Going Through A Lot of Hassell

Well, Mads started school.  I did everything I could to stop it, but it happened anyway.

He was excited!  I was so happy about that, because all summer he was saying he didn't want to go to school.  I forced the girls to say only great things about school.  I think it may have worked.

He liked his first day.  When we were talking about it, he told me his teacher was mean.  I was surprised and asked him if she got mad or yelled, or said mean things or if he got in trouble.  He said no to all those things and then said, "Because recess isn't very long."

 Love this picture.  He looks genuinely afraid.  Of BA.

This is Mads' 2nd week, and he leaves for school not wanting to go, but comes home happy and excited.  That boy does not like to be woken up.  It takes me a good 15-20 minutes to get him out of bed.  And finally, when he gets up, I usually have to get him dressed myself and put his breakfast in his mouth.  He is not very willing to be productive in the morning.

Yesterday I asked him what he likes about school.  He told me recess and playing with toys.  It is so strange for me to have a boy in school.  It is a totally different experience.  But when I asked him if he likes reading and art and music, he said yes to all those things.

He told me this morning that there is a boy who is not fun to play with because all he talks about is Star Wars.  I wonder what kids think about Mads talking about Mario games all the time...

He is excited to start math.  He says, "I want to show off my skills!"  He is trying to be funny of course.

On the first day, I only cried on the way there a little.  It helped that he was happy and excited.

That night at dinner, while everyone was chatting, I realized (again, I'm sure I've realized this before) that we can never go back to the way things were.  Now four of my kids have this whole other life outside our home, and it is a little hard to move on.  All I can do is hope we've done a good job at teaching them to choose the right.

His teacher is from New Zealand and South Africa, so she has an accent.  We thought it was funny yesterday when he told us about the star he brought home.  He said he got it because, "I gave it a go."  I can't wait to hear all the other phrases he picks up.

I've always wanted to use that spell

Whoever was mad at Indonesia, and took the movies away, got over their issues.  So movies are back!  People who were around before the movies were taken away would talk about the theaters, and the movie watching experience, like some long lost friend that they couldn't stand being parted from.  They assured me they would come back, and I would love it.  I did!  I saw the final, very sad, Harry Potter movie.  I just couldn't look at that poor sad baby anymore!  Or when Harry watched Snape's memories... yes, there were tears.

 Do I look cozy?  I'm not going to lie, the blanket was a nice touch.  I wasn't hungry, but they give you menus and you can order food just like a restaurant.  They bring you drinks too.  Get this... all for around 5 bucks!  So awesome.  I can't wait to take the kids to see Kung Fu Panda next week!

It was ours, then it wasn't, then it was again.

Move out...

 One last picture with our view.

 Good-bye Pakobu-LAME-O!

Move in...

 The table all the stuff is on, is the dining room.  The room where G is, is the family room.

I didn't take the best pictures of our house.  I didn't take them with the intention of sharing them.  But since a few people asked, these are what I have right now.

Garage.

The same day we moved in, our air shipment arrived.  It was nice, but I realized how little 1000 pounds can be.

Those young men took every item that was in those boxes, unwrapped them carefully, and put them exactly where I asked them.  And they were all smiles.  It was awesome.  Oh, they took all the paper and boxes away too.

 Here is the front room.  I haven't figured out what to call it yet.  Living room?

 This has been dubbed the Sun Room.  I think it's everyone's favorite.
Those snacks the kids are eating are L.A. Bears.  Isn't that an awesome name?  Things like that make Asia so fun.  Anyway, they are like chocolate Teddy Grahams, but with no artificial ingredients.  And they are dirt cheap!  Each of those bags cost about 1600 rupiah, which is like 18 cents.  It's weird.  Sometimes I don't get the pricing for things here.  Too bad I can only find them in one store, and it was close to the apartment.

 Here's the family area upstairs.  Don't know what to call this room either.

The boys were so happy to play with some of their toys.  It had been almost 3 months.  Three months with only the luggage we took on the plane.  That's a  l o n g  t i m e.  Thank you to all those people who advised us to max out our luggage allowance.

Here's the little neighborhood. 

As soon as the scooters came out of the box, the kids were riding them.  It is a pretty bumpy ride, but no one's complaining.

 And the pool.

G and Mads can both swim.  Three months ago they couldn't.  I guess that's what swimming almost everyday does.

We are all loving the house.  Some of our favorite things are...

-being able to play outside

-being able to take walks

-having a grocery store in walking distance

-more space

-having the street to scoot and ride bikes on

-hearing birds chirp in the morning

-the Sun Room

-seeing trees and all kinds of cool plants everyday

Bad things...

-the apartment was so new!

-mosquitos

-stairs

-ants

-commute, or driving anywhere, anytime really

Our apartment was great.  We were happy there.  It was just difficult to deal with the people there.  They were starting to get to me.  And we were just done with apartment living.

Ragunan

One of the cool things about living in another country, is that even when you do normal kid things, like going to the zoo, it can turn out to be a very interesting experience.

This zoo cracked me up because it was huge, and had tons of animals, but they were all the same animals.  For example, they had elephants in 4 or 5 different areas.

 One of the many elephants we saw.

Some of the animals would come right up to you.  I'm confident they were looking for food.  I don't think there would be any issues if you slipped the animals a grape.  Or an apple.  Or an oreo cookie even.

