Babies! Babies!

Daniel’s wife and baby arrived this week.  Kiandra is the baby’s name.  She is pretty good, sleeps a lot, eats a lot, and is a little fussy, but not screaming crying or anything.  I wear ear plugs at night and I don’t hear anything, but Daniel says she makes a lot of little noises at night and keeps him up.  I crocheted her a soft little girl hat and she likes and needs for these chilly evenings we have been having.  A new pattern and everything, I am getting pretty good at this crochet business.  Wonder what I will whip up this week?  Tomek is back as well, so we are one big happy family again.  Tomek will only be here for a bit though, as he goes on leave in the beginning of July.  My big boss is here for the weekend for some meetings with the government too.  It’s a full house.  Daniel’s wife brought the new Modern Family and Game of Thrones series so that will keep us busy for a while.  My boss also brought me some granola from Bali.  It’s the little pleasures that matter out here!  Just found out today one of our boats got hit by a tanker and caused major damage, so we are down one boat to transfer shells.  That will delay the operations in Lembata and we might do the ops in Alor earlier then.  Oh it’s all up in the air as usual!  Sugi is on the way to Lembata now, but will just check the shells and then return back to Alor most likely.  I’m feeling stressed again as its nearing the end of the month and the stocktake is due and my end of the month report is due this week.  Ugh!  So I will be busy on the computer this week.  I have been stepping up and being a member of our one man dive team too.  Last week I did 4 dives and this next week another 2.  We only have one local diver now and Daniel or I when we can help out.  The plan next week is to move some oysters around and consolidate them on the lines.  A bit of a mission.  Then I will be preparing for operations at the end of the week. 

I met with the electrician’s assistant this past week to help him practice his English and he helped me with my bahasa.  Went pretty well really.  I was in a good mood afterwards like he made some things clearer for me and fixed the way I order the words around.  So it was helpful.  We will meet on Mondays after work to do some practice.  I am not making a big lesson or anything, I will just study from this course book I found online and he can practice his English from that.  It went well with the kids this Sunday.  It’s good to have Lita back in the game, she is really good with them.  We did some review of the clothes lesson last week, went over our recycling program here, and then talked about parts of the body.  I thought I was going to teach them that song…head, shoulders, knees, toes, knees, toes…. But they already know the song in Indonesian!  So that’s good we did it in both Indo and English.  Next week I will make up a game of twister for them from some tarps and we can practice our body parts, left/right, and colors.  They should like that.  Lita, her baby, the hatchery manager, her baby, and I all went on a walk this Sunday morning in the village to go see the office girl and her newborn baby.  Oh babies!  Fun to be with the girls and get out and go for a walk.  When we showed up at Mila’s house, the girl from the office, she was so excited to see us and have some company.  She has been pent up at the house now for a month and 2 more months to go before she comes back to work.  Oh and with all these babies, I am thinking I am not ready for a baby just yet.  It’s really 24/7, not sure I’m ready.  My boyfriend will be glad to hear that!  Let’s just get married first and think about babies later!  lol  My friends, Justin and Roric, from the states are in Bali this week and I would love to take off and visit, but its kind of a bad time, I can’t just up and take time off right now.  I need to be here for the operations and moving these oysters.  I wish I could go and explore Bali with them though!  Frustrating!  Almost finished with this book I’m reading, and I am not loving it, just want to finish it.  I want to get on with reading the next Hunger Games book!  That’s all from me!  The weeks are going by pretty fast.  I look forward to Sundays my day to relax and its usually just a day or two away.                

Daniel's wife, Lita on left. Hatchery manager, Mulia on right

Kiandra (Daniel's baby) on left, and office manager's baby, Kayla on right

At Mila's house. Mila on right and Mulia on left.  Everyone with their babies! Mila also has the 3 yr old boy in the striped shirt. 

Minggu bagus!

