The first real post: My head is spinning

I've been trying to start posting blog entries since the moment I set foot in Indonesia, but my head is spinning and so full of things I want to tell everyone about.  Should I start with the trip?  What about the fruit?  And the monkeys?  And the people?  And the school?  And my kids' reaction?  And the Ibus (house helpers)? Jetlag deserves a full entry too...
Its all too much and I can't figure out where to begin.  I therefore have a feeling there will be a lot of stream of consciousness writing for a while. There's just too much to say to put forward neat and tidy little blog entries: School, Home, Ibus, Wildlife, Etc....  Its all mixed up and we are living and learning every day.
So maybe I just start by saying we're happy.  We're all happy.  We're astonishingly relaxed and calm and happy.  It's almost like those last three months in Houston, which were packed full of shopping and last encounters and forward planning, were purgatory for this heavenly spot.  That's not a slam toward our family and friends.  We love you and miss you - and quite frankly wish every day you were here.  It's just so lovely to be living in the NOW, now, and not waiting and working on some eventual future now. 
 Apropos of that, Today I took a trip to the dairy outside of camp.  It's a great place to get cartons of fresh frozen milk from Australia as well as meat, chicken, and cheese.  (Jury is out on cheese selection in our area.  The cheddar I bought the other day was "cheddar" and tasted like velveeta.  The kids loved it.)   I went to the dairy with 4 other people who are new to camp, a friend who has lived here a while as our guide and her driver (as we are not encouraged to drive off camp.) We headed over and went directly into the freezers.  At first I was all smug, thinking that I, in my cardigan and jeans, was able to function in the cold.  YIKES!  Then I went into the meat locker deep freeze and nearly lost all my toes and fingers.  I found a huge Australian beef tenderloin for about $30, so it really was worth it.  And I can't tell you how great it is to have delicious fresh milk and not the BHT aseptic packaged stuff.  So I load up all my stuff and expect to check out and be home again in 15 minutes.  Uh huh.  Right.
The workers then methodically went through each box and handwrote notes about what we bought and how much.  This took 30 minutes.  We were then ushered to the main office where a member of the office staff typed up each item, separating the meat on one form, dairy on another, my $18 bag of frozen blueberries on another... and then printed them out on an old school dot matrix printer.  Now I am left holding 6 forms, with grocery totals handwritten on them, and I am encouraged to go pay.  I try, but the computer goes down, and various people come to fix the problem.  (Keep in mind this isn't just me, it's 5 people, with 6 forms each.) so another hour + has passed and we finally pay, and go to load stuff in the car. The workers then painstakingly go through each box AGAIN as we are loading up the car and checking them against the typewritten inventory.  45 minutes later we are headed home. 
We laugh a lot and realize that we've gotten to know each other a lot better in that painstaking 3 hours.  I think again about conversations I have had with expats who have lived in Indonesia for a long time, and think of their reminders that we are living on a new time scale.  Things get done, but they get done in their own time.  There is no rush, only getting the job done.  That leaves time for laughing with new friends and playing in the floor with your kid and writing half assed blog posts.  It leaves time for happy.