Merry Christmas!

That's All!

Will be uploading photos over the next few days - having a wonderful time in Melbourne. Much updating needed, I know.

Will try to catch up soon.

Xmas Photo

This was taken at our Christmas party yesterday.

Attached below is our annual Xmas letter we send out to friends and family around the world.

Enjoy!

To All Our Wonderful Friends and Family Around the World.
I begin our annual Christmas letter by apologizing to everyone for being so poor at keeping in touch this year . we.re usually pretty good at keeping friends up to date with our news, but this year, life has just been completely crazy.
Fun, but crazy!
After 5 years in Taipei, we decided that it was time to move on to pastures new so a lot of major exciting changes have happened this past year for each of us.

January to March

January & February saw us knee-deep in job hunting and interviews - a stressful, exciting, nerve-wracking time all at once. Not really sure of where we wanted to go, we almost ended up in Dubai, Switzerland, Qatar, but decided in the end on Jakarta! Jakarta wasn.t even on our list, but the school sought us out and we had one of those interviews where you just feel like you 'click' with the Head and everything just started falling into place. We are soooooo glad we decided to take jobs here. We love our new lives.

The first part of the year is always one of celebrations in terms of birthdays. January & February saw Juliette turn 1 and Annalise turn 3. March saw Andrew turn about 140 years old!
Even though life at school was stressful for Andrew at TES, I was incredibly happy with my lot at home with the girls. I had a truly wonderful set of close friends with kids that we would see almost daily, and we had many amazingly fun nights out together with our hubbies. Of everything we did in Taipei in the five years we were there, I miss our friends the most. I love the adventure of living overseas, but the saying goodbye to friends is just heart-breaking.

March saw me complete my Diploma in Crisis Counselling (Dip.Couns) so I apparently, can officially counsel privately, but am so not ready for that yet! I enjoyed the courses I took so much though, that I am on the lookout for a good distance learning Masters Degree now in it.

April to July

The second half of the year was just a manic rush to get packed up and out of Taiwan! Andrew was being worked to the bone so I had to pack up the house and organize all of our documents and visas for Jakarta. As well as be present at the dozens of leaving parties that were happening in May & June. It seemed like it was a bumper year for change - so many friends were off on new adventures.

We left Taipei on July 1st and spent a wonderful three weeks in the UK at my sister's house. Anne-marie had just found out she was pregnant with her second child which was great news, (she's due anytime around New Year.s) and my Dad came over to visit from Portugal. My brother, Stephen, was still off on his yearlong 'world tour'.

We managed to catch up with extended family and even went down to Kent to a Pontins holiday camp (it was actually WAY better than we expected!) for 5 days where we met up with some close friends from Taipei.

August to December

We flew out to Jakarta on 31st July and haven.t really touched the ground since. After all we had read up on the city before our arrival, Jakarta has proven to be a really pleasant surprise. We live up in The North, which is less crowded and polluted and life is a little slower paced which is nice. The people are super friendly and everyone has a very relaxed way of living.

Jakarta is hard to describe. It.s a true city of contrasts. Smelly and dirty in parts, and beautiful and lush green in others. Some roads are wide, surrounded by beautiful gardens and incredibly large, grand buildings; others are makeshift roads, old and grotty with open sewers, heaps of smelly traffic pumping out black smoke, surrounded by shanty houses made of corrugated iron or cardboard.

These two very different ways of life might only be a block or road apart from each other. Throughout Jakarta, the rivers and canals are brown, murky, thick like soup and full of rubbish. We often see people washing their clothes in these canals, bathing, dumping their waste in them or fishing.

Jakarta is a city for shopping. Amidst the poverty, which can be clearly seen everywhere, huge monstrous shopping malls have been erected, full of international brand-named shops. You can find make-shift markets for the more economic shopper on almost every alleyway - local Indonesians, peddling their goods on wooden trolleys.

The traffic is indescribable. The noise is constant with all these different horns. When the traffic comes to a standstill, the motor bikes just get up and drive along the footpaths! There is no regard to line marking on the roads and the cars edge up to each other so close. You could shake hands with the person in the next car without extending your arm. When we are in taxis, we.re like fish in a bowl, a very interesting sight - the hawkers come up to the window and wave things at us or people just stop and stare.
Jakarta has something about it that makes you become very fond of it, very quickly. It's hard to understand really, especially when there.s a lot of negatives (pollution, noise, traffic, open poverty, dengue ridden mosquitoes, corruption etc), but there's definitely something!

