Celebrating my bd and Christmas w/ Yoshie :)

Yesterday morning (Sunday), I went into Jakarta to meet up with my friend, Yoshie, one more time before I go home for Christmas. We spent the morning at a mall and had a mini celebration for my birthday tomorrow (!) and Christmas in a few weeks (!!!).

I gave her the Indonesian crafts and recipes book that my mom wrote.
She was ecstatic, since she doesn't know how to cook most traditional, Indonesian dishes.

She's so cute!
She's very excited here, b/c she's standing directly beside me in the original photo that was used of me in my mom's book. She's pretending she's between my mom and me here. :-P

I also gave her 2 pairs of earrings.
She liked both of them so much that she wore 1 of each all morning. :-P
(That's something my mom would do!)

This is a mall we frequently go to.

Here it is, all jazzed up for Christmas in its own gaudy, Indonesian way!

We're not really sure why, but there was a random, antique bicycle in the mall.

Kinda pretty, but more weird and random...

This was my Chinese lunch, which I've eaten many times before in Singapore. :)

Bedtime!
I'm gonna be 28 tomorrow.
Sheesh! :-/

Mandy and the dragon fruit...and other kitchen adventures...

It's almost 9:30 on Saturday night.
My grading's still not finished, which was to be my goal of this day,
since I'll be busy all daylong tomorrow.
Oh well. I'll stay up a few more hours tonight to work on it. :-P

Here are some photos of my time today, when I should've been grading...

It rained a total of 3 times this entire day. (!)
This is a photo of the sky right before monsoon rain #2 of the day. Usually, the sky is a DARK shade of gray-blue and makes everything beautiful!...right before everything gets drenched...

This was a day of firsts for me in my kitchen adventures!

Today was the first time I bought a dragon fruit, which is this below.
I cut it up and am still eating it, because each fruit yields a large amount.

It's a vibrant shade of pink/purple when you cut it open!

The texture and flavor can be compared to a kiwi, although it's not as juicy or as tart as a kiwi. It's a bit more watery and tasteless.

Here's a bowlful of 2 dragon fruits.

I also made an avocado shake for the first time. You're supposed to blend avocados, ice, evaporated milk, and chocolate syrup in a blender for this.
However, I added chocolate ice cream, which did wonders.
Yum yum!

Tomorrow is when we expats will celebrate Thanksgiving.
I'm bringing mashed potatoes, which you could still lift up in prayer!
Today was the first time I'd ever made mashed potatoes.
EPIC FAIL! (See photo)

Apparently, there is no slow speed on my mixer.
Sigh.
I'm going to finish them at our friend's house, where I'll receive culinary guidance. :-/

On a random note, I've added more Christmas lights to my home decor!

Now I have a well-lighted reading nook, which will occasionally get slightly dirty from stuff that still falls through the roof screens. :-P

Time to finish the grading!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving, from my students to yours! :)

My 10th grade English girls drew this on the board.
The hunchback turkey looks like he ate a bowling ball. He's making me very hungry, too...!

In honor of Thanksgiving, I made monster cookies to share with my 7th grade homeroom kiddos. I made them pose for a photo with their thankfulness poster first, though, if they wanted a cookie.

(And, of course, we had to have a silly photo.) :)

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for both of these computers!

The huge one on the left is my Dell, which just got fixed and returned to me last Saturday. (!!!)
The dinky one on the right is an older one that the school has let me borrow while my Dell was out of commission.
I'm thankful for both, b/c I wouldn't be able to do any of my work if I didn't have either one.

We expats will have a Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday night, since we all have to be at school on Thanksgiving Day. Photos to come later!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas in my house!

Today was my 3rd day of Idul Adha holiday break! I actually did SOME school work, but I haven't gotten as much done yet as I need to. And I'm in big trouble now, b/c I'll be in Jakarta most of the day on Saturday and Sunday, so I won't have much time to work on it then. I promised my patient students I'd grade EVERYTHING over break, and I will, but I've been very UNmotivated to grade.

Instead, I've spent the past 3 days sleeping in, calling friends on Skype, wasting time on the Internet, and decorating my house for Christmas, all the while listening to my Christmas CDs from home. (They were a smart investment, as most of my Christmas music was stored on my computer, which has been out of commission for over a month now.) I'm going to be home ONE MONTH FROM TODAY for Christmas with my family, and it's been first and foremost on my mind lately. (NOT school- no shocker there!)

Here's a sneak peek at what I've been up to:

My teak desk, right in front of my stairs
(Oops! I should've turned on the Christmas lights on the stairs for this photo...)

