whew

so 25 hours worth of traveling later....
we are in bali!!

spent all day on the beach.
no sunburns yet.
hooray for sunscreen!

here til friday, then flying back to sala3.

over the river

so mom and dad are leaving today for england.
amber and i are getting on the overnight bus today to bali.
zach is in florida doing relief work.
kyley is at home running the farm.
i am proud of all of us.

faith in humanity

lots of things going on...

1. i'm reading the koran.

2. amber is still here and we still love each other.

3. we are house sitting for a family while they are away this week. that means we each get our own bed, free wireless internet, satellite tv, and an 800 dvd collection. oh, and the fattest daschund i've ever seen named snuggles and i love her.

4. my computer is old and about to die. i'm in the process of finding a new one. my church is helping me pay for it. i am so blessed.

5. we went to jogja yesterday. to borobudur first. nothing new there, but amber enjoyed the reliefs and statues in this ancient temple. next, we went to pasar burung (bird market). wow. it was like the albion swap meet, but different. it's a ton of little shops that sell things like birds and snakes and lizards and fish and turtles and owls and eagles and rabbits and mongooses (mongeese?). some guy decided he would be our guide (expecting to be paid, of course), so he showed us all around. he taught us all about cock fighting and which roosters are best to buy. he taught us about pigeon racing and how they actually get the pigeons to come home. he taught us about songbird competitions and he showed us a champion songbird that was worth US $5000. it was great. i like birds.

6. then our self proclaimed guide took us behind pasar burung to the water palace. you see, back in the day, jogja was located underneath a manmade lake. the sultan lived in the water palace. he had his own underwater mosque and he had underwater tunnels for all his wives to walk around in so that no other man could see their faces. the sultan himself traveled by boat. very venice. the palace itself is in ruins (the current sultan lives in a much more modern palace), but the mosque has been restored (made of chalk, sand, and egg whites!) and several of the other buildings are still there. as we were walking around, another indonesian man joined us and seemed to want to be our guide. we politely told him that we were just wandering around and didn't need a guide, but he replied, "oh, no, i'm not expecting money. i work here and i live this way. i'll just walk with you." he was a cute old man, so we acquiesced. he led us through a ton of winding streets - all the people who work for the sultan live in little houses on the palace grounds - where little kids were trying to fly kites and women were throwing pans of dirty dishwater into the street. he pointed out to us lots of little things that normal tourists probably never see. then we came to a garden that had a very tall wall running along one side with a bamboo ladder leaning against it. the man motioned us over to the ladder and told us to climb up carefully. naturally, we did. and from the top of that wall, we could sit and see into the (closed to the public) royal pools - where the sultan's wives would come every day. he would meet them there and select which one he wanted to be with that day. it was like looking down into ancient greece. there were beautiful pools (though the murky green water IN the pools left something to be desired) with amazing statues and courtyards and garden areas all around them. after we sat there for awhile (beneath the setting sun, i might add), we climbed back down and walked through more winding streets until we found ourselves at our unofficial guide's house! he offered us drinks and invited us to look around. as it turns out, he and his family are all artists. amber was in heaven and ended up buying a painting from him. : )

7. i have a bike. sort of. tiffany went to cambodia for 2 weeks and let me borrow hers! i have a rough time cornering with a passenger bigger than me. but so far so good.

8. my leg wound is almost all the way healed. i'll have a nice scar for awhile though.

9. i am watching rugby. ns wales v queensland. go, blue!

my leg is an eyesore

an update on the burn on my leg.

it is doing much better now and well on the road to recovery.
travel was rough because it hurt to walk.
i took oral antibiotics for 3 days and kept the wound covered and prayed a lot.
these things combined seemed to do the trick.

it's still pretty ugly looking.
but at least not in a gross way.
the burn was deep enough that it burnt out the hair follicles.
i don't know if those will grow back.
but if not, at least i now have about 1 square inch less of shaving to do.
that will save me a lot of time in the shower.

the trip.

get ready for some long winded accounts of indonesian adventures.

