Things that Don't Happen in America

I was jolted out of a very sound sleep at 5:something AM this morning.
It was coming from a nearby mosque.
But it wasn't the call to prayer.
It was already light out.
Much too late for morning prayers.
And the call to prayer never wakes me up.
I'm so used to it, I sleep right through it.

This morning, it was a man shouting.
He was alerting the neighborhood to a death.
A 63 year old man from the next street over died at 3:50 AM.
The funeral starts at 10.
The burial is across the street from my house.

This isn't the first time I've been woken up to the details of a death being broadcast.
And it won't be the last.

But it is the first time I ever thought to write about it.

And to think...
In America, you have to wait to read about it in the newspaper.

Banquet 2016

Every year, the junior class plans and hosts a formal banquet to honor the outgoing seniors. And every year for the past few years, I’ve been one of two junior class advisors who has been helping the junior class plan this banquet. That job is super easy when you have a very motivated, organized class. This year’s junior class is the opposite of that. But thankfully, they have parents who ARE motivated and organized, and those parents made a lot of things happen. I was biting my nails a bit there at the end, hoping things would come together, and they really did.

So after 6 months of venue searching, food tasting (which also included me and 6 students getting terrible food poisoning – one ended up in the hospital!), theme choosing, invitation designing, gift buying, and other general planning, it all came together. This past Saturday was our banquet, held in the grand ballroom of a nearby hotel. The theme was 007/Secret agent/Black and white/Classy. Something like that.

We came and took opening photos. Here are just a few of the lovely staff members I get to work with!

We hail from all over the world, with different cultures, different opinions, and different values. But every year, we somehow manage to work together to educate an entire school full of children! I really, truly love this community that I get to be a part of!

Before dinner began, my table quickly earned the reputation of loudest table in the room as we played our own little version of charades to entertain ourselves.

See those two juniors in the background helping the wait-staff figure out which plates go to which table? They were all over it, and I got to sit and relax with my fellow teachers.

One of our classic banquet games is a couples game, where different pairs of people are called up to stage to play a quiz game about how well they know each other. Couples usually include siblings, friends, a married couple (teachers, of course), a dating couple, and a non-dating couple who came to banquet together. One of the seniors convinced me to go with him…

This is me realizing that he correctly guessed my favorite kind of chocolate! We even beat out a married couple with four children!

I don’t know if I should be honored or concerned that my students know me so well…

As with any banquet/prom/homecoming event, there were awards. We had awards for king and queen, the cutest couple, the best bromance, the best dressed guy and girl, and the sassiest couple award. These awards are FOR the students, voted on BY the students throughout the evening. However, at the end of the night, when the votes were tallied and the awards announced, I won sassiest female!! Here I am accepting my award (a sassy pair of sunglasses) with my male counterpart.

I’m not sure how I won a student award, but I CAN vouch for this guy’s sassiness, as he sasses me just about every day in class. I’m sure you can tell just by looking at him…

After the games, dinner, dancing, and awards were all over, the stage was opened back up for more pictures. I got a shot with one of my junior boys and with two of my favorite senior girls!

 

And of course, my senior AP Calculus class (which includes two juniors this year!). This is my absolute favorite class to teach, and this is the BIGGEST this class has ever been! I would say that it is the most difficult class we offer at our school (it’s a college level calculus class), and those who choose to take it are usually few and far between. This year’s senior class is SO academic and SO driven that I had to order extra textbooks this year, just so everyone could have one! This is also the class that I have taught the longest in the history of teaching here. They are the only class I ever taught 8th grade Algebra 1 to, and I’ve taught them every single year since then! Five years in a row! They may be sick of me by now, but I’m sure gonna miss them when they graduate!

A Load off my Mind

Two disasters happened last week, but both in a miraculous way.

1. A massive old maple tree fell on my family's house. When my dad messaged me to say it "swept down the south side of the house" I was under the impression that the tree had knocked down the entire south end of the house. Imagine my relief when I discovered that the entire house was still standing, and that the tree had just grazed the south end of the house as it fell! Because not having half a house would be bad business in Indiana in the winter. I'm thankful to still have a house to come home to (in just a few short months!), and I'm also thankful for the people who gave up a Saturday afternoon to come help my family clean up the giant tree in their yard.

