THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER: PARTY DOWN!

Our two kids (far left), accompanied by our friend Crys on the piano, perform in the school Christmas program.

Dearest Friends,

The Christmas season of that second year in Sumatra turned out to be one of the best ones yet. Just like the year before, the celebrating began at Thanksgiving and went non-stop through New Years. What made this season so special? Well, we were no longer the newbies who didn't know anyone, for starters. Also, one of the very best parties (in my opinion) was going to he at our own house, and I had lots of wonderful people helping me to pull it off. Best of all, though, was the fact that this time, we would have a special guest here to celebrate it with us!

In preparation for the big bash, Asnah and Fatima helped me to clean house, polish silver, and crank out enough appetizers to fill my freezer; our gardener and driver helped us move most of the furniture out to the garage and polish up the dance floor; and we had four wonderful couples co-hosting with us, who borrowed bartenders from the restaurant and helped stock our bar for the evening. Dig my cute hubby in his "Texas Tux", complete with jeans and boots!

Our friends Tom and Teri Hall came in costume. Get it? Deck the Halls!

I flew out to meet my sister Carolyn in Singapore, and we got back just in time for the company Christmas dinner and kid's party up at the restaurant. The only downside was that, once again, Alexis was somewhat ticked about not being old enough to be one of Santa's Elves!

When it was all over and done with, and I would normally be feeling a bit blue, my sister and I still had something really special to look forward to. Hong Kong!

TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

The Candlelight Ceremony

Dearest Friends,

While our friend Teri was busy wrangling all the younger boys into a Tiger Cub scout group, my friend Laura and I were doing our best to handle all the little girls from kindergarten up through 8th grade in a one-size-fits-all brownie/girl scout troop. Needless to say, we had to make a lot of compromises when it came to, well, pretty much everything! Fortunately, the Girl Scout officials were pretty flexible regarding  troops like ours, out in the middle of the jungle somewhere. I guess they had to be. Who was gonna come check up on us?

I don't know how many badges the girls actually earned, but I'm pretty sure they must have earned one for crafts. We were really, really good at crafts!  We can thank HearthSong for that.  HearthSong, at that time, was a fairly new catalog that specialized in educational toys and such. Before we moved to Indonesia, Lex had spotted something like a cooking club in their catalog, where each month they would send your child a package that contained an apron or some child-sized cooking utensils, along with instructions and recipes for several different things you could learn to make using those tools. Unbeknownst to her, I arranged to have all twelve kits sent to me at once before we left for Indonesia, then doled them out to her one per month all year long. She had so much fun with them that, the following summer, I did the same thing with their craft of the month kits. Then I checked to see what kind of supplies were needed for each craft, and purchased enough extras for us to teach the crafts to all of our little Girl Scouts. The main one I remember required us to cut hundreds of long thin triangles from various magazine pages, which we then rolled up around a toothpick, creating colorful beads that we made necklaces and bracelets out of.

Our Christmas Party

Another thing we were pretty good at was parties. Even when we were doing something utilitarian like a beach clean-up, it somehow ended up turning into a party. And, though we may not have toed the line when it came to all the G.S. rules and regulations, I think the girls got a lot out of it nonetheless. I know I certainly did.

ANY EXCUSE FOR A COSTUME

Dearest Friends,

One of the things our Alexis loved most about life on the company compound was the many opportunities for "dressing up." Not only did they have a couple of official school plays each year, there were also lots of classroom skits as well.

And then, of course, there was always Halloween. While on home-leave, I happened to stumble across that phenomenal book pictured above. Turns out Jane Asher, former model/girlfriend to Paul McCartney, and sister to Peter Asher (singer?manager?), was one very creative mama! Anyway, the book seemed like a good idea at the time, but it was kind of like giving crack to an addict, as far as Alexis was concerned, and made a whole lot of work for her poor mama! That book is where Lex got the idea for her Can-Can-Girl costume that Halloween...

and where Austin got the idea for his Headless Horseman.

Building shoulders for the Headless Horseman

One of the new couples on the compound, Carol and Alan, must have shared our daughter's enthusiasm, for they got right into the spirit of things, and blew us all away with their costumes for the Halloween Hash (that trek through the jungle I mentioned a while back)...

while I did my best to just blend into the background.

Come to think of it though, Alexis didn't really care whether she had an official excuse to dress up or not...

Family Movie Night in the multi-purpose room.

 finding that often, it was even more fun to have the only beautiful costume around!

THE PHI PHI ISLANDS

Dearest Friends,

One day during our vacation in Phuket, we took a side trip to the Phi Phi Islands. Years later I wrote this little story about our adventures there, which was published in the Wish You Were Here column of the Austin American Statesman:

OBSERVING NATURE TAKES NEW MEANING 

AT ISLAND

We lived in Indonesia when our children were young, and one of our first vacations from there was to Phuket, Thailand. It included a day trip to the Phi Phi Islands (pronounced Pee Pee, much to the delight of our kids). A water bus took us to the main island, where a tropical buffet had been set up beneath the palm trees.

