Bekk and Adam are getting married!

Some good friends here recently got engaged.
Adam is from Alaska and Bekk is from Australia.
They met here in Bandung and have been dating for the past year.
We are so excited for them!
Their plan is to get married here over spring break and
their families will come to Indonesia for the wedding.

To celebrate their engagement we gathered for a picnic in Bekk's backyard.
We drank homemade chi tea
Ate yummy treats.
Chatted, laughed, and soaked up the sun.
It is so fun to celebrate life moments like these with good friends.
And it is a reminder to me of the importance of living life in community.

Here are a few pics of the fun:

Picnicing is the perfect way to celebrate
and the perfect way to spend a saturday afternoon.

Bekk has a strange teletubbie statue in her backyard.
Charity and I look on puzzled and a little frightened.

Lots and lots of laughs

Bekk and her sister team up to try moving it out of the way
so we can party without the creepy statue looming.

Bekk tells the story of how she proposed to Adam, in a way that only she could.

Botram {potluck}

Thought I would share a little bit more about our staff picnic we had a couple weeks ago. We had about 90 of our staff show up- both Indonesian and bule (american). We went to this really cool place that had big grass fields, a large pond filled with fish, a zip line, and a covered picnic area perfect as shelter from the rain. We picniced Indonesian style. They call it botram. Everybody brings their own food and a little to share. We sat around on woven mats in little family groups. Then you go around tasting what everyone else brought. Kind of like potluck but everyone keeps their own food and waits for others to come to them to try what they have. At the beginning they guys got a game of soccer going and some volleyball while the kids played in the fish pond (they were trying to pull the fish out of the water), and the woman sat around chatting. Then after we ate and it started raining we played some intense games of crab soccer under the roof. It was a very fun day to hang out as a staff outside of school and just be together.

finding time to breath

It has been so busy around here lately.
I have found myself running here, there, and everywhere.
The calendar is packed full and there does not seem to be any reprieve any time soon.
It has been hard to find time to breath in the midst of it all.

This morning I read, "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow,
for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Oh, how true that is.

This evening heavy rains have come again and it is pouring outside.

A couple of weeks ago our staff gathered for a picnic.
Here's some proof that we have been getting lots of rain lately: