Road to Indonesia: Apartment, Stores

 So, which apartment did we get? We have the second floor huge, wonderful apartment. It has 3, I repeat 3, bedrooms. The living room/dining room is the size of our apartment  in China, and one of the bathrooms is the size of our RV.   The kitchen is huge, with all of the amenities, even a Kitchen Aid mixer, as well as crockpot, rice cooker, coffee maker, blender, toaster, microwave. I even have an oven! It is a duplex with one bedroom and bath that could be switched to the other side of the duplex simply by opening and closing doors.  One bedroom has just  a loan little tiny desk in it.  We have a shower, rather than a holding reservoir with a plastic scoop to splash water on ourselves like many Indonesian bathrooms. We can even put the toilet paper into the toilet (not always possible in many countries where the plumping does not tolerate that.)  And absolutely spectacular is that the school is fixed so we can drink water from the tap!!! You can have no idea how wonderful that is. Usually, you are boiling and cooling every drop you drink, or else having to wait as it drips through a ceramic filter, or buying big water cooler type bottles. The only thing that does not live up to the promises is the view. We do have a nice, big wrap around porch (in which we can hang clothes.)  But the foliage has grown so very lush and green that it blocks out the view of the valley below. I can live with that. 

We have been to the quite nice stores in town, many of which we could walk to in about 15 minutes, but then we would have to carry the groceries back up the hill, so someone drove us. . One store did not have any hamburger. The next store did, but I had to ask if it was "Hamburger? Beef? Cow? Moo-moo?" The man nodded his head. I took the last he had which was about a pound and a half. I have soaked my tomatoes in dishwashing liquid, since I am not cooking them, and have dried kidney beans soaking in my crock pot ready for chili. Today we will go to the fruit/vegetable open air market, which is always interesting.