so we made some friends.
zubs and jay.
they're from south africa.
they were in our car that took us white water rafting.
we've been inseparable ever since.

the day we met them, we invited them over for dinner.
we cooked spaghetti.
but then the power went out, so we couldn't cook.
so we sat in the dark and talked.
right as we were in the middle of expressing our relief over bali not having 17 mosques sounding call to prayer right outside our backdoor 5 times a day, we discovered that they are muslim.
oops.
we then also realized that we had put pork sausage in the spaghetti sauce.
oops again.
so we had some good laughs.
then we had some good talks.
we've had lots of those in the past few days.
and soon they're coming to visit us in salatiga.
because they're world traveling right now, on their way to lombok for three weeks next, and what's a little jaunt to our town gonna set them back?
nada.

i'm excited for more good talks.
and some pork-less meals.

hi.

hey hey hey hey

I'm in Bali!
It's like another country.
Everyone speaks English.
And I haven't seen this many whiteys since I left the States!
Haven't found any Americans yet.... Everyone is Australian or European.
I've impressed the locals with my Indonesian abilities, which is nice.
At the very least, I get better prices on stuff.

Well, I should go now.
This internet usage is costing me a whole 1 cent per minute.
And I smell rough.
Just got back from the beach.
THE BEACH!

and now the moment you've all been waiting for

monday was the school christmas celebration (natalan) that the national staff put on. every year, they choose some lucky new teachers (maybe they assume we're too naive to know what they're up to) to be greeters for the blessed event. naturally, i was one of the "lucky ones". i got to spend three hours getting layers of makeup put on, my hair teased and hairsprayed, my torso bound up so i fit in the corset, and jammed into a sarong so tight i couldn't walk. and oh yeah, high heels were involved. i spent the next several hours shaking people's hands, saying "selamat datang" (welcome), "selamat sore" (good afternoon), and "selemat natal" (merry christmas). what a great time. hotjaga ended up with my camera, via yohanes, and he did a really good job with it, so that's exciting. so here's some pictures for you. i do like to spread christmas cheer, but try not to laugh too hard. someone actually told me, "If we were in L.A., I would probably mistake you for a man."

Disgusted by our outfits....




















My, what big hair you have....
















Paul: This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
Me: That's what I'm counting on.

the rain is getting to me

I spent a good part of the morning de-molding. It started with my backpack. Last night, I looked down at it and realized that things were growing all over it. So I threw it in the shower to sit overnight. This morning, I saw that the two pairs of leather sandals I bought in Africa had whole biospheres growing on them. Then I checked my pair of Champions I left by the door after I got them soaked through (I had to wring out my socks) while walking in the rain last week. Sure enough. Green. Inside and out. So I got those things all washed out and threw them out on the lawn to roast in the sun for a few hours. Then I went to eat breakfast. I went to cut off a hunk of bread from this most delicious loaf I have. And I mistook my cutting board for some sort of Terrier sitting on my counter. So I scrubbed that, then left it to soak in bleach in the sink. I ate my bread, then went to fold some laundry that my pembantu hadn't gotten to last week. As I was hanging up a skirt in my lemari (wardrobe type thing), my hand brushed against a Golden Retriever. A WHAT?! In my lemari?! No, actually, it was one of my dresses. Quite fuzzy, I'd say. That went into the hamper. Immediately. Ugh.

"Welcome to rainy season." - Marie

Meet Dave

So the other day, I watched Meet Dave, an American movie done in English. For some reason it also had English subtitles. So that's easy enough for the subtitle writers, right? I mean, just write down what the actors are saying, and you're done. No translating or anything. These guys take their jobs pretty seriously though, and they made it a LOT harder than it needed to be. I actually suspect that the movie was first translated into Indonesian and then BACK to English, because the supposedly English subtitles were actually a mix of Indonesian words and bad English grammar. Some of my favorites go as follows.... The subtitle is in quotes, with the actual line in parentheses.
"Permanent at your place!" (Stay right where you are!)
"This stood planet unanimous with us." (This planet rocks.)
"I shall blow up your head." (I don't know you that well.)
"Security outside sky." (Homeland security.)
"I am captain jam in." (I'm stuck.)

