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Bandung is a riot of color. Walking down the street is an overwhelming experience. Some of the smaller houses are brightly painted with food carts in front that force you to walk into oncoming traffic where motorcycles hold an entire family, a cage or two of pigeons, a sheet of glass, or a massive bag of krupuk (the local homemade chip). Don't walk into a ditch while avoiding a car that is driving in the wrong lane! Don't walk in that pile of trash! We walk to school almost every morning and then drive home because it rains almost every afternoon. Blue skies turn grey and white clouds become a bolt throwing thunder storm.
After six years in the Middle East, seeing color and feeling rain is terribly exciting. We are in a constant state of comparison, which maybe is normal in transition?
In Jeddah, we could eat at every restaurant without the fear of getting sick, here we have to be so careful. Jeddah has ants, here we have ants, snakes, rats, cockroaches, lizards, and so many weird bugs. This week a baby bat camped out in front of our bedroom door until we set him free. Jeddah was hot, here we don't need A.C. In Jeddah, my husband spoke Arabic, here I speak Indonesian. Jeddah was our home for four years, here everything feels new to my family.
There is another layer that is unique to most expats who move around the world. I grew up in this city until I was eighteen years old. Not only am I dodging traffic, I am also remembering walking down this exact road twenty years ago... There are times I can't hold a conversation because the memories overwhelm me. Who would have ever have thought I would move home? Here is a picture of writing my sister did under the stairs in my house here in Bandung. It must be almost thirty years old.
In the cool mornings, my daughters join me for breakfast wrapped in a Batik Sarong (a popular Indonesian cloth)- just like my sister and I did when we were their age. On Sundays, my daughters eat Putu (a coconut brown sugar dessert) from the local seller who walks by our house- just like my sister and I did when we were their age. It is surreal.
Moving anywhere is challenging. Whether it is a new house or a new country, there are layers upon layers of sweet and sad, exciting and exhausting. I am not sure where we are in terms of the "honeymoon" stage of moving, but it is certainly filled to the brim with green.
