Five Minute Friday: Connect

It's Friday again, time for my 5 minute Friday post-fun!

Today's topic is Connect...

When I think of connecting the first thing I think of is Skype.  Ah, Skype, close friend of many that are an ocean away from their families.  Our Internet is kind of poor (okay, kind of is an undstatement...it takes 10 minutes to load a 30 second YouTube video), so our connection with family and friends is often disjointed, delayed, and frequently cut off, but I can still hear and even see loved ones who I haven't seen in almost 2 years from all the way across the world.  It's amazing, really!

The power to connect across thousands of miles makes this big world seem a lot smaller, and in a way, it is.  As I live overseas I see people who look very different than me living a similar life...cooking, cleaning, working, talking with friends, running errands around town, the same stuff I do here and that people I know are doing in my home country everyday.  No matter where people live and in what kind of circumstances, all of us are looking to connect, whether it's with one particular person, or many, with co-workers, family members, friends, neighbors, even pets...I think we all want to impact someone, to have someone impact us, to connect and be known.

I want to write more, but I'm going over my 5 minutes!  It's good to be able to connect with people through this blog, as silly and babbling as it often is...thanks for reading it and connecting to my little world!

Passing the Days with Pictures

While reading my friend April's very fun blog, Catching Fireflies (it's connected with her and her husband's super-nifty gift shops of the same name in Berkley, MI and Rochester, MI...if you live in the area and you haven't visited them yet, you totally should), I was inspired to join the Photo-A-Day Challenge  started by Chantelle at her blog Fat Mum Slim.  I joined Instagram (I can't believe it's taken me this long, I've been adoring other peoples' new vintage-looking pictures on Facebook for months), and I've been happily snapping away meeting the daily photo challenge.  Here's the list of photos for August:

If you want to follow my day-to-day in pictures you can check them out on Instagram under the username sessabeesd.  

Side note: I really need to tell my parents that they don't need to worry about restoring their newlywed pictures and shots of me as a baby that have faded or turned pink or yellow, because guess what, they are actually way trendy now!

As our days in Indonesia dwindle (that is such a weird word, and one of those that doesn't seem like a real word when I type it), it's good to record our simple life here in photos.  Somehow the randomness of this list of pictures captures the essence of life here for me, so I can look back and remember little things, like my messy freezer, which I took a picture of today. 

My freezer is absolutely jam-packed because I store months worth of cheese and bacon, lovingly procured on vacations to other parts of Indonesia and stowed in my carry-on...yes, a carry-on full of fat, basically...plus all the precious herbs, spices. nuts, coffee, and chocolate chips from the U.S. that I freeze to keep them usable for as long as possible, homemade chicken broth, piles of meat in preparation for the end of Ramadan when there won't be much food in the stores and the market for a bit, homemade naan, tortillas, and pita bread to pull out for quick lunches, and lots of other odds and ends that I try to preserve from the heat and humidity.  Funny how just one picture represents a lot of my life here-making most stuff from scratch, carefully keeping and rationing food that isn't available on our island, stocking up for lean times.  Doing this life has certainly been an education!  It's also made me realize that I really love good food and I will go to great lengths (5 hours in the steamy kitchen) to get it!  

Okay, I've hit babbling mode now, but back to the photo-a-day challenge; if the idea of recording daily life one picture at a time intrigues you, I would recommend going for it.  I am having lots of fun with it and my bet is that you will too!

Happy snapping (pictures, not at people)!

My First 'Five Minute Friday' Post

Posts two days in a row, unbelievable, no?  

I was visiting my friend Mary's blog, Bittersweet, and saw she has been doing something that I find so neat I think I will try it myself.  Mary is participating in Five Minute Friday, a "free write flash mob" as termed by it's creator, Lisa-Jo Baker on her blog Tales from a Gypsy Mama.  

Here 's the skinny...a prompt is provided and you are supposed to write anything you want based on that prompt for only 5 minutes, no extra time for editing and making it perfectly spell-checked and grammatically correct, just seeing what comes out in five minutes and sharing that (that's going to be hard for this perfectionist).  After you are done writing you link up to the Gypsy Mama's blog and visit whoever linked up before you to read that person's free write and encourage him or her.  

Pretty fun, huh?  