1. semarang.
mega helped me get to the right bus in salatiga, which i successfully managed to get off of in the right spot in semarang to catch a taxi to the airport. unfortunately, i asked the taxi driver to take me to the bendera instead of the bandara, but he knew what i meant. possibly due to my bad indonesian and the fact that i am white, he also overcharged me by a dollar and wouldn't let me argue about it, but oh well. once in the airport, my flight got delayed 3 times, but it was only by 15 - 30 minutes each time. i was doing a pretty good job of keeping to myself and being very very white so nobody tried to sit and talk to me. but that only worked for so long. the man sitting next to me eventually realized that we were on the same 3-times-delayed flight, so he started asking me about where i'm going, where i'm coming from, and where i'm from originally. he didn't speak english, so that was a good workout for me. we had some really good conversation. he asked some really good questions. and i was really frustrated as i was trying to answer those questions - i was realizing that what was coming out of my mouth was NOT actually what i thought/believed. it was just as close as i could come with the language i have. the funniest part was when he asked me what americans think about indonesians, and i had to break it to him that most americans don't know indonesia exists. he was muslim, so we had lots of good talks about politics and religion and obama and work and why i was willing to come to indonesia. as it turns out, he was in semarang for a work trip - he works for pertamina, the government owned oil company, and he and a bunch of other guys (all from sumatra) were there putting on an employee training seminar. so as we were talking, the other guys with him started wandering over to talk to the white girl also. i was quickly adopted as one of their group. they were super impressed by how much indonesian i know, and i was embarrassed by how much i didn't. they taught me some sumatran tribal language and they told me that i'm definitely not a "bule" (whitey). i'm one of them. it was fun. by the end, it was me and 8 sumatran men.

2. jakarta.
when we got to the airport, my sumatran friends invited me to stay in their hotel with them. ummm.... no, thanks. instead, i followed the instructions my student gave me for cheap travel to her house. i found the airport bus, got on, and rode it to the last stop. however, because my flight was delayed so long and the bus sat for almost an hour waiting for passengers (they won't go until they're full), it was by now about 10 o'clock. in downtown jakarta. under an overpass. with the homeless people. trying to look in my backpack. my next instructions were to get on another bus... but as i asked around for that bus, people told me that it had already stopped running. how perfect. by this point i was very near fearing for my life, so against my better judgement, i jumped in the nearest taxi i could find which was so ghetto it had cardboard laid across the seats to keep the springs down. i had the guy take me to a certain mall where i met my student. however, the mall was also closed, but at least i got a good deal on my taxi, and i did eventually find the student. instead of taking me home with her, my student took me to her family's guesthouse nearby and showed me to a room in the back. i slept on a mattress on the floor in a room full of furniture stacked up. i was grateful for a clean bed.
in the morning, i woke up to an indonesian man standing over me going "goot morning, mees, goot morning. mees? mees? goot morning, mees! mees? goot morning....." freaked me out. he left once i woke up. after he turned all the lights in my room on. awesome. so i called my student and went over to her house to have korean breakfast (fish, chicken, red rice, tofu, kimchi) and then we went to a mall to go ice skating. then they drove me to the airport to get amber!
amber made it here safely. her luggage did not. it got stuck in LA due to a delayed flight. luckily, she had one change of clothes in her carry on, and they told her that her baggage would be here the next day. unfortunately, we would not be. so we waited for yohanes to fly in from batam, and when we met up with him, we made a plan. we would contine on to bandung as planned, and come back in 2 days for her luggage. so on to bandung we went.

3. bandung.
the bus we rode took us directly to a mall where we ate, bought a few things (like a toothbrush for amber), and yo's new cell phone got stolen. perfect end to a perfect day. we went to catch a taxi to the places where we were staying and it started raining. then the taxi driver got lost and had to ask directions 5 times. we FINALLY made it to our final destination at almost midnight. we stayed with a wonderful lady named liz, and yo stayed with some other friends in another part of town.
the next morning, we slept in a bit, and then went shopping! bandung is the outlet store capital of indonesia. all the bules go there to shop, because they have western clothes... unfortunately, bandung is 99.9% super conservative muslim and the only change of clothes amber had for the next 2 days was a pair of shorts and a tank top. we made do. i was super impressed by how nice the stores were, by how much they had, and how little stuff cost. i found a couple shirts i liked that i can wear to teach in, but i was having serious issues finding jeans, which was my number one reason for going. we shopped all morning, ate lunch late, then went home for a siesta. after siesta time, amber and i went back out, and at the first store we went to, i found THREE pairs of jeans to buy. that was a huge blessing, as the only pair i have here got a huge hole ripped in the knee several months ago. so i'm caught back up on pants. after shopping, we met back up with yohanes for dinner at this mall called paris von java. it was just about the fanciest thing i have ever seen. there was a starbucks with an open air second floor with a live band playing. so we just sat in the parking lot and listened for awhile... we walked around a lot and window shopped. it was set up a lot like jefferson pointe (for those who know what that is), but it was way bigger and way fancier. it felt like civilization. : )

4. jakarta.
monday morning, we took the bus back to jakarta to see if amber's bag was there yet. and it WAS! unfortunately, the security guards seemed to hate us and gave us a really hard time going in and going out of the airport. oh well. also unfortunately, not everything was in the luggage. as i had feared from the beginning, some things were stolen. the good news is, the only thing that got taken out was one bag of candy.... in light of all the things they could have taken, i'm glad it was only that. since we knew we were going to be back in jakarta, we got our original train tickets refunded, and found plane tickets that were only $5 more. so we flew home from there to solo, an hour south of home.

