Five Minutes You're Out

Dear Friend,

Yesterday I went on a first grade field trip to the kite museum. It was very fun, but the car ride was quite noisy. Kids love to talk. I enjoyed listening to their conversations. I wish I had a pen with me so I could have written down the silly comments they made. Here were my two favorites (and you must read these in little high pitched first grade voices).

"[name] stop talking so much.
"No, I like to talk.  Talk, talk, talk."
"If you like to talk, then go to grade 2, because they like to talk."
(This is very true. My grade 2 students LOVE to talk!)

"Your house is pink."
"No, my house is not pink."
"Your house has to be pink because you're a girl."
(Evidence that stereotypes are already set by first grade.)

The noisy car trips made me appreciate my parents. My family traveled a lot by car; my two sisters and I LOVED to talk. My parents were so patient and put up with it for quite a while; eventually though, they would tell us we had to settle down and be quite, but only after at least an hour of our non-stop chattering.

There is one game we used to play called 5 minutes you're out. I don't know how the game got started. The goal was to make someone say the word "what" and if they did, the other person would say, "5 minutes you're out." Then the person who said 'what' had to be silent for 5 minutes. It would work like this:

Andrea: Becka.
Me: Hmmm?
Andrea: Han.
Me: yeah?
Andrea: Hannah.

Hannah: Yes?
Andrea: REBEKAH!
Me: WHAT?
Andrea: 5 minutes you're out!


Perhaps my parents made up the game to make us be quiet. Going something like this:

Dad: Girls, do you hear me?
Andrea, Hannah and Rebekah: What dad?
Mom: 5 minutes you're out girls!
Dad: Ahh, 5 minutes of peace and quiet!

Although it was a fun car game, it wasn't my favorite. My favorite of all times is the information service game.

My most memorable car trips are the ones in Switzerland. When we went sight seeing, we always saw information booths for tourists. Well, my sisters and I decided to make up our own information service game. This is how it went:

First, we would pretend to answer a call using our made up Information Service slogan:
"Information service at your service, how may we NOT help you?"
Then, we must come up with some witty air-headed comment.
Finally, laugh with sisters until you think up another scenario.

My favorite scenario was this one, "Hello, information service at your service, how may we not help you? Oh, I'm sorry, I can't help you right now, I'm on the phone."

My sister liked this one, "Hello, information service at your service, how may we not help you? You need to get to (insert destination)? Well you can get there by foot, bike, plane, boat, taxi, bus, train."

A couple other favorites of ours include:

"... You are going to visit (insert destination). Oh it is so beautiful there. Have a great trip!"
(Answering the phone) "Hello, we would like to order a pepperoni pizza. What? You aren't the pizza guy. Sorry, I must have dialed the wrong number."

The summer we created this game, we played it every time we were in the car, repeating our old scenarios and maybe coming up with new ones. We were so amused with it. But even with this game my parents would eventually tell us it was time to do something else that was more quiet.

Did you ever play fun games in the car with your family? What were they like?


Hope to hear from you!
Rebekah

My Chair Debacles

Dear Friend,

How are you this week? Have you had any fun thoughts lately?

My week is going well, especially with the anticipation of Easter holiday coming up where I will actually travel around Indonesia a bit. I'm sure I will write and tell you about it.

Have you ever had any mishaps with chairs? I have. I thought it might be fun to share a couple of stories with you. First I will take you to a summer cabin up in Sendai where the recent tsunami hit. This story takes place many years ago when Sendai was not yet devastated by a natural disaster.

One summer day, many years ago, my family was enjoying the creaks and smells of our missions rustic beach cabin. My mom was out back watching the ocean and listening to the waves, my dad was outside working on something, my oldest sister was in the kitchen baking blueberry muffins for our traditional family breakfast beach picnic, and I was at the dinning room table playing a game with my other sister and some friends.

I was seated at the head of the table. I'm sure everyone knows that if you sit at the head of the table, you have to reach the farthest to get to the middle. Naturally, when the game got exciting, I would stand up to be able to reach better, slapping the table at appropriate moments in the game. When the action settled down, so would I, as I relaxed into the cushioned chair that I knew would be waiting for me. One typically trusts a chair, if it was there when you stood up, it will be there when you sit down. Being under this impression, after a rather exciting part of the game, I comforably relaxed into my chair.  To my surprise, my body kept falling until I hit the floor. Sitting on the floor, slightly dazed, I saw everyone peeking over the table to see if I was okay, my mom rushed inside after hearing a crash, and my sister peeked through the kitchen doorway to see what had happened. "Opps, I thought you weren't using the chair," she said half apologetically, half laughingly. Apparently since I wasn't sitting in the chair, my sister decided she could put it to better use as a stepping stool. We had a good laugh from that one, especially since she didn't do it on purpose!