I'm going to put a button on my blog for Five Minute Friday so you can click on that and read about this link up yourselves, but first I have to figure out how to do that.  I'm trying to learn blogging on a new computer AND trying to get a bit more snazzy with my blog in the process, which is teaching me patience with myself, sort of.  Sort of as in it's teaching, but I'm not always learning!

So, here I go...

The prompt for this Friday is: Here

Here is where I need to be right now.  Even though I am pretty much wanting to be somewhere else, home to be specific.

Here is hot and sweaty, anxious and tiring, loud and smelly, but also interesting.

Always interesting and always changing me, growing me.

Here is the place I can't hide my real difficulties in fun leisure and a never-ending quest for happiness.

Here I see myself and I see just how much work needs to be done.  Here is hard, but here is so good for me in so many ways.

Here is where I have sunk my heart deep into friendships.

Here is where I have time to contemplate in the midst of the daily tasks I know I can accomplish.

Here i have a created a space for my husband and I to rest and have fun, a respite...a home from a cement-walled house in the tropics far, far from home.

Here is where I have been placed for a time.

Here is growth.

Here is a blessing.

The bright red sun setting in a hazy sky after a hot, hot Borneo day

For Laughs

As you can tell from my last post, things have been pretty heavy around here lately.  I don't know about you, but I am in serious need of something to make me giggle!  As I have been going through the multi-step process of recovering the files, pictures, and music from my now long-gone laptop I came upon a bunch of random pictures from the last month that made me smile, and I thought they might give you a chuckle too...

Chris bought a new fan at the store and this is how he carried it home on his motorcycle.  Ah, the ingenuity that is born out of life without a car!

Roti Boy...a fine Indonesian establishment.  'Roti' means bread and, as you can tell by the sign, the Roti Boy is all about buns, sweet, warm, crunchy donut-type goodies that are really quite good.  I'm not sure if the Indonesians quite understand the double entendre in their "buns to die for" slogan, but it always makes me smile.

Chris, ever the fashion-forward chap decided he had to join a couple of our fashionista friends in sporting what he very NON-affectionately refers to as the "belly belt".  Chris has been quite vocal about his confusion and dislike of this trend (he is also outspoken in his horror of skinny jeans and leggings, and the dreaded combo, jeggings), but after his frequent protests went unneeded he figured if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.  Let me add that he didn't just wear his "belly belt" for a few minutes, oh no, he sported it for the entire morning.  That's commitment.

Okay, it's very possible that I am way out of what is going on with jewelry styles in the States, because, well, I haven't been living there in awhile, so two finger rings might be all the rage, but I don't know...I found this one rather binding and well, just sort of weird.  What do you think?  Hmm...

Yeah, yeah, I know it's a little strange to post a picture of a bra on here, but relax people, you've all seen one before.  I was just confused and frankly a bit grossed out by this tag...wait a minute are they actually using perspiration as an advertising tool and trying to make me believe  the presence of it will somehow improve the softness of my skin?   Hi, uncomfortable and ew.  Plus they used the word "moist".  Nobody likes that word, yuck.

A martini, a fruity girly drink, oh no my friends, it's so much more, a mocktail!  A staple of most upscale Indonesian restaurants, the mocktail is oh-so-silly, but I couldn't resist!

This cat is having a very bad day!  The dog, Sadie, that we were watching a couple weeks ago went barreling out the door one morning and chased one of the ever-present neighborhood feral cats into a tree in our yard.  Sadie was just thrilled about the whole situation, I was meanly amused because I have an ongoing grudge towards all cats in this culture due to their incessant urination and copulation in our ceiling, and the cat, well, she would have killed us both if she could.  I wondered how she would get down, but after a couple hours I checked and she was gone, and no dead cat below the tree, so she must have made it out okay.  Haven't seen her since.  Ha.

I think this picture is cute, so I put it in, even though it's not funny.  Chris and I had lunch at this little place in Balikpapan during the week of family conference and the owner took our picture after we ate.  The place is a bakery and restaurant that is decorated like a European cafe-very cute!  The ambiance was great and the food was good too. 

I hope these pictures gave you a  couple laughs (Chris rocking the belly belt, come on, it doesn't get much better than that).  Keep enjoying your summer!

P.S. I'm trying out a brand new program to compose my blog posts, so if things are a little weird in this post that's the reason.  I mean that's the reason for weird technical stuff, the weird writing is just you know, me.

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.