find me a find, catch me a catch

There's these 4 ladies here who have decided to take me under their wing. . . and find me a husband. Four matchmakers. This should be interesting. They are all acting seperately, and until this weekend, none of them knew what the others were planning. But somehow, they all chose the same guy. Two of the ladies were conspiring together this weekend, and I was notified that there will be a spring wedding. I'll keep you posted.

I went to buy pulsa (minutes) for my phone this weekend. Twice. Somehow the first pulsa got eaten by my phone. The first time was pretty standard. I stopped at a warung, told them what carrier I used, and then wrote down my phone number and how much I wanted and they added it to my phone. The second time was a little different and complicated.
Me: Ada pulsa Mentari, pak? (Do you have Mentari phone minutes, Mr?)
Him: Yes. What is your number?
Me: Uhmmm... Kosong-Delapan-Lima-Delapan-Enam-Lima-Kosong-Enam-Satu-Delapan-Dua-Lima.
Him: OK. How much pulsa would you like?
Me: Lima puluh ribu.
Him: Alright. Hold on a minute..... *he uses his phone to send the pulsa to my phone* Check your phone please.
Me: Ah..... Hape di tasku... (My phone is in my bag (which had to be checked at the entrance to the store))
Him: Ohhhhh...... Your pulsa is there.
Me: Terima Kasih!
Him: Thank you.
It wasn't until I'd walked away from the counter that I realized that everything HE said was in English and everything I said was in Indonesian. Dumb, dumb, dumb...

Rumor has it they found a girl's body partway up the mountain last week. Her legs were chewed off. They think it was a tiger. A TIGER!

I ate lunch at Pizza Hut on Friday. PIZZA HUT!

Four new single white girls moved to town last week. Now the single white girl to single white guy ratio in our community is 20:4. That is just great.

I started wrapping Christmas presents last night. It made me kinda happy. I hope the gifts arrive in the States still wrapped. But just in case they don't, I didn't do a very good job. I'll take a picture anyways.

I had Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday.
With a Puerto Rican, an Afghani, a Japanese, 2 Koreans, and 5 Americans - 4 of whom have lived in Indonesia for the past 20 years...

I want to be grown up.
I'm tired of always being the kid.

good morning, sunshine

i spent most of last night basking in the glory of my new best hobby - cream baths.

basically, a cream bath is where you go to a salon and pay a really really good looking asian man $2 to wash and (attempt to) comb your hair. he then puts all kinds of fancy, good smelling creams in your hair and leaves it to soak. however, during that time, he spends about 30 minutes massaging your neck, shoulders, back, and arms with hot oils and lotions. then he shampoos, rinses, and dries your hair, and you are good to go. the whole process takes about an hour and is basically marvelous.

however, when i woke up this morning, i couldn't help but second guess its benefits...

the things we do...

weekend adventure #1. i was sick. nothing serious. just not feeling well. from friday's lunch to sunday's lunch, i ate nothing but rice and oranges.

weekend adventure #2. i spent most of saturday up the mountain. i went to a village to meet a pregnant lady. my friends, charles and marie, are going to take the baby when it's born. it was conceived out of wedlock and it's just not a good situation, so the mother is giving it up. it's a little boy and his name is samuel. he will be here on or around december 4th. we drove up the mountain, parked, then walked further up to get to the house, which was very humble. there were 2 cows in the kitchen and the floor was dirt. they cooked over an open fire and there were holes in the roof and walls. because of the cows in the house, some of the family have ringworm. it was very humbling to sit there with them knowing that our visit meant a lot to them but at the same time, wondering what kinds of parasites i could potentially be picking up. also, it never ceases to amaze me how hospitable people who have nothing can be.

weekend adventure #3. after nothing but rice and oranges for 2 days, i got together with fellow teachers for thanksgiving lunch sunday afternoon. i ate kind of a lot, and then i did not feel good. but it was delicious. there was so much food that the tables were sagging.... i made the corn and deviled eggs. tell me you love me, mom.