2. The SAME DAY the tree fell, some close friends of mine here in Indonesia were sleeping in their home when the ceiling in their four year old daughter's room collapsed!! They have no idea how or why. They also don't know how it missed crushing their child in her sleep, as the (very heavy gypsum) ceiling panels that fell were above her bed... but somehow hit the ground BESIDE her bed. Once again, I am so thankful for God's hand of protection on that situation, and for the workers who came and fixed her ceiling and checked all the other ceiling panels in their still-new house!

And two things that I was really holding my breath over finally reached a happy ending!

1. My new passport arrived! So renewing my passport will be one less thing I have to think about this summer while I'm in America. I could have technically renewed it there, but then I would have to wait until I received the new passport to begin the extremely stressful visa application process to come back to Indonesia. Now I'll be able to get the visa ball rolling as soon as my paperwork comes through!

2. As of yesterday, I HAVE A REPLACEMENT! Someone who is already here in Indonesia and who is a licensed math teacher will be covering my classes for me during the first quarter of next school year while I extend my time in America to be at my brother's wedding! I have been praying about this since the beginning of this school year, before my brother even proposed!

As we prepare to celebrate Jesus's death and resurrection this week, all these events have been a good reminder that what He did for us wasn't just 2000 years ago on the cross. He is STILL working for our good - MY good - this week, today, in this moment.

#springbreak16

If you follow my life very closely, then there are two things you probably know about me. If you don’t follow my life very closely, that’s fine. But you’re missing out. So here are the two things, in no particular order.

1. Every year since I have lived in Indonesia, I have gone to Bali for Christmas break. And more importantly, though the group of people I travel with has changed every year, there is a core group of three people who have gone every single year: Yohanes, Peco, and me. We are the only constants, year to year.

2. This most recent Christmas break, Peco wasn’t able to join us. It was our first Christmas in eight years without him.

If you follow me on any type of social media, you probably saw my many posts appealing for prayer for a girl named Eva who very nearly lost her life last summer. Eva is Peco’s wife. Her life is a story of God’s healing and provision. But that healing took time. Lots of time. In fact, her body is still healing. But just last month, her doctors in America (where their 2 month vacation ended up being a 9 month rehabilitation process) finally gave her the green light to come back to Indonesia. So Peco, Eva, and little Ayla came back to Indonesia two weeks ago. They flew straight to Bali, where they spent a few days adjusting to the weather and the time difference. Yohanes and I (among other friends) flew there at the beginning of our spring break last week to meet them.  They arrived in Bali on Thursday, we arrived on Sunday.

Brace yourself for lots of pictures. Lots of low quality phone pictures.

Four of us traveled from Java to Bali. We took motorbikes to the bus stop, a bus to Solo, a minibus to the airport, then an airport to Bali. We like to include as many forms of transportation as possible. Here’s the four of us in the angkot (minibus) with an old lady. Don’t let her turned-away face fool you. She was VERY amused by us.

From left to right, we have Melanie, me, Katie, and our ever wonderful selfie photographer, Yohanes. Oh, and here’s a shot of our airplane. I was very concerned about getting on a CRIME aircraft. But then I figured out what the rest of it said…

We ran into people we knew in the airport in Solo, then again when we landed in Bali… Because, you know, Indonesia is such a tiny place, you’re bound to run into someone you know eventually… Once we landed on Bali, we took a taxi to the hotel where Peco and Eva were staying at. Some other friends of ours happened to be in Bali at the same time, and when we got to the hotel, everyone met us hungry travelers in the hotel restaurant with pizzas for lunch. I gotta be honest, the second I saw Eva across the empty restaurant, I nearly burst into tears. Being able to finally hug this dear friend was the result of miracle after miracle, and I was just so happy and emotional to see her again! Here is our first of several “family pictures”.

