Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Hi there everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to celebrating the New Year. I just wanted to give a little update on things here. This year for Christmas I stayed in Indonesia. It was my first Christmas "away from home," far from family and our usual Clauson traditions. It was hard to be so far away but was also full of blessings. Molly, one of my roommates, also stayed here for Christmas and we enjoyed time with some of the families in the community. Here are some highlights:

Christmas Eve morning we were invited over for traditional Finnish porridge with the Anturri family. Paivi Anturri is our school's music teacher. Her and her husband and three kids moved here to Indonesia from Finland 3 years ago. It was fun to try something new and spend time with this family.

Christmas Eve night Molly and I went out to dinner and ran into "Indonesian Santa."
There was a moment when I thought he might give us candy canes, but instead he pulled some fruity candy out of his bag. After dinner we went to the international church's Christmas Eve service.

Christmas day started with breakfast at Matt and Rachel Theissen's house. Matt teaches the upper level math classes and spanish and Rachel teaches english and drama at our school. I was especially excited because I bought real bacon at the store for us to enjoy at our special Christmas breakfast. Yum! I love bacon. :)

Next Molly and I went to the Crowther's house for a British Christmas. One of Molly's student's family is originally from Great Britain and has three kids at our school. We enjoyed spending Christmas with this fun family, especially because the kids were so excited about christmas and presents and all those wonderful things.

In this picture David (in 4th grade) uses one of his gifts to build the biggest tower possible.

Siena (in preschool) shows off her favorite Christmas gift- snorkeling gear.

Callum (in 3rd grade) shares his gift with me- 3D glasses that came with a movie he got.

Sitting down for Christmas dinner- very delicious. We had pumpkin soup, roast beef, potatoes, mashed yams and carrots, and gravy. After dinner we enjoyed some yummy "puddings" as they call dessert in England. Suzanne (the mom) made a treacle tart, chocolate mouse, and fruit salad.

A little after dinner reading- Siena shares with us her love of horses.

We spent almost 7 hours at the Crowther's house and I enjoyed every minute. I love British people, especially their accents. After we got back home we ended our very long Christmas day by having a couple of friends over to watch "A Christmas Story." I was exhausted at the end of it all, but felt blessed to be surrounded by friends while I was far away from family.

Photo Shoot

Our PE teacher's wife is a very gifted photographer. A couple weekends ago Janet agreed to take some pictures for my roommates and I. Jennie needed some photos for a new prayer card and we all joined her so we could get roommate pictures taken that day too. We went around Kota Baru and found some cool photo spots. She got lots of great shots... what a fun day! Thanks Janet for giving us your morning!

We are all proud motorbike owners! :)

That day our kitchen happened to be a disaster. Janet insisted on taking some pics of us being silly and wound up capturing our messy kitchen in the process. Although Jennie and I are posed in this pic, this same scene has probably taken place in real life as we open some drawer to find cockroaches inside. Perhaps in real life, though, I would be the one on the stool and she would be the brave one peaking inside. :)

Finally...

I finally finished the web album I promised of pictures from our trip to Mulih k' Desa. Click on the following link to go there: http://picasaweb.google.com/clauson.emily/GarutTrip

