weekenders

adventure 1.
went to semarang all day saturday. last time i'll be there for awhile, likely. i usually go with chuck and marie, but they're moving into the dorm this week (so that the current dorm parents can return to their home country to have a baby!). so that means some serious ball and chain for them. we took the 3 kids with us (big mistake) plus one extra. 2 of them got carsick on the way there and whined the whole time. the baby was mostly fine, but by the middle of the day when he still couldn't fall asleep, he decided to pretty much just scream for the rest of the trip. a white girl carrying a black baby gets a lot of attention. a white girl carrying a screaming black baby gets even more. luckily for me, charles and marie carried him most of the time... it was bethanie's birthday, so she felt entitled to grab everything she saw off the shelves then get all cry-ey faced when you told her she couldn't have it, even if it WAS her bithday. then when josh was playing at the kids play station at the mall, he had some sort of freak accident that involved him falling from a high place, getting ALL the wind knocked out of him, and knocking himself unconscious. fantastic. oh well. got what i needed. glad to be able to help out with the kids. was ready for bed by 8 o'clock.

adventure 2.
bethanie's birthday party. 10 screaming kindergarteners. i designated myself camera person, thus minimizing contact with the little people. karma was swift and sure. a monkey man came around and decided to put on a show for us. this involved getting his trained monkey out of its cage and beating a drum furiously while the monkey performed a variety of tricks for about 10 minutes. those of you who know me well know that i HATE monkeys deep down in my very soul due to some tragic experiences while living in africa that i'd rather not talk about right now. so obviously, i was less than thrilled that one showed up at the party. but add to that the fact that i am pretty sure that both the man and the monkey were demon possessed... makes for one scary party. the kids thought it was hilarious when the monkey danced and rode a bike around and whatever (btw, the monkey's head and eyes were twitching the whole time, but not in unison). i tried to slowly back away from the evil creature... and backed right into a parked motorbike. and for the third time in six months, i managed to melt the skin off my leg. in retrospect, that was probably less painful than having more direct contact with all the kids all afternoon. for everyone.

adventure 3.
bike ride with yohanes. we ended up at some body of water outside town in a small village where i was the only white person in sight. i call it a body of water, because i'm not really sure what else to call it. it was a river that ran into and back out of a small pond, but parts of both were walled or stoned off to form a variety of pools. yo called it a swamp, but it was actually very clean water. there were lots of people down there washing dishes, doing laundry, and bathing. so basically everyone was staring at me while i was trying not to stare at them. because seriously - in what muslim country is it ok for men and women to bathe in public together? geez. at any rate, it was REALLY pretty there, and possibly the first clean body of water i've seen on java. oh, that place is also very spiritual for javanese. a javanese hero once killed a crocodile there like a thousand years ago, and they believe that the place gives special powers. during the full moon, people will come soak in the waters for 6 - 12 hours so that they can absorb some of his power. after i got tired of mostly naked people, we rode around for awhile, through some villages, then back into town. we ate a lovely dinner of jackfruit curry and whole catfish and curried eggs and peppers and white rice and orange juice (total cost for both of us: $1.80), then spent some time at our adoptive family's house where we watched the rocketeer on the projector. that was one of my favorite movies when i was little! i probably haven't seen it since i was 12. oh, and we also discovered that the largest snake in the world lives just a few hours away from here! that's definitely on my list of things to see before i leave. so all in all, it was a good end to a very exhausting weekend.