I’m in a really great mood at the moment.  Like really good!  Had a great day today.  Well its Sunday so that’s a given it was a good day off of work.  But also had a good chat with my boyfriend, did some yoga, lounged around all day, and had a great session with the kids this afternoon.  More on that later.  The weeks are going by pretty quickly.  In Bahasa...Minggu minggu jalan oleh cepat.  Ya its a weird language.  This week we were pretty busy.  Moving and consolidating shells one day, another day of Sugi and I recounting several longlines.  I did a dive with Daniel and our local diver to fix two twisted long lines.  On Friday I did another dive today with the diver to check out the number and color code on this long line.  The cleaning boats that clean the lines keep getting all mixed up on the colors and numbers of oysters that are actually on the line.  Its frustrating.  But we can either go with the cleaning boat and raise the line and recount, or dive the line to check the color code and number.  Daniel went to Bali to pick up his wife and their baby and won't be back until Tuesday.  Hoping he will come with my DVDs and some granola!  We'll see though!  Fingers crossed.  Not sure how our sleep will work out with a newborn in the next room, again we’ll have to wait and see.  I forgot to mention in my last post that I have finally made it to the two big supermarkets in our little town of Kalabahi.  No peanut butter, what I was really hoping for!  The way I see it on this island, supermarkets are for luxurious items and things you can splurge on.  Food staples, like chicken and fish, you get in your local village.  Like in these supermarkets there is a whole aisle of potato chips, and a whole separate aisle of cookies in the five aisles of the store!  I have bought a few nice boxes of apple juice and cans of fruit cocktail which are amazing.  It’s the little things!  lol 

I have become obsessed with the song Somebody that I used to know by Gotye.  Its stuck in my head all day every day!  Finally broke down and got the song for free on Itunes.  I think the song is on the radio at home?  I’m crocheting a new beanie now and starting from the top so we'll see how it goes.  I tried to learn from this other lady on youtube, but had to go back to my old standby Bob Wilson's channel on crochetting on you tube.  She is great.  I’ll stick with her from now on.  She always uses bright colored yarn so I can see the stitches and goes really slow.  The weather is getting really nice here.  No rain, less windy at midday, and the water is really clear now too.  

So with the kiddos today we learned about clothes and things you wear.  Thought about drawing a picture of a girl on the board and describing what she is wearing, but then I had a better idea!  First we went over the basic words, like shirt, shorts, pants, shoes.  Earlier I had cut some non-provocative pics out of my magizines and we pointed out what the people were wearing and what color things were.  They were really getting it.  Then!  I told them there was a small test and I would be right back.  I put on a good 7 layers of clothes in my room, and then they had to say and write down everything I was wearing.  They really liked it and thought it was funny I had a dress, pants, a hat, sunglasses, t-shirt, tank top, shorts, sunglasses, a scarf, and a jacket all on at the same time.  I have been helping Tini out with this recycling project we are starting.  We are just making the bins and labels for the different items.  Thanks for the fiberglass and epoxy lesson at home dad!  We bought some sticky paper with the back that peeled off, for the project and then printed pictures off the computer onto the sticker paper.  Well we had all these off cuts and scraps, and I thought the kids would just love to color on these and make stickers.  So we did that too, and again they really liked it and were all proud to stick them on their books and themselves.  What kid doesn’t like stickers right?  lol  Oh in other news!  I am getting a sailboat!  Made from this drunken fisherman in the village, Hasam Boleh.  Not too thrilled about the price, $55, I’m getting ripped because I’m a foreigner, but I will still be getting a sailboat next week.  Sweet!  It will have a nice sail, oar, and even a rudder.  Pics to come later!  Well that’s all from me!  Don’t forget about father’s day on Sunday!  My dad is off on his own in the San Blas islands braving the storms out there on the boat.

Working with the fiber glass guys on the recycling project

One of our cleaning boats

Our baby on the site at the moment, Adel, the hatchery manager's daughter

Hatchery girls at work

Unloading oysters to get consolidated into new nets

To recap the last few crazy weeks...

So I’m sorry it has been forever since I have blogged.  Sounds like I am in church.  I’m sorry father it has been forever since my last confession!  Haha!  Anyways I have been swamped at work and haven’t had the time after work to sit down and type.  So back to my birthday on May 23.  We had a bbq that night with all of the tech girls that I work with.  They made a new hot sauce (sambal) that I really like called bling ding.  Its like a sweet bruschetta more than a hot sauce.  The little things around here, like discovering you love a new hot sauce, make all the difference!  I didn’t get thrown off the dock like they usually do on your birthday, so that was a plus.  I have been wanting to try bettle nut.  Bettle nut is kind of like the local tobacco.  It’s a nut that turns red when you chew it with chalk and some kind of green twig.  It makes you feel a bit loopy and you can’t feel your mouth (kind of like novocain at the dentist).  Well I didn’t want to try it in front of everyone in case it made me do something stupid.  So the other night Daniel and I sat on our porch and I tried it.  Badly!  I don’t have bettle nut chewing skills what so ever!  You are only supposed to chew it on one side of your mouth and don’t swallow at all!  Tastes horrible.  Well ya I was drooling and chewing it all in my mouth and spitting it down my leg.  Tried 2 different nuts, first one was sour and bad I think, and the second was still bad.  I’m not a big fan of the bettle nut chewing.  Tomek is a regular pro chewing at work and stuff.  Lol! 