From that point on, I was careful about sitting down, making sure no one took my chair out from behind me. Little did I know, sometimes chairs have a mind of their own. This leads me to my next story, it happened a week before I graduated from high school. 

We had one week left of school. Most of our classes were finished, including our senior comps. Some friends and I decided to celebrate by having a little bonfire. We met at a nice little park that had a designated area for bonfires. We gathered together underneath a pale blue sky as the sun prepared to set, a perfect time to build a bonfire. Unfortunately, the park security noticed what we were doing and informed us that we couldn't make a fire. Why not, you ask? Apparently, it was already too late; all campfires had to be finished by 5 pm. What? The sun hadn't even set yet! How could it be too late to make a fire? If anything, it was too early!

Undauntedly, we decided to move locations and find another park; we had papers to burn! We picked up our lawn chairs and other paraphernalia and walked out of the park. Here are some snippets of what our conversation probably sounded like during our search for a new location.
"So much for that."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, where do we go now?"
"I think there's a park near my house."
"Okay, let's check it out."
"I'm hungry, can we stop at 7/11 first."
"Yeah, I haven't eaten dinner yet."
"I already ate, so I'll stay outside with the chairs." (That last statement was from me.)

This is where my chair tale begins. There I was, waiting outside the 7/11 while my friends bought  onigiri's and other food items. One friend quickly bought his food and came outside to keep me company. That's when we had a brilliant idea.
"How fun would it be to sit in the lawn chairs, on the sidewalk, looking into 7/11?"
"No one else does it, so why not? Let's do it."
I opened up the little yellow lawn chair and confidently sat in it. Apparently I was too confident, I hadn''t fully open it up. As a result, the lawn chair tried to eat me up, or comically fold up with me inside it. Suffice it to say I was extra careful the next time I tried to sit in the chair; that is, after my friends had a good laugh and cracked a couple of jokes about the event.

This ends my two random stories about chairs. Do you have any?
In case you were wondering, the bonfire was a success and led to many good memories.

The rain has been falling a lot today, and for the first time I have a leak in my room, right over my doorway. Thank God it isn't over my bed! I just hope the roof tile doesn't fall down in the middle of the night, that would scare me like crazy!

I'll let you know what happens!
Your friend,
Rebekah

It's not called hanging out when you are on your cell phone the whole time!

Dear Friend,

Today I woke up early and decided to stay in bed and read a book. Last night I finished a book titled Shirley by Charlotte Bronte but was still in the mood to read, so I read the first five chapters of a Newbery Honor book titled Princess Academy before going to sleep. When I woke up the next day, I figured I would continue reading the book since the whole night long I was wondering what would happen in the story. I picked it up and read, I kept reading until the 300 page book was finished. It is a middle school level book, so it was an easier read. Regardless, it was still very interesting and had some good points to think about.

It was such a good 'old-fashioned' morning to just be in bed and read. I wasn't fiddling with my computer, I wasn't setting alarms on my phone, and I wasn't listening to music. I was just reading. Unfortunately, it seems harder and harder to get away from all the technology that is around us. I mean, I am writing this on a computer and posting this letter to anyone that wants to read it, believe me, I am just as engulfed in technology as the next person. But sometimes I worry about what we are becoming with all this technology around us. Take, for example, the cell phone. It is no longer used to have a single conversation with someone that too far away for a face to face conversation, but now it is used to have multiple conversations with multiple people at the same time through the 'wonderful world' of texting. I wonder how deep these conversations actually are?

This afternoon, I decided to go to a coffee shop and do some work. I was sitting at a table on the second floor, away from the distraction and smoke of other people, drinking my ice lemon tea, listening to my ipod and working. Three girls came to the second floor with smoothies and sat down to hang out. I was amazed at how much 'hanging out' has changed since I was in high school only 5 years ago.

