Wedding Garb

Here's a side glance of traditional Acehnese wedding wear - now that's a hat!

Cute!

Here's a pix of our immediate neighbor who of course wanted her pix taken for this special event.

Traditional Acehnese Dance Garb

Recently we had a wedding in our community & some of our neighbor girls did a traditional Acehnese dance - very cool.

Monkey Bite

Well, sometimes we like to go for evening strolls thru our community for a chance to connect w/ neighbors & time to talk. This particular night we had NO idea that we’d have an encounter w/ a neighbor’s pet monkey…a biting encounter Elissa was sad to find out! Actually she totally posed that face just for the pix so don’t feel too bad …

The “Right Size” is All Relative

After playing inside, it was time to hit the road. Pak Hamit’s oldest son loves to ride bikes so we said he could borrow ours if he wanted…he didn’t seem to flinch when he saw the size, just hopped right on & rode away. Having things “fit” here doesn’t seem as important & being able to be used… a perfect fit is a luxury it seems.

Playing Jacks

Most of the time Pak Hamit’s sons & their cousin spent learning how to play jacks. Thanks Seth & Sarah for bringing those over, they are quite the hit!

3rd Language Reading…or Not

We’re in the process of reading thru the book called “The Art of Coming Home” because believe it or not, we’ll probably go thru a fair amount of culture shock coming back stateside in a few weeks. Anyways, the sons of our friend Pak Hamit stopped over & the oldest one picked up our book & began “reading.” Only problem is he may speak both Indonesian & Acehnese but not English…pretty funny.

Hand Wench

So J went to the mt. community we’re working in & delivered more cement & hung out w/ the guys there. On his way back he came across a bridge where the wooden slats had been forced apart too far for him to cross the gorge w/o falling in… so thankfully he had a hand wench in the back & put that to good work to pull the bridge back together so he could cross.

Happy 4th!

Well, it's been awhile since we've blogged - the internet access here has been pretty crummy :( Here’s E after just finishing week 28 – showing a little more!

Trekkin'

Here E & Sarah are in the midday heat making their way out to the irrigation project CAMA’s working w/ here in the mountains. This will be a future community rice field – very cool.

Philly Connection

On E’s way back into Aceh, she met our good friends Seth & Sarah in Indo’s 3rd biggest city of Medan. They came & visited us for about 5 days – it’s such a blast having friends to see us here – S&S, you guys rock!

Rules, Rules

After our travels to the island of Java for our conference, E stopped by her sister Crissy’s place to help her begin her packing up & J got back to Calang a little earlier. E happened to see this sign in a bathroom once back on “our” island of Sumatra. The far right symbol is warning against standing up on the toilet seat to use the facilities. Due to the high use of “squatty potties” here this makes sense...kinda. About as much sense as E having a camera in the bathroom we guess ;) If you’re not sure what a squatty potty is, check out our post from Nov 15, ’07.

Nomad

OK, back to our downtime after our field conference. We had a great time just relaxing over the weekend in Ubud. Here we are outside of a restaurant called “Nomad” – who says we can’t find a little piece of Mongolia in Indonesia?

In All Circumstances

On our flight from Jakarta to Bali, the flight attendant concluded her preflight announcement with, “Please pray for this flight.” Coming for the West where we have a phobia of public prayer, it sounded like, well it sounded like we we’re heading down and we hadn't even taken off! A little later we discovered they even had brochures of sample prayers for some of the major religions here – Islam, Prostestant, Catholic & Hindu. Obviously we made it ;)

Surprise!

At our field conference, our female teammembers threw a surprise baby shower for Baby D & Elissa – so fabulous! At the shower they started a list of potential names for Baby D which we’re trying to picture here, hopefully readable?! There was also a diaper pinned up on the wall to collect $ since trying to haul a lot of “stuff” across the islands isn’t as helpful...so thoughtful. :) (Notice the diaper sign says “Fill the diaper before Baby D does!) Any name ideas anyone?