Paper Bridges

Remembering Indonesia: part 2

Monica Brand — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:51:42 +0000

This week I’m republishing articles originally with Relief Journal. The memories of Ujung Pandang, Indonesia continue:

I wrote it all down

Write in my journal, that’s the first thing I want to do.

Leaving home and all things familiar, bound for exotic Indonesia, I can’t wait to get words onto the page. After I stow my first laptop underneath the airplane seat, I open a new blank book. The date: June 1996. As the plane lifts off the Newark airport runway, only then do I finally stop to look out the window.

That’s what we do as writers, isn’t it? We write down as much as we can, whenever we can, the important things – and even the trivial. All the details and emotions captured on paper or hard drive, observations to bring our fiction/poems/essays to life.

The airplane is full leaving the east coast, LAX seems a small city and not just an airport. I find the gate for my connecting flight, the majority of the passengers are Asian. For once, I’m a minority. Lord, do you really want me to do this?

All of it recorded on paper.

Finally in Indonesia, I write lengthy emails about the heat, a wicked-smart spider and rice for breakfast, all on that Toshiba laptop, lugging it to a friend’s house because where I live has no phone. I’m a toddler learning to talk, thriving on the romance of my new life. Even the toilet, at first confusing, becomes a silly story for the journal.

A Muslim girl my age, and her mother, who doesn’t speak any English, rent me a room for three months. Ripe mangoes fall onto my bedroom roof sounding like little bombs as they hit the tin metal. The sing-song Arabic broadcast throughout the city call Muslims to their prayers. The rats on the streets at night. Old man becak drivers call after me as I walk down the street, imploring me to hire them for a ride. Young girls walking in pairs toward the local mosque, their white prayer coverings blow in dry wind.

All captured within my journals.

And when homesickness finds me, I take solace in my journal. I write of my lack of anonymity on the street, I feel like I’m on display in a shop window. People openly stare. I hear “Hey, mister!” and “America!” and “Hello, Bill Clinton!” far too many times. Stupid Indonesians, I write in my journal. And when the married church leader makes a pass at me, that goes onto the page too.

Today the journals lay buried in a box in the attic along with other souvenirs. The old laptop on my closet floor. I don’t want to re-read those words yet. I wrote to remember, to relive it someday, but along with the beauty of Indonesia is pain, loneliness, and abandonment. A voice saying the Lord forgot you.

I never knew loneliness like Indonesia.

I prayed. I wrote. And when I questioned God, I wrote it all down too.

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Remembering Indonesia

Monica Brand — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:12:32 +0000

Due to the release of the film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir Eat, Pray, Love, I decided to re-publish several posts originally on the Relief Journal blog. I hope you enjoy them.

The dark-eyed toddler clutched the mango, squatting barefoot on the counter top next to a basket of fruit. She stared at me, unblinking, her eyes wide. I smiled at her. I knew it wasn’t everyday an American woman like me walked into the market of this remote mountain village in Indonesia.

Before I traded my Miss for a Mrs., I traveled to the other side of the world to teach English in a private elementary school in Ujung Pandang, the capital of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. If you look at a map of the country, the island Sulawesi is most easily described as a floppy letter K. Today renamed Makassar, it’s still labeled Ujung Pandang (or Ujungpandang) on the map here.

When not in the classroom, I explored the city or went to the beach. Sometimes to the mountains. Hot, crowded Ujung Pandang buzzed with Vespa scooters and mini-buses. Everywhere I went – children.

Camera-ready kids, a shy first grader and funny beggars

Meeting children proved easy.

At the Bantimurung waterfall, a nearby tourist attraction, an energetic pack of youngsters playing in the water rushed to meet me. They all wanted their picture taken. My students in the classroom – loud and just as fun loving. So cute in their red and white uniforms. One first grade girl I imagined taking home with me. She was quiet, shy. Probably afraid of the giraffe American who talked English too fast.

I wonder what happened to her.

Then there are the children part of me doesn’t want me to remember. The way-too-young beggars at the Central Market in the heart of the city. One boy without a hand. Another foreigner told me parents were known to cut off a hand or foot, just so the child could beg.

I bantered back and forth with those children, making them laugh. I asked their names, impressing them with my growing Bahasa Indonesia language skills.

I never did ask about their parents.

The children at the shops were friendlier than the beggars in front of the post office. Like beggar kids needed to be friendly, entertaining to me. If anyone should be cranky, it’s them.

A wrong bus and Pizza Hut

I once got on the wrong bus, taking me to a section of the city I’d never seen before. Shacks of tin sat too close to the road. Hundreds of them. Hard to believe families lived in little more than a one-room metal chubby. Like the girl with the mango, I stared openly, glad for the window buffer between me and that foreign world.

Later I saw homes far removed from the tin shacks. A wide iron gate across the driveway was not uncommon for those upscale homes with their high walls and landscaped front yard with tropical flowers. I admired those houses as if I were buying real estate.

