family outing

on one of the last days the whole family was together we all took a trip over to my grandfathers grave. It sits on pretty much an open field at the moment. The family owns the property and built a structure for the grave. Unlike the traditional grave yards that people are buried in here it is more common to have graves on property that is owned by the family. It wasn't a sad occasion. More of an outing to pay our respects and do something as one big group for the last time before family started to head back home. One of my favorite pictures is walking up the little hill and turning around to see a huge line of family all filing up. I have this huge family on the other side of the world and i just wish we got to see them more often or wish some of them could visit us... maybe someday. We ended up putting down a tarp and all had a few treats, took pictures, and made our way back down the hill. it was a good day.

keep in mind this is just our immediate family

are my cousins not the cutest

snack time

Hope you have a simply wonderful Tuesday! 

home sweeeet home

are my roomies not the best for making me this sign! 

Hello Everyone! Let me tell you it feels SO GOOD to be home! After a total of 13 endless flights and delays and being sick I am finally home and finally feel somewhat back to normal after being away for almost a month. We flew in late last monday and it took me pretty much all week to get back into a more normal sleeping schedule, do tons of laundry, restock my kitchen and sleep off how completely exhausted I was from it all. It almost helped that we had some days off due to weather. But this will be my first full week back at work and why not make it even more hectic and throw in huge dinner party at the end of the week. Welcome home to me :) 

Anyways this week I will try to wrap up the Indonesia trip and show you tons of pictures that I didn't have a chance to do while I was away! Today I am going to show you the house that we were staying in. It actually is a little motel that my grandparents own. People usually come and stay for longer amounts of time though instead of quick trips. 

Here is the front of the house. 

Some views from the house...on a hill so it had some beautiful views

The living area...that no one ever really uses.

TV area...tiny tv and no couches...everyone sits on the floor 

The bathrooms normally looks like this in the area. Its more of a squat situation and tile thats built up in the corner is filled with water and is used to take a shower with. The bucket sitting there is how it pour it on yourself 

 THANKFULLY this was our situation. We had the one room in the place with an actual toilet! I seriously have never been so happy to see one in my whole life! 

Our room. We called it the green room because of its crazy bright green walls. The paint colors they have around here are primary and very limited.

 The other side of the room. Its pretty basic...they don't really use a lot of furniture.

Outside in between the house and the kitchen. Huge water tank and also the laundry area. The little thing thats covered in a blanket is the washing machine but it doesn't really work like our modern, throw it in and forget about it washing machines..more work then that. And you still hang your laundry out to dry. 

Or if there is no room left on the clothes line you let your clothes dry on the rocks.....

ummm yeah..

The kitchen. just stove tops. no oven..this looks so much better then it did compared to when we were there last time. 

other side of the kitchen sink and rain water faucet to use for cooking water

They also have a little pond in the back that they sometimes will fish out of. 

Phew! Sorry for the picture overload. Living in a totally different area with totally different living conditions for almost three weeks makes you very thankful for the little things we take for granted on a daily basis here in the states...your bathroom, microwaving your frozen lunch, or doing laundry...

I am very Happy to be home sweet home now.

 Have a simply wonderful Monday! 

a trip to Sapari

not going to lie i was kind of excited to get out of Malianu for a night. im kind of stuck at the same place here and there really ins't a whole lot to see. So going to another town seemed like a change of pace and something different. However, i was warned of A. the lack of internet, and B. no traditional toilets. (side note: we are in the one room that actually has a real toilet..so very lucky) and C. more bugs that will bite then where we currently are. I wasn't really that worried about the internet thing and well...i just hoped for the best for the bathroom situation. Thankfully it wasn't horribly hot, it actually had been pouring rain all night to the point where its so loud you wake up because of it. The rain didn't really let up until the afternoon and I didn't understand why they wanted to wait for the rain to calm down but as we began our adventure i realized exactly why...the roads, the flooding, the stopping at massive pot holes deciding what dips seems less worse then others, roads that were now mini lakes that the motorcycles couldn't even get through. Let me just show you...

