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.