Today was the last day of finals, and all the kids left. So it will be pretty quiet around here for the next 3 weeks. Or at least it'll be as quiet as the most densely populated island in the world can be. I got some sweet Christmas gifts from students... One gave me one of those giant plastic candy canes filled with little candies. Yum! One gave me a loaf of homemade bread, which I can't wait to eat. I got some incredible homemade cards and candies. However, what was possibly the most memorable gift was the plastic bag filled with Korean food, complete with three bags of seasoned seaweed, a dish of noodles (like ramen, but infinitely better), some small candies, packaged cakes, and, of course, chopsticks. Thank you, Glory.

teacherhood

I've been grading papers. That's right - the math teacher. Grading papers. I assigned my two Algebra II classes a project.... They had to do/count/measure something 10 times, plot the points on a coordinate plane, then use the graph to find an equation for whatever it was that they originally did. Then they had to write a paper on it. The only stipulation was that the graph couldn't be a straight line, because that would be too easy. So, for example, several of them had the idea to exercise hard for awhile, then stop and take their pulse every minute for ten minutes.... It declines nearly exponentially until it plateaus at the resting heart rate. At any rate, some of these papers are real beauties......

"To start this project, I had to get data first. I was thinking about what to do. Finally, I decided to time every three pushups I do. I had to do that for ten times. It was very tiring. After I got all the data, I plotted those points on a graph, and it was a line. I was very disappointed. I did thirty pushups. That was not even funny."

"As I think to those ugly times, I can feel the pain inside my stomach." (This from the boy who timed himself drinking 100 ml of water 10 times. That's an entire liter in less than 5 minutes!)

"While I was doing it, I spilled water all over my shirt, only because it was the teacher's water bottle. . . When I was doing it, she took pictures with the big, black camera." (Same boy)

"After finishing, I went to the restroom three times at school, but before I finished, I went twice. At home, I went to the toilet five times, which makes it that I went to the toilet 10 times after I did this project." (Still the same boy. Obviously.)

"I'm glad Christmas break is almost here! Yay! Merry Christmas, Miss!"

"Since if I plug in 10 for x in my equation I will get 51.45 for my heart rate. If I keep adding up the minutes, I'll eventually die in one hour!"

"The Effects of Gravity on a Scooter and Rider with Little Forward Motion Caused by the Rider on a Fairly Evenly Sloped, Rough Road. " (One kid's project title)

"Then, taking long, comfortable strides (since I was not confident in my own ability to keep my strides constant), he would walk back up to the original starting point while counting his steps."

"So that means that if I did 35 jumping jacks, my hart rate would be 1,276 hart beats per minute."

"I seriously didn't know what to do for this massive project. I figured that checking my pulse ten times every minute after an exercise would be the easiest of all. I went down to the gym and played basketball with my little dorm fellows. After thirty minutes, I still didn't feel like my heart was beating faster, so I played my favorite sport, soccer, instead. But because I was goalkeeping, my pulse slowed down completely. So I ran a suicide and four laps." (By Steve, the best goalie ever who is moving to America in a week and I cried like a baby when I found out)

"Readers beware, without a high (indeed, a higher) level of mathematical education, one will not be able to comprehend the intensive mathematical processes that I used to discover the effects of a power on the number 2."

"I then proceeded to attempt to plot this data on a graph. It was rather difficult, seeing as how one point goes up to (8, 256). However, I persevered through the trial because, as Paul put it, 'Consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance' (Paul/God 1)."

"I then hoped desperately that the teacher is in a humorous mood when she reads this and grades it.... I hope any points she takes off will be justified by an error in calculations on my part, and not her prejudice against creative writing and humor expressed through an Algebra II project 'typed description' (Teacher 1)"

"This is my equation. Take it away from this scrap of paper, apply it to your life, and you will find success in all you do."

JiHyun, the water drinking wonder. See the pain etched on his face.




















