We're ALIVE!!!

Am I the luckiest girl or what?
Radical adventures with your best friend.
Can I get an amen!?

Hello Friends! Contrary to understandable assumption, we did not perish in the jungles of Indonesia. :) However, it IS practically miraculous we're back on the farm in light of our wondrous/insane Indo adventures. I more-than-highly suggest a visit/permanent residence in Bokondini Indo if you are possessed with the slightest inclination. You may have to redefine your idea of “pest control”, but a few hundred cockroaches every night just keep things interesting, right?! It was honestly indescribable, so you will simply need to go so you can experience it for yourself (just as long as you take us with you :). Breathtaking would be a gross understatement. I would venture to say that I will never again see a landscape so beautiful, a people so intriguing, or a culture so unique...(unless I get myself back to Indo! :) I loved every moment of it............... Ok, so I loved the cockroach moments a little less, but I tried real hard to keep them in the “adventure” category of my heart.

My brain feels like it is going to explode when I try to pick just one Indo adventure to write about. There are just too many. One thing that totally fascinated me was how DIFFICULT it is to simply GET to Bokondini!! We Americans complain when we have to drive ALL THE WAY to Mcdonalds to get a Redbox movie which will inconveniently be prolonged by at least 3 traffic lights that are practically a “million years” long. It's rough, I know. But we are talking literal end-of-the-world. Like, “good luck, you're going to need it!” Already being 22 flight hours and 3 planes closer to Indo, it felt like we were “ in the neighborhood” while in SE Asia. HOWEVER, getting to the ends of the earth really shouldn't be simple. After 9 months of rigorous planning and 3 months of “simply” trying to buy tickets from airlines who don't have websites or phones and who keep their records in a spiral notebook on the counter located in Indonesia, we launched into the first leg of our trip hoping that we wouldn't get stuck before reaching our final destination. By God's grace, after several days and several plane rides we (almost) made it to Bokondini. As adventure would have it, we got within a 15 minute plane ride of Bokondini and there was not enough room on the last flight for all of us. So, the guys took a 3.5 hour death-wish (aka “road trip” or murdercycling as our missionary friend calls it) on motorcycles through the mountains to our final destination. By God's grace, they avoided the sheer cliffs, stayed on the “road” (sort of), didn't get washed down the river too far, avoided pig collisions (which would have been worse than killing a human in that culture), and remembered to have a blast in the process. Unfortunately and thankfully, there was a seat on the plane for me so I “missed out” on the near death road trip. :) Maybe next time. ;)

Since being home, we have been farming at Mock 90. I'm pretty sure the hay has been conspiring against us so that we don't get a break between crops :).  Nonetheless, we're enjoying it and learning to roll with the punches of weather, heat, crazy schedules, crops, little sleep, and cows.
Probably the biggest farm-ish news since we got back is that WE MOVED INTO OUR HOUSE!! YAY! Just one week before our 1 year farm anniversary, we moved in to the farm house. We love living here and we are pretty much experts at ignoring the areas that aren't finished yet :). We don't even see the missing light covers, construction mess, missing trim, unfinished floor, missing doors, etc. until we are showing it to someone else.... and then we don't even really care for now! :) We're still working on many, many things, but the core of the house has pretty much turned into a home and we're loving it!

Before this post gets too monstrously long, A small note to my ever-faithful readers: Thank you and I'm sorry :). Thanks for checking-in even though it has taken me forever to get another post up and I'm sorry it has been so awfully long! With summer winding down on the farm, I'm planning more frequent updates :)

Thanks for reading everyone! - It's good to be back!
The World Traveling Farmers

This is our great pilot and new friend, Clive with the plane we took up into the mountains.

We met up with Jonathan's roommate from 2006 (Yeli) when he was in Eduventure!
Yeli is an awesome guy who helped us figure out all the complicated flying logistics to get inland. 

Check this out! Wamena (our pit stop in the mountains) is the #1 air supported city in the world!
EVERYTHING has to be brought in by plane which includes daily cargo plane full of rice!
Think about THAT next time you buy toilet paper!

No room for the boys!
I got to take the 15 minute flight from Wamena to Bokondini while Jonathan and Jacob took a 3.5 hour "murder-cycle" ride.

I LOVE flying!!! I can't explain to you how amazing this experience was! Words just don't work :)

Touch down in Bokondini! What a welcoming committee!

These are our amazing friends Scotty, Heidi, Walker and Arwen who are missionaries in Bokondini.
Scotty and Heidi ran the Eduventure program that Jonathan attended in Bokondini in 2006.
It was so awesome to finally meet them after 6 years of Jonathan's stories!

