The Interview

Here we are, settled in suburbia!

It's been two weeks since we left Indonesia and it might as well have been two months. Coming home after a lengthy sojourn wraps you up in familiarity so completely it feels like maybe you just dreamed that two-year hiatus to the other side of the world.  

Didn't know what we were missing...

Of course, we've had moments of culture shock (the cereal aisle comes to mind). But it's hard to compete with the muscle memories of home base. You step onto American soil and it's stepping back into a glove that fits. Is there any Indonesia left in us at all? "Shoes off!" Announces Miles when we enter the house. The Asian imprint survives! 

But before we get in too deep here, we want to reflect on our time in that far-off place. We sat down with ourselves for this little exit-interview... 

What will you miss about Indonesia?

John: The curiosity and patience of Indonesians. And living a 90-minute flight from Bali.

Sarah: Affordable child care. I'm confounded that the United States can figure out how to avoid a war in the South China Sea but can't figure out affordable, accessible child care. I will miss it like crazy. That, and $9 foot massages. 

Who will you miss from Indonesia?
 
John: So many people! Perhaps most of all Water.org Country Director and dear friend Gusril Bahar and his lovely family.  

Head and shoulders: John with his team; Gusril is on his right.

Sarah: I second John's choice and also Gusril's wife, Carla, who makes the most amazing beef rendang. I will also miss our nanny, Larni. If zen came in the form of a human, it would be Larni. I will also miss my colleague Anita Kendrick whose 15+ years in Indonesia made life so much easier for us and who let Stanley swim laps in her pool. 

Zen Master Larni with her favorite Moyer

 What have you learned about yourself since moving to Indonesia?

John: That while I enjoy rice I can only eat a rice-based diet for a maximum of 21 consecutive days. Then I must binge on bread. 

Sarah: That I really like -- and might prefer -- tropical weather. I love a lotion-optional, shorts-all-the-time climate. I never have to check the weather. It's the same every day: 90 degrees and awesome. 

Recall a time you were shocked while living in Indonesia.  

John: When I got a driver's license without any test whatsoever. Nobody even confirmed that I could see.   

Sarah: When we discovered Waternbom. 44 million Indonesians do not have access to clean water. Apparently this is not a prerequisite for a state-of-the-art water park. 

Recall a time you were pleasantly surprised. 

John: When Sarah got into a car accident and our insurance deductible was $21. 

Sarah: When my mom and brother came to visit. I took them to the jungle and we had an awesome, very-Indonesian time. We had many amazing visitors - all of whom jumped right into our Indo life. Thanks to everyone who made the trek: Mom, Amos, Chris, John Sr., Angus, Natalie (twice!), Jon K (twice!), Sandy, Sara, Eric, Hank, Betty, Becca, and Marcus. And thanks to our dear friends Sean and Marisa who twice met us in other countries. 

Jungle cats for a weekend

 
Fill in the blank: I never thought I'd_____

John: I never thought I'd see my miniature dachshund turn into a cold-blooded rat hunter. I'm happy with the results. 

He strings their hides and wears their teeth

 
Sarah: I never thought that horseback riding would be my tropical hobby of choice.   

What is something you will not miss about Jakarta? 

John: The constant threat of mosquitoes carrying dengue fever. 

Sarah: Not being able to drink the tap water. Also, I will not miss giant cockroaches in my shower.

John, sum up Jakarta with a single image:

John:    

motorbike with duck saddle bags

In addition to family and friends, what are you most looking forward to about moving home?

John: Spring and Fall weather and watching live sports during waking hours. 

Sarah: Puh-lease, it's cheese.

What will for sure be in your grocery basket the first time you go shopping in the US?

John: Cheese, berries, ice cream, good IPA.

Sarah: What won't be in our basket? I'm concerned for how gangbusters that first trip will be.  (P.S. We went. It was a complete shit show.)

If you could go back two years and give yourselves a piece of advice as you boarded the flight for Jakarta, what would it be? 

John: Don't resist adopting batik shirts into your wardrobe. 

Don't resist, John. Even the U.S. ambassador wears batik.

 
Sarah: Don't waste time stressing about whether or not you'll ever have a career again. You will. 

What is something you never want to forget about your time in Indonesia? 

John: My son basically became a bilingual Indonesian child. 

He picked this out himself

 
Sarah: The inclusive nature of the ex-pat community. One of my favorite memories was Miles' first birthday party. We invited everyone we knew and had a BBQ. I remember looking around a full room and thinking, "8 months ago I didn't know a single person here." It was a really touching realization for me. You create community wherever you go and you carry that new community with you forever. I can't think of a more affirming reason to take a leap of faith.   