Kang running circles around my room to get his pulse up after doing pushups resulted in a straight line, as taken by Jimin.

you pierced your WHAT?!

so when i was 14, i got my first piercing. in the top of my left ear. in terminal tower. a building that is actually sinking. in cleveland. 8 years ago, back when nobody actually had their cartilage pierced. back when i was cool. even though i was only getting one hole put in me, they had no protocol for selling only one earring, so i had to buy a pair.

i used that same pair when i got my second hole at age 17. well, i used one of them. in a tattoo parlor in fort wayne. i just had the guy sterilize them and put one right through my ear, below the first one.

so last night at 10 o'clock, when my judgement was probably already impaired, i decided i wanted to pierce my earlobes, like normal girls. i mean, i already bought some sweet earrings in africa last year, so why not?

in keeping with tradition, i decided to use the same studs as the last two times. but i needed to somehow clean them first. i didn't really have any cleaning agents in my house. except for bleach. but i didn't want to shove something bleach soaked into my body. so i used listerine instead. i checked the label. third ingredient: alcohol. i don't know if this is the same listerine they market in the states, but it's powerful. i have to water it down to use it or else it burns too bad and i can feel it decroding through my tongue. i figured that would suffice for the earrings.

so i let them soak for an hour while i graded papers, like a good teacher. then i dried them off, numbed my ears with ice cubes until i couldn't feel my head, and the rest is history. they didn't even bleed. i did good. real good.

like mother, like daughter.

don't think too hard

Yesterday I was planning on teaching Spanish class the Spanish lyrics to some Christmas carols. So I chorded the songs out, brought my guitar to school, and was sitting on my desk before class, tuning and playing through the songs to make sure I remembered them. JiHoon, one of the Spanish students came in and came up to my desk and watched me for a minute, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket and began fishing through it. I wasn't really paying attention to him, until he handed me a 1000 bill.
JiHoon: Sorry, I don't have any coins.
Me: What's that for?
JiHoon: You're playing guitar.
So I should be a street musician. I could make money.

Another gecko died in my room yesterday. Right on my desk. He was ailing pretty badly, and having some serious respiratory and bowel issues, but there's a slight chance that I was the one who actually put an end to it all. On accident. The cleaning man is a witness, and he was the one to pronounce the little guy dead (I now know how to say "the gecko is dead" in Indonesian. What a learning experience. "Cecak mati") and take care of the body. This is 4 geckos that have died in here, I think. I checked with the previous teacher, who is now in the States, and he said he never found dead geckos. It just must be me.

feelings

in an amazing feat of self injury, i somehow managed to trip on perfectly flat dirt and fall in such a way that i scraped up the top of my foot and sliced the skin in between my toes. so now every time i take a step and my toes move even slightly, the open wounds rub the other toes and it feels like something sharp is stuck in between my toes. kate is right - these kinds of things happen only to me.

remember my friends, charles and marie? - the ones who are getting the baby. well, sometimes i just have feelings about things. and in this case, i wasn't the only one. some of us... we knew. charles' dad has been sick for awhile. we knew his dad would die and the baby would be born all at once. and that is exactly what happened. the mother went in to labor as mr. h took his last breaths, and an hour later (ONE hour!) samuel was born. charles and marie went from saying their goodbyes at a hospital in semarang to pick up their son in a village near kopeng. he is beautiful. i held him. he is dark, dark, dark. i'm convinced his dad must be papuan. God had His hand in this. maybe both of His hands. every little detail was just as we had prayed...

conversation last week at lunch:
carolyn: (one of the new girls) have you learned much indonesian since you've been here?
me: here and there.... i can barely get by, but i can't really have a conversation.
*peco, a grown man, climbs under the table*
mega: orang gila! (crazy person)
me: ¡es verdad! (it's true)
carolyn: well, it sounds like you speak it pretty well.
me: thanks. that was spanish.

jam karet

12:00 PM
yohanes: you wanna go to lunch with us?
me: sure, where at?
yohanes: kayu arum
me: oh... is that the lunch with the family of the new student?
yohanes: yeah
me: is it gonna take forever?
yohanes: no
me: ok. i'll come. sounds good.

4:00 PM
yohanes: i think that was the longest lunch i've ever had.

Wedding

I have this friend named Phydel who got married this weekend. She called me up on Thursday and asked if I could help. I've never been to an Indonesian wedding, but I've heard the horror stories... I was hesitant, but I have this moral issue about saying no to a bride on her wedding day. I just can't do it. And plus, I just plain love the girl. So I said yes.


