we ween

so after a weekend that was a LOT loonnnnnnger and more exhausting than it needed to be (yes, i'm complaining a little bit... and for no reason, really, because i wasn't even playing in the tournament), OUR BOYS ARE THE IISSAC BASKETBALL CHAMPIONS!!!! and girls got second place!!!

reasons why this is important.
1. only 3 players on our 13 player boys team are NOT seniors. meaning this is probably our last chance in awhile to win the tournament.
2. six international schools from all over java and bali came to our school this weekend for the tournament. not all the schools are Christian schools - in fact, only two of them are. both our girls and boys teams did an awesome job representing Christ on and off the court. and they kicked butt at the same time.
3. our boys ALSO won the IISSAC (indonesian international small school activities conference... or something like that) soccer tournament. they've brought us home TWO trophies this year!
4. we almost won last year, but one of our best players (this year's mvp) broke his leg in two placess during the semifinals. it was kind of gross. it was good for all our senior boys to finally have that win!
5. me and the sophomore girls i was sitting with almost screamed our lungs out during the championship game. that alone is reason for why we should win. we were the loudest.

i am so impressed by our students. they are awesome at life.

mirror, mirror on the wall

well, tomorrow i will embark on what could potentially be my greatest adventure yet. granted, it has a lot of work to do to beat last summer’s backpacking trip (which i highly regard as one of my life’s greatest adventures thus far), but why not go into it optimistically, right?

i leave salatiga tomorrow morning around 5 (about 10 hours from now), and i STILL don’t know how i’m getting to the airport. and in a fashion which is highly atypical for me, i haven’t even started packing yet. (i really like to pack early the day before i leave, then ponder what i have packed, remove as many things as possible and pack again, then rethink and then remove more things and repack. it’s like a game. how few things can i take and still not smell like a hobo? somehow, i rarely beat this game. i tend to err on the side of NOT wanting to be mistaken for a hobo and i pack too much.)

from the airport,  i have a 1 hour flight to jakarta where i have a 4 hour layover. this is the only part of the entire trip that i’m dreading. i hate hate hate the jakarta airport. it is dirty, it is hot, it is NOT tourist friendly, everyone wants a bribe, it is impossible to navigate, the inter-terminal buses will sit at one terminal for an HOUR to wait for more passengers, and etc and etc. also, being a white girl traveling alone tends to attract inordinate amounts of unwanted attention. sigh… however, i heard that there is now a krispy kreme in the terminal i’ll be in. so hurrah for that!

wow, three paragraphs, and i’ve only made it through the first 6 hours of my week long trip. i’ll pick it up here, i promise. from jakarta, i’ll be flying to medan (on the island of sumatra), where i’ll meet ron (my southern hemisphere dad), gentur (my old friend), and wiwik (his new bride). tomorrow night, i’ll be driving with gt and wiwik to turutung, to ron’s farm.  ron will meet us there the following day.  i’ll spend the week there helping out in any capacity i can.

beyond that, i really don’t know much. this is what i have been told: 1) bring sheets. 2) it is colder there than salatiga. 3) don’t count on having lunch.  that’s about all. i feel ultra unprepared, mostly because i don’t know what to prepare for. i’m trying really hard to be ok with that.

i’m going to be staying in the back part of gt and wiwik’s house. ron is looking at buying some goats for the farm, and i’m hoping to be able to help with that while i’m there. goats is something i can do. also, i believe there are 6 more cows (recently imported from australia) that are due any day now. i’m really hoping some of that happens this week so i can be there to help out if needed. i’m also hoping to have some projects to work on. maybe putting in fence or some small construction projects, but we’ll see what needs done when i get there.

i’ll probably be back to civilization next sunday. ins’allah?

here are some apprehensions that i am having that i would GREATLY appreciate prayer for while i’m gone.

