Alief's School Trip

Today, Alief and Mama and Nini were going to Taman Buah Mekarsari. It's a garden fulls of fruit trees that we can harvest by ourself at harvest time. It's oo bad that the harvest time is in December, so we can't really experience harvesting.

Alief was very excited with the trip, eventhough he only had a little time to sleep last night. Alief went to bed at 3 am last night, and woke up at 8 am, so it's only 5 hours of sleep, too few for 2-years-old boy. However sleepy he was, he behaved very nicely during the day, followed almost all the teacher instruction.

We arrived save and sound (literally) in Mekarsari. All the children were eager to get off the bus and make a line behind Ms. Laras. Alief was ready for all the activities today: hat on, sunblock on, spirit on...

Look how excited Alief was.. Looking at Ms. Laras (the one in uniform holding the flag) who were yelling "Please make a line.. Please make a line..." and sang "Following the leader.. following the leader... wherever she may go...." hehe.. I wished I were still a kid.. must be very happy with a school trip like this.

We wait a while in front of the ticketing area to have briefing and toilet or nappy time. Alief couldn't wait to start.. his eyes were rolling across the room seeing a lot of new things around.. W were brought to a meadow and put our bags and things there. We sat for a while before going to the Caping Painting Place.

Caping is a special hat shapes like a cone, wore by the farmers in Indonesia. Alief loves painting, when he saw the paint and the brush, he knew right away that he should paint the Caping. Look how serious Alief was.. hehe.. He used the blue paint first. Ms. Nino paint Alief name on his Caping so that it didn't mixed up with other kids Caping. Everybody can bring their Caping home later...

After about 20 minutes of creative arts, the kids are told to take off their shoes and go to paddy field. Yes, we had the opportunity to plant the paddy with a farmer, who is one of our tour guide. Alief has never walk bare feet on the ground before. He was a bit cranky when he should take off his shoes.. then I decided to put on his boot. Alief was smiling again.

The farmer gave all the kids a bunch of paddy seed to be planted today. Alief was happy, holding the paddy seed looking at the paddyfield. The plan is to have all the kids on the paddyfield to do tandur (tanam mundur) or planting the crops backwards. I thought the kids would be thrilled by this fun activities.

But... surprise.. surprise !!! All the kids were crying and screaming when we went down to the paddy field. It's full of mud (of course), and have 20 cm-height of brown-dirty water. Alief did not even want to touch the water, not to mention planting the paddy in the water and the wet soil. Hehe.. It's his first time to see real paddy field and went down bare feet... I think we should do it frequently, because we won't have this kind of activities in Jakarta.

Next, we went fishing in a shallow fish (natural) pond. Again, because of the dirty water and all the muds, Alief decided not to went down to the pond. However, Nini (Alief nanny) managed to catch 3 fishes for Alief. Alief actually likes fishing. He often fishing in Opa's artificial pond which has clean water. Some of the bigger kids were very brave to try this new things.. but most of the kids in Alief class stayed in their nanny's arm the whole time...

So funny to look at these big-town little kids.. I remember having a very good time in the pond or paddy field when I was a little girl. We lived in a remote area where things like these are just around the neighborhood, unlike Alief and his mates who live in Jakarta with all the shopping malls, restaurants and playing parks arounds them.

After fishing, we went to bathe a bull. Alief still insisted to stay at Nini's armed. Eventhough he looked jealous when Kiko rode the bull. Alief likes riding animals, he often rides camel and elephant with me or his daddy, he even rides a horse by himself. It's probably just because of the dirty water and the muds again...

Finnaly, its time for us to went home... But, before.. we have a tour around the park with a train.. tut..tut..tut.. Alief was very sleepy at that time, and almost went to sleep in the train..

Then, off we go again with the big blue bus, went back to school with the happy face...