I ate at Pizza Hut. Same pizza we eat here in New Jersey. The big difference: the bottle of Sambal sauce on the table. I grew to love the spicy sauce on my pizza too.

Looking back

It’s the littlest things that trigger a memory. I can’t look at bamboo, papaya or an orchid without thinking of Indonesia. Not too long ago, a magazine I picked up in the bookstore pictured a durian on it’s back cover. In Indonesia, we attracted a giggling crowd when we tried the white, fleshy fruit the locals believed to act like an aphrodisiac.

I still have the pictures of the children at the waterfall. The snapshot of the little girl with the mango is worthy of National Geographic. I could scan them, put the best on the Internet, share them with you. But that seems wrong somehow, like I’m pimping them out.

I have no photos of the beggar children and now – 10 years later – I wish I did. Their faces fade the longer I’m gone from Indonesia, and I suspect they are the ones the Lord wants me to remember.

map image: InfoPlease.com

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Book Tour: Good Girls Don’t Have to Dress Bad

Monica Brand — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 03:05:23 +0000

Good Girls Don't Have to Dress Bad (A Style Guide for Every Woman)">Good Girls Don’t Have to Dress Bad (A Style Guide for Every Woman) by Shari Braendel reads like the Christian woman’s answer to “What Not to Wear,” the popular fashion advice show on TLC.

From the back cover:

Shari Braendel teaches you how to accept and appreciate the body God gave you and how to always look your best. You will discover:

Your specific body type and color group
The exact pieces you need in your closet to build your spring/summer and fall/winter wardrobes
Anti-aging tricks, makeup and skincare techniques
Shari’s trademark Shopping Guide and 5 Bs of style and modesty
How to win the battle to find the right swim suit and jeans

“As a sought-after Christian speaker on fashion and beauty, Shari hosts the What to Wear Christian women’s Conference at women’s retreats and gatherings all over the nation. A fabulous, fun and refreshing fashionista, Shari is a speaker and writer with Proverbs 31 Ministries.”

What I like about the book:

The chapters on finding proper fitting undergarments (I think this is the first “Christian” book I’ve read to openly talk about panties)
The advice on make-up, accessories, hair, eyeglasses and finding your personal style
Lots of color pictures
The Jeans Chapter. A must-read, in my opinion
The Modesty Chapter. Ditto. See above.
The shopping guide with good places to find clothes for your style and budget

What I didn’t like about the book:

I wanted to see more picture of casual outfits. Braendel describes four different body types, explaining how each body type should dress, but only dresser outfits are shown as examples. It would be effective to show casual attire for women that don’t dress to go to an office everyday – like me.

As part of the Book Tour, you could win a $500 Visa gift card, web camera, one-hour fashion consultation, along with an autographed copy of Good Girls Don’t Have to Dress Bad (A Style Guide for Every Woman). Visit the author’s website for more information.

Disclaimer: This post is part of a Blog Book Tour. The author (blogger) of this post received a complimentary copy of the above book from the publisher in exchange of a written review. The review is the honest opinion of the blogger. This post contains affiliate links that financially benefit the blogger. By making a purchase via an affiliate link, the blogger may receive monetary compensation.

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Blog Hop for Hip Homeschoolers

Monica Brand — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 20:01:52 +0000

Welcome, Hip Homeschoolers, I’m glad you’re here.

If you have never been to my blog before, let me give you the five-second tour. I mostly write about books and reading. Books capturing my imagination, books that make me think, books that move me to action. Books I love. I also blog about the books my children read and the titles that find their way into our days.

I occasionally offer my opinion as to books I believe are better left on the shelf, rather than in your child’s hands. Hey, I’m a homeschool mom. We are known for our strong opinions, right?

My homeschooling posts are more informative (Look at this cool website!) rather than the mommy blogger fare (This is what we did today in our homeschool!) only because now that they are getting older, I want to protect their privacy.

My children are 12, 10, 8 and 5 years. We’ve been unschooling since May 2009. I cannot imagine any other way to live. The simplicity of our days, the freedom to do as we want – I would never trade it for the world. Homeschooling is a wonderful gift that I’m happy to share with my children.

When I do mention my children, it’s always as Susan, Peter, Edmund and Lucy. If I had known my husband and I would have two girls and two boys, I may just have really given them those names. (If you recognize where those names come from, then you and I are going to get along just fine.)

We work and play in the beautiful Garden State. I love coffee, Twitter and dream of owning a kayak.

Thanks for visiting. Leave a comment so I can visit your blog too.

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What to read instead of Eat, Pray, Love: travelogues by women

Monica Brand — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 17:42:02 +0000

If you are interested in reading about women traveling the world and living overseas, but want to skip the spiritual elements presented in Eat, Pray, Love (One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia), try these books. The archived blog posts give more information.

