There are approximately the same number of people living here in Jakarta as there are in New York City! It is amazing to see the incredible buildings and mass of humanity. It is amazing what has been done here in four years since we were here last in terms of new buildings.
The people are beautiful, bright, well-educated and really wonderful! We were awakened this morning at 4:22 a.m. with the call to prayer. Ninety percent of Jakarta is Muslim. We did a really fun parenting seminar today for Femina, which runs most of the major magazines in Indonesia. Sponsoring this event was the Indonesian division of Parenting Magazine and Ayahbunda which translated means MotherFather. They are beautiful magazines and we had a wonderful five hour discussion about Raising Responsible Kids!
At the end of the day after lots of fun interchange they invited the entire audience to come up to the stage for a picture. Here they are:
Again we learned that everyone wants the same thing for their families…happy responsible children! At lunch we were able to chat with several tables of women and found that there are good hospitals here but absolutely no pain medications for mothers in labor except in case of a caesarian section. And of course they are all rooting for Obama to win. We were meeting in the very neighborhood where he spent part of his childhood!
Our darling hostess, Vivian, organized this event with the help of many others and was about the average size of the women there. Fun Day!