The school we are working at (North Jakarta International School) is very family friendly and as it is small, the school has a really lovely sense of community about it. The school was opened by a couple of Heads and financiers at JIS. It is an American Curriculum School (a first for us) and the wonderful thing for me, is that I am employed as a Grade 5 teacher which I am enjoying IMMENSELY after the stress and strains of teaching High School & IB Theatre. It is perfect as I don.t have to stay after school everyday and go in each weekend to rehearse and I don.t have to plan 6 different year levels of lessons each week. The kids are gorgeous (I have a class of 15) and I am just thoroughly enjoying being in Elementary. I was so worried about going back to school and leaving Annalise & Juliette, and not being able to give the time a Drama job requires, that when this opportunity came up, it was a golden opportunity for me and such a relief!

Andrew is the sole High School science teacher and Upper School Student Council Leader. The school is also paying towards him doing a qualification in International Administration Leadership course which will be fantastic for his career. I was sent on a course about literacy in my first month or so here . I haven.t been on a school paid-for professional development course in 5 years! The school treats us really well and respects (trusts) us as professionals. That.s a
nice change. The best bit is that the school has the philosophy that if you have to work past 4pm, then you.re being inefficient with your time! Most days, the school is a pretty quiet place by 3.30pm. Life/work balance is really fantastic here.

We have made some lovely friends at the school, and many families have young children so the girls have some instant playmates at social events. The staff are mostly American or from Australia/New Zealand and with the exception of a couple of oddballs, (aren.t there always!) the staff are a friendly and sociable lot.

The only bad news about the school is that our time here is uncertain as the school.s lease is up for renewal in 2010 and the government doesn.t want to renew it . they want to sell the land. Negotiations are in the thick as I type!

We live on campus - a great two storey apartment that is very spacious and as it.s on campus, we can have access to all the school sporting and swimming pool facilities after hours. We organized a local carpenter to make us a beautiful wooden home bar that now sits pride of place with bar stools in our living room.

The bar is open most nights for friends who pop in for the odd glass of water or two. Having .help. here is the norm. And it is stupidly cheap . actually, border-lining slave labour, but we do our best to make sure our maids are looked after. We have two young maids to look after our girls whilst we.re at school. It.s taken a bit of getting used to, and in fact, I am just not good with having .help., so as soon as I get home from school, I send them home. Most others will have their maids live in and work 7 days a week. 5 days is fine for us!

Andrew and I are both trying to get fit . I have begun running . only gentle, 3km cross country runs, but it.s a start and my fitness has already improved dramatically . pity my stomach is still a mass of wobbly jelly (damn kids!) Andrew is back on the tennis scene again and plays once or twice weekly which is great. (but his shrapnel wound from Nam opened up so he.s side-lined again but has bar and Bintang)

The girls are in a nursery school just behind our school and although it took them a while to transition from Taipei and the friends they had and lost there, they are doing really well. They are a pair of little imps . but the best of friends and we of course, love them to bits - even though they drive us up the wall!

Annalise is apparently the spit of me (and poor thing, I think she.ll be short and dumpy like me too) whereas Juliette looks very much like Andrew and is very lean with skinny little legs. (Yes, says Andrew...Lean, Mean Fighting Machine just like Dad.) I.ve no idea where they get it from (!), but both girls love to sing and dance, pose and show off.
They keep us on our toes, make us guffaw with laughter most days and they both have the ability to make us feel incredibly loved and cherished most of the time, which is such an amazing feeling. Parenthood is wonderful.
And utterly exhausting.

We.ve had one visitor so far - Andrew.s sister, Fiona, who came over from Oz on a flying visit to Jakarta on her way to Manila our first few weeks in the country which was wonderful . it was great to catch up on all the news as we hadn.t seen her for a year. My sister and her husband, and what will be two children by then, will be coming out at Easter which will be very exciting!
We are always open for visitors . we would love to see you and would love for you to stay. We have lots of room now, so if you fancy visiting Indonesia, give us a call!

We are spending Christmas in Melbourne with Andrew.s family, so tomorrow we are off (Yay!) It will be so nice to see everyone again and the girls are so excited about seeing their Nan again . we can.t wait.
As far as other traveling plans go, some of you I.m sure will catch up with Andrew in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia at the EARCOS conference during the Easter vacation. With my family coming to visit, I.ve opted out of it and will stay with the girls in Jakarta . it will be one of the very few times Andrew and I will have spent time apart. (eeek!) Oh, and Andrew is still not smoking! That.s more than a year and a half now! He.s done brilliantly.

