Special Customs and Ceremonies

Adam and Natalia's reception fell on the third day we were in Jakarta. It was a full day of activity and special ceremonies. Natalia is Chinese Indonesian, which means both sides of her family are Chinese, but they live in Indonesia. They followed many Chinese customs leading up to the reception. It was fun to be a part of this!

In the morning Adam and Natalia's brother, Aldo, came over to our hotel. It is custom for the grooms family to help dress the groom before the ceremony. Mom and Dad didn't really help put on his pants and shirt :) but they did help him put on his tie and jacket for pictures.

You would not believe the camera crew that followed Adam and Aldo to the hotel. I called them the paparazzi. That is what it looked like! A videographer, 4 or 5 cameramen, and one organizer/manager. The "paparazzi" followed Adam and Natalia around the entire day. They looked like celebrities.

Next, Grace and Berthis' driver picked us up at the hotel and took us over to their house. The family formed a line to welcome us into the home. We presented Grace and Berthis with gifts....

Here are Berthis and Grace welcoming Adam into the home. Adam is bringing in Natalia's bouquet. You can see part of the family welcome line and one of the "paparazzi".

Dad and I after we were welcomed into the home.

Next, Adam and Natalia were taken into Grace and Berthis' bedroom and Mom, Dad, Lee and I were taken into Natalia's bedroom. (Natalia's bedroom represented the groom's home.) Grace and Berthis walked Adam and Natalia down the hall to Natalia's bedroom (the groom's home) as if they were handing over Natalia ... and Mom and Dad were welcoming Natalia and Adam into their "home" together.

It is custom for the bride's mother to decorate the couple's bedroom in a certain way before they get married. Here you can see the flowers Grace put in Natalia's bedroom.

Another part of Natalia's bedroom. Pictures from the wedding in Indy... and pickled eggs for good luck!

Mom and Dad welcoming Natalia into their "home".

It is custom to feed each other the pickled eggs for good luck (With chopsticks! This is not an easy thing to do.)

Adam took the entire egg into his mouth! :)

Natalia's aunts got the biggest kick out of Adam's egg eating. We were all cracking up!

Natalia pretends to eat the egg for a picture. Smart girl :)

Next we went downstairs where they had a gift ceremony for our family.

The gifts

(Each item represented something special. Pickled pigs feet and all.)

A big part of this ceremony was when cookies were described and presented to Adam and Natalia. Each cookie represented something good for their future. (Ex: Moon shaped cookie represents a beautiful life... like a beautiful full moon.) There were cookies about kids, love, wealth, success, etc.

Adam, Natalia, Mom and Dad during the gift ceremony.

Lee and I were given a gift of cookies... representing good luck in future things.

(This is a pretty serious picture of Lee and I... we really were enjoying the ceremony, but sweating half to death. It felt like it was over 90 degrees inside of their house that day!)

Dividing the gifts up... half goes to Grace and Berthis and half goes to Mom and Dad.

After the gift ceremony we started the tea ceremony.

The tea.

For this ceremony, two family members (they had to be older than Adam and Natalia) would sit on the chairs. Adam and Natalia would give them tea... the two family members would drink the tea together... then they would present a gift to Adam and Natalia. The gift is either money (in a red envelope) or jewelry. How nice is that?

Grace and Berthis drinking the tea and then giving Adam and Natalia their gifts.

Mom and Dad drinking the tea and then giving Adam and Natalia their gifts.

Lee and I got to be a part of this ceremony because we are older than Adam and Natalia.

Natalia's family watching the tea ceremony.

The family members who are younger than Adam and Natalia are actually given money by them at the end of the tea ceremony! What a custom, huh?

All of these customs and ceremonies happened before the reception that day! Just wait until you see their reception... unbelievable!

Indonesian Cultural Center

Natalia and her family took us to the Indonesian Cultural Center on the second day. This was very interesting because we learned about the different Indonesian islands, their religions and customs. Each island is unique.

The Bird Aviary

There were some crazy looking birds, let me tell you! They looked like birds we are used to seeing in the States... only with a tropical twist. I didn't get very many pictures of the birds.

This picture creeps me out for some reason. Six eagles sitting together.

The fruit hanging off of this tree is commonly eaten in Indonesia. I forget what it is called. Natalia, are you reading this?