When you go to hang out with someone you should be giving one another your attention and be talking, laughing, discussing, debating etc. Instead, these three girls sat together at the same table, but instead of looking at each other and talking with one another, they each had their phones out and were intensely interacting with their phones. SERIOUSLY!!! I'm sorry, but this upsets me. The girls would sometimes show each other something on their phone, but that little piece of technology seemed to be a part of their body. I was at a party once and the same thing happened. I glanced at the people sitting on the two couches and each one of them had their phone out and were texting. I almost felt out of place because I wasn't texting.

What has this world we live in come to? What world will my children grow up in? Will the phone epidemic be this bad, or even worse that they text me good morning rather than walking into the kitchen to give me a good morning hug and a kiss.

Do you know how it feels when you are telling a story, very animatedly in my case, and half way through your story you look at the person you are talking to and they are typing on their phone, having a different conversation with someone else? I mean, if you ask a question, wait and listen to the reply. Your texting conversation can wait. Don't ask questions or try to have conversation if you don't want to listen.

I am big on conversations. I love having conversations, so this new era of phones and texting is a little frusterating. Granted, I am thankful for the technology. Without it I would not be able to talk to my family in Japan and America, I would not be able to talk to my best friends and keep up with what is going on in their lives. But, there is a difference between talking to someone face to face, over a computer or phone, and texting someone, facebook chatting and skype chatting. To be honest, how deep a conversation can you have when texting or chatting? I suppose that's why they call it chatting and not talking. Recently, a friend and I, who typically have good thought provoking conversations, were facebook chatting for the first time since I came to Indonesia. It started out as the casual how are you little chit-chatty conversations. But after a short while the questions were getting deeper and the responses were getting longer. Eventually, we got fed up with it and figured out how we could talk and have a real conversation. Having a conversation, where you hear a persons voice, is much more satisfying in my opinion than writing short questions and half-sentenced answers.

Well my friend, there is my little rant about this new era we are living in. I am thankful my texting doesn't work half the time, that way I am sure not to become a part of the crowd. Someone told me I should buy a blackberry, because that is what everyone has over here in Indonesia, telling me all the benefits of having internet on your phone etc. I said I really didn't want to be distracted by those things which I am doing fine without. Instead I have the cheapest phone possible with a black and white screen that can make calls and text. That's all. And I really don't use it enough to justify having one in my oppinion, but it is or will be, useful in times of emergency.

I will step down from this little soap box I have been standing on and say good bye.
Till next time,
Rebekah E.

"There's no place like home"

Dear Friend,

Today at a staff meeting, the curriculum coordinator said something that triggered a thought in my mind, which has led me to write this letter.

You know in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy had to tap her ruby red slippers and say, "There's no place like home" three times. Once she did that she managed to go home. I sat in that meeting musing over this thought. If I had magic ruby red slippers like that and said those words, where would they take me? Where does my subconsciousness consider home? Would it be Japan, Switzerland, America or even Indonesia?

People used to say, "Home is where the heart is," to which I would reply, "Home is where my pillow is." Seriously, even if I was staying overnight in a hotel and my sisters and I were eating dinner. If I was done, I would say, "Time to go home" meaning, back to the hotel room.

I was talking to a dear friend about this concept of home and they wisely pointed out to me, "Home is in heaven." I guess the saying, "Home is where the heart is" is true, because if heaven is our home and our hearts are living for God, then our hearts are in heaven.

It's funny, having lived in many different countries I occasionally get confused or frustrated by the question, "where are you from?" I don't know! Then when I try to figure it out and rank my countries by which is most like home, I get even more flustered, because honestly I can't rank them. Perhaps this is because, deep down, I know none of them are my true home. My home is in heaven, and I am patiently waiting for the day to finally go home and know it is home.

That was my thought for the day,
What thoughts have you had recently?

Your friend,
Rebekah

Rain and Quakes

Dear Friend,

I am lying on my bed listening to the rain outside. I love the smell and sound of rain, especially when you are safe at home in the afternoon after a long day of work. It is so peaceful and calming... until the thunder comes, that is. You know that great smell rain has? Well here I get to smell that smell all the time. In Indonesia the houses have two front doors, one that is wooden and one that has a metal screen. Then there is also a backdoor that leads out to the kitchen and washing area. That door also has the two doors. During the day both wooden doors are opened and just the screen doors are closed. This allows the wind to blow through the house instead of having an air conditioner. Since these doors are always open, I can be sitting at my table and smell that great afternoon rain smell without getting caught outside in the rain. All the floors are tiled, in the house and out the backdoor where the kitchen and washing machine are. There is an non-roofed space where we hang our clothes to dry during the day. When the rain hits the tile it makes a crisp popping sound, a little like the sound of a fountain. I also have a metal roof over part of the back area, which adds a melodious tone to the rainfall. It is raining now and the peacefulness inspired me to write you.

