What a Game...

I have to apologize for my serious lack of blogging lately, but I've been in a ridiculous funk. I never really thought about it before moving, but in Timor I have exactly one thing. I have Connor and that's it. Don't get me wrong, I adore Connor, he is my love, but when you're in a different world one person can't be enough to hold you there. Every day it's like I'm in a fishbowl, swimming in circles going no where. I know the whole deal about home sickness coming in waves, and culture shock taking it's toll and whatnot, but it's more than that.
Imagine you were picked up and dropped off in a foreign country with three things you held dear, three things to keep you happy for your entire time there. Do you know what my three are? Connor, my knitting, and my Jurassic Park Trilogy set. How sad is that? I can't even site the internet as making me happy because the coverage is so shotty here and once you run out, you're out for a week at a time until you can drag your keister to the Timor Telecom office that has a 50/50 chance of being open.
To put it simply, I am incredibly lonely. Because of this, I have been feeling sorry for myself and not blogging like I should, so I apologize. I will try and be better.
On a pleasant note, I might teach Mana Angela how to knit soon. It might be a bit difficult because we don't speak much of the same language, but if we can manage it, it might give me a little bit of purpose. She said she could maybe give me some yarn for my trouble, which is a big deal here because there is not a single knitting store on the whole island of Timor. Just my luck, huh? I'm actually almost out of yarn and without enough yarn to make one solid project I've been working on an entrelac blanket entirely out of scrap yarn. This is what I've got so far.

Not bad, right? It's only a few inches long now but so far I really like the way the scrap colors are working together.

I like the kind of "patchwork circus tent" vibe it has thus far. When it's done it'll be about four and a half feet wide and about seven feet long. It'll be a good blanket for napping on the couch. The sad bit is that I won't get much further without more yarn. My stash is running dry and the care package my mom is sending (full of treats, Nancy Drew games, and yarn) won't arrive for another few weeks. Oh woe is me.

Working for the man.

So for this story to make sense to you all, I'll need to give you some background. The place we're living in here in Dili is a two bedroom, two bathroom flat that is the second story of our landlord's home. In the house below ours there are essentially three families. Six children that I know of, and countless adults. One of the adults living below us, Mana Angela, is our housekeeper. She does our laundry, washes dishes, sweeps, and is basically a godsend. When she's not being amazing, she makes Timorese flags for soccer matches and festivals and such.
The other day I was walking up to our flat, after a run at the beach with boyfriend. I had the Sea Glass bag tied around my waist because the beach we ran at had piles of the colorful shards and I loaded up. As I approached the stairs Mana Angela came out from her house with her adult son Colbain (apparently he was supposed to be named after Kurt Cobain but "Cobain" is a tricky one in Tetun). Mana Angela told her son that I had made the bag around my waist and he asked me how long it took me.
"Eh, a day or two."
"Could you make me a hat? Black hat?"
"Yes, I could do that."
In exchange for my hat making services Mana Angela promised me a Timor flag to hang on our living room wall. So over the next few days I chipped away at a simple ski-cap for Colbain. I for one, did not see the appeal in having a hat where the average temperature is 85 degrees with 75% humidity. But it's what he wanted and I was more than able so I knit him up a neat little cap over the span of a few days.
This afternoon when the Mana came in to drop off some finished laundry, I told her that I had the hat for her son all finished and ready for his wear. I gave it to her and she left quickly, showering me with praise. A short while later Colbain himself came up to thank me and tell me that he very much liked his hat, and that I was a very good "crafter" (I don't think the word for knitting translates very well).
Later this evening, after Connor and Carrick were back from working out, and Sharanya was back from work, we all settled down to watch some t.v. and talk about our days. The doorbell rings and when Connor answered it, I hear Colbain's voice from the other side of the door, along with a few others in the background.
"I am uhhhh.... Like to speak with... Alexander?"
"Do you mean Alexis? Yes, she's right here."
I step out onto the porch to find Colbain and five others from his family. One older woman and her young son, two teenage girls, and a boy who looked about my age, all talking in hushed whispers and pointing at Colbain's hat.
The older woman started: "You make hat or sell hat?"
"I made the hat, but Angela is going to make me a Timor flag for it, so I did kind of sell it as well I guess."
"You make hat?"
"Yes, I made it."
"Oh..."
Everyone's quiet for a while, and then the older woman spoke rather carefully:
"We can all have hats?"
Now the seriousness of the situation struck me in an odd way. Here are six people on my front porch, looking at me dead-serious, waiting to see if I will be offended by their request. I smile softly and say:
"You all want hats?"
They nod.
"You want a hat too?" I ask the little boy tucked into his mother's side. He smiles and says "Hat!" and touches his head.
"Yes I can make you all hats. It's going to take me a few days, but I can make them for you."
Suddenly the tension is gone and everyone starts talking at once about colors they want and if maybe I could do stripes, and how much I charge, and the little boy asks Colbain if he can have his very own hat. Colbain translated for me and I nodded and smiled to the boy. I wrote down requests and assured them that as soon as they were all done, I would give them to Colbain to hand them out to everyone.
I'm pretty sure the family down stairs adores me.
I let you know how everything is going once I dig my way out of this pile of hats.

