The New House

Whew! A lot has happened in the past few months. I suppose I should start by saying that Greg and I bought a house in North Denver. It's in an area called Sunnyside, near the newly popular areas of Highlands and Berkeley. When I was a kid, the area was just 'Lakeside', and we were warned to stay away. As a result, exiting onto Federal from I-70 still feels like I'm breaking some sort of rule. Federal as a street is known for its crazy Cinco de Mayo chaos and Lakeside was once supposedly disputed gang territory. I'm definitely wondering if there was ever any truth to these stories, though - there are beautiful parks, adorable houses, and at least three coffee shops within walking distance of our house (only one is a Starbucks). The neighbors are friendly, the kids play in the street (one family on our block has quintuplets), and the trees are big. We're just 10 minutes north of LoDo (Lower Downtown) Denver, and easy to get to from all sides. Sunnyside used to be an Italian neighborhood and our back yard was full of grapes about a month ago. We also have an apricot tree and a cherry tree. They both need some care, but hopefully will produce fruit next year. The yard is generally fantastic and has a huge covered patio with doors to both the kitchen and the master bedroom. It's a two bed, two bath house, but it also sort of has two living rooms since the basement is finished and just has one room. Not a lot of storage, but its working out for us. The floors are beautiful wide oak planks. The majority of the walls are, unfortunately plaster, but we're working on painting. The kitches was a very tomato-soupy red and is now much brighter in cream with a dark purple accent wall. Next to paint is the bedroom. Then curtains. We've already had some major plumbing issues fixed, put a new roof over the front stoop, had the sewage lines cleaned of roots, and replaced every window in the house. And to think - this house was 'move-in ready'! I can't imagine what it would be like to move into a fixer-uper! I know these pictures aren't the best - and they're a little dated. I will try to get more up soon so you can all get a better sense of what its really like.

New Year

I suppose you will all just have to get used to my infrequent posts... what can I say? Life in America is busy! As always, today I'll be writing about some past events - Winter Break and the New Year, which Greg and I spent with his family.

We started by flying to California to spend a day having a meal with some of the family - Greg's aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandma, in addition to his parents and sister. We met up with a few of Greg's high school pals, and as usual, spent sufficient time in the kitchen. This trip, coming from Colorado, we found the Bay Area to be rather warm (last time, coming from Indonesia, we were freezing!). We ate at an Indonesian restaurant with some friends of the family along with a group of what definitely seemed to be Indonesian tourists in America. Then, almost immediately, we took off to visit the Hatayama extended family in Hawaii. We spent some wonderful days at the beach, body surfing, looking at turtles, and eating sashimi almost constantly! Greg had arranged to meet up with another teacher at the school he works at, the Denver School of Science and Technology, where he regularly puts in 10-12 hour days - who are these people that think teachers go home at 3pm with the students? In any case, the Spanish teacher, whose last name is Wong, came over with her husband, daughter, parents, niece, and a sibling and in-law and we had a great time with them eating sashimi. (crazy sis-in-law with weird native plant)

In keeping with being touristy for a few days, we took a trip up Mauna Kea volcano. The peak, at over 13,000 feet was covered in snow and dotted with observatories that looked like something out of Star Wars. We walked to the summit at sunset and the sky cleared just enough for us to see a sky full of stars. And then our tour's van wouldn't start so we missed the star show and worried about being stranded in the freezing dark since all the other tourists had already left. Fortunately, we were able to see plenty of stars the next night from the national park parking lot - more stars than I think I've ever seen. We came down from the volcano before midnight on New Year's Eve, so we had dinner/breakfast at Al's Pancake House (open 24 hours) and then drove home while the town set off fireworks. We set off a few of our own fountains, then got up the next morning to prepare a New Year's Feast with Greg's grandma. His uncles, aunt, and cousins all came over and we ate wonderful things like a stew made out of gobo (burdock) root that we pulled from the garden, tons of sushi and pickles, tempura shrimp, mochi soup, sashimi, a dish made with homemade sesame butter and cabbage, and apple pie and pineapple cake for dessert, in case anyone wasn't full. We didn't pound mochi, but we did see it being pounded a few days before New Year on our drive to Mountain View. We ate, lit incense and prayed at Grandma Peggy's shrine in the spare bedroom, looked at old pictures, and tried to stay warm near the fire - the rainy side of the Big Island is much colder than you'd expect. We visited Grandpa Jack several times in the nursing home where he's been since his last stroke. We played cards with him, showed him some pictures of Indonesia, and got to hear a few good stories about Greg's dad's childhood. We were able to spend a lot more time with each of the relatives than we had the last visit (except Greg's aunt who was sick), and Greg's uncles and oldest cousin had a last dinner with us (with lots of sashimi) and even got up early to have breakfast with us before our flight out (I had macadamia waffles with coconut syrup).