Even though there are these signs.  I love the hearts.

Cheese!

Cool trees.

K, so I have gotten quite used to people taking pictures of my kids.  It happens literally everyday.  So when I saw a couple dudes getting out their phones when they walked by us, I thought nothing of it.  He held up the phone and clicked a picture, just like they always do.  This time he showed it to me, and it was of me!  What?!!  I was so confused.  And I looked that way too.  In the picture.  So I made him take another one.  hee hee.  And then we took one with my camera.  It was very silly.

Don't worry.  I am very humble about this situation.  I know it's not because of my looks.

That's my Austalian friend.  Love her.  I've never had an Australian friend before.  Sometime I'll write a post about how I giggle in my head when I am listening to her talk.

She is the reason we went to the zoo that day.  I was having a hard time being motivated.  I'm so glad we went.

This is the food court.

We brought our lunch.  Not that any of us have a problem with Indonesian food, but it's tricky when you don't know anything about the place you are buying from, and you don't speak the language.

Another cool tree.

Dude fishing at the zoo.  Ironic.

You could tell the monkeys were used to being fed too.  In fact, there were guys selling peanuts right by their cages.  And those guys were standing right by the "don't feed the animals" signs.  The monkeys got really mad at you if you didn't give them any food.  They would scream and hiss.  Carmen warned me that they sometimes pee on you!  Thank goodness we avoided that situation.

Having lunch.

This was a hard group to get to smile at me all at the same time.

My favorite part of the day was when I learned that there is a taxidermy shop there.  At the zoo!  So hilarious.  It was right next to the gift shop.  So you could buy a t-shirt, and a stuffed orangutan all in one convenient location.

New New New

First day of school...

-     It seems like I've been making preparations for this day for a long time.  I started about 8 months ago by filling out applications online.  To say the process was complicated would be an understatement.  I think I had to sign over each of the kids' first born child.  But they got in, and they started.

-     I wish I would have ordered the stuff we needed 8 months ago.  I slacked a bit, but only because we didn't have internet forever.  We still haven't gotten their backpacks and shoes.

-     It is an amazing school.  We are very excited.

-     School starts at 7:30, and we have a long commute.  I woke up at 5:15, and I woke the kids up around 5:45.  Ugh. 

-     There was a little drama in the morning.  Mads got lost, and there were tears.  When I dropped Dare off at her classroom, there were tears.  But that's it!  I call it a success.

-     Mads doesn't start until Monday.  The tears may be mine that day.

-     I thought it was funny that there was even a question about what nationality the girls' teachers were.  They are all American, but I'm pretty sure Mads' is from New Zealand.

-     Most of the students are from Asia.

-     The girls bought their lunch.  There was a choice between "Western" and "Asian".  Asian was chicken and rice.  And Western was beef and potatoes.  And rice!  I guess they have a hard time not serving rice with meals.

-     The girls had a good day.  They like the school and their teachers.  

The Horn Culture

I took this when we were in Hong Kong.  It's funny.

We sat in that tunnel for a good 15 minutes or so.  Just listening.

Lollipop's

There's an apostrophe in the name because that's how they wrote it.  Nate and I had a big discussion as to why there was an apostrophe.  He thinks it bad punctuation, but I assured him the cat who owns the place is named Lollipop, so it is correct.  In all honesty, it's probably bad punctuation.  There's enough of it around here after all.

So, indoor playgrounds are popular here.  Probably because it's hot outside.  So in all the malls, there is something to do for the kids.  We decided to try one out.  Lollipop's.

The helmets seemed like overkill if you ask me.  It was like a .354 mile per hour zip line.  Better safe than sorry, I guess.

This slide was slow unless you were wearing slick pants, then you were out of control.  They should have worn helmets.

My boys with the N boys.

All the kids on the spinning cat named Lollipop.

We had dessert afterwards.  We got a crap load of shaved ice.

Sunda

About a month ago, we took our first trip out of the city.  We went on an embassy trip to Bogor, which is another smaller city just outside of Jakarta.  We went on an organized tour of the traditional Sundanese culture geared towards kids.  It was perfect for us. 

First they got to play an angklung, and learn a song.

Then they got to make a traditional cake, and drink.

Then they dressed us all up in traditional clothing.

 They were having a good time.  I just told them to make serious faces.

Then we saw a huge spider.  That thing was about the size of my hand stretched out.  We thought it was just an old spider that waited for bugs to fly into its web, and slowly crawl over to get them.  We were so wrong!  As we were sitting there watching it, it shot down to the bottom of the web super quick to catch something to eat.  It freaked us out.  I learned my lesson about checking out big bugs up close.

Then we had a dance lesson.

Walking around the grounds.

Then we got to play with more instruments.  I don't know the names for these.

 They had a fun time banging on those things, but I can't say the music they produced was very pleasant.

 Then we had lunch.

They got a lesson on how to make a doll from stems.  The girls really wanted to do it right, but it was kind of hard.  The instructors didn't speak a lot of English, so they were mostly showing the kids and it was hard to follow along.  But it was still very interesting.

Walking over to the village...

These boys were delighted that I wanted to take their picture.

The kids got first hand experience on how to plant rice.

Last, they washed their feet off and gave the water buffalos a bath.