1. first and foremost, please pray that i would be able to be a blessing and a bringer of encouragement. i know that gt and wiwik have been stressed with everything there is to do there and discouraged with the lack of workers (they’re currently the ONLY people working there full time). please pray that my eyes would be opened to opportunities to help out beyond just what i’m expecting to do (i sometimes have trouble with this). and please pray for wisdom for me. i’ve never helped birth a calf before…

2. pray for the living situation. back before gt and wiwik got married, when yohanes, gt, and i would run around together all night long, i think that some jealousy developed on wiwik’s part toward me. i don’t know if any of that has abated since their wedding – i haven’t seen them since they moved right after getting married. but i’ll be living in close quarters with them. also, wiwik just found that she is 2 weeks pregnant (hurrah!), so there are vast amounts of unusual hormones and morning sickness running around that house. please just pray that things go smoothly. we’ve all been very upfront with ron about the situation, so he is aware of it, and ready to step in should anything come up.

3. please pray for the farm and the ministry that they have there. right now, it’s in its baby stages. several more workers should be moving there throughout the course of this year, and ron and his family will be moving there full time after this school year as well. God has given them a vision for several areas of ministry that they would like to get off the ground besides just the agricultural aspect of the ministry. maybe i can help with some of that this week too!

4. this has been the most frustrating and emotionally and mentally challenging week i have had since moving to indonesia. to top it off, i’ve been sick this weekend. please pray that this trip would be a time of relaxation for me and that all health problems would cease.

well, i think that’s about all. thank you for prayers. and i’ll be sure to take lots of pictures and write an overly talkative report all about it when i get back!

there is power

so i had this student last year. her name is lainy. she was a junior. and she got really sick. so sick that she missed about half the school year. she would have migraines so bad that she would black out and give herself black eyes. she would not be able to eat for days at a time because everything made her throw up. she would not be able to get up and walk because of dizziness. she could not sleep through the night. we were lucky if we saw her one or two days out of each week. sometimes she couldn't come to school for a couple weeks straight. sometimes she came with crutches. sometimes she came with huge bruises. sometimes she came with an IV. a lot of the days when she tried to come, she ended up in the nurse's office curled up in bed before the day was half over. she missed so much school that this year she is having to retake the class she was in last year. she went to america over the summer and got some medical treatment. no doctor could tell her what is wrong with her. but they gave her some medicine to take anyways. this year has been better, but she still misses 1 - 2 days out of each week. she inherited her dad's weak knees and she's also had some other leg issues lately that resulted her being on and off crutches for quite awhile. this has been really hard on her... besides the obvious reasons, she also plays basketball and hasn't been able to be part of the team lately due to her injuries. also, the annual basketball tournament (IISSAC) with other indonesian international schools is this weekend - hosted by our school. it is the biggest event of the year for the teams.

thursday, lainy came to class without crutches. i thought it was awfully fast for her to suddenly be better. but i didn't really know what had happened until just now when i read something she posted on facebook. i copied and pasted it here...

"So I thought that I would write out what happened to me the other day (Wednesday to be exact) because a lot of people have been asking me about it and I think that God’s amazingness needs to be shared!
So I have been on crutches for the last 2 weeks because I may have broken my toe, and I twisted my ankle… and most of you know that I have bad knees so I have been limping around school all year. I have also been having migraines all the time and haven’t slept well in months because of this.

Well on Wednesday this guy named Seth came to our school and asked if he could pray for me to be healed. So, my parents and coach came with Seth and prayed for me. Seth prayed once and asked me how I felt, and the numbness in my foot was getting less. It was the craziest feeling ever! It was like God was just holding my foot and making it well. So then Seth prayed again, and again asked me how I felt. This time the numbness was all gone and I could move my toes, which I couldn’t do before. So by now I was kind of in shock and freaking out because right before my eyes God was healing me and it was so amazing!!! Then Seth prayed again, and when he finished this time he said “get up” so I did. And I could walk!!!!! I walked and jumped and ran and there was no pain at all!!! My whole foot felt completely perfect! My ankle and my toe and the side of my foot… the whole thing felt perfect! So then we prayed again praising God and thanked Him. Then he prayed over me again that all the issues I was still dealing with from last year would be gone. I didn’t have a headache all day! And I slept all night!!!!
My knees and ankle and foot and head and back and neck… ALL of the pain is GONE!!!!!!!!!!