Since the massive earthquake in Japan, I have been thinking of my earthquake experiences. My friend, that I went to grade school with, is now working in Japan and she said it was worse than any earthquake she had ever experienced. In 7th grade we went on a field trip about safety and they had a little room that looked like a kitchen that you could stand in. They would make the room shake like an earthquake with a magnitude equal to the Kobe earthquake. That was strong and scary to feel even though it wasn't real. This current earthquake was so much stronger than that! I can't imagine how scary that must have been! Especially for a teacher in charge of little children. They had to evacuate the building and everything. I only remember having a real earthquake during school once, and it was so small we didn't even evacuate the building.

Growing up in Japan, earthquakes were an expected event. My mom always left our door ajar when we went to bed, not to let the light in, but to prevent the door from getting stuck if there was a big earthquake. She wanted us to be able to get out of our room easily. If your clothes are on fire, you stop drop and roll. If you experience an earthquake when you are sleeping this is our families routine: grab your pillow, hold it over your head, stand under the door frame of your room and if the earthquake persists, run to the dinning room and get under the table. I only remember having to run to the dining room table once when I was really little. Normally the earthquakes are small and my whole family stands under the door frames of our rooms, look at each other with our pillows wrapped around our heads, smile at the silly sight, then ask the question, "Did it stop?" "I think so." "Okay, well good-night again." Then we all go back to bed. Sometimes we would go turn on the TV to see where the earthquake originated from and how strong it was. Typically they were only 3's.

I remember one small earthquake that woke me up in the night. It was still early and the rest of my family was still awake. I ran to my door with my pillow clutched over my head. My sister was in the restroom right next to my room and I could hear her struggling to open the door. It was locked and in her haste and panic she was having trouble unlocking it. The sound of her trying to get out scared me so much that for a while I stopped closing the door when I used the restroom at home and I rarely ever locked the door after that.

Another time my family and I were at McDonalds for breakfast, a family tradition of ours. We were sitting on the second floor by the window. Sometimes we would feel the building shake and my dad said it was because a heavy truck drove by. Sure enough, looking out the window we could see a truck had just past. Just as we were finishing our breakfast we felt the floor shake more than normal and my dad said it was still just a truck, but when we looked out the window there was no truck in sight! What happened next was SO funny! My family of 5 tried to get down on the floor under the small tables at McDonalds, except my dad. He sat there eating until we pulled him under the table. We were sitting in a booth where the chairs don't push back and there definitly was not enough room for all of us under there. We all started to laugh at how ridiculous we looked. We were finished with breakfast and quickly got into our car to run home and see how big of an earthquake it was. Of course the information wasn't on the TV anymore because we lived at least 15 minutes away, but we still hurried home, just in case we could see.

Those are my small earthquake experiences. My stories are kind of silly and I am in no way trying to make light of what happened in Japan. Not at all. It is a devastating event. Watching the news and seeing all the pictures and footage is just unbelievable to me. To see my strong country smashed into devastation in a manner of seconds is jaw dropping. I know the whole country wasn't wiped out, but to see even a part of it harmed is unbelievable. It is amazing to see the strength of the Japanese as they work together to get through this all. May God's light be seen through all of this!

Keep praying for Japan.
RES

Ice Cream Floats... or not

Dear Friend,

Last night I went to a friends house to hang out. She had asked me on Monday if I wanted to hang out and told me to think about what we should eat. All I could think of was, "I want to have an ice cream float." You know, with ice cream and coke (since it would probably be hard to find root beer here). So Friday comes around and I run to the convenient store to buy ice cream and coke. Now I had been thinking about these floats the whole week and was very excited. It's no fun to make an ice cream float for yourself, you have to have other people there.

I arrived at her house, got some glasses, and dished out the ice cream. The vanilla ice cream looked more yellow than white, but I figured it was just a different brand of ice cream. I slowly poured in the coke, watching the big bubbles form. It looked delicious! I grabbed my spoon and tried some of the bubbles... it tasted a little weird, not like a normal coke float. Perhaps the vanilla ice cream is just different than in America. I started to put the ice cream into the fridge while licking the ice cream scoop. That's when I realized it. The ice cream was not vanilla ice cream. It was DURIAN ice cream! Durian is this fruit that smells quite strong, some people might even say it smells like feet. I like durian, I can eat it, BUT NOT IN MY FLOAT! It totally changed the taste of the float. Sad day! So much for my much anticipated ice cream float!

