Happy New Year!/Selamat Tahun Baru!

***HAPPY NEW YEAR!

SELAMAT TAHUN BARU!***

For New Year's Eve, I had a few expats who were still in Sentul come over for a few hours for some snacks. We were the second in the world to ring in the new year, and so we stood in my backyard for awhile and watched my neighborhood light up the sky with fireworks. It was a lot of fun, but I didn't take any pictures.

I did, however take photos because my downstairs has been slightly updated, and I never have posted any photos of my upstairs.

Enjoy!

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This is Lisa. She's new to SPH, and she'll start teaching with us next week. She grew up in the Solomon Islands, but her family lives in Dallas now. She lives down the street from me and came over last night to help me get some food ready.







This is my newly-tiled floor. I bought this teak furniture from a former missionary family that had to leave Jakarta, and it arrived at my house on the day before my birthday. Sweet deal! (The bench on the left normally sits where the pink pull-out couch on the floor is, but since it still rains into the house there, I have to keep it away from rain water until the roof gets fixed.)

Living room


Living room, with a few things added. (The blankets on the furniture are shawls from India, if you care.)
I'm going to keep these Christmas lights along the stairway up all year round. Sometimes I leave them on all night so I can see the stairs. I had a small Christmas display on my desk here w/ Christmas decorations and cards anyone has sent to me. (ATTN: family members)

Going up the stairs...















Here's the landing at the top of the stairs. (Bathroom on the left; extra bedroom straight in; my bedroom on right, around the corner) The railing on the right overlooks the rain when it rains into my house.

This is my oh-so-exciting bathroom!










This is an extra bedroom that I currently have no use for. There's nothing in here except for my wardrobe thing, which is on the left (not in the photo) because it's too big to fit in the bedroom where I sleep. It may someday be a guest bedroom if I ever have any guests...*cough cough* ;)

This is a really tiny back porch off of this bedroom. It was hard to take this photo because it's so small, but I have a chair out here so I can see my backyard and into part of Leland's backyard next door.

And this is my bedroom, at the front of the house. It's all nice and clean and rarely ever looks like this, so I thought I'd take a photo. :)

This is a small porch area off of my bedroom. This porch faces the street in front of my house. When one of my friends leaves next year, I'll buy her bamboo benches that she had made for her porch like this, and then I will be able to lie here and sunbathe. Haha! (This is also where I sometimes hear animals thumping around outside at night. I'm pretty sure it's JUST cats I hear playing with each other and NOT rats...either way, it's gross and disturbing!)