Greg and I flew out separately and ended up spending the day in Oahu where we met some Baha'is - a girl who's father is Indonesian and her boyfriend from Chile. We went to get coffee and ran into two more Baha'is, then had mochi ice cream in many flavors and had a great time talking. We also got to meet Greg's Uncle Pui (who's actually his great-uncle) who took us to a very good all-you-can-eat Japanese restaurant. It was sort of an all-you-can-eat vacation, but it was nice to have a last taste of sashimi before we returned to Colorado.

out-of-culture experiences in colorado

Although these two events happened some time ago, I've been wanting to write about them. Both are out-of-culture experiences and were a wonderful reminder that it is possible to 'travel' within the city we live in.

We attended a Divali celebration at the Sikh Temple near Red Rocks - quite close to the amphitheater road, actually. Dozens of women wearing beautifully embroidered saris and scarves in pinks and golds, sewn with sequins and shimmering beads sat on the right side. Men with orange head coverings sat on the other. Throughout the service, three men with beards and head wraps, all in white, chanted songs in Punjabi. Several words repeated sounded Indonesian and probably are related through Sanskrit origins. For the hour-long service, another man waved what looked like an enormous mop-like duster over what seemed to be a child's crib. In fact, it was the Holy book, passed down through a line of teachers (Gurus) until the book itself replaced those teachers and is now called The Guru. Toddlers walked between the mens' and womens' sections. When the singing was over, we moved downstairs where we sat back-to-back in long rows on the floor and received helpings of dahl, saag, yoghurt, ice-cream, sweets, and bread on styrofoam trays. Afterwards we had dark chai upstairs and The Guru was placed in its bedroom for the night. People bowed at the door to The Guru before leaving, walking out past the rows of tiny glowing candles and lanterns that the children were balancing on the outer ledges of the building.

A few weeks ago, Greg and I decided at the last minute to go to a Baha'i Holy Day celebration at a man's house. This particular celebration falls in the middle of the night and we left our home at 10pm. We entered the man's furnished basement and went around the room shaking everyone's hand, to find that we were the only non-Persians! Later, three other non-Persians entered into the crowd of 30 or so Iranian-Americans. It seemed that out of our Baha'i community of over 150, this was a cultural gathering. Why else would you be out so late on a weekday? Certainly not very diverse as Baha'i events tend to be, but way more fun than the average Holy Day. It felt much like being in Indonesia as prayers and stories were told in Farsi. Then we had a break to drink tea and eat semolina halvah and a rice and chicken pudding very closely related to Chinese jook. Then prayers and readings continued and didn't end until after 1am!