God healed me and made me whole again! I haven’t stopped smiling since!!!! God is sooooo good! And I get to play in IISSAC… God’s timing is sooo perfect! He healed me the day we had a game, and this weekend we have IISSAC, which is my last IISSAC... and i can play hard without pain! I feel wonderful! Praise His name! God is sooo good ALL the time!"

make good choices

so since today is a half day, shortened class periods, the day before spring break, and all my math classes had tests yesterday, we didn't really do a whole lot. the students were mostly just studying for other tests, doing some reading, giving each other back massages, and things like that.

one student asked if i would play some music on my computer for them while they worked. i asked if they had any requests. from the same student, i had requests (in order) for: metallica? no. black sabbath? no. iron maiden? no. michael buble? yes.

hmmm... interesting choices.

so being that this is spirit week, kids have been coming to school dressed appropriately crazy every day. today was clashing day. aditya, the most hyperactive indian kid i have ever met in my entire life, didn't dress up. so his classmates decided to help him out. jose had an extra pair of shorts, so they made aditya go put his jeans on inside out, then they put jose's shorts on OVER aditya's inside-out jeans. but jose is much larger than aditya. so they also cinched up the extra 12 inches or so of waistband with a belt. this conversation was at lunch.

adita: help me! jose put his shorts on me. now i'm too hot. because i'm wearing jose's shorts, a pair of boxers, my pants, and a pair of boxers."
me: wait, you're wearing 2 pairs of boxers?
aditya: yes. one inside my pants and one outside my pants!
me: you brought TWO PAIRS of your own boxers to school today?
aditya: well, yes. i mean, like, um, YES!
me: um. why?
aditya: because what if someone takes my pants off?!? I NEED TO BE SAFE! come ON.
me: and wearing two pairs of boxers makes you feel... safe?
aditya: YES! are you CRAZY?!
me: so do people take your pants off a lot here?
aditya: they used to. not as much anymore. but one time i took off paul's pants in front of stefanie. it was gross. it was horriffic.
me: his underwear came off too, huh?
aditya: oh, yeah. it all came down. in cooking class.
me: oohhhhhhh...

haha. highschoolers are the best. i love talking to them.

dem jeans?

so i had a kid show up today in THEE tightest and yellowest jeans i have ever seen. on a BOY! like, i reached down to his knee and tried to pull his jeans away from his skin. not happening. they inspired some amusing conversations and jokes throughout classtime though. for example, "those aren't skinny jeans, those are anorexic jeans!" it was a good day.

he came to pick up a paper from my class a few minutes ago. and i couldn't resist. i had to take a picture of him. while i took the picture, we had the following conversation.

him: you love my pants, don't you?
me: they are just so... bright.
him: i'm going to give them to you.
me: ok, one, i don't think i could fit in those. i would feel fat just trying them on. and two, i could never in a million years pull off that color the way you do.
him: you could try them on at home first.
me: i think you should keep them.
him: are you going to put this picture on facebook?
me: oh yeah, it's my new profile picture.
him: what?! really?!
me: maybe.
him: all your western friends will think i'm gay!
me: oh. i didn't think about that.

(i couldn't in all honesty deny it... he had a point. decide for yourself.)

oh, tongues

because of last night’s storm, some students were unable to turn in their homework today due to lack of electricity. i got a note from a parent today asking me to excuse her son for late homework.

i’m thankful it wasn’t one of the korean kids! at least i can read this language.

there i was...