Reading Lolita in Tehran (A Memoir in Books) by Azar Nafisi

The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad

Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez (archived blog post)

A Year in the World (Journeys of a Passionate Traveler) by Francis Mayes (archived blog post)

Tales of a Female Nomad (Living at Large in the World) and Female Nomad and Friends (Tales of Breaking Free and Breaking Bread Around the World) both by Rita Golden Gelman (archived blog post)

From this list, Tales of a Female Nomad is a favorite. If you want to read more about living in Indonesia, start with that title. A Year in the World did not hold my attention; I don’t think I finished it.

Do you like to read travelogues by women living overseas? What book would you add to this list?

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New learning resource : FindingEducation.com

Monica Brand — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 13:25:39 +0000

Friends, I have seen the future of our learning at home and I like it.

Now that my children are getting older, I want to use the Internet more to our advantage. I have my Delicious bookmarks account that I’ve been using to hold sites I find for my children, but that always felt awkward to me. I didn’t want the kids to have to wade through my personal bookmarks to find what they needed. I thought of using email, but they don’t have email accounts yet. (Does my 8 year old need gmail? I’m going to go with No.) I thought of writing down the website addresses on scraps of paper, but that seemed too cumbersome.

Thankfully, I found a website that solves the problem.

At findingeducation.com, you set up a “classroom” to give “assignments” to your students/children. You can tag assignments by grade and subject and make “due by” dates. If you blog with WordPress, you will feel comfortable right from the start with how the site works. (I’m not sure it’s run on WordPress, but it looks eerily similar.) I’m not too keen on the labels (classroom, subjects or due dates), but since that’s the language of the rest of the world, those of us with a nontraditional approach to homeschooling will just have to ignore that part.

This is my findingeducation.com classroom. So far, I have one lesson posted for my baking-crazy preteen.

I’ll be posting links of educational interest for my kids; feel free to poke around my site. Let me know if you make a classroom too. There are no comments, which I love. No way for spammers to come and stalk my kids. There is a built-in search engine that looks promising.

I’ll let you know how how my kids respond to this virtual way of helping them pursue their interests and our learning at home.

Does any one else think the future has arrived?

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Mark Driscoll on Twilight and vampire fiction

Monica Brand — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:08:52 +0000

Mark Driscoll shares his thoughts on the Twilight series and all the new vampire-ish books for preteen/teen girls. Some of you aren’t going to like what he has to say. Please watch and we can discuss in the comments.

HT: Katie Howard

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What I’ve been doing

Monica Brand — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:20:00 +0000

Bible in 90 Days daily. I’m current with Day 35. That’s 1/3 of the Bible read since July 2.

Rescued several Juvenile/YA books from my parent’s attic and it’s been a hoot re-reading them. Titles like: The Summer Riders by Patricia Leitch, Nobody’s Brother by Anne Snyder and Louis Pelletier, Hail, Hail Camp Timberwood by Ellen Conford, Summer Begins by Sandy Asher and a book that didn’t do me much good at the time, The Teen Girl’s Guide to Social Success by Marjabelle Young Stewart. I haven’t looked, but I’m sure these are all out of print; I read them so long ago.

I was surprised to find references to some pretty controversial stuff as I re-read. I have no memory of how I felt about those issues as a teen (bullying, teen s*x, first kiss, abortion, divorce and antisemitism) and what I thought of the characters’ decisions in the storyline. How I wish I had kept a reading journal back then! How fun and interesting it would be today to return to those teenage thoughts.

Reading these books must have been a positive experience, since I kept them safely tucked away for so long. I liked them, I probably loved them, and I imagine I wanted to give them to my daughters to read one day. I love books that are good conversation starters.

So that’s been my late July, August so far. Sorry I’ve been quiet here. I’m not sure how chatty I will be in these last few weeks of the summer. Time will tell, eh?

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Hello. Welcome to my lame Blog Hop ’10 party post

Monica Brand — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:14:46 +0000

Oh, yeah. I’m all about the honestly over here in my humble spot on the web.

If you are new here. . . WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!?!?

Seriously. . . .

Welcome to my thoughts broadcast to paperbridges.net, a place where I ramble on about (mostly) books, (sometimes) homeschooling and the (occasional) post about this journey of motherhood. Sometimes I may even write a post that hits all those marks (I am very talented in that way.)

I have four children, ages 12, 10, 8 and 5. One husband. All of us in New Jersey.

I spend far too much time on Twitter.

I tolerate Facebook.

I like coffee.

What else?

Ummm.

I might have a bit of a sarcastic streak that comes out every now and then. Not you could tell. *ahem*

Thanks for visiting. Leave me a comment, so I can come have a look-see at your blog. Thanks to Robin-girl for hosting.

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The Shack by William P. Young: our discussion continues

Monica Brand — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:55:36 +0000

Just so you know, there is a new comment (with a response by me) on my post regarding The Shack. You can find that conversation here, if you want to join the discussion. I’m pleased we have been able to discuss and disagree without judgment or anger. Thanks, guys!

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For you Shack fans