Tuesday 16. Aug 2005

August 22, 2004

I have new photos up from the week of August 17 which is the Indonesian Independence Day. Most of the photos come from that day. Mercedes and Rebecca dressed up in traditional dress from Sumbawa and took part in the annual parade, something like I did when I was a kid. Here in Sekongkang there were days of activity before and after the 17th. The activities took place at the Kantor Camat (the Camat's Office which is a local government official). One set of activities were a bunch of dance competitions between students from area schools. Mercedes decided not to take part. Rebecca did and came in first. I have some photos, but I took them at night and they didn't come out very good. I'm working on cleaning them up so that they are viewable. I have a few movies of Rebecca as well, but they are also dark.

The next thing in the past hectic week was Su getting a contract from the mining company to provide box lunches for people volunteering to clean up the local beaches. The contract required Su to provide 4,500 box lunches in two days. Since the house isn't finished she decided to do all of this baking in our 6 by 5 square meter room and the 2 by 4 square meter kitchen. She hired a dozen locals to help and for two and a half days our house was a mess, Su rarely slept and I grew increasing crabby at not being able to live in my apartment except for sleeping in the bedroom. I'm glad that that period is over.

During this period of mad baking, Rebecca had her 11th birthday which we put off until next weekend when Su will have time to bake a cake and get stuff together for Rebecca's crowd of little girlfriends. So I'll have some birthday photos of Rebecca coming up. The floor in the house is in the process of being poured, so I'll have some photos of that as well. And thanks for the photos, Amanda, Su and the kids liked looking at them.

I put a little guestbook here so you can leave a message here for us if you are having trouble reaching us by email. Thanks for the messages in the guestbook. I like hearing from you all.