Sarah, anything you wished you'd blogged about?

Sarah: We barely scratched the surface. There are so many stories still to be told. We could probably write a chapter just about the things we ordered Gojek (Indonesia's Uber on a scooter) to do for us (not least of which was carry a stool sample to the doctor's office for testing). I never got around to detailing our trips to Korea, Australia or the Philippines. For that matter, I never got around to telling you about Stanley's near-death experience! Family came and went and we were busy living it; just didn't get to writing it. There is a documentary somewhere to be made on the entrepreneurial spirit of Indonesians, especially when it comes to inventing lines of business to circumvent traffic. I would have liked to document those, like the "jockeys" who stand at the entrance to the mandated carpool roads. You can pay them 20 cents to ride in the car so you meet the minimum body count. Imagine the stories there. I would love to get to the bottom of the thumb and pinky nail obsession that dominates certain circles of South East Asian men. Also I still have questions about their tendency toward mega stone rings. Don't get me started on Dengue Fever. In my head, I've written a featurette on my colleague Magda who is this sweet mom of a macro economist...until you find out she's also the ultimate coffee snob (do not bring her that Laotian coffee you picked up on your last trip and expect her to grind it in her grinder!). She ran a coffee trading business on the side (out of her filing cabinet, basically). You were no one until you were sourcing your beans from Magda. I became someone! I could fill a coffee table book with photos of my husband standing next to Indonesians looking like an NBA star. Did Stanley win hearts and minds? I think so; we could have done a better job of documenting it though. I took many photos of my hairdresser Essy and even took notes while in her chair for the essay I planned to write about her. Girl grows up in a village. Girl realizes cutting hair is a useful skill. Girl sees that English could give her an edge. Girl masters blond highlights. Girl puts it all together and becomes the savior of every wannabe blonde who moves to Jakarta. I also had a whole foray into rescuing animals. I know! I never mentioned it. Life was busy! But there was a kitten at one point ("Meow") and also a great dane. And then I got involved in various animal rescue organizations. Should we talk about the zoo? it's embarrassing how little attention this blog gave to the grocery store and the pharmacy - minefields of material the both of them. Did I ever mention our neighborhood monkey, Bonita? There are so many stories. Anyway, friends, now we tell the stories in person. Come visit. We are going to rock suburban life. And we have a finished basement with your names on it. 

Aku Mau Lehit Poop

One of the best parts of being an ex-pat parent is watching your child adapt to a new culture. In our case, we have the unique opportunity of witnessing a culture, foreign to us, be his first. For him, it's not foreign at all.

Miles was three months old when we arrived in Jakarta. His first word was ini, which means "this." His first big word was duduk, or "sit". For a while, he ordered everyone and everything to duduk: mom in the kursi (chair), his susu (milk) on the table, the diaper in the sampah (trash). From there, like toddlers everywhere, his vocabulary exploded. It just always exploded in two directions: English and Indonesian.

I don't think he knows he speaks two languages, though he knows that some things have two words. Like bath and mandi. At nap time, he knows it's time for tidur, but he also knows it's time to go to sleep. A car is a car, but it's also a mobil. Some things only have an Indonesian name, like susu or sakit (boo boo) or the word for naughty (nakal), which is his favorite way to describe the dog.

It was not long before he spoke Indonesian better than I could. To be fair, it's a low bar. Still, he routinely engages in conversation with Indonesians and I have to pretend I know what is going on. I usually don't.

There’s another downside. The other day he actually corrected my pronunciation. He was not satisfied with the emphasis I was placing on the “r” in motor. Can you imagine? He only just learned to express himself three words at a time and HE has an opinion on my pronunciation?!

It's hard to know if he's good at language because that's how his brain works, or if he is good at language because he gets an enormous high-five of positive reinforcement every time he opens his mouth. He gets a lot of attention when he speaks Indonesian. Naturally he seeks out bigger smiles, bigger laughs, bigger reactions.

And since culture is much more than a language, he’s more than just a toddler who has a good Indonesian vocabulary. He’s an American who has really only ever known Indonesia. In a lot of ways he’s Indonesian. He says “ow” in Indonesian. I don’t think he even knows the word in English. When he wants you to cuddle next to him during bed time, he asks you in Indonesian. When he says nonsensical things in his sleep, it's in Indonesian.