It was a funny experience though. Now every time I buy ice cream I will make sure it says Vanilla and Chocolate and not Durian and Chocolate.

Perhaps we will just have to have the real ice cream floats when I see you next.
Your friend,
Rebekah E.

From Ogre to Barbie

Dear Friend,

It's been quite a while since I last wrote. Life here has been good here I'm having fun and staying busy.
Keep praying for Japan, okay? Everyday I am checking the news and facebook feed to see the updates. It is unimaginable the amount of damage there is. I see the pictures and ask myself, "Is this really Japan?" But I know God's hand is in all of this and am excited to see how He uses this disaster to bring glory to his name.

So I have a few stories for you, hope you enjoy.

Well about a month or so ago I was at a bazzar raising money for an organization that helps street children. There were so many adorable little kids and babies there. The whole time I just wanted to hold them, make them laugh and twirl with them. I saw one adorable two year old boy with big ears try to put a backpack on; however, he had it upside down and it was all twisted up, so naturally I went over to help. I tried to hold out the backpack strap so he could put his arm through it. Instead of putting his arm in the straps, he looked at me as if I was an ogre, let go of the backpack, backed up slowly and then ran away. Ooppps! I felt so bad. At that moment I wished I wasn't a bulé! If I was Indonesian the kids wouldn't be scared of me and I would be able to play and laugh with them. It is not a fun feeling to think that kids are scared of you (or that you look like an ogre).

Well, a week later I went to a party and the birthday girl's four year old niece was there. I was sitting next to the birthday girl and her niece was standing in front of her. She did this adorable stretching motion, looking away from me, and her hand just happened to touch my arm and stay there for a while. It was so cute how curious she was to see if my skin felt the same even though it didn't look the same. Okay, so not every kid is scared of me, of course, her auntie knew me, so it was easier for her, right? So maybe I'm not an ogre.

That Sunday I was riding the bus from my church in Jakarta back to Cikarang. There was a 7-year old girl on the bus sitting in the front, while I was sitting more towards the back. She would often turn around to look at me; then we would make eye contact and smile. She started to stand up and play in the isle of the bus, nonchalantly making her way closer to where I was sitting. I watched as she sat 4 rows in front of me. Ten seconds later she would move back one row, 5 seconds later she would move back again. Now she was only two rows in front of me. Then she stood up and walked back to her seat in the front. Two minutes later she was back, trying again. Eventually she made it back to my row. Not knowing what to do, she just stood there and looked at me, so I held out my hand to say hello. She shook my hand and then went back to her seat in the front. A few minutes later she came back and sat in the row behind mine. She was fiddling with something, but I couldn't tell what it was. A little while later I noticed a candy sitting beside me. She had pushed the little candy between the seats to give me. I took the candy, held it up and asked her with my eyes and hands, "for me?" She nodded and I said, "Terima kasih" (Thank you) to which she replied "Sama sama" (You're welcome). She then moved forward a row to sit on the same row as me. After two minutes she went back to the front where her dad was.

Wow, maybe I'm not so scary after all if a child stranger is friendly enough to give me a chocolate mint candy. That made me feel better.

Just last week, I was on the same bus coming home. Unfortunately it was later in the day and the bus was packed. I sat in the backity-back because there were only about 3 seats left. On the next stop a lady holding a one and a half year old got on the bus and sat right next to me. The little baby boy stared at me with curiosity. He started to quietly sing a song, he clapped his hands and then reached his hand out and 'just happened' to touch my arm. He kept his hand there for a little, then moved it away. He did this a few more times, just to make sure my skin was still the same. SO CUTE! That settled it, I am not a scary person! What a relief!

I kind of feel like a doll because people are touching my arm to see if I am real or fake. Once, I had a teacher friend tell me, "When I was little I would play with barbies and think, people don't really have hair like this, but I was wrong, you hair is just like a barbies hair!" I don't quite agree with her, and don't really want to be equated with a barbie since in my mind a barbie is a blond headed unproportional bimbo, but it is kind of funny.

Anyways, those are my stories for you: from ogre to barbie.
Your friend till Niagra Falls,
Rebekah