weekend adventure #4. hannah and i invented a game. it is called "play badminton while holding an umbrella in a dog poop infested yard barefoot in the rain and try not to break anything". or just "mary poppins badminton". it is not easy, let me tell you.

weekend adventure #5. i went to an indonesian rock concert. (look up the bands - changcuter (pr. chang-chooter) and andra and the backbone. two excellent bands. see below.) it was outdoors. luckily, it wasn't raining by that point; however, it HAD been raining since about 11 o'clock that morning. the field was like a swamp by 7 pm. so we made the best of it, ditched our footwear, rolled our pants up to our knees, and flung mud on everyone. i love being in a crowd. i love being a part. it didn't matter that i only knew one song (one band did an avril lavigne cover). the sound of a thousand voices all singing together is so haunting. i love it. so i just danced along. in ankle deep mud.

weekend adventure #6. well, riding anywhere on a motorbike is always a grand adventure.

easily a top 3 best indonesian weekend. so far.

andra and the backbone














the changcuters

as we drive past a hotel beside the road....
me: *reading sign* front desk and reception.
*brief pause*
me: HEY! that was in english!!
marie: yeah, but you read it with an indonesian accent, so it doesn't count.
me: dang.

what would we do without moms?

i got one of my christmas boxes from mom yesterday.
when boxes arrive at the school, the jagas (guards) open and check them.
we are very secure.

so i guess the box arrived at about the end of lunch break time for the staff here.
everyone was coming through the front gates, back to work.
the jaga post is right there, and they were going through my box.

guess what mom sent?
underwear.
guess who saw them?
everyone.
guess what i have heard?
"nice underwear"
guess who thinks this is hilarious?
me.

thanks, mom.
i am famous.

there is a man
outside my door
right now
mowing the lawn
with a pair of pruning shears

There's a first time

Things I have done for the first time in the last week:

Ate from a roadside stand
Ate eel
Ate frog legs
Was in a minor car wreck
Went to Jogja
Went to Kopeng
Was taken to the police station
Road a motorbike outside Salatiga
Bartered in Indonesian
Bought Christmas gifts before Christmas Eve
Went dirtbiking. Sort of.
Went to an Indonesian orphanage
Ate at an Indonesian Wendy's
Drank at an Indonesian Starbucks
Ate martabak manis
Rode a becak (TWICE!)
Rode a dokar
Bought pants that actually fit me. In Asia.
Got a message from Zach
Was electrocuted by my computer so badly my heart stopped beating

I call that a successful week.

weekend adventures

so i spent saturday with some students in jogja (the city formerly known as yogyakarta) to do some christmas shopping. i had heard previously that this was the place to go for shopping. that is correct. the way there was adventure in itself. during the 2 hour drive, we got pulled over and taken to the police station where our driver was made to pay a fine. we later rear ended another vehicle, which is not good news. if white people are involved in - or anywhere around - an accident, they are expected to pay for it. there was no damage, but me and the other white girl in the car threw ourselves on the floor of the vehicle immediately, so as to not be seen by anyone. we heard lots of yelling happening outside the car, as our driver argued with the driver of the other vehicle. i peeked up once and saw that, in typical javanese fashion, they were smiling at each other as they yelled. once all the mishaps were out of the way, we spent the vast majority of our day walking down streets bartering with the proprietors of various tables piled high with merchandise. (note - i bartered. in indonesian. this is a milestone.) as of yesterday, i am *almost* done christmas shopping. now to get it all shipped. sigh.... after we tired of walking and arguing, we went to (drumroll please).... WENDY'S! that's right. wendy's. as in dave thomas. as in home of the frosty. i might have gotten a little carried away and ordered rp. 60,000 worth of food. which is a lot. all the things i missed: chicken sandwiches, french fries, frosties, cups of chili... mmmm..... and it only got better from there. next, we went to starbucks! i've never really been much of a starbucks fan, not being a coffee drinker myself. but still. finding little things from home is an emotional experience. so i had a hazelnut steamer. because you can't go to starbucks for the first time in months and not buy anything. duh....

