Letter: 24 February 2007

It’s been a few weeks since we last wrote. We have dried out from the floods and so has the city, although there are still many problems because of it.

We had quite a few leaks in our house with all the rain so we had the landlord come and take a look at everything a couple of weeks ago. We had black mold growing in several spots on our ceilings and walls and our staff had several inches of water in their kitchen and bedrooms after the rain.

Our house was gutted and rebuilt right before we moved in, so the landlord brought the original contractor over so they were both able to talk about what to do and see everything. Now, for the past two weeks several workers have been in our house every day fixing things. I laugh every night when they leave after seeing what they’ve done. It’s really interesting to see what they think will fix the problems. I have no confidence at all that what they did (tearing up our bathroom ceiling, completely taking the tub out of the guest bathroom and then reinstalling it, drilling countless holes, making huge holes in the balcony floors and putting a pipe down to the ground and sealing up cracks) will fix any of the problems. We will see. They just don’t do things very logically here.

We celebrated Grant’s birthday on the 11th. He and Nash had to go to a strings bash at school that day after church and then we came home, opened presents, and had cake. He had a great birthday. A couple of days before, he invited two friends to go rock climbing and to dinner.

Nash has been very busy with the middle school musical, Flapper. He has one of the key parts and they have had rehearsals almost every day after school. The performances are this next week. We are excited to see him perform.

Luke has just finished up a transportation unit at school. During which, he was able to ride in several traditional Indonesian transports: the bajaj, delman, and becak. The school has the drivers come to the parking lot of the school and spend the entire day taking kids around. It’s a great way for the kids to experience it in a safe environment.

They also had bike day. They shut the school parking lot down and the kids ride around for over an hour. They had a blast and were completely wiped out by lunch time. It was a great day.

Mallory is enjoying her swimming lessons and has made a lot of progress recently. She can go under and swim about a meter to the side of the pool then pull herself up and out of the pool. She loves to be in the water and especially loves to jump in. She stands up on the side and tells me to scoot back so she can jump farther.

Mallory has also begun to say her own prayers. I have to try so hard not to crack up. The other night I was putting her to bed and decided to let her say the prayer completely by herself. She started correctly and then began saying, “tank tee for…um…my bruders, tank tee for um…Mommy and Daddy, tank tee for Ann (one of her nursery teachers), for um.( I could tell she was looking around the room) da door, and bed and um my flip flop…’ this went on for some time and I couldn’t stop laughing.

Creed took the kids all up to the school last Saturday to play in the big soccer field and run around the track. Nash and Grant started to run and to his surprise, Mallory was right with them. She ran one whole lap around the track without stopping. I think Creed said she could have gone more. She loves to be with her brothers and has to do everything they do.

This is Creed. One more thing: last Sunday on the way home from church we got in a small car accident. We were driving on one of the many very narrow roads near our house when our driver’s side rear view mirror was hit by an on-coming car. It was interesting to see how this sort of thing is handled in this culture. A lot of people were standing on the side of the roads and saw or heard the impact. Cartim, our driver, pulled over to the side of the road as soon as he could. Before he could stop, though, about 4 or 5 guys ran down the street after the other car to get that car to stop (it continued going another 100 meters or so). We watched out the back of the car window as Cartim ran to catch up with the other car. When Cartim got there, the driver of the other car tried to drive away, but he ended up hitting a motorcycle. There was a bit of a scuffle, during which Cartim punched the other driver, reached his hand in the car, turned off the ignition, and took the keys out of the car in order to control of the situation. After a lot of talking, Cartim and the other driver came back to our car. They looked at the damage to our window, talked some more, and then talked with me. We settled on an amount that the other driver would pay us for the damage: 1 million rupiah (about US $100). Cartim followed the other guy to an ATM for him to withdraw the money from his account. As I said, it was very interesting to see how they handle things like this here. We’re just glad that nobody was hurt from the car accident.

Feb 2007: Luke's transportation day

Luke with his friend in a becak for transportation day.

Here's Luke riding in the back of a delman.

And last, but not least, the bajaj.

Grant performing with the elementary school beginning strings group at the Strings Bash.