5. salatiga.
it is so good to be home.
amber slept 12.5 hours last night.
i slept 10.

ada infeksi

my burn is infected.
it is actually pretty gross.
it was fine up until yesterday.
by last night it was emitting heat and hurting pretty bad.
by this morning it was downright sickening to look at.

i got some medicine last night from the apotek.
so this morning i scraped the infected parts off with a knife.
then i cleaned and bandaged it up.

my indonesian friends say to see a doctor.
my white friends say not to.
my indonesian friends say put burn salve on it.
my white friends say just keep it clean with water and let it heal.

who to listen to?
i compromised.
i'm not seeing a dr unless it gets way worse.
but i am taking antibiotics and using a little aloe.
and praying for the best.

rencanaku

so this weekend will be a big one...

first and foremost - AMBER IS COMING!
she'll be staying with me for a month...
yes, yes, i am pretty excited about that.
i mean, it's not every day a girl's best friend comes to visit her halfway around the world!

the tricky part is getting her here.
the jakarta airport could easily be compared to a traveler's hell.
i took pity on amber, and decided to meet her there, as opposed to forcing her to navigate the impossible airport in order for her to get a connecting flight to somewhere closer to me.

so here's what i have to do.
friday, i have to pack up my hiking backpack and walk about a km to the main road.
there, i'll have to stop a bus (hopefully the right one) and take it an hour north.
i need to have them stop at the town circle there, which is where i have the highest chance of finding a taxi in that city.
the taxi will take me to the airport, where i'll fly an hour to jakarta.
once in jakarta, i have to take the airport bus to the end of the line.
after that, i have to walk to another bus station and take that one to a certain mall.
when i am safely in the mall, i am to sms a student from our school who will meet me and lead me to her house, where i'll be staying.
she is korean. her family is korean. she speaks english. her family does not.
her family graciously offered to drive me to the airport the next day to meet amber.
i have given amber VERY explicit instructions on how to get her visa, get through immigration, where to get her luggage, what to do at customs, and where i will be waiting for her.
once i'm with her, we're gonna wait about an hour for yohanes to fly in.
when the three of us are together, we will rent a car to take us to another town where we'll spend 2 nights.
when our time there is up, we'll get on the night train to bring us back to semarang where, hopefully, a car will be waiting to drive us home.

whew. got all that?
i'm still not sure that i do.

i would ask that you please pray for safety and smoothness in all things.
with as many of us are traveling using as many different modes of transportation as we are, there is SO much opportunity for things to go wrong - big and small.
pray that we would be in His hands every step (and every flight and every bus ride and every train ride and every car ride) of the way : )

SIM

i got my driver's license
i got my driver's license
i got my driver's license
HEY HEY HEY HEY!


i hope you like the song i just wrote.
about getting my driver's license.
i've been singing it all day.

the fun never ends

i have an indonesian friend. her name is aya. she is 18 and finishing up high school. she is girlie and boy crazy. her english is equivalent to my indonesian. we really have very little in common. but she likes to hang out with me. probably because i am white. so sometimes we do.

we hung out this weekend, in fact. she wanted to go to a photographer to take our pictures. but i nixed that idea - too expensive. so she suggested we go somewhere and take our own. that's called compromise. she said she was bringing some friends. she also told me to bring my helmet. so she showed up saturday afternoon with 2 high school boys. aya pointed to one bike and told me to get on. i did, and we took off.

so there i was. on the back of some indonesian high school boy's ghetto motorbike. it only had one foot peg for the passenger. balance? rough. and it was tiny, so i was squished up against him the whole time. he spoke no english. indonesian and japanese only. we drove for 45 minutes. i hurt so bad by the time we got there. but the fact that we had taken country back roads with nice views helped. then i burned my leg real bad on his exhaust pipe.