in other news, this was our school's service weekend. all the students and faculty participated in some capacity or another. some did beautification projects around the campus, but most went out into the community. we had a team go do some landscaping work for a local church. one team organized and led a day of fun for a boatload of compassion kids (as in compassion international.... like those kids with huge brown eyes that look at you longingly from brochure covers). a team of about 40 students went to a nearby orphanage to paint (this was my team). some students set up a prayer vigil here at the school and served by praying for the teams all day. one team traveled 12 hours by bus to a place called madura, off the east coast of java. i don't know much about madura, but i know that it is 99% muslim. the girls who went had to wear pants, long sleeves, and head coverings the whole time they were there. they spent three days there, returning at 4 this morning. i heard reports that while they were there, they had so many opportunities to share Christ with students they encountered. their "reason" for being there was to teach english, but our kids came back with so many stories of muslim students hungry for the Truth and asking questions and many, many seeds planted there. now to pray for roots....

funny story from the orphanage. i took a picture of a little boy holding a baby girl, and the boy, having seen me take the picture, came over to have a look at it. he motioned with his hand that he wanted to see the rest of the pictures in my camera. so keeping the strap securely around my neck, i sat down beside him and began to flip through other pictures i had taken throughout the day. we eventually reached the end of those, and by that time, there were about 4 other little kids crowded on my lap, on my shoulders, and on the little boy next to me. i had many other pictures on my camera, besides the ones from that day. the little boy had figured out (by watching me) how to operate the slide show function, so he deftly slid his hand under mine, and began to look through other pictures. all 700 of them. he would often stop and point to a picture and look at me with a questioning expression. and every time, i was able to explain to him in indonesian what the picture was of (a fish, my brother, my house, food, etc....). This went on for quite some time. By this point, there were maybe 8 kids crowded around us now. The camera strap was still around my neck, but the camera was in the hands of the little boy, and there were about 2 kids crammed in between us. I was getting a crick. I made a bold move and removed the strap from my neck and put it around the neck of the little boy. He looked like I'd just crowned him king of the world. We kept looking at pictures, and I kept explaining them to him. Eventually all the other kids wandered away until it was just he and I again; him pointing and me explaining. I was feeling pretty good about my Indonesian skills by this point. I mean, we just looked through 800 or so pictures, and this little boy knew what every single one was. And then a student walked up to me and said, "Miss, you know he's deaf, right?" Danget.

I wonder why I started capitalizing halfway through that last paragraph....?