Feb 2007: Photos - Grant's Birthday, Mallory, and the Tailor

Mallory with a cheesy smile.

Mallory always goes on walks in the neighborhood with Kus (in the background). Sometimes she takes her Cabbage Patch doll in the stroller on the walk with her.

Here's a photo of the tailor who comes through the neighborhood 2 or 3 times per week. As you can see in the picture, he has a sewing machine mounted to a 3-wheeled bicycle. He rides around and does small mending and repair jobs for people. However, I don't think he is a licensed Levi's distributor, as the writing on his bike would lead you to believe.

Strange expressions on everyone's faces for this family photo on Grant's 9th birthday, but its the best photo we have.

Feb 2007: Photos of Luke's bike day and field trip to the transport museum

Here's Luke on the back of a tandem bike with his teacher, Mrs. Clark, on Grade One Bike Day.

This is Luke's class during their visit to the transport museum at Taman Mini. Luke is on the back row on the right side wearing his orange Team Belgium hat from his soccer team.

Feb 2007: Photos of Gideon, an Atlas Moth, and the Muse Concert

One of Grant's recent creations: Gideon Frame, the robot, complete with matchbox cars attached to the bottom for wheels.

An Atlas moth spent the evening at our house, flying around outside on the porch by our living room. The boys were pretty amazed to see in person a moth they had only read about it books.

Friday night I took Nash to see the band Muse perform at a stadium here in Jakarta. He was pretty nervous to go, not knowing what to expect and how loud the music might be. We both enjoyed the show. Luckily, it was pretty tame. After the show, I made Nash go up on a little platform and stand by card board cutouts of the band members. He was embarrassed.

Feb 2, 2007 - Jakarta Flood

It rained nearly every day last week, but only a few hours each day until Thursday night. It started raining at 8:00 PM that night, and it didn't stop until 1:00 PM on Friday. When we woke up at 6 AM on Friday (the electricity was out, by the way) we went outside on Luke's & Grant's balcony and saw that the river across the street from us had risen over its banks and over the road in front of our house. At that point the water was up to the gate to our driveway in front of our house (it had been a little bit higher earlier in the morning). It was one of the most incredible things we have ever seen. Luckily, by mid morning the water level was low enough so that the street in front of our house was clear. School was cancelled on Friday and I didn't go in to work. I heard nightmare reports of 3 to 5 hour commutes to get from our end of the town into city.

Because the power was out, we spent most of the day indoors, talking with other people (from work, friends, etc) about the flooding around different parts of the city. The power at our house went back on at about 3:00 pm. Luke had some friends over in the afternoon, and in the evening Heidi and I went to the mall to eat dinner, and then go to a movie with some friends. It was strange to see the mall so empty.

Saturday we had a few things going on - Luke attended a birthday party, we did some grocery shopping, and Grant had a rehearsal for the school musical. Today, Sunday, we went to church - our numbers were lower than normal because some people's routes were blocked because of continued flooding. I continued to get updates from people at work about their situation. The homes of many people at work are flooded (I have received reports of between 5 cm and 1.5 meters in the homes of Ford employees here). Apparently 200,000 people have been evacuated from their homes, and thousands more have water damage. It'll be interesting to see how many people make it in to work tomorrow and to see how bad the roads are.

Friday morning when the water in front of our house had gone down, we went on a walk around the neighborhood to see what things looked like. The photo below is of the street right next to ours. Many of the homes at the end of the street had half a foot or more of water in them.

Feb 2, 2007 - Jakarta Flood

This is the end of the street next to ours. The river is on the right. As you can see, it has risen over the banks and crossed the fence and onto the road.

Feb 1, 2007: Luke's 7th Birthday

On Thursday, February 1, Luke turned 7. He opened his presents from the family in the morning before school, because after school he had a party with his friends at the American Club. About 20 kids showed up, and they did a bunch of games outside with water balloons, toilet paper, slime, whipped cream, etc. They had a great time. The kids also swam for a while, then had pizza, cake, and ice cream. They were a bit disorganized, but I don't think the kids really noticed.