He's picked up Indonesian mannerisms and tastes too. The other day I saw him put the back of his hand to his forehead after someone tried to shake his hand. That's how a young person shows respect when meeting someone older. We were recently in Australia for a vacation and about four days into the trip he asked us for a krupuk - a salty shrimp cracker that is ubiquitous in Indonesia but hard to find outside of Asia. He loves them. 

Recently, he's started speaking in phrases and sentences and he's also learned the word aku, which means "I or me." So he's really empowered now. Some favorites include: aku cuci tangan - I wash hands; aku bisa = I can do it; and the infrequent but always welcome, aku mau tidur - I want to sleep.

But the real fun is the extraordinary range of Indo-English that he speaks. Such gems include, aku mau go car = I want to go in the car; aku mau do it = I want to do it; mau watch Elmo = Can I watch Elmo? And, my personal favorite, Aku mau lihat poop = I want to see the poop.

Indonesia is not a country of just one language; there are something like 700 languages and dialects here. Since Miles spends a large part of the work week surrounded by Indonesians that are ethnically Javanese, he's picked up all sorts of slang to go along with his Indonesian. He basically talks like a Javanese street child. It's futile for me to try and keep up.

Now we are preparing to move home. Part of that transition will be watching Miles discover a new layer of his identity. And his age will be his best agent – helping him embrace the change and run straight for it. There will be no time for remembering  bumps along the way, only time for learning new things. Inevitably, for us, the transition will also mean watching his Indonesian parts slip away. The Miles we know will be eclipsed by a new Miles we are about to meet: it makes our hearts cry a little, but also sing at the idea of discovering a new little boy.

...And we are brining three bags of krupuk home to ease the transition. 

Notations: A Child and a Dachsund

The following is an excerpt from an email we recently received from a real estate agent:

"I am at your disposition, at any time, to help you in your search for a home, here in the Bethesda/Washington, D.C. area. I had the great pleasure of speaking with your father regarding your upcoming search for a rental home in Bethesda, hopefully in close proximity to where your sister lives.

Your father further informed me that you would be back in the area during the 2^nd week of August, and looking for occupancy in a commodious rental home on or about September 1^st. Other notations that I made during our brief conversation indicate that you and Mrs. Moyer have a child and a Dachshund."


Indeed, we do. We do have a Dachshund. And let me tell you, he is our top priority.


PS - We are moving back to the USA!

Gone Postal

Indonesia's largest post office, Jakarta

This is a story about an amazing care package and my foray into the Indonesian postal system. It has a little something for everyone, including what it's like to give a grown-up beef jerky for the first time. Please, read on.


Sometime around Miles' first birthday (which was a year ago), my sister sent him a present. After a while with no package, I forgot it was coming. Then I received a letter from the Indonesian Postal System explaining that a package was being held in quarantine and that I needed to come to the headquarters to pay duty and pick it up. Well who could resist that invitation?


Because I had been living here long enough to know it was a terrible idea to embark on such a mission without proper reinforcement, I asked my Indonesian friend, Amy, to come with me. I met Amy when I posted an ad for a nanny and hired her after one of her previous employers wrote this to me, "I would not have survived my first year in Jakarta without that woman." I soon realized Amy could solve any problem, pretty much anytime. Before long I was asking her to accompany me all over town to help me translate, negotiate, and maneuver this insane city. I credit her with teaching me to drive here. First of all she was brave enough to get in the car with me. Second of all, she offered this helpful advice, "Miss Sarah, just fill the space in the road. That's how you drive like an Indonesian."


She eventually stopped working for us in order to open her own café. We dutifully accepted her invitation to eat there so that we could make her "famous." But Amy and I have stayed friends and have had many adventures, including quite a successful run at rescuing abandoned and mistreated animals. Whole other story.

Amy's café. Miles is sitting in the lap of Amy's daughter, Mya, top left. Amy is bottom right with her youngest son, Rainn.

Anyway, Amy and I set out for the post office headquarters, which is an absolute monster of a building. I know because I traipsed all over it in the course of the subsequent three hours.


We located the quarantine office and I handed over my summons. We were told to wait. There we found a display of various items that, presumably, had been confiscated: hard woods, grains...We waited so long, I asked Amy if she could find out what was going on. She returned to tell me that they were having trouble locating the package.


Frankly, I've been to enough post offices in this world to know there is a certain universality about the speed with which postal work gets done. And I had a small baby waiting for me at home.