Anyone want to see what I've been working on?

 The many fiber-related things I've been working on since first arriving in Timor!

 First, the spinning:

I've only done a few batches from the raw wool I brought with me here. I haven't set the Purple or the Green yet, but I'm hoping to spin some yellow and some pink and work it into a traditional Timorese pattern.

 This is a scarf that I worked up in about a day and a half using the "Snowdrift Mobius Cowl" pattern that you can find here: http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/snowdrift-mobius-cowl
(While looking up this pattern on Ravelry I found this one, also called "Snowdrift" and I want to make it! I'll add it to the list. http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/snowdrift-2)

This guy, I call "Fire Ant". Mostly because it's small and red, but also because I'm watching a Planet Earth documentary and insects are the main focus of the episode. This little shawlette was a project I worked up because it was simple and I was incredibly bored. The only really interesting thing about it is it's scalloped edge.

See? It's not especially fancy, but I like a little flared edge to spice things up.

This is "Sea Glass". It's a little draw-string bag that fastens around my waist so that when I'm frolicking about on the beach (be it snorkeling, wading, or just lounging), if I find an interesting piece of sea glass or shell, I can just toss it in the bag and bring it home with me. I am an avid sea glass collector so an accessory like this it just what I need.

Now the next things I'm going to show you are not my work, but in the interest of the fiber arts, I must show you what I got.

These little beauties are called Taiis (ty-es). It's an incredibly beautiful and complex form of weaving using tiny silk threads. There's a Taiis market not too far from our house where women have stalls where they sell their gorgeous works. I'm afraid and excited that I might build up quite the collection while I'm here.

So that's what I've been up to lately, not a whole lot, but you know how it goes. I'll keep you guys updated with new knits and crazy stories.

P.S. I've tried to write this post like, four times, but each time my computer has crashed or I get booted off the internet, or my battery dies, or something else that causes me to lose the entire post. Fifth time's the charm?

Busy busy busy...

Hello my lovlies, I'm sorry that there has been such a delay in my postings but I've been busy doing... Nothing really. There's so much to tell you about that every time I sit down to write it all out, it just seems like way too much work and I play a Nancy Drew game instead. Let's do a brief overview of my activities, shall we?

-I've been knitting like a fiend. Churned out a mobius scarf, a wee coin purse for my coins, a belt-bag to collect seaglass in (who's pattern I designed and may very well put on Ravelry), and a slouchy hat that I only just started today but that should be done by the time Connor gets home. I also have a passport cozy on the needles for Carrick, but that will have to wait until I have enough motivation to pick it up again.
-Connor and I went to the East Timor equivalent of the DMV. It. Was. Awful. Almost worse than back at home if you can believe it. Carrick's fiancee Sharanya told us it would only take forty minutes or so, but it ended up taking several hours. We would have been there even longer if a helpful Timorese man hadn't come up to us and said: "Sim?" Which is a permit to drive. We nodded and he whisked us away to another window, filled out all the paperwork for us, and took us through every step of the way, thereby putting us in front of himself and making his trip to the DMV twice as long. After we got our permits, I tried to hand him some money for his trouble (before anyone gets offended, that kind of behavior is customary here. Help someone out, get a few bucks) and he shook his head and said: "Just to help." What an awesome guy!
-Missed my skype date with my family on Monday due to an unfortunate miscommunication with Sharanya about when she was leaving for West Timor (taking the internet stick with her, as was agreed upon). I was super bummed all day, but Connor went out and got another one, so hopefully I'll be able to talk to my family soon.
-I don't know if it's a children's week festival or something, but for the last few days, whenever the sun goes down, children gather in the streets and start chanting something in Tetun and then break into song. This lasts all evening and well into the night. It might be cute if it wasn't so... creepy. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a strange aversion to children singing. It's too much like the shining. When kids sing, I get a wicked case of the hee-bee jee-bees.
-I've been reading like a fiend too. I've been a fast reader my entire life but in the last few weeks I've broken some of my own records. I read Stieg Larson's "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" in just a few days, I re-read one of my favorite romance novels whose name I will not divulge due to embarrassment, I read Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" yesterday, and I read a fantastic book by Stephanie Bond called "In Deep Voodoo" today. I need to either get more books on my kindle or start reading slower. All I have left that I haven't read are "Mocking Jay" the second of the Hunger Games trilogy, "The Girl who Played with Fire", the second of the Melinium Trilogy, and Jane Eyre. I'll probably be through those by the end of the week.