Funny... they have CFC's (California Fried Chicken) in Indonesia. Since when did California start making great fried chicken? :)

Adam and Natalia said people in Indonesia like to throw "California" onto a lot of their product names in order to get it to sell.

We rode a cable car across the cultural center and got a birds-eye view of everything.

They made islands in this pond replicating the islands of Indonesia.

90 percent of people in Jakarta are Muslim. You see masques all over the place. At the cultural center they had the different types of religious buildings found in Indonesia... Masques, Temples, Cathedrals, Synagogues, etc.

Not sure what this says... Natalia?

When we went into the reptile area... they actually called us in to touch the Komodo Dragon! They said he just ate around 8 chickens so he wouldn't be moving too fast for awhile. He was very bumpy with tough skin. They wouldn't let you do this in the States.

Mr. Komodo started turning around to look at Lee when he was touching him. That was my exit signal.

Aren't they cute? Much cuter than Mr. Komodo.

After the Komodo Dragon... they took us in to see and hold a Python!

Crazy Driving, Sultan Hotel, and Natalia's House

When we finally arrived in Jakarta we took a taxi to our hotel. There are 25 million people living in the city of Jakarta which makes the traffic unreal! We had been warned by Adam about the crazy drivers... but I don't think anything could have prepared us for what we saw. It is like there are no rules when it comes to the road. It's a free for all! Motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic or driving down the center line between cars. Kids and babies with no helmets riding on motorcycles with their parents. Lots and lots of traffic jams and running red lights. It was nuts! This was very hard to capture on camera.

There is a lot of poverty in Jakarta. This is what the majority of the houses look like lining the sides of the streets. One side of the house is usually used as a shop where they can make money for their family to live.

The view from our room at the Sultan Hotel.

All of the hotel pools were full sized so people could swim laps.

This is Natalia's parent's house.

They sent their driver to pick us up from our hotel every day. How nice!

Another side of the house.

Natalia's dad, Berthis, runs his metal fabricating business out of the back of his home.

The living room.

Grace and Berthis had cookies for us when we got to their house. The cookies were not sweet at all... but very good!

Pictures of their backyard water garden.

Stone table and chairs on the back porch.

Adam with his two nieces. So cute!

Me with Grace and Natalia in their home.

Flying, Flying, and More Flying...

In order for this project to not seem so overwhelming (for me to document, for you to read) ... I am going to break up our trip into sections. I will try to post one or two entries a day covering different things we did on our trip. I will make sure I start at the beginning and document in the order our events happened. Enjoy the ride!

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

After packing up our house, writing millions of notes, making lots of phone calls, running last minute errands... Beth came over to pick up the boys (and their essentials for 12 days). This was obviously harder on Lee and I than it was the boys. We were saying things like, "You take care of your brother. We will miss you. We love you so much!" They were saying things like, "Bye. Grandma Beth, can we go fishing when we get to the lake? Is Papa Sam going to be there?" Geesh! At least it made it a little easier for Lee and I to watch them pull out of the driveway. We also knew we had our web cam handy so we could see them and talk to them every day.

At 2pm Lee and I took took off in our car for Indy. We were meeting my parents at the Indianapolis Airport and then flying out together. We had initial complications at the Indy airport ... My suitcase was too heavy :) and the know-it-all luggage check-in guy was trying to scare us by saying that we needed to have purchased a visa in order to enter Hong Kong (not true). This was the same guy that was saying "Jar-ki-da" for Jakarta... and then following that up by saying, "I'm not very good at punctuation."

Once we got our luggage checked in, everything was smooth sailing. We met up with mom and dad and they were with us for the remainder of our travels to Indonesia.

This was what our trip out consisted of:

Auburn to Indy - car

Indy to Chicago - airplane

Chicago to San Francisco - airplane

San Francisco to Hong Kong - airplane

Hong Kong to Singapore - airplane

Singapore to Jakarta - airplane

It was 37 hours of total travel time! We spent 24 hours in the air!

It was so worth it, though.

Lee and I talking to the boys via web cam at the Chicago Airport. Gotta love Skype!

Waiting for our next flight.

Just finished the longest leg of our flight... over the Pacific. Getting close to Hong Kong.

Tired Lee checking email.

Riding the travelator at the Singapore Airport.