More bike fun:)

We had two trees cut down yesterday. They were so big that the grass wasn't growing in the back yard. It took three guys about five hours to cut everything down and clear all the wood, branches and leaves out of the back yard, through our house and into the front where they hauled it away. The cost of all this labor was $4 per tree for a grand total of 8 dollars.

Before

After

Biker Chick

Trying to get up the hill

Didn't quite make it.

This is Raquel's new chalkboard. She loves to draw on it and especially to erase things off of it (I think that's her favorite part:). We've been trying to get her to write some of her letters and the other day she made this 'g' all by herself.

She drew this too which I am also very proud of:)

This weekend we went to Yogyakarta, a city about two and a half hours south, to do some shopping. We went to the mall, ate at McDonald's (which also delivers:) and got some things that we needed, including a bike for Raquel which was 'needed' as an outlet for all her energy:). We were picking up another family who had spent a few days in the city and we shared their taxi back to Salatiga. They have a 2 and a 1/2 year old boy that Raquel got to play with.

Raquel was tired on the way there. Since there are no carseats, Daddy makes a fine sleeping place:)

McDonalds anyone? You can get rice instead of fries.

Cockroaches conquered!

While this may look disgusting, it's actually quite a relief. We've been finding these nasty creatures running around our house every few days(Raquel stepped on one the other day). Well today we found the source of the problem. Dylan sprayed stuff down this drain in our bathroom and an hour later this is what we found, so we knew where they were coming from. He was able to cover that nasty drain with mesh so, hopefully, no more cockroaches!

What dry season?

So supposedly the rainy season is over, however, on Sunday it looked like we might be washed away by the river flowing down the road in front of our house. It brought back fun memories of my trip to Cambodia in college. Remember that Leigh?:)

Boo!

A Package and a Pool!

Yesterday a package came in the mail all the way from Apollo Beach, FL. Aunt Kristen, Uncle Derek (happy 4th anniversary by the way) and Mya sent Raquel a birthday present! There was a cute shirt and shorts, some princess underwear and fun play shoes. There was also a cool card that plays an awesome song EVERY time you open it. (thanks a lot Kristen:)

Nice modeling job Raquel! (she wore these shoes all day, and was very upset when she couldn't wear them to the store:)

A family who lives down the street from us is moving to Papua on Sunday, so we inherited their swimming pool. Raquel had a blast 'swimming' in it today.

Yuck!

As Raquel walked to her bedroom before nap time she stopped, stared up at her door and started saying "oh my goodness, oh my goodness"

Look at what she found...

Poor dead cicak!

Our weekend

On Saturday we had a regional field fair that was held at a hotel in town. This was our view from the fifth floor. Salatiga is at the base of a mountain which is why the weather is so nice at night. It's hot during the day, but cools off to probably the high 70s at night so it's nice for sleeping.

On Friday night we ate at a restaurant down the road from our house. It's a really pretty place and you can't beat the prices. (Our bill was 9 dollars for us all to have fresh fruit juice, a meal and dessert)

Raquel was helping Ibu Yanti with the ironing:)

To market to market...

Here are some pictures from our market excursion, but first a picture of what greeted me at the kitchen sink this morning.

The weirdos I live with (and love:)

Dylan trying to recreate his inversion table

This is Raquel after we were over at someone's house for dinner. Their five year old has a makeup kit and Raquel was going to town with a makeup brush and blue eyeshadow:)

Transportation

How we got home from school today - poor horse

We started classes yesterday! For the first two months (until July 6th) we are in Pre-IMLAC training that is done by NTM. In July we will start IMLAC which is an actual school not run by NTM. During our first two months we go on different excursions, take pictures and ask questions, and then review the pictures with our language helpers and learn the different words for the objects in the pictures. Today we went on our first excursion. We went into town on a angkot (acts like a bus, but is actually a very small van that can hold as many as 17 people (maybe more, but that's as many as we counted on ours that was full to bursting:) and took pictures of all the different modes of transportation that we could see. We ended by taking a dokar (horse and cart) back to our house. Tomorrow our language helper will come to our house and we will review all the pictures we took. She will tell us what each picture is and we will record her saying each word. Then we load that onto our computer and can review them over and over. The second half of the day we will go on another excursion to someone's house and learn what is culturally appropriate when you are a guest in a home.

An angkot

Dylan and Raquel inside the angkot (this is the day before our class excursion)

Raquel smashed in between two women (this is the time that there were 17 people in the vehicle)

Weekend

On Saturday we went to a water park about 15 minutes away from our house. We went with two other NTM families and it was a very fun relaxing day. Raquel got used to the water after a little while and started to play without holding on to our hands the whole time. Later on the guys took the kids to go down the water slides. Dylan took Raquel up to the top of one, and then decided to go get her an inner tube. Before he could do anything Raquel took off down the slide. Dylan went after her, but she went under before he could reach her and then, to make matters worse, Dylan landed on top of her when he came down. She wasn't too thrilled with the water after that:)

Around the house

Ibu Yanti clipping Raquel's nails


The tree house in the back yard. Raquel is still too scared to climb up to the top by herself.

The cheechaks sp? that inhabit our house. They come out each evening and run around on our walls, ceilings and sometimes kitchen counters:( We're hoping that there won't be so many after we've been here for a while. The house has been empty for several months so they've gotten used to having the run of the place.

We got rid of this one after he tried to get the last sip out of the Coke bottle sitting on the counter.

This is our oven that is heated by the stove top. The cookies turned out ok, but it will take some getting used to. A 9 by 13 pan does not fit in there so to make Raquel's cake I walked down the road and used another families real oven:)

Our first week

We arrived in Salatiga exactly one week ago and were warmly welcomed by all the NTM families here. Every day we ate a meal at someone's house, and there was a family assigned to take us shopping each day. We're not allowed to drive for the first 3 months. They want us to get used to the traffic and also don't want us getting in an accident and not be able to understand or communicate with anyone. Our house was set up with beds, dressers and tables. We just had to buy a few things. On Monday our 'pembantus' (house help) started working. We have two pembantus who work M-F. They cook one meal a day, clean, do laundry and will take care of Raquel when we start school. It will take some getting used to having them do all this for us, but know that it will be a huge help in allowing us concentrate on learning Indonesian. They will also be able to help us with learning language and culture; only one of them speaks very limited English.

Here are some pictures of our house. We haven't done much decorating as you can see, but that will come:)

This is the front (obviously:). We live on a pretty busy road, but have a gate which is nice so we don't need to worry about Raquel.

The front room

Dining room looking from the front room

Kitchen (right off the dining room)

Dining room from the back door

Bathroom (yay for toilets and showers:)

Office

Our bedroom

Raquel's room

We also have a really big back yard with lots of fruit trees and a cool tree house. It takes forever for pictures to load here, but I'll put some of that up later.

Our 3 year old!

We celebrated Raquel's 3rd birthday yesterday!

Our pembantu (house help) made Nasi Kuning (yellow rice) which is a special birthday meal - it was delicious. She also made the doll cake. I made the other that is supposed to be Boo's door from Monsters Inc. (She got the movie from my parents) We didn't know that she was making a cake until after I made one. All day Raquel kept running to the fridge to look at BOTH of her cakes. She kept saying 'oh my goodness, oh my goodness'

We had a few families over in the evening and she got lots of presents. I'm trying to post a video of her blowing out her candles.

She got play doh from twins Hasten and Roman, and the purse she's showing off from another family.

Raquel and Hannah blowing bubbles