An Experience I Hoped Never To Have

Remember my last post when I said that not much was going on and less momentous events seem to be occurring as compared to when we first arrived?


Remind me to never say something like that again. 

Our house was broken into last week while I was out during the day. My laptop was the only thing taken, which is a blessing, but, of course the most significant thing that was stolen was my peace of mind.

I talk more about my thought process in dealing with all this on the MAF blog...click here for the link.

Your prayers for our safety and security as well as for the rest of our team would be appreciated. Our house was one of several that have been broken into in our neighborhood in the past few weeks, and just today a man with a crow bar and an empty bag was seen in the jungle by one of our teammates's empty houses. 


Thanks for your prayers.

Blah

Hello, hello after a L-O-N-G absence.  How is everyone?  Well?  I am all right I suppose…I think the title of this post says it all, and explains why I haven’t posted in so long.  Things just seem sort of, you know, blah. 

I’ve come to the conclusion that after almost 2 years here the things that were exciting and new have become, well, familiar (uh-oh, I may need to change the name of the blog, shoot!).  Happenings that would have had me running to the computer to record every detail in the past seem to slip by with a shrug…like about a month ago when I saw a black snake about the length of a yard stick that was probably a cobra slithering down our driveway and into the nearby field.  Before I would have grabbed my camera to get a shot and posted all about it.  Instead I watched it disappear and reflected that I was glad I was on my motorcycle and not on foot when I spotted the snake, and then headed off to the grocery store.  I also think (and I’m a bit afraid to write this for fear of inviting disaster) that far fewer sensational things have happened lately as compared to earlier in my time here.  I am not complaining about that by any means, I am ecstatic to miss the drama of unexpected animals in the house, too-close-for-comfort lightening strikes, you name it…relative calmness just makes for less to write about.  Every time I sit down to write a post I think, “What has really been happening?  Nothing that people would really want to read about.  Maybe I’ll write another day.”  Then two months go by with nothing on the blog. Oops. 

So here I am on another beautiful, sunny, steamy day, doing laundry, getting ready to grind the hunk of beef the size of my head that is sitting in my fridge, trying to decide whether I can put off going to the grocery store for one more day (I’m fighting a headache with dizziness that seems to get worse when I move around…not the best time to get on a motorcycle I think).  I don’t have any crazy stories to tell, just wanted to check in on this little blog since I haven’t for SO long. 

Wow, I’m boring.

Yawn.

See, this is why I never post.

I need to find ways to make the mundane interesting…I’ll let you know how that goes.

For now, here are a few highlights from the last couple months…

•             Some of the MAF ladies get together about every other month for Cookbook Club.  One person hosts and provides the main dish and the other ladies bring sides.  Usually the host picks a theme, maybe a specific cookbook or web site all the recipes should be from, or a food theme like Italian, Indian, etc.  I hosted our gathering in April and our theme was soup, salad, bread, and pie.  The food was delicious and we had fun gabbing.  Here’s a couple pictures of the tables-I had to bring in our patio set to accommodate all the guests.

          I signed up to bring pies and here are the recipes I used.  They were quite scrumptious, especially     

          the Apple Sour Cream Pie…I would highly recommend them:

          Apple Sour Cream Pie

          Chocolate Cream Pie

• In May there were several groups of MAF-related guests that came through including a couple guys from MAF headquarters in Nampa, ID to install a cargo pod on one of the airplanes, a long-term intern, someone to test the school-aged kids and give recommendations for the MAF school, and a group of college students and an MAF advocate from Canada who wanted to get a taste of life as a missionary pilot overseas.  We kept busy welcoming the guests and making sure they had places to stay, meals, and whatever else they needed.  No pictures of them, but when I think of the month of May doing various hospitality-related things comes to mind.

• Chris and I celebrated our 3^rd wedding anniversary on June 6^th by heading to the nearest larger city, Balikpapan (I’ve talked about it in previous posts), and spending a couple nights at a nice hotel, relaxing by the pool, shopping, and eating.  I think food is pretty much the highlight of every vacation for us since there isn’t much Western-style food available where we live.  It was great to get away.  I can’t believe it’s already been three years since our wedding!  In a way it seems like longer than that because we have packed so much into those years.

•       Our yearly MAF Family Conference was June 10-15 in Balikpapan, so we actually flew in early to celebrate our anniversary and then got together with everyone for conference.  It was a fun time with lots of opportunities to worship together, get to know each other more with team building exercises, and learn from great speakers Kevin & Linda Swanson who very generously travelled all the way from the U.S. to minister to us.  We also, surprise, surprise, managed to eat lots of delicious meals…Pizza, Indian food, Mexican, Sushi, yum!  I can’t talk about it for long, because I just start to crave yummy food that I don’t have to make from scratch *sigh*.  It was a fun and refreshing time hanging out with our friends and co-workers in a different setting.  Here’s a picture of the whole group, as well as a few other pictures from conference.  All the shots are compliments of Tripp Flythe, one of the amazing photographers on our MAF team.