My Christmas corner :)

Yes, my family is a gift! That's why this photo's under the tree with the other gifts. (It's 4 years old, though, so let's shoot for an updated photo this year, Mom and Dad!)

Yay for cheap Christmas decorations in Indonesia!
I managed to find some last year in the store that weren't flashy or gaudy. Ick.

If you're my friend or family member, then your present's sitting in here somewhere. ;)

My aunt, cousin and grandma sent me these decorated letters in a care package last year.
The first set spells "hope"...

...and the second set spells "joy". :)
(Thanks!!)

Do you see what I see??? ;)
I bought this little guy at the Starbucks in the Hong Kong airport on my way home in June.
Next year, I'll try to decorate my trees with a Starbucks theme!

It's now 9:00 at night and I STILL haven't gotten anything purposeful accomplished, school-wise. I did watch "Elf" while writing this post, and I'm now wide awake from laughter, so I should crack down for a few hours and work!
(It's so hard to be motivated when Christmas is on the mind, though!)

Photos for A Little Princess

It's Sunday evening, and I'm now recovered enough from the play from this weekend to post photos and commentary about it.

We did 2 performances of A Little Princess, once on Friday morning for students in area schools, and last night, for family and friends. (If you want to read the storyline, you can click here.)

I loved doing this drama, but it totally sucked all of my time and energy in this past week-and-a-half of rehearsals! Thankfully, I didn't have a cold this year, so I was able to yell at people with a loud and clear voice. :-P

These were my two co-directors, Marie and Kevin.

Marie's from Cedar Lake, Indiana, and is a first-year teacher. She just graduated from Dordt College and is sooo fun to be around!

Kevin's my "son". He's in 11th grade and has been in several of my photos on here, most notably, as Robin Hood in last year's play.




Here's the cast and crew
























I absolutely LOVE these kids!

These 4 are all 7th graders, and we're all going to Bali together on the field trip in March. I can't wait! We're gonna have a blast!






The girl on the right, Vanessa, played Sara Crew. (She's also reusing Maid Marian's costume from last year.) :-P














This is one of my drama students named Shanti. She's a sweetheart, even though she played a mean girl, and she has a strange infatuation with me, because she always strokes my arms.

Odd.














This is Gian. He's in 7th grade but was supposed to look like an old man. He's definitely THE cutest old man I've ever seen! ;)














I love my orchids!

We had a good run, but I'm glad it's over so that I can actually grade assessments and return them to my patient students.











I'm currently watching "Last Holiday" as I write this, and now I need to do some school stuff. This week, we only have 2 days of school! There's a Muslim holiday on Wed., so my school gets Wed. - Fri. off. Yay! I plan on watching movies as I grade my mountain of work.
I'll post photos, too, in a few days.

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!


(I just love this dog! Don't you? It's hilarious!) :-P

Halloween party!

Happy Halloween!

It's now Sunday morning, and I can officially say that. :-P

Last night was when Elise and I hosted a Halloween parties at our houses for 7th and 8th graders. The theme was "Get A Clue", and so I'd made an interactive Clue activity for the evening. However, not many kids had actually ever played the board game, which was shocking to me, so they didn't totally understand what was going on.

We had fun, though!

Here are some photos.

Halloween goodies!

I'd made sugar cookies, but I didn't have any buttermilk, so I used mango yogurt instead. Yum!

Sidenote: The chocolate cookies on the right are the Indonesian equivalent to the thin mint Girl Scout cookies! I congratulate myself on this wonderful discovery! :)






This is the first batch of kids who came: Permata, Vanesha, Tiana, Caca (and her little brother, Riuta), and Jeremy








The first activity was making mummies with toilet paper, which the kids had also never done before.









































































Elise with Rebekah, another teacher at a sister school, Marie, a new teacher, and me















Being stupid/scary













We're striking a Charlie's Angels pose, haha!













Then the kids went to Elise's house to draw and carve faces on pumpkins.












Natasha and Vanesha's pumpkin



















Caca

(I love this girl! She's one of my many "daughters"!)












Riuta and Jeremy























Matt and Riuta loved scooping the seeds and feeling slimy!

















Permata's quite happy with her design!



















Juhee, Vanesha and Caca making a yummy dessert for Miss Mandy! Elise taught them some AMAZING recipe that involved baking bananas with peanut butter and chocolate in aluminum foil in the oven!







We had a great time. However, we'd told the kids the party would end probably around 8:30. The kids in the last few photos here stuck around until 10! At one point, they had so much sugar in them that they started jumping up and down.
No lie.
Elise and I felt very old.
But it was tons of fun, and we hope to do it again next year! :)