Monday, September 26, 2011

Jakarta Scenes

Tanner and I went for a walk around the city today, and took some pictures of some classic scenes we see everyday as we commute around Jakarta. 
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The Blue Bajaj:  Most Bajaj’s in Jakarta are orange, but if you happen to get a blue one, they are like the Cadillac of Bajajs.  That means they probably don’t have ripped seats and you are a lot less likely to catch a disease than in the orange ones.  Also, unlike the orange bajaj where you usually prefer sticking your head out the side to breathe the still polluted and stinky Jakarta air over the internal orange bajaj air, you can actually breathe regularly inside a blue one.  BONUS! 
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Have I mentioned there are KFC’s EVERYWHERE here…I mean E V E R Y W H E R E.  The Indonesians like them some fried chicken. 
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Most of the locals eat their meals from street stalls like this one.  We don’t.  Anyone who does usually ends up taking multiple stool samples into the med unit within a few days. 
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Look at that lovely sidewalk….err road…yeah, there are almost no sidewalks here. 
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This is what I love about Jakarta.  Just when you begin to think there could not be any more of a disorganized, dirty city in the world, you see a scene like this in the middle of all the madness.  I love the diamonds in the rough. 
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Hey look!  A sidewalk!  We found one…WITH trees!  Pay no attention to the main road next to it, but you better pay attention to that grate in the middle of the pavement because there are 4  iron handles literally sticking up above the level of the sidewalk.  I have hooked my foot on one of those far too many times.  But I should count my blessings. At least it isn’t just a big square hole in the middle of the pavement which also happens quite frequently.  As a member of our ward unfortunately discovered:  if you step into one of those holes, you will break your arm. 
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If you even attempt to speak any amount of Indonesian to a random citizen on the street, you will probably get a reaction like we did from this guy above.  Indos LOVE it when Americans speak their language.
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This is a street that comes off a main road into a small residential neighborhood in the heart of the city.  No car could ever fit down that street (maybe a mini?), but no one owns one that lives here.  If they own a vehicle, it is a motorcycle. 
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If I had to pick three pictures that encompass the Jakarta landscape, these are the three.   
All in all, Jakarta definitely has some good, bad, and ugly, but we are happy here.  If you wanna see the bad and the ugly you will, and it will put you in a bad and ugly mood for sure.  We’ve all had those days.  But mostly we try to find the humor where we can and try to help where we can, and recognize the good, because it is there. 

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Happy 9th Anniversary!

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Almost to double digits!  We kept it pretty low key by just going out to dinner since we had our big trip to Vietnam coming up!   You know you’ve been married a long time when you have trouble remembering anything from before you were married!  Tanner and I both saw this quote when we were in Singapore on the metro and we liked it: 

“Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths.  No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.” Mark Twain - 25th Wedding Anniversary Quote

Guess we still have a ways to go according to Mark Twain, but at nine, we think it is pretty great. 

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Clark Starts Soccer

In Kindergarten here, they don’t offer school sponsored after school activities, but they do have quite a few well organized parent sponsored activities that the school also supports.  We signed Clark up for the U7 soccer league here and Tanner also signed up to be an assistant coach.  It has been really great to watch Clark learn and grow as he has started playing sports.  It is great to see him enjoy being part of a team and working together.  It is fun to see his skill improving steadily and even nice to see him work through disappointments.  It is the worst as a parent to see your kid put in as goalie and then get scored on.  They are so disappointed, but we are so proud when they can take it in stride and keep working hard.  They have practice once a week and then games early Saturday mornings.  It has been good to get the family going on Saturday, and I enjoy taking the whole family to watch Clark.  I really think it is important for siblings to support each other in the activities they are involved in and Andrew in particular likes to watch Clark and cheer for him. 

 

The week before Soccer started, a few families from our ward all got together and went over to the school on a Saturday and played together.  It was really fun and all the kids schooled the parents playing capture the flag afterward! 

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Clark is on Team Spain.  They have a lot of team pride and apparently a lot of pride for Burger King and McDonalds too since for some reason they do a team cheer for them too every week (maybe they are just hoping that’s where their parents will take them to lunch after the game?).

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