A little clarification

Last night J and I spent 2 hours in front of the tv watching American Idol - the Idol Gives Back special. It was not a bad show, and oozed all the typical American pop culture and melodramatic cheese you would expect from a charitable event created by American Idol. Of course, being the total sucker that I am and infused with raging pregnancy hormones, I cried nearly the whole way through. The event seems to have been successful, and raised over $60 million (so far) for charities in the US and Africa. I especially enjoyed the footage of Randy and Paula in the US, because my focus has always been so international that I often forget there is extreme poverty and illiteracy in our own back yard. Hmm, forget is not the right word, I don't forget. But America has become so good at hiding (and ignoring) these realities that it is easy to overlook, whereas the conditions in Africa are so readily apparent and abundant that it is impossible to miss. I was also interested to learn about all the domestic work Save the Children does. I didn't know that, as I only know them due to their international work. In Mali they have set up several village elementary schools (J helped get one set up in his own village) and do basic health education.

With only minutes before the end, they finally showed Bono talking to the contestants. Can I just go on a little hero worship rant...I Love Bono. It is true, very very true. And I know that J doesn't even mind because he worships him even more than I do. I know deep down in my heart that he would leave me for Bono, if they both swung that way. And I accept that. And I don't blame him. I mean, the guy is a musical genius AND has done amazing work to fight poverty and HIV/AIDS. He is my Idol. Anyway, so he was featured in the end, talking about his amazing One campaign. Evidently, after the show over 70,000 people joined the One campaign, which is impressive. I was really hoping he would perform though, so I was a bit disappointed.

The whole reason for this post though is that I feel the need to provide a bit of clarification. Some of the footage they showed of Africa was very bothersome to me. I think that many Americans may have come away from the telecasts thinking that Africans live in filth and do not care about keeping their space clean. And this is not true. Granted, you do see a lot of trash along the streets, especially blue plastic bags which seem to have overtaken the whole continent. Think about it, if African governments don't have enough money to educate all their children and stop the HIV epidemic, they certainly don't have enough money to pay for garbage trucks and collectors. What I want to point out is that you will not see garbage laying around a family's compound. They do not live in "filth", and try to keep their space as clean and organized as resources would allow. If a woman let her home become dirty, the whole neighborhood or village would talk about it and she would be disgraced. So, after getting up at 5 a.m. to start breakfast cooking, washing dishes, with a child on her back or at her breast, in between preparing all the meals and doing laundry and taking care of the children and the elderly family members and going to the fields, she will sweep her compound. You don't know the meaning of work until you've seen a woman in rural Africa in action. For whatever reason, I needed that to be clear, because the scenes of heaping trash that Idol showed gave the wrong impression. Why did they feel the need to show the local dump in Kenya but not the one in Kentucky?

Spread of America

A friend asked me some questions that I imagine others of you may wonder as well, so I thought I'd answer her here on the blog. She basically asked me what sort of American things we can find here in Jakarta, and her questions relate to some things I had been thinking of mentioning on my blog anyway. So here goes...

1) Do you get any American tv shows there? The answer is yes, yes, yes. Most importantly, I get American Idol, in all it's wonderful current season glory. We are 1 day behind and of course can't vote, but I can't tell you how thrilled I was when we arrived here and I saw that it would be shown here as well. Seeing the trailers for American Idol and 24 before we left the US was killing me. So yes, I am fully up-to-date on Sanjaya finally and mercifully being kicked off, Simon's latest cracks, and Melinda's amazing talent. 24 is also shown here, but it is not the current season. We have been really getting into Heroes, which is the current season but a few months behind. All the CSIs are on, as well as Grey's Anatomy, Desperate Housewives, and others like Scrubs, Friends, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, but none of these are the current season. But no, we are not forced to watch Alf or Green Acres in order to get our American tv fix. We also get CNN, BBC, MSNBC, Discovery channel, Disney Playhouse, National Geographic channel, ESPN, HBO, Cinemax, and Star Movies which shows good movies in English with Indonesian subtitles. Definitely not a bad selection.

2) How about the radio? The radio pretty much sucks here. Given that it is horrible in the US as well though, I'm not surprised. There are a couple "good" channels that seem to play a better assortment and have some commentary in English, but it's still pretty hit or miss. They just play the most random selection of songs. One minute we could be enjoying Coldplay or U2, and the next we're stuck with Olivia Newton John or Tiffany. Our car also only has a tape deck, so we have started buying some cassette tapes. The availability of good cassettes is pretty small though, so it looks like we're going to be stuck with only a few good tapes. Remember all the fun of making mix tapes back in junior high school? Well, if you've still got a tape deck in your stereo, why not relive the glory days and send us a few mix tapes!

