Goodbye Gumyoji (Part one)

We are moving out from the Foreign Student House by the end of this month. Staying here for almost six months seems to be all of our lives. It's the first place for us to live together as a family --no relatives, no servants, no baby sitters. Just us.

The hardest part of leaving this place is that we are so acquainted with the administrators and the staffs.

For Wisnu, Fujita-san is the apple of his eyes. Every morning (Monday to Friday) Fujita-san always cheerfully greets Wisnu "Ohayo Gozaimas". Wisnu will always look for Fujita in the morning and ask me "Ibu, ayo mas", which means "Ibu, where is Fujita-san?".
Wisnu throws his toys out of the window to the garden as soon as he got bored playing with it. Sometimes he does it to make me go to the backyard garden to pick his toys and he would say "ikutt!!" which means he has to go with me and have sometime playing swing there. It is Fujita-san who will put the toys in our veranda. Whenever we meet him, he will take sometime to carry Wisnu and make a conversation as if they understood each other.















The second one is Nishida-san. She is my reliable interpreter and translator. When I was pregnant and had to cancel the doctor's appointment she was the one who helped. She gave lots of information about child raising and cooking. Wisnu loves her too.
She wished to see the house we live in in Jakarta as she could not figure out how come there are two families living at the same house sharing the same kitchen and living room and having 4 bedrooms. The house she lives in is divided into two parts-- one for her mother and one for her and the whole family.


There are two other ladies. One is Makita-san, the manager of this house. She is the one holding Akira in this picture. She lives here, in the Foreign Student House with her family , but we never meet her two sons though.
I never forget one hot summer night when we could not turn the AC on because one we could not understand the menu in remote control and second, that night the temperature could not be set just like usual, we called her through the intercom and she came to our room to help out. Another thing I remember about her is that her tingling key holder whenever she opens the office door. I can tell it's her who is opening or closing the door , not Nishida-san, from the sound of her key holder.Beside that, she is a real mom -- I mean she really knows how to put crying baby to sleep.Akira slept in her arms comfortably when my husband was trying to take my picture wearing the kimono and yukata.

The last, but not the least, is Kuroda-san, the janitor. She is the one who put on the Kimono and Yukata and the hair-do. The best thing is that we got it for free!!! She is as the matter of fact a professional Kimono dresser. If we ask someone like her and take photograph in the photo studio it will cost more than 30,000 yen for few snapshots.



I hate to realize that in our new apartment, there will be no these friendly people. We will be out of civilization :( on the 3rd floor. Well, you don't cherish things you posses until they no longer exist.