Cakes

I have finally, at the ripe old age of 32, discovered the simple pleasure of cooking cakes! I bought myself a cheap and nasty hand mixer, and off we went.

Soren loves to help, even though he has a strong dislike of loud noises.

The boys have noise protection all figured out. We got these earmuffs while adjusting to the early morning noises in Sentani (roosters, call to prayer, dogs barking and motorbikes).

The best bit.

Banana cake: perfect way to get rid of over-ripe bananas.

Reuben and his ridiculous bike

Reuben looks longingly onto the street, waiting to be released. If you think the bike looks a tad ludicrous now, you should have seen it before Philip pulled off the rear-view mirrors, battery-operated cookoo clock, front basket, foot rests, adjustable arm rests and canopy!

The Big Chop

In Indonesia, boys are required to have short hair for school. It was high time anyway, it was starting to affect his vision!

Surrender.

Showing interest.

Unsure.

Not happy, Dad!

Playing with Riski

This is Riski, our house-helper Ibu Anik's 7 year-old. One day she brought him to work and the boys played a bit together.

Digging for 'pets' (snails and worms).

Check out the Mick Jagger lips.

'Eh! (look!)' Reuben makes up for his lack of language ability (English or Indonesian) with his charm and devastating good looks.

Checking out the action on the street.

Sate Ayam (chicken sate)

Most nights Pak Sul cruises the streets calling out 'Sateeee'. Costs 30,000 rupiah (AU$3.30) and is very good.

He cooks the sate on site over hot coals.

Steam a few veggies, put on the rice cooker and Voila! we have delicious dinner.

A new mountain, a new home

View from our second floor balcony.

Philip did a heroic job of walking/motorcycling the streets looking for 'to rent' signs while I tried to keep the kids entertained back at the guesthouse. Our new house is a short walk to language school in one direction and Soren's kinder in the other. Fantastic.

The boys enjoy the small yard, and lots of space to play inside.

The house came with basic furniture but it was still quite a task getting it set up. A wonderful new friend lent us his motorcycle for a week, and took us in his car to a big electronics store.
The house was full of dirt and dead critters when we moved in. Taps, toilets, powerpoints and the water pump were broken or missing. Figuring out what on earth was going on with the workmen became a cross-cultural comedy of errors, but after 10 days of no reliable running water, I was running out of laughs!

Now it is clean and functioning, we love our new home.

Hunting & Gathering

We stayed in a lovely little guesthouse in Malang while we looked for a house to rent. I loved the Javanese furniture!





Breakfast.

For lunch and dinner, we discovered lots of warungs around town.



Bercakap-cakap (chatting).

Here you can order a fresh juice: any combination of orange, watermelon, apple, papaya, rockmelon, pineapple.. Two guys, two blenders and a generator worked flat out all day.

Eat-in or take-away.