Our MAF Kalimantan team 

Several of the other ladies and I all dressed up for a banquet 

Chris & I

What a handsome guy!

•       Right after conference about half our MAF team including Chris and I came down with a nasty sore throat/cough/cold that seemed to last forever.  I am still dealing with sinus issues 3 weeks after the fact, yuck.  All in all I’ve been struggling with feeling under the weather for the better part of a month between that cold, an off and on angry tummy, and headaches.  Prayers for health and energy would be appreciated.

•       Chris has still been flying the Cessna Caravan like crazy and loving it.  He leaves the house at 6:50am and often doesn’t get home until 5:30-6:00pm.  He is pretty tired on the weekends, but he is having fun flying and he is thankful for the opportunity to get more comfortable flying a turbine aircraft (if that means something to you as a non-pilot, kudos, I had no idea the significance before I was married to a pilot).

•      We celebrated 4^th of July last week with a barbeque with our teammates.  It was relaxing and fun.  It’s nice to celebrate an American holiday and actually have it feel like the right weather…Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas just never feel quite right in the heat and humidity. 

Those are all the highlights I can think of, like I said, nothing too exciting right now, although there are some things on the horizon that promise to be interesting.  More about those things in a later post.  For now I will get going on my tasks for the day.  Enjoy your day or night!

Lost in Translation

I have two funny little stories for you that have happened in the last couple weeks built around the theme of communication difficulties.  So often (pretty much every day) there is some sort of communication breakdown that happens between me and the culture I live in, whether it’s someone from the local phone/internet company calling yet again about a promotion, and me trying to explain I’m not interested, which usually ends with me hanging up on the well-meaning person due to my hopeless lack of understanding, or trying to decipher the concerns of our yard guy (is he telling me there was someone on our driveway that he told to go away, that is afraid there will be someone on our driveway coming up to bother me, or is he talking about dogs-not really sure).  Anyway, talking and understanding is always an adventure here, both from a language and a cultural perspective, and these are a couple instances I had to share because they made me smile.  Here goes…

A couple weeks ago Chris came home from work saying “I have a surprise for you!”  This is always exciting because it often means delicious pineapple from the jungle or maybe other assorted yummy fruits and vegetables.  Before he pulled out the gift he told me the story behind it. 

Chris had told one of the ladies in a village he frequently flies into that he wanted to bring some fresh flowers to his wife, and since fresh flower bouquets are pretty well impossible to come by in Tarakan, where we live, he wondered if she would be willing to cut some for him from the jungle where she lives.  She was happy to help and assured him she would get a bouquet.  When he came back to the village a couple weeks later she made sure to find him and was excited to give him the bouquet she had worked so hard to get.  He was surprised when she handed him these…

My "fresh" bouquet of plastic "crystal" and metal flowers

When Chris pulled them out to show me I had to laugh, somehow the “fresh” part of the request was, as the title of this post indicates, lost in translation!  I was so touched though, that Chris would go through the trouble to try to bring me flowers, and that this women probably really did have to work extremely hard to get (make) this bouquet.  I actually think the flowers are unique and pretty, and I’ll always have them as a remembrance-my one and only “fresh” flower bouquet in Indonesia!

On to story number two, which really should be called “Sarah makes a fool of herself in Indonesia…yet again.”

So, I am working on putting together a retreat for the ladies on our program to take place in September.  It is going to be at the local hotel in Tarakan, so I went there last Friday to reserve the rooms and establish a contact person.  I initially met with one woman who helped me set up the reservations, and she was excited to use her really good English skills to communicate with me, which was great!  Often if Indonesian people are able to converse in English they are happy to have a native English speaker to practice with, especially in Tarakan where native English speakers are pretty sparse.  The fun began when she called another woman from the hotel to help me make detailed arrangements about how to set up the rooms, and this woman didn’t speak much English.  First of all, I hadn’t put any thought into how I wanted the rooms set up, I thought I was just making the reservations and we would be working all the details out later, so I was caught off guard when the woman from the hotel started asking me, in Indonesian, how did I want to rooms set up, what did I need?  At this point I was sitting there with the two women who were helping me and nearby there were another couple of Indonesian workers and customers, all listening (and staring) at the western girl, because that’s how they roll here.  I was fumbling to think what I needed in the rooms and then trying to translate it into Indonesian, and thankfully the woman who spoke English was helping me.  I was listing off the extra plates, cups, coffee mugs, etc. that we would need and then I came to silverware.  Let me pause to say that I frequently get the word for “spoon” and the word for “shoe” mixed up…I’m sure you know where this is headed.  I explained I would need 12 extra shoes and forks in the room where we would be meet.  I didn’t even realize my mistake until I heard a giggle from a girl sitting nearby, and suddenly everyone was laughing, including me.  It was pretty great.  A bit humiliating, but very funny! 

