The
House
of Ding.

Semarang, Indonesia

• Posted January 2nd, 2012
• by Chris
• 4 comments

Agnes was finally suc­cess­ful in sur­pris­ing her par­ents with a visit home. Last time she tried, they found out and ended up play­ing a prank and sur­pris­ing her!

We met her dad while he was vis­it­ing her Grandma (he was gen­uinely sur­prised! I was sure he knew). We stayed a while and played with the half dozen or so Pomera­ni­ans and pup­pies. Nes was in heaven.

We then drove over to her mom’s sister’s house to con­tinue the sur­prise. We snuck in and said hello. Ina’s face went from con­fused to bawl­ing in an instant. Another suc­cess­ful surprise!

After a short visit we packed up the car and headed up into the moun­tains to Ban­dun­gan, a small vil­lage about an hour south of Semarang, for the annual “Wid­jaya fam­ily reunion/Christmas/New Year’s extrav­a­ganza”. It was intense; like a Dinger fam­ily get together on steroids. 50 peo­ple in one villa; more food than 100 peo­ple could eat; a full-on Christ­mas mass (yes, they brought in a priest and every­thing); sev­eral Santa and Black Piet out­fits for some “Christ­mas the­ater”; and the 20 or so ever-present con­cur­rent con­ver­sa­tions, each com­pet­ing in vol­ume with the oth­ers. Exhaust­ing (but fun) for an intro­vert like me!

After two days here, we’re pack­ing up this after­noon to head to—I think—Kudus.

I’m really regret­ting not bring­ing the lap­top… pho­tos are com­ing soon!

Nes at her hap­pi­est… with Pom pups

Nes and Ina cel­e­brate New Year’s “Ina-style”