2013 CNY trip to home! - part 1

Haha, I should have posted this months ago but was too tired (read: lazy) to write and update my blog.

Ever since I entered workforce, it's been a custom for me to go back to my hometown to celebrate CNY (Chinese New Year) with my family. We don't really celebrate it like Chinese in China do, but we still have mini-reunion now and then with our extended family, usually with my extended family from my mother's side. Usually, I just visit our great grandmother (yeah, my great grandmother still lives! and she is 97 years old! long live great grandma!) in Madiun and pay respect to her, to my uncles and aunties from my mother's side; catch up with my cousins, nieces and nephews; and eat! Of course, I also pay respect to my uncles and aunties from my father's side too; but ever since my grandpa and grandma from my father's side passed away, we hardly ever have any reunion. My father's side's extended family is really huge anyway; it's very difficult to arrange reunion with all of them hahahaha..

and here is when I suddenly thought about how taxing it is for Chinese to explain their extended family (;ㅡ.ㅡ) see this funny video showing how Chinese are supposed to call their extended family members! I think I can never do that without a really, really, really great effort and love to Chinese tradition :)

Anyway, this year my family didn't just visit our great grandma, but also visited Sarangan, our beloved holiday spot ever since I was a kid until just before I moved to Singapore to study. It was located at the foot of Mount Lawu. We visited her almost every school holiday that time for one, okay, two particular reasons: it is so near to Madiun and it has a great, clean air to refresh our body and mind (muahhaha.. okay, a bit of exaggeration here, but the air is really clean and refreshing!). The decision came partly because of me :p My mom asked me and my sister where we wanted to go. She's afraid that we'd get bored only staying in Surabaya during our one-week break, so I just anyhow said, "I miss Sarangan, let's go there! I wanna ride a horse again!". Yeah, we rode horses too in Sarangan; it's one of the only 3 activities you can do there: riding a boat circling the small lake Sarangan, riding a horse circling the path around the lake Sarangan, or just relaxing in hotel room and eating satay.

Lake Sarangan at daylight. taken from: kerasatamagetan.blogspot.com

This year CNY was pretty interesting, because it's my first time flew and arrived in Surabaya in the middle of the night, and directly travel to Madiun the next morning to visit my great grandma. Felt a little bit like living "Running Man" with their crazy travelling schedule :P which now I know is not good for me because I turned cranky the next day, not enough sleep :( We flew to Surabaya on Friday night, arrived in Surabaya at 12++ a.m. local time and traveled to Madiun the following morning at 9 a.m. Along the road trip, we made some stops to pay respect to my father's side relatives. I was very tired, so I slept for the most of the road trip.

And...when we reached Madiun around 2 p.m., things started to get..frightful. Well, the weather was. I became very alert because the sky was very dark all of a sudden when we stopped there for awhile to change driver. My brother took the wheel and drove us up to Sarangan; it was his first time driving up to Sarangan. And then... it started raining. And it became heavier as we approached the dangerous, sloping, winding road going up to Sarangan. Scenes from "Final Destination" started popping out in my head; mind you, it was my bro's first time driving up to Sarangan. The rain was very heavy to the point that you couldn't see past 2 m from the windshield. With my mom whispered prayers continuously beside me and my sis became very quiet all of a sudden, I could only think of the worst in that moment. Carry Underwood's "Jesus take the wheel" started playing in my ear. Then, suddenly my mom teased me, "Now you woke up, worried your bro will crash the car, huh?". Err... *knockwood three times after hearing that*

As swiftly as the flash, the weather turned beautiful. The air became clear and fresh as we went up the mountain. We arrived safely in Sarangan, checked-in to the hotel, rested for awhile, ate satay and then around 6 p.m. we went down to Madiun to have a feast (and collect hong bao haha. i think i'm getting too old for that..)! Yeahhhh!!! Slurp! Too bad I forgot to take pictures of the food because I was busy eating hahaha. I love Indo. I love the food. haha.. We also celebrated my niece's birthday there. Took some pictures with my long-never-see nieces and nephew.

my pretty nieces.. on the right is the b'day gal

On the following Sunday, my dad was scheduled to preach at the local church in Plaosan. It's a 20-minutes drive down from Sarangan. The praise and worship session was in Javanese. I was dumbfounded for awhile, then took that chance to challenge my Javanese, which vocabulary already lost here and there from my brain. We were then served lunch by the home Pastor family. As always, Indonesian food is yummyyy!! hehehehe..

Lake Sarangan at night. Took it from hotel when there was a local rain, only on the lake, but can't see clearly at night with my phone cam :(

After the Sunday service, we went back up to Sarangan, lazying in the hotel room and taking a walk around the lake.We ate at our beloved Miroso diner for dinner. Almost everytime we go to Sarangan, we go to Miroso to eat. I'm not a gourmet, so I don't really know what the actual standard of deliciousness Miroso has. But to me, it serves the most delicious food in Sarangan hahaha..

We didn't do much after that, just eating and relaxing more before our trip back to Surabaya the next day, Monday. And up until that moment, I hadn't met my nephew, Matthew. I missed him so much that I actually wanted to see him right after we arrived in Surabaya, but everybody was so tired from the road trip that we decided to just wait and see him on Tuesday.

And story with Matthew will be continued on PART 2 :P