Mulih k' Desa

Melih k' Desa loosely translated means "return to the village" or "return home." Desa is my new favorite word meaning village or countryside. I'm not from the desa (or country) but I definitely want to return to it. A couple weekends ago we went on vacation to a city called Garut and stayed at a resort place named "Mulih k' Desa." It hosts people who are wanting to experience Sundanese culture, on a little bit of a nicer scale. We went with a couple whose kids go to our school and who are involved in a lot of work with the Sundanese people. At this place we stayed in traditional looking bungalows but with nice beds and hot showers inside. It was so nice to get away, relax a bit and have fun together. We signed up for the hotel's leadership program or team building activities where we did some silly games together. One of them was playing tug of war in the mud. Another one involved us balancing across a bamboo pole over a large pit of mud. More than half of us didn't make it across and ended up falling in and coming out pretty dirty. We got to learn how to plant rice and later went out to another field where we saw the end product and watched as it was being harvested. I was told by the man who was leading our group that I was the best rice planter... perhaps this might be a calling of mine. :) We sat outside on the porch of our bungalow looking at the rice patties, watching to see if our rice might grow, and enjoying quality conversation. We went to the pasar (traditional market), where the women found some cool tin dishes and the men bought machetes. We sat on the floor in open air huts and ate traditional meals. One night we went to a nearby hot springs, where there were two pools. One was hot and the other one was HOT. The smaller pool had the hottest water I have ever felt in my life. You could barely put your legs in, let alone get all the way in to sit in it. At the hot springs a few in our group decided to draw some attention and sing karaoke for all the people that were there. One played the piano while the other two sang. Another night we had a bonfire and layed around staring at the stars. We saw a lot of shooting stars and tried to spot the constellations because we had a star expert in our group or at least someone who had brought along a map of the constellations. On Sunday we gathered for some fellowship. Then before leaving the couple who had planned the trip had also prepared a scavenger hunt of sorts for us to do. We split into two groups to go out into the surrounding neighborhoods. We were given a wide variety of tasks to complete, worth different amounts of points, that had to be documented with photographs. The tasks ranged from things like plucking a feather from a chicken, catching a tadpole, and holding a baby under 5 months old to things like playing a traditional instrument, hearing a story from someone who has seen a ghost, and getting a signature from a midwife. We had a lot of fun trying to see how many we could accomplish and hang out with some local Sundanese people. They truly are generous people with such beautiful hearts.

Here are just a few snapshots of all that our weekend held. More pictures to come once I get the Picasa WebAlbum finished.

Thanksgiving Day

Our Thanksgiving Progressive Dinner 35 people from 6 different countries 4 houses 5 hours a delicious and fun meal

Critters and our quest to kill them...

We have had lots of critters in our house these days. I thought I'd write about some of them.

We've had lots and lots and lots of mosquitoes in our new house. We've had all sorts of beetles and flying wasp bugs. We've seen mice (or rats... depending who you ask). And our kitchen is infested with cockroaches. I'm so sick of opening the silverware drawer and finding a cockroach staring up at me. This past weekend I had finally had it and just started spraying it with Raid. After about an hour it finally died and I was left with a whole drawer full of dirty silverware. Unfortunately that one cockroach was not the only one in our house and even though I wish I could single handedly kill them all I continue to see them occasionally.

A couple weeks ago we were headed to bed when I heard my roommate Molly yell, "there's a snake in my bathroom." I was so confused. How could there be a snake in your bathroom? Me and my other roommates went down to see what was happening. Sure enough a snake had crawled up the shower drain and was coiled in the corner.

As a house full of girls we started freaking out... just a little. Molly's bathroom is smaller than most closets with the shower practically hanging over the toilet. We threw around some ideas of what to do. Someone suggested we try and put a bucket on top of it. Not sure what the plan was after that but it sounded good to me. Other ideas were discussed, but the one that won was to turn the shower full blast on hot to shoo the snake back down the drain. Molly turned the shower on and quickly shut the door as to not let the snake escape into the house.

The four of us just stood on the other side of the bathroom door, listening to the water run, waiting til the right moment to see if the snake had disappeared. Finally it seemed like it had been long enough so we slowly opened the door to find that the snake was no longer where it had been. We looked around and saw nothing and begun congratulating ourselves on our genius idea when Jennie looked in and spotted the snake in the back corner behind the toilet.

With no other ideas and the snake now out of reach we called it a night and headed to bed. Molly carefully used the bathroom and went to bed. The next morning it was still there, so she went ahead and showered while the snake kept her company inside the small bathroom.

As we left for school that morning we decided we would let our house helper take care of the snake so we left a note saying "Ibu there is a snake in the bathroom. Help yourself!" :) I thought maybe she would want it. But that was not the case. She called Jennie at school as soon as she saw our message. She was freaking out and did not know what to do. We sent a friend's driver over to deal with it. He killed the snake and that was the end of that. He did inform us that that kind of snake is very poisonous. Next time we'll advise Molly not to shower with any snakes.

Blessings

I have so much to be thankful for... sometimes the busyness or stress of life can cloud that. Perhaps it would benefit us all to take a step back and remember the blessings in our lives.

A beautiful sunset. A good conversation with a friend. A English Learner student finally beginning to speak in class. Rain that brings with it relief from the heat and the promise that rainy season is just around the corner.

What are you thankful for today?