See those two little girls? Yeah, so the last time I saw them, the younger one had just been born! Again, notice Yohanes’s masterful selfie taking skills. After lunch, we parted with our visiting friends, and seven of us (Peco, Eva, Ayla (who was napping during the picture above), Yohanes, Katie, Melanie, and I) headed inland towards Ubud, where we spent the rest of the week in one of our favorite homes away from home. This was the view along the coast on the way there.

Last time I got to spend time with Peco, Eva, and Ayla was Christmas 2014, when Ayla was still 6 months old! She was seriously jet-lagging when we arrived and didn’t really want anyone but mommy and daddy. By the next morning though, she was warming up to the rest of us and learning our names. She even went on a walk with me first thing in the morning! I can’t even tell you what a delight this little girl is to be around. Her brain is a little sponge, and she just loves life. I’m pretty sure she could find something to be happy about in just about any situation. And just look at that killer smile!

When we stay in Ubud (which is usually at least once a year), we stay at the T-Houses. They are open air classic style wood frame homes that can be rented pretty cheaply. I don’t want to make them sound too great though, because I really don’t want a ton of people to go stay there, because then I won’t be able to! So to deter possible customers, I just want to show you this picture of the day I was taking my sweet time on the toilet when suddenly, a lizard fell out of a tree and landed on the awning above me and started clunking around. It was startling and a little bit frightening. But it’s the price you pay for outdoor bathrooms (which PS are just about my favorite thing ever).

So now that I have deterred you from ever wanting to stay there, here are some pictures of pretty things I found around the house.

  

Oh, and our swimming pool! We can’t forget about the refreshing pool at the edge of the rice fields.

It’s very rare for us to ever meet any Americans on Bali. Most of the non-Asian tourists there are either European or Australian. This year was no exception. Our neighbors consisted of a British family on a one month holiday (their kids, Riley and Isis are playing with Ayla in the photo above), a Russian couple with their baby and their Filipino nanny, and a large extended Turkish family on vacation. Bali – and especially Ubud – has such a relaxed environment, and it’s fun to chill by the pool and get to know people from around the world. Ayla also had no shortage of friends. She is very comfortable with people – grownups and kids, friends and strangers – and she made friends pretty much everywhere we went!

On Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, we spent most of our days eating and walking around town. People come from every corner of the world to start restaurants in Bali, and eating is one of my favorite things about vacation because the food is authentic. We had Mexican, Italian, Turkish, Balinese, Thai, vegan, and many other kinds of foods. Here are some shots from our walks and our dinner views.

 

The Wednesday of our trip was the Balinese Hindu holiday of Nyepi. It is a day of complete silence, rest, and reflection. Non-Hindus and tourists are not exempt from this. For the entire day, we had to keep quiet and we were not allowed to leave the T-Houses. We went shopping Tuesday night (and it was like the night before Armageddon in the grocery store) and bought ingredients to cook all our own meals at the house on Wednesday. We thought we would be bored out of our minds, but really, the day passed quickly, and we got to spend lots of quality time together. I’ve never been on Bali during Nyepi before, so it was a new cultural experience for me. I wanted to know more about it, so I asked a lot of questions.

One of the most bizarre traditions is the creation of what are called ogoh-ogoh. They are the stuff of nightmares. An ogoh-ogoh is essentially a giant, scary, lightweight statue. Each neighborhood makes one, which the men parade through the streets on the night before Nyepi. The ogoh-ogoh look terrifying, because they are supposed to attract evil spirits. The idea is that if the ogoh-ogoh looks evil, the evil spirits will see it, think it is one of their own, and enter it. Then, after they have walked it through the village, the ogoh-ogoh is ceremonially destroyed or burned. Nyepi corresponds to the Hindu new year, so it means they get to start the year off free of evil spirits around them. As we drove and walked around, we took lots of pictures of the various ogoh-ogoh waiting to be paraded and burned. Here are some of my personal favorites (and by “favorites”, I mean “WHO EVEN IMAGINED THAT BECAUSE THEY SHOULD PROBABLY BE IN SOME SORT OF FACILITY!”).