The original plan was to have me dress in traditional clothes and serve as the greeter/guest book attendant at the reception. I pointed out that I really don't speak Indonesian, and she assured me that if I knew "selamat datang" (welcome), "terima kasih" (thank you), and "silakan" (please do), that would suffice. I don't know if I was more intimidated by the thought of having to speak a language I don't speak all day or having to wear a traditional outfit...


Luckily, I had to do neither. It was decided that my American... umm... figure... probably wouldn't fit in an Indonesian corset. And I had my own clothes in the appropriate wedding colors. So I just wore those. And when I got to the reception, there was already someone else greeting, so I laid low and hoped no-one would notice that I wasn't doing my job.


However, this does not mean that I was off the hook. The day before the wedding, I was talking to Phydel, and I mentioned to her that if she wanted, I could take some pictures in the morning of people getting ready before the actual photographers got there. That made her happy. So that made me happy.


I got up and dressed at 6 on Saturday morning, and a girl who looked to be about 12 came and picked me up on a motorbike. I thought we were going to die on the way to Phydel's house, but we made it. The girl dropped me off at the front gate and sped away. There were crazy women everywhere running around trying to get everything ready. And none of them spoke a lick of English. So I finally found the groom, Wisnu, and was able to ask him where I should go. He took me to the room where Phydel was getting ready. She was in there with a few other girls and her hairdresser/makeup artist. We laughingly referred to him as "the woman" all day. He was probably more ladylike than me. He also knew how to curse in English. Oh good, my native tongue.

I watched Phydel get ready for a bit, but then she decided I should go take pictures of everything else that was happening. So I left the safety of English speaking people and ventured out into the house. However, there seemed to be nothing happening and nobody was around. So I returned to Fidel and explained the situation. After some thought, she remembered that all the ladies had gone next door to get ready. So she sent me there.

Awkward moment of awkward moments. A little white girl with a big camera walks into a room full of Indonesian women frantically trying to make their skin whiter and their hair bigger. And of course, none of them had any clue who I was and none of them spoke any English. So they decided to feed me. Bread. And bread. And bread. Then one of them thought to ask if I wanted a drink. I said yes please. So they poured me a glass of tea. But after much discussion and staring at the glass of tea, it must have been decided that it wasn't good enough, because they set it down and poured another glass. The same discussion ensued and ended with them opening the tea pot and taking turns peering in. It must have all been faulty, because I never did end up getting a drink. I also never ended up taking many pictures either, because I raised my camera once to take a picture and one lady started yelling. Maybe they didn't want the white stranger taking pictures of them half made-up? I don't know. So I sat there in uncomfortable silence for about 45 minutes until a little girl came in and told me Phydel needed me.

At this point, the professional photographers had arrived, so Phydel asked me to take some more formal portraits with Wisnu and other family and friends. I acquiesced, much to the chagrin of the pros who shot me murderous looks from across the room. After many pictures and some sort of formal ceremony that involved the bride, groom, and female family members marching down the driveway while a man prayed in a very loud voice, we all got in cars and drove to the church.

I was directed toward one of the last cars to leave. We left, and about 5 minutes later, the driver declared that he actually had no idea where he was going. Shortly thereafter, we realized that every single person in the car was from out of town. So they turned to me. The foreigner. Luckily, I had been to the church once before, and I kind of-sort of-relatively knew where it was at. And luckily, I know how to say "left" and "straight" in Indonesian, but not "right". So also luckily, one girl in the car spoke some English. We made it. Eventually.

And the rest is history...

last week i was out to dinner with about 10 friends.
i was sitting at the end of the table, and everyone was laughing and talking.
as i sat there looking at them, i had a moment.
a moment in which i realized that if i were not sitting right there, nothing would be different.
if i had never come to indonesia, they would all still be sitting exactly where they were sitting, laughing and talking.
i could mentally remove myself from that table, from that restaurant... and everything was the same.
it was a little disconcerting.

but then i began to wonder about how many millions of other places in the world i'm not at right now, and how many other things are the same, without knowledge of my existence. i want to go to all of them. life is not quite long enough.