The first foray

Here goes my first venture into the bloggingsphere. It definitely has that blank page intimidation about it – how does one begin to write to a mass group of friends and family and potential anonymous readers, especially for a somewhat private person such as myself? And how does one begin to recount a great adventure, one that is so life changing and unreal? And I still have to set up my site, a foray into a technical world that I feel ill equipped for. There is also the responsibility of giving this site a name…

I suppose I can be unoriginal and start with a little background and introduction. On this site, in this world, I am B. My 2.5 year old son C and I are tagging along with my husband J, whose company has sent him to Jakarta, Indonesia to head up their office. We have been here for one month, and will be here for at least 2 years. We are transplants from Washington, DC and both work in international development. I will be able to continue working for my company on a part-time basis, and the rest of the time will be spent with my family, learning, and self-discovery. Oh, and the other big piece of information is that we are having another baby this summer, so in addition to moving to the other side of the planet, selling our house and cars, putting most of our worldly possessions into storage, we are expecting another child. Nothing like doing it all at once…

This site is mostly intended to keep our loved ones and acquaintances informed of our activities, to give them and possibly others insight into the people and culture of Indonesia, and perhaps to talk about any interesting political and health related information I come across. I have grand plans to keep it fairly active, but I realize those words are probably often uttered on sites such as this.

The rainy season has begun with a vengeance. I understand that it was late in arriving this year, and our first 2 weeks here were full of sunshine and heat. Hmm, the tropics, during Washington's January - fantastic. The last 2 weeks, however, have seen increasing rain and cloud cover, so that the last few days have been nothing but rainy. The nice thing is that the thunderstorms are awesome, especially the thunder, and the temps have cooled. The worst thing is that I am stuck in a hotel room with a toddler.

So, yes, not only have we moved to a totally foreign country (I have never been to SE Asia), we have been living in a hotel for a month now, and have 2 weeks to go before we move into a house. We take an elevator downstairs every morning to have a buffet breakfast (in a matter of days I can kiss goodbye those freshly made waffles, pain au chocolats, eggs, fruit, and everything else I can shove into my mouth before my son gets sick of watching me try to eat as many carbs as possible – did I mention I’m pregnant?), we greet the staff, we produce fake smiles of discomfort to all the Asians who pinch C’s cheeks and baby talk to him and want to take his photo, we walk around the fairly extensive grounds, we order room service, we take taxis everywhere, we have 6 huge boxes of the things we air shipped sitting in our "living room", J can walk to work, we hear the myriad of noises of a city spilling over with millions of people.

I guess this hotel thing isn’t all that bad, when I look at it like that. Mostly what I’m desperate for is to feel settled again. It has been months, basically ever since we decided that J should try for this position and especially since he was informed he got it and we had 3 months to completely rearrange our lives, that I have felt unsettled. And I know that feeling settled is still months away, but at least moving into our new house is the rebirth of that feeling. So, 2 more weeks to go…

Ah, the rain has finally stopped. Hopefully it will remain dry so C and I can finally go outside… And I hear the rainy season here lasts for 3-4 months. Oh boy.