Our pretty little horny kitty came home from the vet today, minus her ovaries and plus a shaved belly. She sported the infamous plastic “Cone of Shame” (which is apparently officially known as an Elizabethan Collar) to keep her from licking her incision.

Linsea and Dori hit it right off again, playing and wrestling (to our concerned chagrin – he goes in for spaying next week!), so there seem to be no concerns about them remembering each other. With Alea gone on her Project Week adventure to Manado, watching Linsea bob and weave her head as she stumbles around the house makes a great antidote to missing her!

Besides the malls and the traffic, Jakarta has a plethora of water parks. OK, maybe only three that we’ve heard of, but still…

We got an overhead view of the Snowbay park during our visit to the mini Indonesia park the other day (see previous post), and decided to visit Waterbom – the biggest and ritziest place in town.

We hopped a taxi out there, and had a great day in the sun. The highlight of the visit was when Dave’s swimsuit tore completely in half on one of the rides. Thanks goodness he was able to slip on his boxers under the suit and parade around for the rest of the afternoon like that. Wardrobe malfunction aside, the place reminded us a lot of the water park we’ve been to at the Mall of America (except that it was all outdoors).There was even cold beer and hot satay to enjoy, so we could relax in style.

We didn’t bring the phone/camera in with us when we were at the pool, so we didn’t take pictures of some of the full-body-covering swimsuits that we saw, but we did sneak back in at the end of our visit to snap some “we were there” pictures. It was a super follow-up to our cultural outing the day before!

Ahh, the cat saga continues. We had quite the visit to the vet this weekend, one that will probably live in family lore for quite some time. We wanted to get the kitties’ first vaccinations, and so made plans to get into our school-provided minibus and go. Unfortunately, we made a series of mistakes that morning that were to weigh heavily on our adventure:

Mistake #1 – Breakfast for the cats was some kitty food mixed with some leftover rice and chicken from our dinner. Nice and bland, perfect for a couple of ex street cats, right?

Mistake #2 – I asked the kids to look up the address of the place we were going, but didn’t check on Google maps to make sure we knew (although, in my defense, even if I had looked online, the maze of twisting streets probably would have totally confused me anyways).

Mistake #3 – Susan asked if we were going to put them in a cardboard (beer bottle) box or something, since we don’t have a cat carrier. I thought that it would be no problem to just hold them in the van, and even let them explore, so long as we kept them away from the driver.

So off we go – and within 3 minutes of leaving, one of the cats is experiencing explosive diarrhea as we are weaving down the road. Because of mistake #3, we have no place to put her, but we still want to keep the flying feces off seats and clothing, so we empty out a canvas bag that Susan brought, and stick the cat – butt first, I might add – into the bag.

Now, cat crap is a pretty stinky affair. Loose bowelled poopers are even worse. So there the 7 of us are – the driver trying to drive, me holding the cat’s rear end in the bag, Susan cleaning the poop that got on her and Breck (and trying not to gag from the smell), and Alea keeping track of the other kitten (who is having a great time exploring the van and is totally unfazed by everything). We can’t really open the windows much because most are sealed shut and the others would present a great “jump out” opportunity, so we are stuck in a sealed metal tube, bobbing and lurching through Jakarta traffic.

And then we get lost. Not really lost, but when we finally get the building at #17A, it is a tattoo parlor, not a vet shop. We call the lady who brought the kittens, and she says that we are at the wrong 17A – the one we want is at the far other end of the road (and yes, she’s had people come to the animal shelter looking for the tattoo shop). So we turn around, make two more attempts to get down the road (with stinking cat, who is by this time pretty upset about having to stay in the bag).

But we finally make it. And get chastised in no uncertain terms for feeding people food to the cats. Apparently they can’t digest carbohydrates too well, so that’s why we had “Jakarta juice” all over the van.

And the surprise? Well that was finding out that, instead of two sisters, we actually have a sister and a brother. Oops. Susan is not happy about that oversight, as she is really concerned about male cats spraying things. Breck got very teary-eyed when we told him, and asked if we were going to have to sell NiDorianna and get a female. The decision was made to keep the cat, rename him to NiDorianno, and hope that he behaves himself when he gets older.

Then we all went home, jumped in the pool, and had a series of cold drinks to recover from the afternoon.

Here we go again!!

Not too much to post, just the yearly picture of Alea and Breck heading off to their first day of school at JIS.

We’ve planted a morning glory in our front yard, and Susan’s big plan is to take a picture of it each year – let’s see how it grows!

And as always, our previous school photos can be seen over on the webpage…

Setting things up for the classroom the other day, my principal stopped by with a high school teacher (known here as “Speck”). He has been at JIS for many years, and was the driving force in getting the MS science building (at which I am teaching) all revamped and remodeled.

When I introduced myself, he paused for a minute and then responded, “I taught some kids named ‘Stutz’ a few years ago at my last school before JIS. Their names were Karla and Rob.” It turns out that he had been my sister and brother’s teacher, in Amman, Jordan, twenty-three years ago. He’s been here in Jakarta since, and he still remembered them by name!

When we got the schedules last night, guess who was listed as Alea’s science teacher this year…