3) What American movies do you get? We get American movies in the theaters here, although a bit late and a pretty random assortment. We have gone to 2 movies here, Music and Lyrics with Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore, and last Friday was Shooter with Mark Whalberg. I expect that most of the big summer movies will make their way here. Let me tell you about the movie theater we went to though. It's the nicest movie theater we've ever been to, and this is for the regular theater. They also have a VIP theater where I guess you are served food and drinks. The theater we went to is in one of the nice malls, Plaza Indonesia (stores include Cartier, Tiffany's, Valentino, Nine West, Benetton), and the price of a ticket is a whopping $3. You get to choose your seats when you buy your ticket, and they have a full concession stand as well as a cafe or something in the lobby. The theater itself has fantastic surround sound (was great for Shooter) and the seats are heavenly - big, plush recliner like seats with plenty of leg room. We will have to check out some of the other theaters around town because it can take us 1 hour to get there, but at least it's a nice experience once we're there. We can also get just about everything on DVD. We can buy officially released movies, but we can also buy pirated ones for about $.70. The quality is usually fairly good, and you can get most of the major movies as soon as they hit theaters in the US. We can also get a lot of tv shows on DVD. We have been really enjoying Entourage this way, and have bought past seasons of Scrubs, West Wing, and X Files (oh yeah!). I just recently bought part of the current season of Grey's Anatomy and 24, but only some of them work in our dvd player. But we can't really complain at $.70/dvd.

4) What's the availability of American food? Believe it or not, but just about all the major restaurant chains have reached Jakarta. There is at least one TGIF, Tony Roma's, Chile's, California Pizza Kitchen, Pizza Hut, McDonald's, KFC, Dunkin' Donuts, and Starbucks. Krispy Kreme has also just arrived, and has become my favorite treat. I don't remember liking it quite this much back home... One nice thing is that these places are here, but another nice thing is that you don't find them everywhere. America has definitely not taken over. As far as the grocery stores, you can find just about anything, at a price. We can buy Cheerios here, but no thank you at $11/box. We can get Ben & Jerry's, and it's not too much more than back home. We have certainly been able to find everything we "need", and sometimes we treat ourselves to something we don't need. And there are a couple things we have either not found or have a difficult time finding, like arugula, pine nuts, Goldfish crackers, some liquor like Bailey's, etc. The other challenge is that in order to get everything I know is available that we might want/need, I'd have to go to about 5 different grocery stores. In a big city with bad traffic, this is not fun. So usually we just live without.

So as you can see we aren't doing without very much. It's quite a comfortable place to live. Many of the people I am coming to know here work outside of the international development industry, and have either never been overseas before or their expat jobs have been in the middle east or Asia. I take their complaints with a grain of salt. I find it quite amusing when they get worked up over not being able to get x, or having to pay so much for it if they can find it. Considering that we expected our overseas assignment to be in Africa where you can't get at least 3/4 of what I described above, we think we're living in a pretty posh environment.

Hope this has been at least mildly interesting. Feel free to ask me any other burning questions.

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.

Bali bliss

What do you picture when you imagine Bali? Tranquil warm sea waters lapping at long sandy beaches, perhaps? Cocktails that come in coconut shells and palm trees hugging the coast, hot and humid tropics, exotic languages, spicy food, beautiful resorts, bustling market places? From our few short days there, I would say you are right on. It was truly blissful and I can't wait to go back (6 long months from now).

Our trip began with some mild challenges. The airline called the day before to tell us our flight was delayed until the afternoon, which meant that we would lose a half-day of a precious 3 day weekend. This also meant that we would be going during C's nap, thus losing his nap for the day. We covet his naps dearly because we spent so many months trying to get him to be a good sleeper, so we go to great pains to ensure he takes a nap every day. Anyway, so this was disappointing but not serious. Our flight there, on budget Air Asia, was not bad. It's definitely a budget airline, but at half the cost of even the most respected Indonesian carrier, Garuda, and for a short 90 minute flight, it was well worth it. We arranged for the hotel to pick us up at the airport, and 20 minutes after collecting our luggage we arrived at the Nusa Dua Beach Hotel.

The hotel had an open air lobby with Balinese design and furnishings throughout. It was quite beautiful, and really made us feel like we had landed in paradise. Our room was lovely and had a nice patio overlooking the incredibly serene hotel gardens. The hotel was very quiet, and the only sounds we heard from our room during our stay were thunder and birds. There were about 10 hotel inhabitants of the duck variety, and C wasted no time in chasing him. Before I knew it, not 5 minutes after coming into our room, C was several feet away heading towards the pond, chasing the poor ducks who were squawking and waddling as fast as they could. I could hardly keep up, and poor J had no idea where we had disappeared to.

