What Am I? #3

Boy, not supposed to have too much excitement in my life!! :) This 'little' fella was waiting for me when I came home tonight. Kind of like the 'Welcome Committee' I think. :)













Just so you know, I successfully unlocked, drove my motorbike past, took pictures of, and then locked the gate without as much as a simple little friendly spiderly lick. Yeah for me! :)
(should I also mention that tonight was NOT one of those times the lock simply locked compliantly... I had to fiddle with it for about a minute.... calmly of course...)

Money in the Bucket

I found money again in my paint bucket!! I didn't think the 'Catylac' paint company was doing that anymore, but hey(!) I must have gotten an older bucket! :)



























I was painting spots on the wall that I have been looking at for 2 months!!

ps - Forgot to say that Rp. 1.000 is about US$ .10 :) Not exactly a jackpot. hee hee hee

Coffee Powder - Tjangkir

Hey! Look what I found today as I paroozed the tea/coffee section at 'Ada Baru!' Cool, eh?!? I feel a LARGE painting coming on....














PS - Coffee powder is a VERY common form of coffee here in Indonesia. The coffee is ground fine enough that it just leaves a fine silt at the bottom of the glass. It is very yummy as well and you don't need near as much of it since there aren't the larger grounds to jip you of that extra coffee flavour that got stuck in the ground... :)

PSS - Saves the dumping out of the grounds too. You can just wash the coffee silt down the sink! Coffee silt... hmmm. That doesn't quite sound appealing. :-/

What Am I? #2

Bertemuan

'Open House!!'

Today I began to make plans for our bertemuan on May 17th.

I need to:
Order food/snack boxes for 50+ people
Make a western style invitations (25+) {Want to give them a little bit of our culture. :)}

We will have it on May 17th at 7:00 PM. It is after the evening prayer and the men have time to relax a little bit. I will order food/snack boxes again because it is more of an experience than I can handle for cooking that much again for all our new neighbors. I won't have to hire any neighbors or rent bowls/spoons/tea again.

We will clear out the furniture from our main livingroom, leaving it bare floored - covered with mats. (tikars)

Prayer Request:
* That through this cultural gesture our neighbors would see that we do care about being a part of their lives and that we do care about them personally.

Painting Hobbie

In moving to a new home, I get to come up with new decorating ideas.

A recent hobbie is painting loose tea wrappers.














Loose tea comes in a variety of ways, however, this way intrigues me the most. :)














So... I have decided to paint a picture from different wrappers... Here are the 2 that I have painted so far.





























Side note: The 'Teh Tjankir' wrapper has a cool batik design which I plan on painting on the main wall in the front room of the house.... when I have some free time. :)

Kijang

Kijang - well, I am not talking about a popular car here, but a deer. :)

We ate some for lunch yesterday. Mmmmm.... It was good. The liver did not disappoint me. Deer liver is ALWAYS better than beef!! (At least the wild ones that have only eaten good, yummy things.)

The spread....



















Our pastor being funny. :)














The skin drying out... kind of.















The story is that you can trap these deer, but not shoot them. So, this deer when it was being trapped got it's front leg broke, so they killed it. Apparently there are a lot on our Mt. Merbabu.

'How Does Your Garden Grow?'

So... it has been a while since I have done any fun blogging. Shane is gone for the week and I am entertaining myself. :)

Today after 'homeschool art class' at Tim and Kathy's, I checked my lemon 'tree'. Since we will be here a while, we want lemons!! :) Tim and Kathy have a few nice lemon trees, so I tried my hand at rooting one for ourselves. Today I was tickled to see the roots coming out of the coconut husk! Berhasil! (Success!)

(Here)














So, that got me thinking that I could blog about what else grows in this garden. Most things were not of my own volition (I know! BIG word for karen to use!!) but of Ruth's, the previous inhabitant of this house.

This is what I have...
Aloe (very yummy to eat - used in many ways in Kalimantan)














My lemon tree.....














Oregano...














Ginger...














Red/Green peppers.. hopefully someday.














Lofa vines...














lemon grass.. Mmm!!!














Pandan plants... (add a VERY yummy flavour to drinks and certain Indonesian desserts.)














Miscellanious roots... There are about 5 different kinds that Javanese women cook with.














View of the right side of the yard from the right corner...














View to the left....

Mas Miko's Wedding

This past week was crammed with activity. Not only are we busy getting ready for 2 new families (who JUST arrived yesterday and today), but we attended 2 weddings. Sunday was Puput's wedding (I did a blog about her fiance changing religions.) and her cousin, Mas Miko who was our house guard when we needed to be away, payed some bills and was a regular visitor unlike most of our neighbors. Puput's was right behind our old house, but Mas Miko's was up in Pekalongan. Pekalongan is a town North-West along the coast of Java. It is known for its bright colorful batik. (no... I didn't get to go shopping) :(

We have become good friends of the family and felt privileged to be invited to this wedding especially.

The family rented a huge AC'd touring bus (no bathroom, just seats) for the 4 hour ride up and back. We all were decked out for the ride, ready to attend the ceremony when we arrived.

The picture of me holding a small piece of paper was my 'lucky draw' to a door prize. To get the door prize (which turned out to be a hot pink napkin holder - very Indonesianish) :) I had to sing a song for the whole bus!! THAT was interesting. :) Good memories non-the-less.

White folks are rarely seen, so I think we were also along for the prestige of it all, but it was still neat. :) We were givine the honor of escorting the groom to the house of the bride. Sorry... no picture. I couldn't get one! :)

After 3 1/2 hours we were back on the bus and heading home. We were gone from 8AM to 8PM. We were tired! :)

Settlers with Friends

Ariel and Dea came for Settlers the other night. It was fun. :) About 3 of us were about to win, (ternyata) in the end I think Dea won. :)