Eid Al Adha

Just a quick post today because I haven't been feeling well the past couple of days.  It's just a cold or something and I think I'm getting over it.  Hopefully I'll be up and running soon!
In last week's post I told you about the holiday this week that people couldn't agree about the correct date for it.  Kinda funny, if you ask me.  It all has to do with the moon or something like that.  Anyway, this is what it looked like for an outsider's perspective and then I'll give you a link that gives you a short insider's perspective.  
Eid Al Adha celebrates the time with Abraham took Ishmael (not Isaac) up the mountain to be sacrificed.  An angel provided a lamb/goat to be sacrificed instead.  So, that's part of what is done on this holiday, sacrifices of goats and other animals.  There have been goat pens popping up on the sides of the road in recent days so people can buy their goats to sacrifice!  If we had felt like it, we could have walked down the street to watch some sacrifices.  I don't think that would have made me feel any better, though!!  We regularly hear the Call to Prayer here five times per day coming from a loud speaker nearby.  On this day, however, the loud speaker went off continually almost all night.  I do know it stopped, at least for a bit, around 10:45 because that's when I finally got to sleep.  I was up around 4:00 the next morning and heard it going off again.  I'm pretty sure it went off intermittently all night long.  The next day, after the sacrifices, we had a neighbor stop by and give us some goat meat.  That's what is done.  One third of the meat is kept for family celebrations, one third is given to other family and friends, and one third is given to the poor.  So, now we have goat meat in the freezer.  Anyone have any good goat recipes?

Okay, here's a little more info, if you're interested:
http://islam.about.com/od/hajj/a/adha.htm
http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/holidays/eidaladha.htm

The Things We See (and Hear)

This is our third installment of "The Things We See."  I thought I would add to it a couple of funny stories.  They both have to do with conversations I've had at school.  

1)  A test is called a "review" and a review is called . . . well I haven't quite figured that one out, yet.  I found this out because I planned on giving my students a test and I wrote up a review for them to prepare them for the test (that's what a review is, right???).  Well, I gave one of the other teachers the review to hand out.  When I showed up the following week, she hadn't handed out the reviews because she thought they were the tests!  Oh my, oh my!

2)  This Thursday is a holiday from school because of a religious holiday.  Come to find out, this past weekend, different sects of this religion couldn't decide what day the holiday should be on.  Some say Wednesday and some say Thursday!  What?  So, this week, the school suddenly decides that the school should have a holiday on Wednesday and Thursday.  Crazy!

Id El Fitri decorations at the mall

 This becak (pronounced bay-chuck) was getting gas at the gas station.  Most are pedal bikes, but some have engines.

 Who knew I could find cowboy boots in Indonesia?!?!?!

Look closely . . . do you see the heads on the fried chicken?  Yummy!!

Mannequins

Not quite sure what this is supposed to be.  It's a parade, but what is that hairy animal?

 

 I know it's hard to see, but the billboard for a hotel says "mice promotions."  Ummm . . . who wants to stay there?

"Bacon" on a hamburger.

We spent about six bucks on these Dr Pepper twizzlers that we found.  They were NOT good!

Soccer and Friends

The other day, some friends came over to play.

It started with just a few girls . . .

 who really wanted to take a picture with Paisley.

Then some more friends arrived . . .

 And it turned into a game of soccer, boys against girls.

(I'm too old to play soccer with kids,  I bruised my foot!)

 But we all had a great time!

 

Photo Friday, September 5

I've joined a gamalan group!  It's an Indonesian instrument similar to a xylophone, but with a different scale.  The strange thing is that some of the instruments have a 5 note scale and others have a 7 note scale.  But we all play together.  There is a lot of dissonance and my western ears have NO IDEA if I'm even playing the right notes!  Here are some pictures of the sheet music and the instruments.

If this youtube video works, you can listen to a snippet of a song.

We play on the 4th Sunday of every month and have just been asked to play every time there's a 5th Sunday, too.  The whole family went last time.  The kids went to Sunday School for a little bit, but quickly left when they didn't really understand what was going on.  We got a picture of them with some of the 

other kids as well as them dancing.

 We got some hermit crabs a while back.  The kids probably won't ever have a dog or cat at our house, but we figured we could deal with hermit crabs.  We had great fun with them, for about a week.  After a few days, Spidey died and we had a nice little funeral (or a "future" as Truett was calling it).  Then Bob ran away and we looked all over the house, yard, and neighborhood for him.  Then Elsa and Kitty decided they couldn't live without the other two and they died, too.

A little fun photo shoot with Paisley and photobombed by Tru.

We went on a little overnight trip to Salatiga a few weeks ago.  It's the city where I used to live and where Michael can find some Dr Pepper.  The kids loved wheeling our suitcases in, so we let them.  We tried to get a family selfie with the mountain in the background and took about 20 pictures.  These are the best two we could get.  One of our favorite things to do there is find these little plants that close their leaves when you touch them.

And just a few little last pictures.