This is how much it rained...umm yes...houses completely surrounded by water

 

 A field totally covered in water

Us treading through the water hoping it wasn't to deep to go through

 

If you look closely through the window you can sorta see the massive pot holes in the way...yeah..it was a fun drive.

 

I would like to mention that the edge of the pavement goes straight down...the road broke..and we were seriously that close to the edge! umm scary 

 

passed lots of little houses and huts

 

sadly i didn't get a good shot of some of the extensive jungle that was happening along the way...the area we were in all of the trees were used for paper and owned by some paper company..so some areas where totally cleared... but here is some of the beautiful green along the way

 

The little village of Sapari is over an hour from where we have been staying and it is the more permanent home for my Grandma. They have a little shop with basic food items and they also sell all the weaving my Grandma does. She is one of the few people left who actually does this anymore. She is quite talented! This is one of the sets of shelves with things she has made and sells.

My Grandma lives with my moms youngest brother and his wife and kids. My moms brother loves animals and their cat just had kittens..they were sooooo cute! totally kept me entertained :)

Here is the kitchen area...and where they do most of the cooking..not like our stove tops at all.

And yes that is one of the kittens finding himself a little lunch

And now for a little reality check and something to be thankful for. Your bathroom. Because even though this was one of the cleanest and least smelly i've seen in these types of bathrooms they still aren't ideal.

It was a nice little trip but I am happy to be back with a real toilet and a little AC..and not to mention some internet. :) 

Hope you have a simply fantastic day!

a night out in malinau

to be honest once it gets dark around here there really isn't that much going on...however, when the locals are finally tired of cooking and sweating over a hot kitchen they head out...to the one area that has mini little food stands. i almost would say its a fair but more of the food aspect rather then the fair aspect. However they do have a couple booths with some fun kiddy things. Don't worry I have pictures that literally just took me at least an hour and a half to upload....(i wont go there now) but anyways here is what our night looked like 

Tons of little food stands with people making a variety of different things.. 

 

this guy is making chicken sate's...delish and totally what i had for dinner

My cousins found the one little "ride" they area had..

 

the best part about the ride...it's totally man made power...peddle, peddle, peddle! 

Mom was so amazed that she wanted to try it out! Let's just say it was harder then it looked...peddling 4 kids on a ride is hard work!

They even had a little stand where they sold gold fish! my mom for some reason wanted to buy one but dont worry we didn't waste money on fish

 

However....we did spend money on my future husband..here is a pic of him :) 

pretty sure he could build me a house ;)

I didn't want him to be lonely so I had to get him a friend. 

Who obviously would be a cow with pink horns...

haha...it was a fun night and a nice change of pace from our normal routine around here.

It was fun to be silly and pick out a couple of these ridiculous little toys.. and don't worry only cost me like 2 US dollars. Everyone needs a little silly in their life :)

Hope you have a simply silly Friday!

the pig.

Last night we had our big "family reunion"/ celebration for our Grandma. Prep for this celebration started days before. There were over 150 people invited and that meant over 100 mouths to feed. It is pretty traditional to kill a pig for big celebrations or in honor of someone. I don't have pics of the actual killing...maybe thats better for some of you who would not be pleased with this anyways. but I did snap a few pics of the the end of the hair removal and the cutting of the pig. This is quite a process and a lot of work. But the whole event turned out great. More on that tomorrow. but for now...the pig. 

the end of the hair removal. they burn the hair and scrap it off with knives

the skinning begins

the feet

..idk why i failed at getting his whole head in the pic...oops

the head and the bucket full of other parts

Pretty much this whole pig is touched by the whole family.. Its quite a process..the men do the killing and main cutting then it moves to another set of hands for the next step

Here the women are doing more of the clean up and cutting of the meat.

Pretty much every part of the pig is used and eaten. Including the intestines, brain, heart..you name it its eaten. A long process all done by hand. 

Hope you have a simply marvelous day!