Mid February

Happy Belated Valetines Day! I guess they do Valentines day here but definitely not to the extent we do at home. Before I get into this week’s post I just wanted to share 2 words used in just about every sentence in Indonesian. Sudah means already, and belum means not yet. Ya these 2 little words are used for everything! Its crazy! Have you eaten? Are you married? Have you finished your work? Etc, etc. They are also used as past and future tenses when you put them with verbs. Like it is not yet working, or it is already working. My Indonesian is slowly progressing, but I haven’t really been full on studying it every day like I should.

This week I did another 2 days of harvesting pearls and re-operating them so maybe they can grow an even better pearl after another 2 years. I also wrote a mid month report this week on what I’ve been up to so far in February. The Alor government have decided to build a harbor right where one of our main sites is and where my building for operations is. It is such a mess! The government signed the contract build this 2 years ago and just told us about it a week before the supply ship arrived to start constructing the pier! They want to turn this harbor into a major port. Pretty bad news for us, and we are trying to get them to pay us so we can move all our gear to a new site away from the polluted harbor water.

Mid week there was a birthday party at the site. A woman that works in the hatchery, her daughter had her first birthday. It was pretty stinking cute! All the village kids came all dressed to the T. They usually play with us in just raggedy clothes. Some were there with their moms that are my technicians in operations. All the kids wore Disney birthday hats and sat on 2 benches facing each other. The birthday girl was in the middle in her too big for her pink poufy Easter dress. They sang to her and then had some birthday cake. A few had presents but most just had a note to give her and they all went up (literally at once! Freaked the birthday girl right out and she started crying!) to give her their present and a kiss, and then they got their party favor…fried noodle in a to-go container! So different than a 1 yr old’s birthday in the US! I thought it was really interesting to be a part of that. Also the same night as the birthday party there was a meeting of the chief of the community and other heads of the village here at our site. We are in the process of getting the locals to have a market here once a week with livestock, veggies, fruits, and seafood that we can buy for our kitchen instead of driving the 20 minutes to the town to buy our food. The villagers really seem like they are for it, so it should work out. Yesterday afternoon I went for a walk in the village with Lita (Daniel’s wife). We went through a path and down to the water to the mechanics house (the mechanic at our site). He is a grandpa and he had lots of kids running around, along with chickens and ducks. Nice big garden and a huge tree of this fruit we like that looks like a small mango but tastes like a granny smith apple. He got the kids to collect some fruit for us. And then he walked it all the way back to work with us and wouldn’t even let us pay for it. So nice! Today is Sunday, my day off. I’ve been sick with a cold this past week so I’m just resting trying to get over it. We did play with the kids this morning. More than 30 of them! Right in the beginning a group of girls had to go to dance class, so an extra 10 of them left right away. They do come super early on Sunday mornings and wait around for us to wake up. So next Sunday we have agreed that they are going to come at 5 pm. Much better to have a relaxing morning without a bunch of kids screaming Ibu Lita! Tata Tanya! (Mother Lita, Aunt Tanya) They had fun with us. A little group of about 6 kindergarteners had leggos to play with and I think it was their first time with leggos! They were just loving it! We had other activities for them to do, but they just thought the leggos were so cool how you could stick them together! Pretty cute! They were trying to use all the leggos together to make a tower. We also had a coloring contest and played hot potato with them. After they left I laid out in the sun and took some dips in the bay to cool off. Just relaxing today, its so nice! I attempted to get the hot tub going on Saturday and just fill it up with water as a cool tub, but no luck with that maybe this week we can get it sorted out. Well that’s been my week!