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