Okay, I spent about 2 hours uploading and arranging photos, giving them all little sayings and snippets, and when I went to post, the photos rearranged and the snippets went into all of the wrong places. In some spots the photos overlapped each other. What's with that??? Anyways, I may try again or I may just add a older photos with each blog post. I also tried to do a slide show, but picaso (the album) only wants to show a slide show of ALL the photos on my blog...all 449 of them. That's not my intention, either. Any ideas?

Today was a fun day. Because we go to church on Saturday nights we have the whole Sunday to do whatever we feel like doing. We decided to drive out to Jakarta to an outlet store. Both kids have grown tremendously (we're wondering what is in the air/food here!) and need clothes again. Tris was brave enough to get directions and tackle the traffic himself, so we set out around 9:30. After hitting the outlet store (some success) and then an A&W we arrived home about 2:00. Our intention was to meet other families at the school pool, but the thunderstorm that we are experiencing right now is so loud and full of electricity that it is probably not a good idea. I'm just thankful that the rain never came down until we got back from Jakarta...driving in the wet city isn't very fun. Instead, everyone's doing school work and I'm going to make some chocolate chip cookies. I have a 5 year old friend, Hope Weeda, who gets very frustrated with me if she comes for a visit and there are no cookies in my fridge!

A long time ago, in 2008 I believe, Abby was told that she was going to receive some awards for having such high scores in her classes. She silently and patiently waited for these awards, and it was explained to us the other day that there was such a delay that instead of awarding them in front of the entire Junior School the awards would be given in front of her class instead. In order to receive these awards a student had to get all highly-competent and an attitude of 3 (like getting straight A's) during a unit. Last week Abby received 6 awards total in: Bible (twice), English (twice), UOI (unit of inquiry--I'm always impressed by the expectations and outcomes of these units--they make the students really think, assess, analyze and work together as a team), and Mathematics. Ab works very hard at her school work and we're really proud of the work that she is turning out as well as her attitude in class.

Also last week I was able to visit the house behind us (we call it the 'noisy house'). I had earlier volunteered to "help" with the childrens' english homework, but it changed somehow. When I got there the house mom was eating dinner and she said "go ahead, Mrs. Kim." Not sure how I did it but with my lack of Bahasa Indonesia (and Papuan, because the kids also struggle to learn Indonesian) and the childrens' lack of Bahasa Ingriss (English) but I figured out what they needed to study. It's difficult to study a language when you don't even know what the instructions say, so instead of helping them with their work I ended up doing vocabulary with them at the front of the class (later I told the house mom that I'm not a teacher, in case she had great expectations). It was quite fun, but it turned out that it took almost 2 hours to figure out where they were at and do the vocab as well as help them finish their original lessons; apparently I took them right past their prayer time. Looks like Fridays would work better for them, but I'm still not sure that I am supposed to be teaching them English. What I would really like to do is to take them to the park and play a game of soccer or something...that's a great way to practise english! Today is out because of the thunder.

Tomorrow I am heading out to the slums with a woman named Maria. She is the woman who took my parents out for the day when they were here. She is teaching Muslim women about empowerment (which includes sewing, hygiene...and i'll learn more tomorrow) and visits 6 slums each week. I'll update more once I return. Last time I went with Matthew's class I didn't bring my camera (nuts, I know!!) and so maybe tomorrow I will bring it instead.

Two and a half more weeks of Masters of Educational Technology and then we get our husband/dad all to ourselves! We're not officially counting down but we're getting pretty excited as a family to have the courses finished.

Thanks for reading.