Next we were loaded onto several small boats, and paddled out to an uninhabited island. They first took us to the Viking Cave, where bamboo scaffolding was set up for the harvesting of birds' nests (a valuable delicacy destined for bird's nest soup). We were then dropped off at a private beach.

As we picked out a spot to spread our towels, the kids ran off to try out their new snorkels. Once we were settled, we scanned the water for them. "Uh, dear? Notice anything unusual?" asked my husband. As a matter of fact, I did. At least half the women weren't wearing tops. He then pointed to a few of them who were standing in a circle, chest deep in the water, and had been tossing a volleyball back and forth to one another. "What's that ruckus?"

It appeared that the women had been distracted from their game by the sight of a snorkel that kept circling around them, like a shark around his supper. Several times they called out "Hey, you! What are you doing?" When they got no response, one of them finally reached out and put her thumb over the top of the snorkel, forcing the swimmer up for air. Who popped up, gasping and choking? Our 7-year-old son, Austin!

To this day, he still claims he was merely studying the fish.

PHUKET

Dearest Friends,

Up to this point, we had only taken the kids to Singapore and Penang -- both places were we never strayed too far from our hotel or resort, and where we seemed mostly to be surrounded by other expats. During the fall school break of our second year, however, we decided to be a little more adventurous. We took the kids to Thailand! Our destination was Phuket (no, that's not an F sound, it's poo-ket').

Of course, we were still in a nice hotel filled with tourists (we had to ease them into the real world gradually) but Thailand as a whole was much more, well, raw, than anywhere else we had ever been. The poverty was less hidden, the disparity between cultures more obvious, and the people weren't nearly as happy and easy-going as the Indonesians -- or maybe they just weren't nearly as adept at hiding their dislike of all these foreign intruders.

On the other hand, there was magnificent beauty to behold, and so much history to be absorbed. I'll share a bit of that with you tomorrow, along with a funny story that somehow made it into the newspaper here in the states, when we head over to Phi Phi Island (again, not an F sound).

SETTLING INTO OUR NEW ABODE

Our new house, which...

unbeknownst to us...

came with a kitty!

It also came with a fancy, home-built barbecue pit, which we never really figured out how to use.

Miss Becky had a new toy in the new house -- the amazing Miracle Piano! You hooked it up to your computer and learned how to play the piano by shooting ducks and such in little video games. I got pretty good at playing Ode To Joy, but that was about it.

THE HELP

Dearest Friends,

After more than a year in Sumatra, I still wasn't crazy about having staff, but I had learned to live with it. And, if I had to have a housekeeper, there could have been none better than our Asnah. What a jewel she was! My kids adored her, and I think she was pretty crazy about them, too. Because I didn't want them turning into spoiled brats who expected to be waited upon, the rule at our house had always been that Asnah could dust and mop in their bedrooms, but she was not to pick up after them or make their beds. That was their job. It wasn't until years later that one of them admitted to her picking up their toys all the time, and keeping it their little secret!

Asnah, Mrs., and Fatima

Another special person, who came into our lives that second year, was Fatima -- the baking lady! I still hadn't hired a cook, like most everyone else had, but when I heard about Fatima (that was her name wasn't it?) I just couldn't resist. You see, so much of what we take for granted in our supermarkets here just wasn't available over there, and therefore had to be made from scratch. Not just cakes, cookies, and pastries, but also pizza crusts, tortillas, even dinner rolls. Fatima could make all of these, and more!  I think she had a pretty long waiting list of prospective clients, but she happened to be best buds with our Asnah, who must have told her I was easy to work for (a patsy, in fact) so she squeezed me into her schedule. She came to our house every other Friday, if I remember correctly -- the very best days of the whole month, for not only were the aromas emanating from our kitchen beyond delicious, her presence always meant getting pizza for dinner that evening (a night off from cooking for mom!) and waking up to her sumptuous cinnamon rolls the next morning. Oh my my. Those cinnamon rolls.

One day that fall, Asnah came to me in tears, mumbling something about a terrible accident. A car accident? Had someone been hurt? Killed! "Oh no Mrs., a laundry accident!" As I mentioned before, our washing machine was a piece of crap, and it must not have dispensed all the bleach properly when she did a load of whites, for the color load that went in afterwards came out covered in white splotches. Compared to the horror I had been envisioning, this was not a big deal, but poor Asnah was so distraught, I thought I'd never get her calmed down!

After supper that evening, we were supposed to go up to the school yard to play volleyball with the older kids. John and I both decided it would be rather humorous if our whole family showed up clad in our polka-dotted clothes. We did get some good laughs out of it, but one woman actually said,"If she were my maid, she'd be out on her ass right now." I felt like telling her,"Well, if I were your maid, I'd probably bleach your clothes on purpose!" Jeez, people. Sometimes, you just gotta know when to laugh!