There were 2 little areas with shops and restaurants within walking distance of the hotel, so that is what we did for dinner for 2 nights. Aside from the slap-you-in-the-face humidity, the walks were pretty and quiet, unlike noisy polluted Jakarta. The best shopping in Bali evidently is in and on the way to Ubud, which is a town towards central Bali. We would have needed about 5 hours for that excursion, which we didn't really have this time, so this will be a priority the next time we go. We also didn't have any exceptional food during our stay. The one thing we forgot on this trip was our Lonely Planet Indonesia book, so we were somewhat at a loss as to what to do. We knew about Ubud, but didn't know we needed so much time to go there. We knew there were things to see in Kuta, and we went there the morning it rained, but we didn't know where to go so I'm pretty sure we missed seeing anything interesting. Anyway, next time we will not make the same mistake and hopefully we will eat better and see more. As it was we spent most of our time at the hotel, enjoying the beach and the pools, and it was glorious. The ocean and pool water temperatures were perfect and C had a great time playing in the sand and "swimming" (as did we!). J and I managed to get out by ourselves for dinner one night by hiring a babysitter from the hotel. All in all it was a wonderful mini-vacation and we are already greatly looking forward to going back when we will spend a longer amount of time.

During our stay C slept in a big boy bed for the first time ever. It was well barricaded with 2 walls and the back of a couch, so he must have felt pretty secure. The only time we woke up during the 3 nights we were there was the first night when he bumped his head on the wall. His new big boy bed is due to arrive next week so I'm optimistic that the transition will go smoothly.

We got back from Bali on Sunday and C started his new school on Monday morning. He will spend M-W mornings there and so far so good. The center requests that parents stay with their child much of the time in the beginning, so I was able to get a good feel for the center, the teachers, and how C will like it. Given all the time he spent in a daycare center back home, we are not worried about him adapting to the environment. He is happy to go in the morning and is enjoying all the activity and the other children. My only complaint with the center is that it seems a bit manic. They try to cram too much into the morning and as a result the kids are constantly moved from one activity to another and from one place to another within the center. It felt to me that as soon as C was getting into an activity or into playing, it would be time to do something else. Other than that though, it seems to be a good mix of free play, directed play, and learning. His teachers are nice and seem to manage the children well. I think it will be a positive experience for him. I think I will miss him a bit while he's there in the mornings, as I've become so accustomed to him being around. But, I am also happy that I will have this alone time with his little brother, and I think that will be good for everyone.

One to remember

We were at the dinner table the other night and asked C to open his mouth so we could look at his teeth because they seemed a bit yellow to us. He complied, and we discussed why this might be happening for a little while. After a few minutes he turned to J and said, "hey big boy, show me your teeth!". Classic.

Demonville, incorporated 2007

Was it just a few days ago that I was raving about how "delightful" and totally wonderful my son is? I feel like I'm emotionally unstable with this kid around. One minute he IS the most delightful, fantastic boy, and I can't believe I totally lucked out to have the most perfect child in the world. And the next? I think I gave birth to a demon child that was put on this earth to make me crazy and push every single button I have. Last night was especially horrendous. Meal time is always a bit of a struggle. While he usually ends up eating most of everything on his plate, it often takes some coaxing, bribing, games, or sitting for eons waiting him out until he decides that eating his broccoli is indeed a fair trade-off to play with his cars. I have grown accustomed to this struggle for the most part, since I do it 3-5 times/day with him. But J usually only witnesses it at dinner, after a long day at work. So this is the way we started last evening - the usual mealtime struggle, before which we had to fight with him to get him to wash his hands. And one of the reasons I was looking forward to coming to Indonesia was that we'd be able to eat together as a family every night, instead of rushing home from work and feeding C something quick and J and I not eating until 8 after he was in bed. What was I thinking?! Now we eat as a family, but it is not a very relaxing, enjoyable experience. Evidently C is supposed to be getting something positive out of eating with his family, so "the" pediatricians say. I wonder. Maybe it's just an evil ruse to make the parents even more frazzled than they already were.

After dinner we moved on to trying to get C to help us clean up. Then came brushing his teeth. What he does these days when we ask him to do something is head in that direction, and then veer off in another direction like it's a big game. And even when he knows it isn't a game to us, he still refuses and there are more bribes, games, coaxing, etc. to get him where we need him to be. So brushing his teeth ended up in tears, raised voices and threats of time-outs. And when we finally got that done, we had to go through all of this again to get his pj's on. Well, this ended with me getting kicked and that was our last straw. He got his first time-out since we've moved into our house. I suppose that's pretty good considering we've been here for 6 weeks, but usually the threat of a time-out is enough.

Finally the monster went to bed, but instead of relaxing J and I had language lessons. It was a very tiring evening, and the thought that we're adding another Demon Child to this already taxing situation was hardly comforting.

And my poor little monster has a lot ahead of him, little does he know. He starts school next Monday. That following weekend we're hitting the potty training hard core. Soon after that he'll be getting a big boy bed. And then we'll be going to Singapore and he'll become a big brother. And then we'll come home. It's a heck of a lot for a little guy, I know, but unfortunately we just don't have any ways around it. With all these changes we'll probably be living in Demonville for the foreseeable future.

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I just posted a new entry but it is located before the Two Little Tykes post, since I started it before that one. Just fyi.