Too Cute

A couple weekends ago my roommate Emma and I went to visit our helper at her house. We sat and ate and chatted there. Then (like she has done a couple times before) she asked if we wanted to go visit her family. We went to her father's house and then to her sister's house and then to her other sister's house. They basically all live next door to each other. They were getting ready for a birthday party for one of the kids later that afternoon. Here are a couple of pictures of the cute kids that were hanging around that day.

Bandung Traffic

What is daily life like here? Well if we want to go into Bandung it will include some of this:

Crazy Food Adventures

So if you have a weak stomach you may want to skip this post. Since I've been back to Indonesia this year I've found myself eating and trying all sorts of crazy foods. I had thought I ate some weird food last year, but so far this year I've topped all that.

The first crazy food adventure we've had is one Friday night we decided to go find a place to eat and ended up at a local Padang Restaurant. When we sat down we didn't order anything, they just immediately brought us a whole bunch of dishes and told us that we only needed to pay for what we ate. Some of the weird foods we tried were cow skin, brain, and lung.

The large spread of food- some normal food mixed in there too.

The brain.

The lung.

The second crazy food adventure we had was on our trip to Bromo. When we got to Surabaya we asked if there was any special food that the city was known for. Our taxi driver told us about the local specialty of cow nose rujak (rujak is cut up fruit covered in spicy peanut sauce).

We went to lunch at a local Indonesian restaurant that was known for serving this specialty. We tried the cow nose rujak (yes, with pieces of cow nose in it as well as mashed up in the sauce). I also tried ox tail soup for the first time. And we had some cow ankle curry which looked very weird and was kind of hairy... not sure what was going on with that.

We got invited into the kitchen to take a look. In the back there is the cow nose waiting to be added in with the fruit and peanut sauce.

Here is some of the things we ate at that lunch. On the left is the cow nose rujak, in the middle is some sort of sauce and something crunchy, and on the right is the ox tail soup.

The last crazy food adventure we've had is a lunch that was hosted for the students who applied to go on the Sea Tribe youth trip in the spring. We wanted to see who would be able to endure an uncomfortable situation and eat weird food with a smile. And eat weird food we did!

Our lunch included crickets and grasshoppers (that were fried). We had stomach, intestine, and lung. We also ordered some chicken head and chicken feet. Lastly, we had some salty fish and durian to round out our list.

Adam, one of the leaders, with his lunch group.

Here's me with one of the girls in my group. We are trying to figure out how to eat some of this stuff.

A plate full of all the crazy stuff- lung, intestine, stomach, grasshoppers, etc.

A close up on those heads and feet... pretty hard to eat. I would not recommend them.

New School Dedication

A couple weeks ago we had our official building dedication for the new BAIS campus. It was a great time of remembering God's faithfulness in bringing us to this point. Several people shared what the school has meant to them throughout the past 50+ years. We thanked many people who had volunteered countless hours to help the project come to completion. We recognized the contractor and his building team for the work they did. We also looked to the future and asked for God to bless this place and use it to further His kingdom. We had several out of town visitors for the event. Gary and Shelley Brumbaugh from the NICS home office were there. Gary came for a couple months at the end of last year to help us through financial issues and ensure a smooth transition to the new campus. Shelley is the Member Care Director for NICS. Also from the home office was Beckie Hopkins, who helps us with teacher recruiting and filling our job openings. Also from out of town was Joe and Becky Beeson (the parents of Joey the former director of our school) who came from Singapore to help us celebrate the dedication. Here are a few pictures from the day:

Pete Simano, our school's director, was the MC for the event. Next to him is one of the Indonesian teachers at our school acting as translator.

As part of the ceremony a group of staff members sang Psalm 127 in Indonesia. "Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain."

We also heard from a student choir made up of students from preschool all the way up to grade 12.

The ribbon cutting ceremony.

Pete Simano (the current director) and Joe Beeson (the father of last year's director) share the honor of cutting the ribbon.

We also included the Indonesian tradition of breaking a pot full of water and flowers. Gary does the honor of the pot smashing.

Also an Indonesian tradition is serving special food to the dignitaries first before everyone else eats. Together we enjoyed a delicious Indonesian lunch.

Me with my roommates. Because it was a special ceremony, we all dressed up in our Indonesian best.