told her that I could just go and she started to laugh. She then said, ‘No, no, no. Do you want to pay the ‘bule’ price or the real price?’ ‘Bule’ means ‘white person’. There are a lot of times I’ve paid the ‘bule’ price for things so it’s always nice to take an Indonesian shopping. She bargained with the store owner and I think I got a pretty good deal. They need to stain it and make an iron stand for it. It was nice to have her there with me. It’s always a trick trying to converse in half English, half Indonesian. It can be extremely frustrating.
We’ve had an exciting weekend. The Willis’ went on their 15th anniversary trip to Bali on Friday morning so we watched their four kids until after lunch today. We sure had a house full (of noise!). Our house echoes so much that is sounds like 50 people are running around, not 8. The boys had a blast though, swimming for hours, watching movies, playing games, playing soccer and several other activities.
Yesterday we took everyone, plus one extra…Spencer Powell whose sister was in a gymnastic meet all day, to see an IMAX film on Indonesia. We were all quite popular since we were the only white people there. A large school group from central Java was there also and it was fairly obvious that we were the only white people they had seen in person. Several times we were asked to stand together so pictures could be taken. I couldn’t stop laughing, especially when I counted 11 school children with their cameras out snapping photo after photo of us. Nash called them the paparazzi. We were stared at quite a bit before and after the movie.
Luke said something really funny this morning as we were driving to church. Luke and Daniel Willis were sitting in the back of our car looking at the pictures in the Book of Mormon. Daniel said, “Nephi looks strong!” and Luke immediately said very seriously, “That’s because he works out.”
We are getting so excited for Aunt Heather to come on the 31st and can’t believe we have already been here a year and that it’s time for our states visit. It will be strange to be in the US again. We have nearly forgotten what it’s like. That life seems so far away to me. We can’t wait to see everyone and be with family. We have missed everyone.