A friend of the family that reads this blog was asking for more details about the process and what actually goes on to seed oysters to make pearls.  Well I’m sorry but I don’t think I can talk about that part of my job freely on the internet because of trade secrets and all.  Its all confidential.  Not even sure if I can be writing this blog really!  So I try to keep it brief when it comes to what I actually do at my work.  Just give you guys an overall idea.  Sorry I can’t divulge more!

The xray session is now finished in Alor.  The machine is packed up and sent back to Bali.  There were a few mistakes along the way like mixing two separate groups together and things, but overall it went pretty well and we finished on time.  Now it is just business as usual with the normal cleaning schedule until we start operations here in August.  My new vacation time is now in Aug/Sept so I can be in Alor for the ops session here.  I plan on seeing my family in Washington and spending some time with James in New England (somewhere?) over my break.  I may be staying in North Bali when I come back from leave, as they have a few crazy months of operations there.  More on the work front, we had one of our ships come to Alor last Sunday and bring us oysters.  They have already been seeded so they will just be grown out here.  Was quite a day, my first unloading.  Started at 4am and finished about 2pm.  At the first it was easy, one tank got unloaded and hung on one long line.  And then towards the end it got super sloppy with lots of small groups hung where ever!  We will sort it out in the coming months.  So these early mornings at work have left me sick.  I have a bit of a cold and I don’t even think I caught it from anyone but myself.  We didn’t have a day off last week so we have been working non-stop.  I am just all congested and tired.  Rested some this weekend though as we were back to our normal schedule with half day off on Saturday and the whole day off on Sunday. 

I have still been doing Mutiara Kids with this girl Tini helping.  It’s a bit manic.  Loads of kids show up and they are just naughty.  Yelling, kicking each other, crying.  Just bad.  They wanted to celebrate my birthday and we gave them each a little package of rice and they were all hitting each other and crying because they thought they wouldn’t get one.  Even though there was enough for everyone.  I made them an obstacle course that day and it was the first one that they had done ever I think and they liked it.  I just got done with them today and I sent this boy home early because he was being a brat.  He hit someone when we were playing a game so I had the 2 boys sit out, and then during another game he kicked someone after he said he was going to be good.  Well I set an example of him and had security escort him right out.  I said, “Dua kali!?”  Ya dua kali, kamu pulan.  Sampai jumpa minggu depan.  Means…2 times!  Yes 2 times, you go home.  See you next week.  Oh I was pissed!  So ya he better be good next week. 

I haven’t had any luck getting a sailboat.  In March it was going to be cheap, and now in June they upped the price because they found out a foreigner wanted it.  So it was $25 and now its up to $70!  Def not worth $70 and I don’t want them to feel like they can rip off a foreigner, so I can just do without.  Its super windy here in the afternoons and it kind of kills me a bit that I can’t be out zooming around the bay in the wind.  Grr…. Maybe later I will get one.  I haven’t been studying my Indonesian either.  I should be studying more, you can tell my vocab is slacking.  Just takes a lot of effort after sitting behind my desk all day to sit down and study.  I’m not in school anymore you know!  I have been crochetting up a storm lately.  I have made a hat, a scarf (until I ran out of the yarn!), and a head band so far.  Really enjoying it too.  So grandma of me!  I have been getting along with Daniel well, Tomek is still in Lembata covering for a guy that works there who is on vacation.  Daniel and I have been watching this TV series called Homeland and really getting into it.  Its pretty good.  Today we took a boat out and snorkeled near outside of bay.  It was a great snorkeling/dive spot, beautiful colorful healthy reef.  Our compressor is broken at the moment so we just went for a snorkel.  Below are some pics of people at my work.  Enjoy!  I will try to get better at keeping up with this blog.  Sorry!

Birthday loot!

Normal scene of me in the office



Traditional dress for a government event in Kalabahi




At xray



Our carpenter team





Tomek and the hatchery crew





My tech team




Our big bad security guys




Local market on site



Oh the bettle nut!