Greetings from Wamena! This is Valerie, Becky’s mother-in-law. I arrived here this past Sunday after a very long trip, and I asked Becky if I could write in her place. She leads a very busy life – life with two year twins is busy anywhere, but add a 7 year old and a 5 year old, and living in a developing country, and well, her days are very full. The other thing is that she’s been here in Indonesia for awhile, and she’s feeling more at home. I know lots of you all are curious about what life is like here, so for the next few posts I’ll do my best to give you a look through fresh, “outsider’s” eyes. Warning: upcoming randomness.
Reece has lost her front tooth. I asked her what the tooth fairy brought her, and she said “a blue one.” (Some of you remember the difficult time Reece had with a tooth problem and a practicing non-dentist. Keep that in mind when you consider the tooth fairy’s generous pay out.) I laughed out loud. Later I heard Joe talking about something he deemed very expensive, as in, “Bet that would take about ten of the pink ones, wouldn’t it, Dad?”
When I came to visit, I was bringing quite a lot of extra baggage, so on the next to the last leg of my journey here, from Makassar to Sentani, a “local” flight, I had to pay the extra fees in rupiah. Credit cards are not accepted at the baggage check-in counter; I had to go to another counter where a friendly man wrote down the number of rupiah I needed to pay. Was I seeing correctly? Over a million and a half?!! I had been to the ATM in this same airport, and because I had to pay for my stay in a guest room (another blog) and eaten dinner, I had taken out the maximum withdrawal allowed. I began counting it out – not enough! The kind man kindly pointed me once again to the ATM upstairs, where once again I withdrew the maximum allowed – a thick stack of bills, all in the same denomination: “blue ones” – that is to say, 50,000 rupiah each. Worth about $5 each in U.S. currency. My maximum withdrawal was about $135 in U.S. currency.
Daniel says just take off 4 zeroes. FOUR zeroes? Honestly! Reece and Joe have the right idea, one I as an adult didn’t latch on to until I heard it from them. LOOK AT THE COLOR! “Blue ones” are $5 bills. “Pink ones” are $10. Don’t look at the zeroes. They trip me up every time. Too many of them! But still it’s a good thing that I won’t be doing much marketing here on my own.
fullnessofhisgrace 
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