The fun continued when, later that day, I got a call from the woman I set up the reservations with while I was in the parking lot of a grocery store, and I answered it right then (what was I thinking?  It was so loud with traffic and people yelling and construction, how did I think I would possibly hear and understand her?).  She was trying to explain that she got us a cheaper rate on the rooms, but I had to check in with a special process and oh my goodness I could NOT figure out what she was talking about for like 10 minutes!  She was so patient and kept explaining until I finally understood.  All in all it was humbling day, but everything is reserved and ready to go and the good news is everyone gets a pair a shoes in her room to go with the rest of her dinnerware-just kidding!

Thought those stories of communication folly might make you smile!  I’m off to try to exercise, which includes a “Dancing with the Stars Latin Cardio Dance” DVD.  

Apparently more humiliation is in my very near future.

Events in Pictures

Whew, it’s been a LONG time!  I am going to do a sum up of the highlights (with a couple random things thrown in) of the last bit of time with pictures…

Chris brought this sweet, tiny kitty home from the hangar with him one Saturday.  He said that, unlike most stray animals here that are scared of people, she ran up to him and followed him like she was begging to be adopted.  We tried to keep her, but she was so little that she was still looking to nurse, so all she wanted to do was snuggle up against me and try to suck on my shirt.  When she ate she started to have stomach troubles, and Chris and I started having allergies, and it all got to be too much, so we gave our little Rocket (that was her name) to one of Chris’s friends who loves cats.  I guess she is doing great and has a fun personality.  Hopefully we will get to see her again sometime.

Chris had his first solo flight in the Caravan-the airplane he recently learned how to fly.  Here are a few fun pictures of Chris getting doused with water and ice as is the tradition here in Tarakan after the first solo flight day.  Chris has a fun video of the shenanigans too-you can look at it on our Desjardine's Destinations Facebook Page.

The triumphant pilot - notice he isn't wearing shoes...he had a clue he might be getting wet!

A bucket of water at close range from one of the kids

All of Chris' colleagues took turns shaking his hand and congratulating him - such a nice tradition

A few weeks after Chris’s solo flight I was able to fly with him for the afternoon.  We had a smooth ride out to a village where we delivered lots of cargo.  It was fun to see Chris in action!  I am always amazed at how hard Chris and the other pilots have to work everyday-keeping on top of rugged terrain, unpredictable weather, and an ever-changing schedule, it’s not an easy job, that’s for sure.  Good thing Chris has so much fun doing it!

The control panel...I always want to press all the buttons and flip the switches, but Chris says I can't, what a bummer!

Yes, I actually wore real shoes and socks for I think the first time outside the house since we have lived in Tarakan.  I figured it would be a safer option than flip flops...I had to commemorate the moment

Captain Desjardine-pretty handsome if I do say so myself!

If you want a peek into a typical flight day with Chris, check out the awesome video he posted on ourDesjardine's Destinations Facebook Page and/or on YouTube.  Chris actually set his phone to take a photo every few seconds throughout one flight day and put all the images together to create this video. 

To COMPLETELY change the subject, a store in town recently got a new kind of cheese, and I think the name is so funny that I have to share it…

It's like sharp cheddar, but isn't "Strong & Bitey" such a better name (and description) than "Sharp"?!

At the end of February my Mom came to visit for three weeks!  It was so much fun to have her here and to be able to show her around instead of just telling her about it.  A lot of her trip was spent just hanging out and talking together as well as showing her some of the sights, sounds, and smells of Tarakan, but Chris and I and my Mom did take a trip with several other MAF families to Derawan, an island about 3 hours away by boat that has a nice beach and amazing snorkeling.  Sadly, it wasn’t the best trip mainly because we had atypically (for this part of Indonesia) cool and rainy weather much of the time we were there.  We still did a little bit of snorkeling though and got to have the once-in-a-lifetime experience of setting some baby sea turtles free into the ocean.  The sea turtle eggs are protected by a group of people on Derawan to ensure the eggs aren’t used for turtle soup or sold for profit.  One of the families we travelled to Derawan with knows the people who protect the turtles, and when the protectors found out a group of us was there, they let us be part of introducing the little turtles to the big ocean-it was really neat.