So off we went in search of the searching postal workers and found them in a giant room with floor to ceiling boxes. They were picking them up one at a time to look for my package. As far as I could tell, there was zero order to this exercise.

Diving for packages with Indonesia's finest

Without asking permission, we joined in the process. Someone in charge protested but I convinced him to let us help because I was pretty sure "I'd recognize the box." Finally it was found..in a box I absolutely did not recognize. I followed it into a new room where it was ceremoniously opened. Before the tape was off I was already hedging. I said, "listen this is from my sister. She sent a present for my son and I think she maybe just added a bag of quinoa or something. No big deal. All I really want is the present. Did I mention it's for my son? He's really cute. Look, here's a picture."


The customs official reacted to none of this, probably because of our sizable language barrier. He grabbed a scale and he opened that box.


It's now been a year but I remember this moment well. A "bag of quinoa" was the least of my concerns. One by one the official removed a multitude of items, all of which looked like potential contraband: a bag of barley, polenta, gourmet pancake mix, a bean soup mix, beef jerky: it was like my sister walked into her pantry and just swept her arm across a few shelves and into that box. Oh and yes, somewhere in there was also a present for Miles.


Each item was weighed and a careful note was ticked onto a clip board. I was really embarrassed because I wanted to be the perfect foreigner and not make any postal officials mad. But, I also really wanted that polenta. I started to calculate in my head how much it was all worth to me. What would I pay to be able to walk into the house and tell my southern husband, "honey, look! we can make grits!"


Our customs friend did a bunch of calculations on a large calculator and explained that I would need to pay a duty on each item in order to "import" it and I also needed to pay the postage for the letter that was sent to me notifying me of this box. Sigh. "What are we talking about here?" He pushed a receipt across the table. All told, I was out Rp8,000, which is about $0.60.


It's hard to adequately describe how satisfied I was with this outcome. I felt like I had just conquered all post offices everywhere. Of course, the celebration was mildly premature b/c we then had to take the receipt upstairs to the cashier's office and, once paid and stamped, take it down stairs to the receiving hall, where the package was walked from the desk where we had left it over to another desk where we were allowed to pick it up. It felt a bit like a sketch on Saturday Night Live.


When we were back in the car I told Amy that my sister paid sixty bucks or so to send it. That's roughly the equivalent to what an Indonesia making minimum wage would earn in one week, so you can imagine her response. She rifled through the box. "What's this?" She held up the beef jerky.


"You've never had beef jerky?" She shook her head so I opened it and said, "you need to try this. It will change your world."


After a few moments she turned around from the front seat and said, "this is amazing. I'd pay so much more than Rp600,000 for this!"

Le Chien au Cafe

I am ready to report the one thing I never thought would happen living in Jakarta.



Don't mind my Saturday look, we're just here for a baguette...or four.

At a recent party I learned that there is a café in this city that allows dogs. If you need a reminder, Indonesia is not a particularly dog-friendly place. Muslims consider dogs dirty (something about them willingly licking their own asses).

While too polite to say anything, I can tell that some of our Indonesian friends are quietly horrified that we allow Stanley to sit on our couch with his dirty paws and dirty mouth. Bringing him to a place for eating? Unheard of. This would be like if I called up TGI Friday's and asked if I could bring in my pet rat.

Anyway I was cautiously excited about this café. But I needed to know if this was all a ruse. I rehearsed how to say, "can I bring my dog to your café?" in Indonesian and rang up the place, feeling really silly about the question and fairly certain the answer would be, "lady, you crazy."

Instead, the person who answered the phone said, "Sophie Authentique bonjour!" And somewhere in my heart my dream of taking Stanley out to meet the people grew tenfold. Here I was, having a full on discussion IN FRENCH in Jakarta of all places. And when I asked the man if I could bring my dog, he said, "oui madam. bien sûr." That's right, bien flippin sûr. Stanley, freshen yourself. We're headed out for croissants.

A rare outing with the WHOLE family.

This is how we discovered Sophie Authentique, a legit French café right in our neighborhood that serves a macchiato that can snap awake any parent in the Saturday slump. A place that makes its own paté and is not afraid to put a quiche Lorraine on the menu (pork is also a no no here). Stanley was surfing fallen croissant crumbs faster than you can say, "quel chien chic!"
We got a few stares from patrons but mostly people were curious and smiling. The staff didn't even flinch. I'm already imagining the chic outfits Stanley will refuse to wear when we stop by Sophie's for a weekend pain au chocolat. This, my friends, is what we call a game changer.