 

(Photo cred goes to Melanie for the first 2 pictures shot from the back of a moving motorbike. Impressive work, Mel.) Every neighborhood had an ogoh-ogoh, all different, and all with varying degrees of gruesome-ness.

On the morning of Nyepi, besides hanging out with our neighbors in the pool (quietly, of course – because there are actually local men patrolling to make sure everyone is being quiet), we also spent a large portion of the day monitoring the solar eclipse! Unfortunately, we were just a bit too far south to see the full eclipse, but we got to see a good partial eclipse! We couldn’t see anything from looking at the sun, which obviously you shouldn’t do anyways (but obviously I still did just because someone once told me I shouldn’t), because though it seemed like someone dimmed the lights down way low outdoors, the sun still looked like this even at the peak of the eclipse:

Thanks to Peco’s ingenuity, we were able to watch the eclipse with much less eye burning via the cover of a book he ripped off and poked a pinhole in.

The eclipse started with the picture on the left and the peak occurred at 8:27 AM, which is precisely when I took the picture on the right.

The day after Nyepi, we were restless and ready to get out. So we took our motorbikes and drove an hour to the coast. We stopped for breakfast on the way, and partway through our meal, a family came and sat at the table next to ours. They sounded suspiciously American, and like I said before, that is a rare thing to come across on Bali. So at one point, I just leaned right on over and flat out asked them, “Are you American?” The dad quickly said, “No. Canadian.” But he was good natured enough about it, and we started a conversation. They own a business in Canada, but they wanted their two young sons to have the experience of living overseas, so when they’re not in Canada running their business, they spend 7-8 months a year living on the coast of Bali. Their kids go to an alternative natural school (that I’ve actually been to!) there, and spend a lot of time surfing and making friends from other cultures. It was really fun to talk to them and hear about their life! They also took us to one of their favorite beaches after we all finished our breakfast. Also, they were coming off a 12 day juice fast, and this was their first real meal. You really meet the most interesting people on Bali…

The beach they took us to is a well known surf beach with very high waves and strong waters. We scored some lounge chairs pretty far from the water and had a good time chuckling at all the tourists who pulled their chairs close to the water and got doused by high waves crashing over them while they sunbathed. 

I didn’t take a whole lot of pictures at the beach, but one thing I did make sure to take pictures of was the waves crashing majestically against this rock. It wasn’t until I’d been standing there for quite awhile that I noticed the group of boys hiding in the crevices of the shore side of the rock! They would wait for a wave to crash over, then give the thumbs up! They were both amused and amusing.

We exchanged numbers with the Canadian family with the promise that if they ever traveled to Java, we’d hook them up! I have a feeling they may take us up on the offer sometime in the near future…

The very best part about this trip was the time we got to spend together. One day, all the girls went to town to get massages (except me, because I am super freaked out by strangers touching my body), so Peco, Yo, and I took that opportunity to make us some pictures (because according to Katie, that is how everyone says it).

 

We meant to take a family picture when the girls got back from their massages, but we forgot. Then it was dark. So we did it the next morning before we said our goodbyes. As you can see from the photos below, morning is not our best time.

We clearly have no business taking early morning photos… Even Ayla couldn’t manage to muster up a smile!

It was tough to say goodbye. Our week together was SO GOOD. But alas, we had a flight to catch, so goodbyes were inevitable. We all squeezed Ayla a lot, and many hugs were had. Then the four of us headed to the airport.

^^ That’s the very western edge of Java. Though it was hard to leave Bali, seeing Java always feels like coming home, which is a good feeling. And if that wasn’t enough, flying in over Jogjakarta definitely reminded me that I live in one of the most densely inhabited islands on earth…

We all learned a lot over the past year. We learned that life is unpredictable. We learned how hard it is to be far from those you love when they are facing hard times. But more importantly, we learned that God is in control. We learned how beautifully the Body of Christ can function. We learned a lot about peace and prayer and trust. And we learned all over again how God works for the good of those who love Him.