This summer will be a European one: we are planning to see my family in the UK, but also plan to visit friends in Amsterdam, and then we have a wedding to go to in Corfu in early July. We would also like to try to get to see my Dad.s neck of the woods in Portugal too . lots of traveling plans to get sorted!

Our summer holidays start much earlier now that we are at an American school, so we have most of June and July off and then start work again in early August.

So, here we are!
The end of 2008 already.
All that.s left is to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas, a prosperous, healthy and happy New Year and to say that we hope we do meet again in person in the near future.
Until that time, we send many hugs across the miles and hope you stay in touch.
Take care,
Much love,
Andrew, Kathryn, Annalise & Juliette
Xxxx

Dance Show

We went down the south of Jakarta today as Annalise had been asked by her teacher to dance in a show they were doing at the Mall. Annalise had only practised the dances a couple of times so was a bit unsure of the moves but she made up for it with enthusiasm! She looked super cute up on the stage. She did two dances, one to some bizarre pop tune in some Asian language, and another to a Hi5 song. She was better at the Hi5 one, but Andrew, in his excitement, forgot to press record on the camera! Doh!

Have attached a link to her dancing in the first one. She's a move behind the others most of the time - it cracks me up - but she's as gorgeous as ever! (No bias here!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mO4O5P_QgBQ

The mall we were in is apparently (so the Indonesians say), the biggest mall in the Southern Hemisphere. It was certainly the biggest I've been in. But, it has some great shops, including Dorothy Perkins and Next and Harvey and Zara and Harvey Nicks and Top Shop etc etc! And they had size 14 and 16!! Wahay! But, you'd have to have a pretty big bank balance to shop there. At least I know where to go if I'm desperate to find some things.

We're on a long weekend here for Eid Al Adha. Yay! Monday is a holiday. Some people have gone away but we're just staying at home.

Friday night our 'bar' was open so we relaxed with friends around it which was great. Only two more weeks of school to go!

Yesterday we went over to Sam & Teresa's for a BBQ dinner. We had a great night. The girls get along so well with their little girl Abby who is 2, and Annalise wouldn't leave baby Zach alone! (I can't believe he's now over a month old!)

The girls are doing well. Juliette is as cute as ever and Annalise is great although she likes to test us to see how far she can push us. She's started getting upset again recently about missing all her Taipei friends and is constantly asking when she can see her 'best friends' again. It breaks my heart to hear her talking about how much she misses them. It's tough.

Annalise was banned from TV On Friday as she went into my makeup bag and emptied all the compacts, eye shadows and lipsticks and rubbed them into the carpet. As well as a bottle of Andrew's aftershave and so the playroom was locked and there was no TV so she had to amuse herself in other ways, the naughty girl, so she spent the day doing arts and crafts and making up songs and dances. I actually think she had a good day, damn it!

Juliette

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16s0QwMVbu4

Juliette singing Wiggles with Andrew last night!

Doesn't she look like a Baby Alive doll? Those eyes!





We've bought Annalise one of these for Christmas, and Juliette the baby version one.

Movies in Jakarta

Realised I never wrote about our movie weekend two weekends ago. We asked the maids to stay on Friday night to look after the girls so that Andrew and I could have a night out with friends and so we went to see Quantum of Solace last weekend which was amazing.
However, we came out a bit confused. Lots of questions.
Then we find out that Indonesia has a rule that movies can be no longer than 1 hour 45 minutes. That's why! The movie is supposed to be about 2 and a half hours!
Scenes we have since found out they cut: the love scene; the scene in the desert where he leaves the guy stranded with a can of oil; the whole end scene in the apartment once the Canadian lady leaves; and probably many more!
The film was ace regardless, but glad it wasn't our fault that we were a bit confused at the end!

On Sunday, I took Annalise to see her first movie - "High School Musical 3". My goodness, she is now obsessed with it! I have had to download all the songs and she sings her little heart out to them. The movie was quite good - I was pleasantly surprised!
The only problem at the movies though for her is that she isn't heavy enough to keep the seats down so she kept being folded up in it! I ended up with her on my lap the whole time whilst she bopped.
We had a lovely girlie day out - lunch then the movies with popcorn, then I took her to an indoor funfair. It was wonderful. Now I have to think of something special I can do with Juliette.

Pinch Punch ....

First day of the month, no returns.

Ok. Feeling in a silly mood!

Happy December! Christmas is so near I can smell it.

Very excited!

La la la la la la la la la!

(No, I'm not drunk. I am actually at work, supposed to be marking.)

Picture below is just of some of the students in my class who won awards on Friday at the assembly.