A view of the bay from the porch of our cabin

Nearby cabins and an eating pavilion

In my snorkeling outfit - I brought a rash guard to protect me from the sun...too bad I didn't really need it since the sun barely made an appearance all weekend : (

Beautiful shells, coral, and sand dollars Mom and I collected on the beach 

Walking to a restaurant out on one of the docks - notice the storm clouds rolling in

A couple of cute kids in the village on Derawan-they insisted on having their picture taken.  The little boy was especially proud of his chicken.

First ocean swim for the baby turtles!  They had to be released after dark, so it was hard to get good pictures.

The nice, smooth boat ride home...notice there aren't any pictures of the rough, wavy ride there...that's not an accident, there were definitely some green faces-yuck

My Mom and me on the front porch of the house in Tarakan - It was so wonderful to have her here!

Since my Mom left (sniff, sniff) life has been pretty uneventful.  Chris has been flying a lot, which is a blessing, but leaves him pretty tired at the end of the week.  I have been plugging along with the same ol’ routine, laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc., etc.…quiet and uneventful is good, it means nothing bad is happening and I will take that over drama any day!

I feel like this is quite a boring post after not checking in for so long, no crazy stories or anything…sorry…not sure how to spice it up…more later if I come up with something fun!

Have a reflective Holy Week and a Happy Easter!

I had to include this picture I found on Pinterest...I want to eat this right now-hooray for Peeps!

  

MAF Blog Post

Hi!  Yes, I'm still around even though I haven't posted in FOR-EVER!  I posted on the MAF blog this week about my wonderful Mom's visit, here's the link:

http://www.mafblog.com/general/the-blessing-of-family

I will be writing about her visit in more detail as well as everything else that is going on soon, I promise!

The Capture

Finally the conclusion of the lizard story...between frequent power outages and other busyness I am just getting to posting about what happened to our scaly visitor.

The lizard wasn't interested in the popcorn I scattered on the storage room floor in case you were wondering...in fact after I scared him by taking his picture he hid behind one of the storage bins and didn't come out again.  Around 5:00pm Chris came home and soon after our friend Dave and his son Britton arrived to nab the intruder, here's how it all went down...

As you can see Mr. Lizard was NOT excited about getting to know us up close and personal.  After he squirted out that stinky goo on the storage room floor he threw up a (barely) live toad he had obviously recently eaten.  Luckily he was outside when that happened so we didn't have to clean it up from the floor.  

After that adventure, and because we have had lots of trouble with stray cats wandering in and urinating on our things in the storage area, we decided that since we need to keep doors open to the storage area during the day to maintain good ventilation, we needed some sort of screens to keep the critters out.  The next day Chris went to work with PVC pipe, zip ties, mesh screening, and hooks and made a couple of screens strong enough to keep out unwanted guests, but easy for us to move when we need to drive our motorcycles in and out.  

The screens have been working great so far and I am thankful.  I can only imagine how terrifying it would have been to head out to the storage area to look for extra contact solution, or medicine, or decorating stuff and getting attacked or at the very least unpleasantly surprised by a lurking monitor lizard-horrible.  I don't mind looking at lizards contained in a cage, and the little geckos that climb up and down our walls and scuttle across our floors don't bother me a bit, but a critter that big and nasty is a different matter entirely!

Just another story to add to my collection of tropical animal encounters, and may I just say that I am fine if that particular volume in my series of overseas living adventures is complete.

Somehow I don't think I am that lucky.

More soon...maybe even later today...about a very sweet animal that stayed with us for a little while and Chris's first solo flight in the Caravan!

Yikes!

As I write this critter is just one room away from me...

It's a bit hard to see him in this picture, but this monitor lizard wandered into our storage area today (we keep it open to the outside during the day because it is poorly ventilated and gets damp and moldy if we don't).  I was sitting at the table working on something when I heard a scuffling noise from the side door into our storage room and I looked out just in time to see the lizard's long tail slide behind one of the stacks of plastic storage bins we have out there.  My first thought after my initial "Eeek!" was to get a picture.  This was hard to do without getting too close and I wasn't about to venture anywhere near the beastie's hiding place, no way!  I snapped this one of him peaking out from behind the boxes...you can see his eye glowing...

When he finally ventured out I got the better shot of him that I showed you first, and scared him away in the process so he is hiding again.  

It's all fine and good that I got some pictures and now have this story to tell you, but now I would like this little monster out of our storage room...I'm really not wanting him to decide he likes the place and take up residence.  I am NOT interested in a reptilian surprise next time I move around the boxes to look for more contact solution or home decorations.  I text messaged Chris at work and he promptly answered with a text asking me to trap the lizard in the storage room because one of the other MAF guys wants it, presumably to show his kids.  

So here I sit, snacking on popcorn and writing to you with a large lizard imprisoned in the room just off my kitchen waiting for the guys show up after 5pm .

Nothing like keeping life exciting.

I wonder if monitor lizards like popcorn?

I'll keep you posted.