Crafts, furniture, and storms - obviously

We went to a fabulous craft fair on Saturday, one that probably lives up to its reputation of being the best craft exhibition in Jakarta. The Inacraft fair took place in the Jakarta Convention Center and had 100s of vendors, including housewares, furniture, jewelry, batik, clothing, accessories, gifts, toys, and more. It was wonderful. I had a great time, although I dragged J to it and his lack of enthusiasm was a downer for both of us. I have to admit though he warned me ahead of time. Next time I will just leave him home and take his wallet, and call it a fair trade :) This exhibition evidently takes place twice/year, so hopefully the next one will be 6 months from now in October when J's parents will be here. I know J's mom would love it too, and J's sister would go crazy for all the purse vendors.

It looks like most of our furniture will be ready this week. God willing our dining room table and chairs will be included in this motherload of furniture, so we can stop eating on a 3 person table with lime green plastic chairs. It's the thing we've needed the most, the thing I spent the most time looking for (the space for it is odd so I had to order a round extending table - an unusual request here in Jakarta), and the thing that has taken the longest. Figures. Hopefully it will be well worth the wait. A couple of Indonesian style recliner chairs arrived today, and C's bed, dresser and bedside table are due in tomorrow I believe. Once those are in, I can set up our study/guest bedroom and the baby's room. I want to have this house organized before I leave for Singapore to have the baby; I learned my lesson last time when it took us at least 6 months after C's birth before we resumed any of our house projects. It will feel so good to get this house really feeling like a home, and will finally free up our time to do non-house related activities.

On a totally different note, there is an insane, mad, crazy storm raging outside right now. It rains in the afternoon almost every day. What I love about the rain here is that I would say 90% of the time it is accompanied by lightning and thunder. I don't really see the lightning because it's during the day, but the thunder is absolutely amazing. Sometimes it is the sort of thunder that sounds like it is rolling across the sky, like two giants were flapping sheets of metal through the clouds. And other times it is directly overhead, a shattering bolt that rocks the house. We didn't get good thunderstorms in DC, and certainly not this often. In Mali, however, we would get some awesome storms as well. What I loved about these storms was that the sky in my village was so uninterrupted, you could see the storm coming for miles. Huge, billowing black clouds would come rolling into a clear blue sky, and when they finally reached you with gusts of wind, there would be an instantaneous downpour of rain that could actually hurt if you found yourself stuck in it. And the sound of these downpours was deafening, because my house had a tin roof and the sound was like what I imagine a war sounds like...constant riotous noise with bursts of shocking sound.

The problem with these storms, and their timing, is that they occur during C's nap. Today, given the intensity of the storm, he only got half his nap in before the thunder woke him up. Loud noises seem to be the only thing that really disturbs C, and this kind of loud thunder is the worst. So despite my best efforts, there was no calming him down enough to go back to sleep. Makes me think of a girl in C's class; I swear this poor girl is afraid of her own shadow. I've never actually seen a small child tremble in fear, until her, and it was over a very small thing. How does that happen? Has she always been like that, just something biological, or was there some trauma in her short life? Ah, the whole nature vs. nurture - one of my favorite subjects to ponder.