public transportation

So last night was a bit of an adventure. Starting today, our school is sending out service teams to various places. Some are traveling east to Madura to work with students in a strictly Muslim part of Indonesia. Most are working locally. I will be going with a group tomorrow to an orphanage in Bawen to paint and love on some kids. (But not to paint on some kids.) The other math teacher, Amanda, is heading up the trip, but there are a ton of kids signed up to go, so I volunteered to serve as another chaperone. Amanda heard of some needs the orphanage has, so we decided to go into town after school yesterday to choose paint colors and to pick up some things we thought they could use. For example, there are 120 children and a handful of widows who live there, and they don't have enough spoons at meal time. The kids share their spoons. So we bought them spoons.
Something you have to understand about shopping in Indonesia is that there is no Wal-Mart. Shopping here is like the opposite of Wal-Mart. It is the anti-Wal-Mart. If you need 6 things, you cannot go to one place. However, if you need 1 thing, you will likely go to 6 places. On occasion you will find exactly what you need on the first try. But those are the times when you get what you want off the shelf, and you take it to the cashier, feeling pretty good about your lucky find. But the cashier rattles off something in Indonesian and points you back to the area of the store where you grabbed the item. So you shuffle back there, wondering what on earth she just said to you. A salesperson indicates that you should approach them, so you do, and they take your item and try to find where it came from. Just as you begin to think that they are putting your merchandise back on the shelf, thereby indirectly forbidding you to buy it from them, they will locate the item and its price and then go and write you a sales slip, which they will then hand to you and point back to the cashier. So then you take the piece of paper back to the cashier and pay her. Then you go back to the other salesperson who by now has bagged your item for you and is waiting with a smile on their face for you to come get your crap. Then, and only then, you may finally leave the store.
So anyways, back to last night. Amanda and I bought some things, traipsing all over downtown to find what we needed. I even found a pair of pants! And they fit! Hooray for my first new clothes in months. That's beside the point. Something else you need to know about Salatiga is that all public transportation leads to Ramayana - the biggest store in the shopping district of town. It is the closest thing we have to a department store. And pretty much all of the other tokos (shops) extend down the street from Ramayana for as far as the eye can see. So Amanda and I started at the big R and worked our way down the street getting what we needed as we went into various little tokos. As dusk approached, we realized that we needed to get back to Ramayana in order to catch an angkota home. An angkota is my preferred mode of public transportation, and up until last night, it was my ONLY mode of public transportation. An angkota is a robin's egg blue mini-van type thing. On the inside, it has a low padded bench along the walls and a metal floor. It comfortably seats about 10, if you're OK with cozying up to your neighbor. We fit 21 once. So every angkota has a number painted on the front and back of it, and each number runs a different route (like buses in the states). And no matter where they are coming from, their routes all end at Ramayana.
Angkotas stop running at 5:30, and as darkness approached, we finally realized that it was about 5:23 and we were close to a kilometer down the street from Ramayana. So we start hurrying back up the street. About halfway there, all hell broke loose. And by that, I mean it started pouring down rain. So there we were, 2 white girls, heavy laden with shopping bags full of spoons and things for orphans, trying to run on wet tile sidewalks (which is comparable to trying to run on ice), through the pouring rain, past the beggars beside the road, through some family's dinner on the sidewalk, until we finally made it to Ramayana. We began running frantically around the few angkotas that were left there, looking for the number 9. No such luck. They had all left already. Amanda and I just stood there looking at each other hopelessly, and behind her, through the pouring rain, I saw our salvation, meager as it was.... A becak!
Welcome to Indonesian mode of transportation number 2. The becak (bay-chak). It is essentially a bicycle rickshaw made to seat one (or 2 children) and powered by unfortunate middle aged men smaller than me. We jumped in. It was dry. We did not fit. Half my butt was in Amanda's lap, and both our laps were filled with spoons. I have always been mildly terrified of becaks in general, mostly because they drive right down the street going about 2 km per hour while buses and lorries fly right by them. Having my first becak experience downtown in the dark in the rain did not inspire confidence. Before our driver even had a chance to don his rain gear and begin pedaling, I was begging Jesus to spare our lives. Amanda had a good laugh. As we began moving down the street, it quickly became evident that it was going to take us about 2 hours to get home at this rate. So we decided to look for a dokar.
Mode of transportation number 3. A dokar is a horse drawn covered carriage. And by "horse", I actually mean "unhealthy looking pony that will probably drop dead from hunger and exhaustion at any moment". Looking for a dokar was a trick in itself. Our becak driver had been gracious enough to seal us into our seats. They usually just have a small awning over the rider to keep the sun off. Our guy had huge plastic sheets that he had thrown over the awning and tied underneath the seat after we got in. Amanda was finally able to shove her head out into the rain and did eventually spot a dokar sitting down a sidestreet. So we quicly paid our becak driver, and ran through even more pouring rain down a dark street where we found not one but TWO idle dokars. We quickly assessed which pony was the least worm-ridden, and we jumped in. From there, it took only about 10 minutes and 75 cents each to get home. 10 minutes well spent on discussing politics. 75 cents well spent on not walking through the pouring rain. The end.

what have i done?

did some research this morning.

indonesia is home to.....
220 species of bats
166 species of rats

and 460 species of snakes
only a handful of which are NOT venomous
in fact, if you look at a list of the world's deadliest snakes....
most of them live in australia/southeast asia
oh, indonesia....

oh, and sri lanka has the most deaths by snakebite per year.
just for the record.