sietessietes: March 2016

A week before semester finals, I took a flight to Manado to escort my grandma home. She came to Jakarta with my uncle and lived with us about 3 months, when it's time for her to go back home, I volunteered to go with her. I just missed my hometown so much.

We took an evening flight, the plan took off at 6 PM from Jakarta Airport (CGK) and arrived about 9 PM at Manado Airport (MDC).

Waiting for our baggage about half an hour and took a taxi to grandma's home, we arrived home exactly at 10 PM.

There was a funny story about that too. It's been 6 years since the last time I was there, and the town has been into so many changes, when the taxi entered Airmadidi, I was lost, it's quite hard to recognize some of the places and buildings, especially because there was power outage happened. It was too dark, I let the taxi passed the supposed road we should take, but I know more shortcuts, then we passed another road, that's when I told the driver to slow down, and we get the other shortcuts.

Arrived at grandma's home another problem occurred, after paying the taxi and set off all the baggage, it's time to look for the key. So, when grandma was in Jakarta, the key was kept by my aunt, but she doesn't live here, knowing that we will arrived late, she left the key at a hidden place. The thing is, there is no light, I only use my phone while calling her to ask for the key's location. After a while we finally get inside the house, next task is looking for some candles.

There is no photo at all because it was really hectic. I had to fill the tub in the bathroom, re-heating the food we brought from Jakarta, reheating the rice my aunt cook this morning and left it inside the fridge, boil some water for drink (my grandma only drink hot drinks, no power to get it from the dispenser), everything had to be done with not enough lights.

After everything, we took a shower and getting ready to rest. I shared room with my grandma in my old bedroom, that's the only bedroom ready for us to sleep that night. The power came back in the middle of the night, but we were too tired to do anything.

The next morning, I woke up to this.

My grandma has already cleaned up the front yard and burned the dried leaves, this is the scene where I don't see often in Jakarta. That tree is an old rambutan tree, my grandpa planted it when I was still toddler.

I used to play on that tree with my friend when we were still a child. I was lucky, I get to eat some this time I came back here.

Breakfast coming up next after eating so much rambutans.

One of our neighbor was walking towards the market which is only 5 minutes away from home, as she was walking my grandma asked if she could buy breakfast for us and gave an amount of money to her. As a good neighbor she gladly accepted the simple task.

The breakfast was the specialty of our hometown, the original Tinu'tu'an, which is infamously known as Bubur Manado.

This is my favorite dish, eat it with pisang goreng (deepfried banana) and dabu-dabu terasi, perfect. Lekker!

After the breakfast, I continue my activity with cleaning up around the house, then cook the rice, our meals will be delivered by catering service. All the cleaning made me so tired, we spent the afternoon by taking a long nap.

In the evening I spent my time looking around the back yard, the place where I used to play at when I was a child.

I missed those time where I still have a lot of time playing around this back yard. The big tree at the corner left of the back yard is a durian tree, the one on the right is a small rambutan tree, and the small one in the front is a lime tree.

It used to be a garage where grandpa's old stuff was kept at, but most of it has been sold or thrown away. I used to play in there when it was still a garage.

The next day is another cleaning up day, and I was caught in reminiscing moment. Old photo albums. I love it.

I was looking through old pictures while listening to the radio played with my old stereo.

My dad bought this for me when I ranked first in my class on the second year in Junior High School.

I also found the bag rack I made when I just graduated high school, back then I was really into sewing when I was not in college.

Of course I'm taking it with me back to Jakarta.

That night I went to my aunt's house with grandma to sleepover there. My aunt's house had so many changes too, we were talking till late, and I was the last one to go to bed.

The next day, my grandma went back home first because my aunt and I will go visit my grandpa's grave.

This is my aunt's neighborhood. Going to the right way is entering her complex, but I don't want to take a picture of the people on the street without their consent.

Now we're entering the graveyard. It's kind of abandoned because most of the family of those buried here were away or probably were just too lazy to come clean up their family's grave.

My aunt is leading me in because she used to come here to clean up grandpa's grave so she knows the way to get there. I remember where is the exact location but the way is full of bushes and too hard to get through it.

My grandpa's resting place.

The one on the far side isn't our family, but we usually clean it too when we were cleaning up grandpa's.

We were burning grass and leaves, and some trash (I can't believe people still leaving trash in the graveyard), when the sky got dark.

Then I realized, the news told us there will be total solar eclipse (March 9th).

I can't get the total solar eclipse picture because it would break my lenses, we decided to say a prayer for grandpa and started tidying up to leave.

We walked to grandma's house which took about 20 minutes. Passed the Police Station, Town Hall, and through some neighborhoods.

I could only take a picture of the Police Station. The mountain behind is the Mount Klabat.

Above is my grandma's neighborhood.

I spent the rest of the days cleaning up my room, organizing the inside of my cupboard, organizing my book collection, cleaning up my grandma's bedroom so she could use it after I go back to Jakarta.

My grandma made some dried pork cuts for me to bring back to Jakarta. It's my and my mom's favorite, we can just fried it, squeezed some lemon, and eat it with rice.

She also bought some of my favorite sweet snacks from market.

Actually I love the rose flavor but the aunt my grandma told to go buy it at the market bought the chocolate ones. But it doesn't matter, I like it.

The last morning before I went back to Jakarta, I enjoy the sun from the porch. That was the time when I tried hard not cry. I forced my self hard to keep smiling and tell jokes.

Leaving grandma behind is always hard, but she actually don't mind living alone in her beloved home. I just always pray she will be healthy and safe.

My uncle came to visit grandma and then he drove me to the airport. My flight is on 12 PM, but I had to check in at least an house before, so we left grandma's house at 10:30 AM.