Well that's all I've got for now but next time I'll definitely have pictures of my latest knitted goodies.

P.S. If you have a Kindle, like mystery novels, and want a new read, then you should take a look at "In Deep Voodoo". It's incredibly good, totally blew my mind in terms of what I was expecting it to be. Plus it's free for Kindles! I don't know about Nooks though...

Chicken vs scooter

Alright, so remember how I promised you a story about a chicken and a motor-scooter? Well here it is:

So on my second day in Timor, Carrick (Connor's older brother, if anyone missed that) approached me and said: “Would you be interested in learning how to ride a scooter while you're here?” I told him that I was very interested, that I had always wanted to learn how to ride. He said: “Good, let's go!” This, I was a bit taken back by, for I didn't think he meant right that instant. But off we went into Timor's intense sun, in helmets and protective clothing.

Carrick drove us out to a large salt-flat where it was open wide and the ground was soft and silty. He hopped off, and I slid forward on the scooter so as to be in the driver's seat. He went over all the controls and mechanics of the thing, showing me how to change gear and break. I asked way too many inane questions, mostly so that I could drag out the classroom session before it switched to on the road time. Carrick quickly grew wise to my games and told me to just try it out in first gear and if it got too scary I could always just bale off the bike and into the sand.

I honestly can't say what I was so scared of because by the time I had finished my first lap of the salt-flat I was feeling great. The tricky shifting was still giving me some problems but I just seemed to absorb everything else. Round the flat I went, weaving in and out of prickly, sun-bleached skeleton trees and avoiding large ruts from riders past.

Carrick finally flagged me down and I quickly went to him. “Now try it with me on the back!” and I responded with an oh so elegant: “...uh. What?”

“Don't worry, you'll be fine!”

So he hopped on and I tried to take off like I had been before, but let me tell you, having another person on the bike completely changes the dynamic. It changes the balance and the way you pick up speed, it changes the way you shift and drastically alters how much you have to turn the handle bars before you change direction. The answer: not very much! One tiny alteration from strait and you find yourself headed towards a tree or a giant manure pile.

After the practice we decided to head to a nearby shore line and walk the beach for a bit before heading back. It was at this point that we checked our phones to see the time and found that we each had several missed calls, all from Connor. I call him back to find out that he got back from his work orientation early and has been locked out of the house for three hours. He was not very happy. As we walked back to the bike Carrick said: “I'll get us back to the main road, but then we'll switch and you can drive us home. After so little practice I didn't want to drive the main road and so I used Connor as an excuse. “Connor's pretty mad that he's been locked out for so long, I think you should just drive.”

“Oh it's okay. You don't drive much slower than me, you'll be fine.”

So we shot off to the main road and when we arrived there, Carrick hopped off and I slid forward, just like before. Honestly, it wasn't that scary. Smooth beach roads with the occasional pothole, but plenty of room to maneuver around them. I like to think I was doing pretty well. That is until we approached the corner of chicken doom.

We were just passing a row of quaint little houses with stone fences, coming up to a turn that first went out slightly to the right and then a hard left around a blind corner. I was just approaching the soft right when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and heard and horrible “BUCAWK!”. That's when the attack came, not from the front, but from the side, from a chicken that I didn't even know was there.