Hanging out with Arwen on a hike. Pretty sure I left part of my heart with her in Indo.
She was showing me how you can make paint out of crusching rocks... then we were painting each other's faces.

Scotty and Heidi started a Christian Elementary school in Bokondini where kids can learn in a safe environment
with dedicated teachers who love them. It was so awesome to see God working through this school in the lives of these kids! If you have any desire to teach overseas, we would highly recommend Indonesia! 

We got to teach the English classes for all grades... talk about cool!
Jonathan is showing them our farming pictures on the computer to practice their vocab.
They were so awestruck and mesmerized to hear about our life! Check out their faces!

Silly faces after English class! These adorable kids are encouraged, educated, and inspired every day at Op Anggen school.

Jonathan and I had the privilege of teaching the Social Studies class for the whole school!
 We talk about American farming and Scotty's son translated the whole thing for us!
We had a BLAST sharing our life with an incredibly interested audience :)

Jonathan's other roommate from 2006, Yerri, who came to visit us while we were visiting the school.
In the back of this picture you can see computers.
This school actually teaches computer classes in a culture where some people don't know what a computer is.
It is really fun to see the confidence that is built in a student who is able to do the highly complicated task of using a computer! 

Bokondini market - People come from miles and mountains around to sell their goods!

Bokondini shopping cart. Notice all the nokin bags that the women are carrying on their heads.
They carry EVERYTHING in there and then climb mountains! Simply amazing!
Think about that next time you go grocery shopping!

Fun with the ladies at the market. I took a picture of them and then showed it to them on my camera.

I can't tell you how great it was to be there with this hot man!
Why am I so lucky that I got to marry HIM!?
Here we are on a little hike as he is showing me all the locations of the last 6 years of stories.
This spot was the river that you see in the background.
He and his fellow student would hike down the cliff to the river, fill their backpacks with rocks, and then hike back up to the village where they made a monument out of the rocks. (They said it was to prepare for the mountain treks) I thought it was silly BEFORE I saw the cliff... after SEEING the cliff, I have no clue what would possess someone to do that!
I guess that's my man! :)

Hiking with our new friends who are teachers/staff at the school. An excellent bunch of people!

More hiking -- this time with Walker and Arwen who scale the Indo terrain like it is their job!... and all barefoot!

Indo "hotdog" roast... Isn't this the coolest thing EVER!!???
We hiked to a river and then the guys made us lunch. Good times!

A very common custom in Indo. This was a man who Jonathan visited in 2006.
He was SO excited to see Jonathan that he decided to hold his hand :)

We lived in the lap of luxury this visit -- even had indoor plumbing and a SHOWER!
(Jonathan loved his slimy rain barrel in 2006) ... As you can see, our shower was a bit different than the one in your house. At least the water was "refreshing" and it would wake you up if you were sleepy :)
I only took a few cold ones... then we decided to take Heidi's advice and heat it up.

Here is our friend Comboom who helped us every day starting a fire in that stove and heating up water (in the pot) for drinking and showering. Using that stove was an art! He was amazing!

A SE Asia trip wouldn't be complete without a little alligator wrestling, right? An alligator this size could easily take off your finger. This alligator was extraordinarily upset which made things exciting. Who wouldn't be upset dangling from their tail?
Thankfully we still have all of our digits.

Lest our adventure end as we headed home... After our first 3 of 6 flights home (with over 24 hours to go), we touched down in Bangkok and I began my 'exciting' bathroom tour of SE Asia where I visited every single bathroom in my path  through the airport for uncontrollable bouts of stomach flu. When the airline heard I was sick, they told me I could not get on our next flight home (6 hours then 15 hours) without seeing a doctor. Trouble was, the flight was leaving real soon. This picture does a pretty good job showing how it went :) Our amazing friends and this very helpful airline man literally RAN me around the airport to go see a doctor, get a prescription, get our luggage changed to our flight home, visit the pharmacy, speed me through the red-carpet security and dump me off on the plane JUST in time to have it take off.
It was horrendous but so exciting!
Check out Jacob in the background of this picture pushing our luggage while our friend Heidi runs along trying to make sense of my doctor papers and prescriptions...all while I am just thinking about the next bathroom :)

Home again, home again!
After countless flights, hours, and involuntary stomach 'adventures', we made it all the way from the jungles of Indo to the MSP airport curb :)
It. Was. AWESOME!!!