Getting busy

Greg and I are starting to be busy with Baha'i activities in Denver - with the core activities all over the world, it's so nice to be able to say "hey, we did this in Surabaya" and be able to draw on our experiences there and in Tacoma so that we can help people who are just starting to serve in these areas. We've been asked to speak and show our slide show several times, and have plans to present more. We've once again opened our house for devotional gatherings, where we gather with people of different religions to read quotes and prayers on a specific topic showing the unity between all religions. Our last one had the theme of 'happiness.' Of course, we had to make and eat sushi, first - I think sushi is the ultimate 'happy' food, though I know there are those of you out there who disagree... Greg is only a few weeks away from becoming a tutor for the series of study books open to all, and I'm beginning to tutor the first book in the series along with my mom, which brings up discussion topics such as "why do we pray?" and "what happens to our soul after we die?" and "why are we here?" and, more importantly, "what are we supposed to do while we're here?" The workbook opens with the quote "The betterment of the world can be accomplished through pure and goodly deeds, through commendable and seemly conduct" from the Baha'i Writings, and the end result is deciding how we as individuals and as a group can start to 'better' the world. Plus, Greg and I are now involved in planning the first of quarterly meetings held between all the different Baha'i communities in the area - in our case, that includes Denver, Aurora, and Englewood.

We've also been attending various events taking place in the Colorado Indonesian community. I still can't get over seeing little Muslim girls with their heads covered wearing velvet dresses, thick tights, and winter coats - after Indonesia, the contrast is so shocking to me. I expect to see flimsy summer dresses and bare feet every time I see one of them! Strangely, it seems that the Muslim and Christian (predominantly of Chinese decent) Indonesian populations continue to remain separate in America. The second event I attended with Greg, was a housewarming which, unbeknownst to us, started with a full mass lead by an Indonesian priest. It reminded me of attending mass in Irish with my Catholic flatmate - she understood the mass, and I could catch a word here and there after studying Irish. In this case, Greg's Catholic High School education had to guide us. It concluded with the singing of a hymn as all 30 or so guests processed through every room in the house, out the garage door, back in the front door, as the priest sprinkled water from a branch and the couple carried a large wooden cross and a lit candle (which had to be re-lit after the trip outside). Then we had a type of soto ayam and mie goreng (fried noodles), talked, and eventually played Clue. We got to speak a little Indonesian - particularly Greg, because, guess what - he still looks like he's from Surabaya!

Apparently the group called the Black Soldiers - black men who ride horses in parades and such - has added a group for women and children. I'm working with a woman and her horse a few hours a day, and hoping to also work with some of her friends in the group. It was a bit of a rough start, since both the woman and her horse are inexperienced, but they're doing well now.

job hunting

I still don't have a real job, but I did start training a woman's horse. It's nice to be doing that sort of work again, though I wish it were a little more reliable and lucrative. Once it starts snowing, by hours will be seriously cut, of course, and I would need to train a lot more horses to make it pay like a low-end job. I've applied to all sorts of 'real' jobs, but it's ridiculous. Apparently there is not a job in existence that I want to do and am qualified for. I don't want to work with people because I hate having to do the 'customer service' thing (the customer's always right), I don't want to work at a desk all day, I want decent pay and I'd like to be outdoors or at least in an environment where I can move around if I want. I definitely don't want to do anything with computers, and I hate answering phones. And no more data entry for me. But I don't want to go back to school, and I don't want to get a lifeguarding degree, a teaching degree, a phD, a masters, a librarians degree, an editors degree, or anything like that. So that leaves.... manual labor, which requires only a high school diploma and pays at least $9 an hour, no benefits generally. Would someone like to remind me why I went to college? Ugh. I can't even find anything to apply for! At least I'm doing something in the mean time.

Fortunately, all this not working lets me do some fun things like play with our kitten, who's gotten a lot bigger since we got her. Her name is Persatuan (Unity in Indonesian) or just Satu for short (which means One). I get to ride my horses at my parent's house, read lots of books, and think about all the things I should be doing but never seem to do (like write a book). Check out the picture of Greg making use of my parent's wireless network from outside the house. It's so nice to be around pine trees and fresh air! Every time we go to the mountains, we say "we're not in Indonesia anymore!" But of course we miss it, especially our friends there. Good thing we have email to stay in touch.