[at this point i need to interject a side note about exhaust pipe burns. they have FINALLY started to put plastic guards on the exhaust pipes of the newer bikes. but on most bikes, the metal exhaust pipe runs exposed along the side of the bike, right where passenger's leg goes. most indonesian girls have a permanent scar on the inside of their right calf from so many burns. i now have two. so imagine putting your hand right on the exhaust pipe of a running car. it burns like heck, right? the nice thing about using your hand is that 1. you can see what you're doing, and 2. the impulse travels pretty quickly to your brain to tell you that something is hurting. when it's your lower leg though, that impulse has to travel so far that by the time it reaches your brain, you are also wondering where that nasty burning flesh smell is coming from. it actually COOKS YOUR FLESH and turns it brown. this is NOT my new hobby.]

back to the story. the place we went to was quite nice. like golf course nice. it was called gua maria (mary's cave). it was apparently some sacred catholic place up the mountain. there were prayer rooms, burial grounds, hanging gardens... and my favorite part - the actual cave in which we found a "replica" of Jesus' tomb. it was so creepy.

the boys were quite charming. they bought us drinks and mostly just left us alone to walk and chat. one boy, bani, is aya's boyfriend. he talked to us a little bit. but atchonk, the boy i rode with, would come nowhere near us. no matter how many times we told him "jangan malu-malu" (don't be shy).

after about an hour, we headed home. but instead of taking the nice, calm back roads, we took the main road. at rush hour. in indonesia. we actually almost died. twice. and our faces were black from bus exhaust by the time we got home.

then aya taught me javanese. i'm learning. little by little.
my repertoire now includes:
thank you
you're welcome
my name is...
whitey
you are very beautiful
i don't want to
who?
what?
tuesday

some useful stuff right there.

and speaking of learning...
i practiced driving a motorbike yesterday.
i'm much better now.
i didn't drive off the road a single time!
and with a passenger too!
i have an appointment with the police to get my license (SIM) tomorrow.

i also made nasi goreng (fried rice) for dinner.
that's gonna need some practice.
it came out a bit on the greasy side.
as in i had to strain the oil off before i could eat it without gagging.
i'll be working on that....

i'm also reading the new testament in indonesian. i've been doing a chapter a day, following these steps.
1. read the whole chapter out loud first, to practice pronunciation and reading speed.
2. read the the chapter again for understanding, writing down any words i don't know.
3. look up all the words i don't know.
4. read the chapter again, translating it aloud into english.

it is really hard.
but i am learning a lot of new words.
some of them are not so useful.
but good to know, nonetheless.

now the cleaning lady is mopping around me.
time to go home.

it's raining men.

so there's several construction projects going on around campus this summer.
one is in the building i live in.
currently, there are 2 apartments at either end of a long-ish building with an empty middle used for storage.
they're working on putting a third apartment in the middle.
so every day except sunday from 7 - 4, my place is swarming with javanese men.
i've joked that for all the singing and chatting they do in javanese, i'm gonna learn it before the summer's end.
too bad i can't really stand being in my house much while they're there.
too much banging and sawing and man-yelling.
and i had to tape my curtains shut so they would stop looking in, so now it's dark in there too.
it's probably ok. keeps me from being too lazy.

another project is going on near the soccer field.
they're working on paving a trail from the school to the field because right now whenever it rains, you have to walk through ankle deep water to get there.
whenever i come to school (so every day), i have to skirt around the guys working there.
and it is always extreeeeeemely awkward.
i'm pretty much used to not really acknowledging men here.
because if i do, they will want to talk, then they will want my phone number, then they will want to get married.
give an inch...
but i feel strange about this. because they're on campus. and i have to walk within a meter of them all. every day.
sometimes there is a guard out there watching them work.
and when he is there, the workers pretty much ignore me completely.
but one day he was not there, and the guys were saying hello and asking my name and being generally very leering.
so i prefer it when he is there. but at the same time, it almost makes it more awkward, because if i were to say hello to them, i would be afraid that he would think i was trying to flirt or start something.
so if the guard is there, i pretty much just feel like i have to keep my eyes on the ground the whole time and never stop walking.
if we were on the street, it wouldn't bother me at all to ignore them.
but here, where i see them twice a day every day... well, it bothers me enough to blog about it, so i guess that says something.
it's just very hard to draw the line between when i need to be polite and when i need to be detached.

switching gears completely....
i mentioned the guards.
usually i refer to them as jagas.
in writing and in talking.
that is the lazy way out.
because in actuality, they are penjaga.

an interesting thing about indonesian language...
you can tell what kind of word something is by how it is put together.
of course there are exceptions, but usually.....
if something ends with -an, it is a noun. (unless it ends with -kan, then it is a verb.)
if something starts with pen-, it is a person.
if something starts with me-, it is a verb.
if something starts with di-, it is a passive verb.

so take for example, the case of the jaga.
jaga is the root word. it means guard.
jagaan is an object that is guarded, typically. the noun.
penjaga is the guard. the person.
menjaga means to guard. the verb.
and dijaga means to be guarded. the passive verb.

so the jagaan is dijaga-ed by the penjaga who menjagas the jagaan.
but now i'm butchering the language, so i'll stop.

indonesian lesson for the day, everyone.