I was mostly dealt a glancing blow off my left shoulder, but Carrick caught most of the feathery furry in his left shoulder. The ordeal had me flustered and I hadn't seen them until it was too late. Two gigantic potholes around the blind left corner, each about the size of a manhole cover, each a few inches deep. I only saw them just before impact and didn't have time to avoid them. I hit them both, doing about 30 miles an hour. Carrick almost bounced off the back, we were jostled so hard.

All the bouncing and slamming had kicked the bike out of gear, so when I tried to accelerate the bike through the rest of the corner, I got nothing but a revved engine.

At that point I calmly pulled over to the side of the road and Carrick said: “I have never heard of that happening before to anyone. Do you want me to drive?” To which I calmly replied: “Yes thank you, I'm a bit too flustered right now.” So he took over and drove us home.

What a fun first riding experience! Not one I'm likely to forget.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get taken out, mid-air, by me on a scooter.

Hope you liked my story! I'll have to tell you of my battle with the ants in the new house next time.

P.S. This is the view from our balcony at the new house.

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In Timor!

Hello friends and followers! Long time no update, I know. In my defense I have moved to another country since my last blog post and I believe that should allow me some lenience in my online-ness. Let me tell you, the internet situation here in East Timor is absolutely bonkers! There aren't really any hard lines unless you're somewhere fancy like the US embassy, the President's palace or an internet cafe, so everything is done wireless. To get access to the 3G you need, you have to get this little USB stick and a special SIM card. You buy your internet before you use it at a place called Timor Telecom and they apply it to your SIM card which you then put into your internet stick. Once you hook it up to your computer it then connects you to the internet via satellite. Because of all this rerouting and satellite connecting, the internet speed here is equivalent to dial-up from ten years ago. For any of those who are really dependent on the internet for happiness, DON'T COME TO TIMOR!

One of the many interesting things about this place is that you basically prepay for everything. Internet, electricity, air-conditioning, gas, water, it's pretty crazy. The power grid is also pretty messed up in that sometimes the power will go out for absolutely no apparent reason for an undetermined amount of time. Sometimes for three minutes, sometimes for three days. I've only experienced one of these so far, it lasted for about eight or nine hours. Because there was no power, the AC was out as well, so Connor, Carrick, Sharanya, and myself woke up sweaty and annoyed. The whole day was sweaty and dark (opening windows can let in more heat and mosquitoes) so it was better to just sit, grumpy in the cave.

Mosquitoes are especially dangerous here because many of them carry the virus known as Dengue. It's a slow-burning sickness that causes your skin to become painful to the touch and discolored, it causes fever, joint pain, and headaches that could shatter your teeth. It, in general, is a horrible thing that, unless treated, will result in death. It actually killed around thirty locals and one Australian a few months ago when there was a bit of an epidemic. Carrick is super concerned about our health and always asking us how we're doing and feeling. I've gotten a couple of mosquito bites since I've been here, but so far no death virus for me.

So that's just a few things I've learned so far while here, but I know why you all come here to read my blog (… pity... support...), the knitting!

Knitting is basically all I've been doing so far here (which I'm totally happy with Carrick!). It's a great way to spend days while Connor and Carrick are at work (Sharanya is currently in Bali with her sister and her sister's new husband). I've just been lounging in the AC, watching all kinds of shows and movies whilst working on various projects. Thus far I've finished a shawlette that's basically Holden with a scalloped edge and I'm about half-way through a “Snowdrift Mobius Cowl”. You should look it up on Ravelry when you get a chance. I'd post a link but I'm currently not even online! I'm really writing this on a word document while offline, so that I can copy and paste it onto blogger later and not use up three dollars worth of internet!

That's just a really quick rundown of what's up in Timor currently, I'll have to post again soon with more stories and real live pictures. I even have a story lined up for you about a chicken and motor-scooter. Guesses? You'll hear from me soon!

Tokyo!

What an adventure. When I have more time I'll have to fill you guys in on what happened during those crazy seventeen hours. For now I have to board another plane, this one to Jakarta. 8 hours but the airline is ANA and I've only heard good things about them (apparently their economy class is like United's first class). So I have to go for now but Connor and I are safe and having a blast. With love!