Monday, January 26, 2009

Time to Update!

I realize that it's been a while since I've updated our blog, and I have good reason. As I told Janet Weeda tonight, I've had to swallow my pride and realize that yes, it is going to take a while for me to recuperate from the fever. Never in my life have I been sick for more than 2 weeks; I am now on the upswing but my body still wants me to relax. That's not easy! I hate to admit it, but I am bored. Resources are harder to come by here and even if I found some (ie/ a sewing machine) it's difficult to find the rest of the things I would need to do projects (ie/ material, needles, patterns). I have read everything in the house of interest to me and so I think it's time to wander over to the senior school library and check out the shelves. Enough whining.

As an aside, one of the other reasons that I haven't been blogging is that our hard drive seems to have got a fever of its own and is now in the shop. This was a scary concept because all of my photos from the last 6 months are on it and (gulp) I haven't yet backed them up, except for what's on this blog. Thankfully, the computer techies working on it say that they can fix it without losing any data. Hallelujah! I am now typing on Tris' laptop which means that there will be no photos on this posting.

As I write, the kids are getting ready for bed and Tris is finishing up some marking. Yesterday he handed in a Masters assignment that was due today, and got his mark back already. Twenty-eight out of 30. I love being married to such a studious, intelligent man. Matthew got his report card last week and he did quite well. Takes after his dad.

In the background I hear the noise of a whole slew of children. We're not sure, but we think that the renovations that we were hearing a few weeks back have resulted in, quite possibly, an orphanage of some sort behind our house. The key word here is DIRECTLY behind our house. All noise from that house carried into our bedroom and our dining room, especially the singing that occurs as the possible-dozen children sing themselves awake around 5 am every morning (including weekends) and to sleep again around 10 pm. I am so very tempted to make a huge batch of cookies and take it over; not sure if anyone speaks english but cookies always speak volumes. Maybe if I get to know them I can bribe them into talking very softly on the weekends until around 8 am; cookies for quiet, sounds reasonable to me! We met a few girls who we think may be around 10 years old. Tris was in our back yard recycling and they were giggling at him. So far, with all of the kids we've seen with our own eyes, there are about 7 children. If we find out that there are 20 we will not be surprised. One of the things we're a little curious about here are zoning laws; we don't think they're the same as in Canada.

Today is my dad's birthday. We were able to celebrate it a little (and Tris' as well) early January when we took my parents to the Marriot Hotel in Jakarta. It was an all you can eat buffet of all kinds of wonderful dishes. One of the best things about eating there, especially after travelling, is that we are pretty sure that the prepping & cooking conditions in the kitchen are sanitary. The food is pretty incredible, too. There is an Indonesian singing strings quartet that walks around the restaurant taking requests. I tried to get them to sing the Beatles' "When I'm 64" but unfortunately they didn't know it. They sang Obladi-obladah instead and so we dedicated that to the guys for their birthdays. Happy Birthday Dad.

It's time to wrap it up. Everyone's heading to bed on this Chinese New Years holiday Monday. It's an early 8:18 pm but tomorrow is a school day and we go to bed early here.

Thanks for reading.

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