autumn in Colorado and podcast interview

We saw snow for the first time in several years on Saturday night. Greg and I went with our parents to Glenwood Springs for the annual Baha'i conference commemorating the visit of Abdu'l-Baha to that place 95 years ago. It's a beautiful drive through Glenwood Canyon, red cliffs are on both sides, and the aspens were turning patches of the mountains gold. We didn't see all that much of the scenery, though, because we left before it was light out and came back after soaking in the hot springs (http://www.hotspringspool.com/pool/) at night. And it began to rain, and then the rain turned into snow. Sunday, we could see snow on the mountains when we looked west from our apartment! It's cooled down a lot where we live, but no snow yet. In fact, the trees near our house haven't even changed. Sunday Greg had ruhi in Lakewood and I drove back up to my parent's house and went for a long trail ride with my mom. It was a beautiful day with intense Colorado blue, cloudless skies and the golden aspens fluttering. I'd forgotten that the trees have a particular smell in the fall, a sweet, tangy smell that just smells like fall!

After I picked Greg up we sat in a park for a while, bought food for the week, and went out for dinner. We were so caught up in getting things done that we completely spaced a very important engagement we'd made. Fortunately, the folks in charge were very understanding and we still got to participate in an interview on our experiences in Indonesia. It's a half-hour interview you can lister to at this address: http://www.talkshoe.com/talkshoe/web/talkCast.jsp?masterId=26038&cmd=tc It's a podcast so you can listen on your ipod. I think it turned out well, though there's a lot we would have liked to add, like talk about bemos, becaks, the different kinds of fruit, the mud volcano... but you know about all that from my blog! Check it out and see what you think!

Look for pictures soon... several people have requested photos of our apartment.

Back in the States

It’s been a long time again, I know! Greg and I are back in the US now, which leaves me nearly three months to fill in… We arrived on July 20^th, moved in with my parents, and quickly began searching for first a car and then a place to live. In under two weeks we managed to find both a ’90 corolla all-trac (just like my High School car, but blue instead of Red), and an apartment within biking distance of Greg’s School, the Denver School of Science and Technology in the Stapleton area of Northeast Denver. We moved in two days before Greg started work, then got our shipments from both California and Indonesia (which just came two days ago). We still don’t have much furniture, but we’ll deal with that soon. So far, Greg loves his new job. The people he works with do fun things like rock climb and mountain bike and most of them are young and excited about working hard. It turns out that he gets to observe the teachers and help them implement technology in their classrooms, which is important since every kid has a laptop. In addition, he’s teaching a 9^th grade seminar and AP computer science to seniors. It’s all stuff he’s done before, but of course still provides enough challenge to keep him very busy.

Our apartment, despite being very close to what we Coloradan’s like to call ‘Saudi Aurora’ out on the plains, turns out to be in a very diverse and newly developed part of Denver. So far we’ve eaten at an Ethiopian restaurant where we were the only non-Ethiopians, had Vietnamese pho, shopped at a Japanese/Korean grocery store that had just about everything Greg needs to cook Japanese food, and have yet to try the multiple Mexican restaurants and shop at the African Muslim grocery store.

We’re about an hour drive from my parent’s house in the mountains – a little farther than I’d like, but this way we only have to have one car. For now, anyways. So I’ve gotten to ride my horse, go on some trail rides, and spend time breathing the clean, pine-scented, non-Surabaya air.

To catch you up on our time since we moved from our house in Surabaya, I’m going to add a post or two dated before this one. I know it’s confusing, but I’d like to keep in chronological. So keep reading!

For anyone wanting to get in touch, my new cell phone number is (303)257-9310. Our address is 10000 E. Alameda Ave. Apt. 833; Denver, CO 80247. The complex is called The Estates at Mira Vista (it's weird and gated, but it's what we could find and quite spacious - you have to push the button to be let in).

