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.