Sinterklaas is back in Jakarta

Every year Sinterklaas comes to visit the Dutch children in Jakarta with his helpers de 'Zwarte Pieten'.

Celebrating Sinterklaas is a Dutch tradition, during which kids get presents and pepernoten....if they have been good.....

For Ayla the whole thing was pretty scary. This was the closest she dared to get to 'Zwarte Piet'

The Big day is actually December 5th when The Sint celebrates his birthday. However during the weeks leading up to his birthday, the kids can put their shoe out at night and hopefully one of the Zwart Pieten will come by at night and put a present in it.

Noah is totally into it and has been nervous for a while about the old man's visit. He has been counting down the days until finally he arrived last Saturday.
You can imagine....these are exciting times for Dutch kids

Reading in Ayla's Class

Last week I was in Ayla's class at NIS to read to the kids.

It was fun and I got to read 2 books to the kids. Amazingly enough they all stayed in their seats and actually listened to both stories until the very end. Pretty impressive for a class of 2 year olds.....!

IASAS SOCCER 2007

The yearly IASAS soccer tournament was held this year in Kuala Lumpur. Six schools are part of IASAS, Manilla, Singapore, Taipeh, Bangkok, KL and Jakarta, and battle it out in a tournament at the end of each season.

I coached the girls team this year together with Gerardo Cuneo

It's been a while since I coached a girls team, but I actually enjoyed it a lot. We had a very young team with a lot of potential and we will be good in a few years time. The girls were very eager to improve, they worked extremely hard and they were just great fun to work with.

In the tournament we made it to the consellation game, which was a great achievement for the girls!
This was also Gerardo's last IASAS. After 17 years at JIS he will be moving to the States at the end of this school year. This really is a huge loss for the school. We will all miss him a lot!

Gerardo and his wife Lisa are good friends of ours and he is also part of our annual Boys Trip.

The Rains Are Back

Every year when the monsoon rains start hitting Jakarta the floods come.

As soon as we have heavy rain, the traffic gets even worse than usual. Of course it especially gets bad when trees fall over and start blocking half of the road.

This is what happened close to our house last week.

Of course Noah had to check it out and it was a good opportunity for me to take some blog photos.

Still in Bali Mood

When we came back from Bali Noah and Ayla just wanted to wear their matching Bali outfits. Pretty cool, huh? Bali Flower Power!

We definitely caught a lot of sun in Bali......Look at Ayla in this picture, she is almost black!

October Break Bali

Every year we have a week off in October. This year because of Idul Fitri ( end of ramadhan) it was even longer and we had 9 days break from school. Sweet!

We went to Bali for 6 days and spent the rest of the time at home in Jakarta. Bali is easy, it's familiar and the kids love it. Why would we go far if we have it all just around the corner?

As usual we had a great time. The kids are at an age now that they are starting to enjoy the beach more and more.



We stayed at The Peninsula which was booked by our friends The Lollbacks. Normally this hotel is only for time share holders. We could not have booked this place ourselves. You need to be a member or you need to be introduced by a member to stay here. It was a fantastic place and we would definitely go back there if we could.

Spoiled for Life!

Like many other ladies here in Jakarta Sue loves to go to the salon to get pampered. Or the salon comes to our house ....the salon ladies do house calls too.

You know manicure/ pedicure / shoulder massage...that kind of stuff. Nothing wrong with that, right?

There is only a problem when you have 2 little ones at home, who just love getting special treatments. Now they are fighting about who gets the lady first...and Noah proudly walks around with red toe nails most of the time.

Are we creating two 'monsters'?