Pilgrimage

For nine days, July 9-17, Greg and I joined my parents and brother for Baha'i Pilgrimage. The Baha'i Holy Land is in Haifa, Israel, and since the Baha'is want to stay on good terms with the government, Baha'is from all over the world have to 'sign up' and wait for their turn the the city doesn't become over-run with Baha'is. My family had been waiting for about 7 years for the opportunity to go - pilgrimage is something that every Baha'i is supposed to do at least once in their lifetime if they can make it work. For many pilgrims, going to Haifa is the first time they've been out of their native country, the first time they've been on an airplane - perhaps the first time they've left their place of birth. Pilgrims going to the Holy Land is often explained with the analogy of the blood going to the heart to gain spiritual energy to bring back to their various places of origin. Toward the end of last year my parents were notified that our family would be able to go and were given a choice of dates and with the school year, July was what we chose. Greg, having become part of the family, was immediately added and didn't have to go on the waiting list - lucky him!

Coming right from a busy trip in Mentawai, riding in dugout canoes to places with no electricity, Greg and I didn't have much time to prepare - mentally or spiritually. In every Baha'i home we visited in Mentawai, there wasn't any furniture, and the only wall decoration would be a picture or two of the Holy Land. When we arrived, it was a very 'Mary Poppins' experience, and a bit shocking to our senses. We were inside the pictures! Except that everything was more beautiful than the pictures, and the pictures don't convey the water pouring from the fountains and plunking down the sides of the stairs leading up the terraces or the light cast from the stained-glass windows of the shrine of the Bab at night. Or the gently swaying lacey-leaved trees inside the shrine of Baha'u'llah. Or the intense heat and humidity in Haifa in July!

Baha'i pilgrimage consists of visiting the most Holy places for Baha'is. The most important place is the resting place of the founder of the Baha'i Faith, Baha'u'llah, which is in a house called Baji near Akka (now called Acre). The other most Holy site is the shrine of the Bab, the forerunner of the Baha'i Faith. Abdu'l-Baha, Baha'u'llah's son is also buried in the Bab's shrine located on Mount Carmel right in the center of the city of Haifa, and such a prominent landmark that the locals proudly boast its beauty and brides consider it good luck to have their pictures taken inside the front gates. The whole section of the mountain is terraced with beautiful gardens, and a few terraces above the shrine of the Bab are several buildings collectively called the ark. There's the Universal House of Justice, the center of the covenant and currently the only international governing body in the world that makes sure the Baha'is all over the world are on the same page. It's the highest level of administration in the Baha'i world, above the National Spiritual Assemblies, which are above Local Spiritual Assemblies, each with nine elected members, elected by secret ballot without campaigning, of course. There's also the Center for the Study of the Text full of libraries and researchers, the International Teaching Center, and the Archives building. What I didn't know until I had a tour of the buildings, was how beautiful they are. I always thought they were just cool buildings, but the architecture and design is incredible. The outside of the Universal House of Justice is Carrara marble carved in Greece, the Center for the Study of the Text has a round sunk garden in the entryway with a fountain, the meeting chamber for the International Teaching Center has a prism-like layered glass window to allow light in with the ring-stone symbol etched into the glass in the middle of a nine-pointed star skylight... I guess because the building are in such a steep mountain, great effort was put into making the rooms filled with sunlight - and they certainly are. We also saw the prison where Baha'u'llah and his family were kept, as well as the numerous houses that he and his family lived in while under house arrest.

We basically spent the whole time praying at the shrines and in the houses. All the pilgrims were really taken care of - there were excellent facilities everywhere we went, we had an amazing guide, and it really wasn't like a tour group even though there were about 30 of us and we went everywhere on a bus together. There were about 250 pilgrims total when we were there, and nearly every night we got to hear talks from Hand of the Cause Dr. Varqa, members of the Universal House of Justice, and members of the International Teaching Center. It was really amazing to be in the Holy Land. Greg said that he felt like, coming straight from Indonesia where so many Baha'is will never be able to go on pilgrimage, that he was bringing the prayers of all the people with him. Maybe it helped that almost all the clothes we wore were made by Indonesian Baha'i friends of ours. It was powerful. And by the end of our nine days, we were exhausted, and Greg and I were ready to stop living out of our suitcases!