Easter Break trip

For spring break the family flew from Jakarta to Manado, a city in North Sulawesi, or Celebes(see map above).  Once there, we spent 3 nights along the coast (on a small island called Bunaken) and 2 nights in the mountains.  On the last day of our trip our family ranked our top events of the trip.  Pictures below show our more popular activities.

Eric, Neil, and their friend Matthew experienced the joy of discovery and the pain of being lost while exploring Bunaken island (an island that is only about 5 miles in diameter) mangroves.  Fortunately after being gone for about 7 hours, they ran into a friendly fisherman (above) who gave them water and found scooter drivers to take them back to us.  We were just starting to really worry.  By the end of the trip however, they ranked the adventure as the best thing on the trip.

We enjoyed two great boat rides around Bunaken!  The pictures above were taken during the day and are very beautiful.  However, the better trip was a night ride with a full moon and lots of stars.  Unfortunately, no pictures of that trip (pictures wouldn't do it justice anyway!).

Hope enjoyed shopping at a basket market in the mountain town of Tomahon.

The boys and I enjoyed a great river rafting adventure.  Hope and Janet followed behind in the chase vehicle.  This was a favorite of mine.... and I've been on a few river raft experiences!.

Being Indonesia, we enjoyed yet another active volcano hike. Here we are on the crater rim.



All of us, but especially Hope, loved the world class reefs while snorkling.

Neil, with snorklers in the background. 

Postcard perfect

Photo taken March 2011

Just remember.... things are not always as they appear.

Just thought I would show off my birthday present from this year.  Now, when I'm experincing "enchantment fever", all I have to do is look at my large poster and I feel home again!

Gong Xi Fa Chai

How to have a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year :

1.  Dress your daughter up in Asian clothes and teach her to say Gong Xi Fa Chai (Prosperous New Year).

2.  Get invited to billionare's house for a celebration.

3.  Enjoy the tradition where older married Chinese present money in red envelopes (called Angpao) to all the children in the house.

Hope with Vietnamese dress and Angpao envelope

Despite it's fake appearance, 100,000 Rupiah is worth around $11.

Loving the water at Earthlove

We went whitewater rafting a few weeks ago in the mountains on the south side of Java at a place called Suka Bumi (which translates "Earthlove").  The traffic was horrendous (5 hours to get there when it should have taken 3) but the rafting was fantastic.  Watch Neil's expressions below in the series of photos as he gets soaked (the last two pictures are larger so you can see)!

Pictures of Vietnam

Our family enjoyed 8 days around Saigon, Vietnam over Christmas. Enjoy this vacation with us through our pictures!

Hope eats tropical fruit on a boat on the Mekong river

 Eric and Neil cooking at our homestay on the Mekong delta

Christmas day in the Ocean!

Eric shooting an AK-47 at Cu Chi tunnels

Hope bids farewell to Vietnam. She is wearing an Ao Dai (traditional Vietnamese dress)

 

Riverside at our homestay on the Mekong delta

 Hope in a trap door to the Cu Chi tunnels 

Open letter to HCM

Asian totalitarian despots used to provide for much of the world’s misery (think Pol Pot, Mao Tse Dung, Hirorito, Ho Chi Minh, Suharto and around 100 million killed in the last 75 years). While many of the regimes of these losers have faded away, some, such as North Korea, China and Vietnam still remain. In the case of Vietnam today, it is hard to believe this country is still communist and authoritarian as life seems quite free and good for the citizens as you walk around. While I am sure this is not always the case and there are still real examples of despotism in Vietnam, I thought I would make light of my perceptions of the many improvements in Vietnam in the entry below.

Dear Ho Chi Minh,

I feel the need to inform you regarding the alarming condition of your country after visiting the largest city in it which also happens to be named after you.
I am sure you were ecstatic following the triumph of your communist forces over South Vietnam in 1975 and the removal of all Imperialist (religious and capitalist influences) elements from your country with violence and wholesale re education of all those deemed threats to your new utopia.

When I first visited your country in 1990, things seemed to have slipped a bit. While still a rigidly and dogmatically a communist country, there were small scale businesses popping up everywhere, so much so that my professor, who had traveled to almost every communist country, was amazed at the entrepreneurial spirit of Vietnam and the tolerance of it by your government.

When I returned this year, I found even more un communist influences. On top of small scale industries, foreign multinational companies now exist everywhere—Toyota, Ford, Pizza Hut, Yamaha, Sony, etc….). While I was there, the local communist english newspaper even interviewed the Japanese trade minister and criticized his country’s companies… for not investing enough capital, I mean CAPITAL, in Vietnam!

Also unlike 1990, religious life seems vibrant. When I visited in 1990, the group I was in had to smuggle Bibles and a keyboard into the country for Christians there, who were in hiding. Other religious influences were not present. Now, religious things seemed everywhere. Buddhist shrines were at almost every business, catholic saints were spotted on the dashboards of many cars and mass was conducted at churches. The largest statue of Jesus in Asia, which was completed in 1993, even stands over the city of Vung Tau. I believe it is even larger than any statue of you in the country!

Christ of Vung Tau

I hope you know that if this continues, your legacy is in doubt.

Just thought you should know,

Sweeda

Signing on the bottom line

Janet and I are both indecisive, compliant youngest children and it’s interesting to see our lives in hind sight. Most people fitting this description end up as mousy homebodies who never make it out of our parent’s clutches, much less out of our home towns. For me, branching out included 4 years of Calvin, a first job in Florida and a summer job in Washington D.C. For Janet, it meant college in Chicago, a summer in Germany and an early career in the U.S. Navy. After marriage, things seem to settle down in Rehoboth (my home town), but since 2007, something hit us and we first found ourselves in Lithuania for a summer and now in Indonesia. This continues as we now have signed on for our 4th year in Indonesia (school year 2011-2012).

However, we still remain who we are. If you doubt this try to find us at 9 PM on a Friday or Saturday night (in bed) or watch us try to decide as a family where to eat out on a Sunday noon (and laugh at the comic indecisiveness of us and our children). Regardless of who we are and what we will be called to do, we know as we start a new year “that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).

Happy New Year.