... sitting on my couch, minding my own business.

when all of a sudden, i kind of felt like someone punched me in the side of the head. there was a BOOM! so loud it left my ears ringing, and i saw stars shooting out from all directions. my whole house shook. my whole being shook. down into my skull. it only took a split second, and after it was over, i was kind of surprised to find that i was still sitting on my couch, minding my own business. but now i was sitting in the dark and the only thing i could hear was someone screaming in the street outside.

turns out, lightning struck my house. the stars i saw were actually sparks shooting out from the light sockets, the wall sockets, and from some electronics that got fried. once i realized that the only reason i was sitting in the dark was because the breaker got flipped, i was able to easily fix that. but my modem and wireless router will never be the same. thank goodness my tv, dvd player, and computer are all fine... amazingly enough. the only things that got fried were the only things plugged into the regulator.

the unfortunate thing is that lightning friend my modem last wednesday, and they didn't come to fix it until monday. then yesterday (tuesday), the router got fried. but the modem was still working. so i went to get a new router - not an easy find around here. but i have connections. i had to go to bible study after, and didn't get a chance to come home and try it out until after 9. but when i got home, the modem was dead. it wouldn't even turn on! so last night, i tracked down a modem as well, got that home at almost 10, then set everything up. only to find out that there was a network problem also and i have to call my service provider to come back out and fix it. maybe they'll show up by next week.

duhhhh...

i had forgotten how much more enjoyable tennis lessons are when i DON'T eat plates full of indian food or like 5 chicken sandwiches immediately before going. also, i finally feel like i'm getting better.

besides that, i am currently watching the blindside. i like it. kind of a lot. so if you are from back home, go see it in theaters. it's still out in some. i know because dad told me so. and if you miss it now, you'll have to wait until march 23rd, when it comes out on dvd. and that is too long to wait to see this movie.

sometimes you just have those days

today was one of those days. where nothing really goes right. like at all.

it all started with new shoes. i paired them with a cute dress to wear to work today. i felt great. my heels were bleeding before i even made half of my 7 minute walk. the shoes sat under my desk all day long.

since i was wearing a dress and new shoes and feeling so good about myself, i totally forgot to grab a jacket on the way to work. usually not a big deal. but today it started raining and blowing really hard at lunch. think monsoon. we eat under a large pavilion. but pretty much everything was wet by the end of lunch break. including me. and my food. and my cute dress. and my bare feet. oh, and since i didn’t have shoes on and lightning was striking close by, i spent lunch standing on a table for fear of getting electrocuted. (yes, i’m a little paranoid when it comes to lightning). and then i froze for the rest of the day. i think i had goosebumps on my FACE. is that even possible?

some students had to take a retest this week, and in typical high schooler fashion, they waited until the LAST possible day to take it. guess who got to stay an hour and half late after work on friday with 4 teenage boys who had come straight from PE? grr. and then had to walk home in even MORE rain…

i got home to find a note from my helper on my kitchen table. that’s usually how we communicate. it read something like this: ibu is sorry. when it rained, the cats were in the house. maybe they peed in the bed because it is wet. ibu is sorry. thank you. ibu.

so i went to check my bed. sure enough, they peed on top of the comforter. and since my helper didn’t clean it up (weird…) the pee had soaked ALL THE WAY THROUGH my comforter, my fleece blanket, my top sheet, my fitted sheet, and INTO THE MATTRESS. and ibu washed my only other sheets yesterday, so they still are not dry, due to rainy season. so i went to find some laundry detergent and did my best to handwash all my sheets, blankets, and my mattress, then i put them under my ceiling fan blowing at full speed.

then my stomach freaked out and decided to feel like the time i had food poisoning. so i ended up passing out on my couch (which also smells like cat pee) for about an hour and sleeping through the final hours of the coffeeshop being open on the only day of the week that it is open (also my last chance to go for the next 3 weeks) – my only source of delightful beverages and baked goods.

i woke up to an sms from a friend, needing to talk. so i drove through the rain on my bike to talk to them. turns out they wanted to tell me that they couldn’t be friends with me anymore. ok, so not really that harsh. but that’s what it feels like. go ahead, rip my heart out. it’s someone i count on a lot. someone who has ALWAYS been there for me. and now, no more. all of a sudden, i feel a little lost. like a little kid who was hanging onto his daddy’s hand in the crowd, and then somehow lost his hold and looks around wide eyed at all the people, not really knowing what to do. the oil in my motorbike needs changed to keep up the warranty. i also need to take it to the carwash. my internet and tv stopped working 2 days ago. and i don’t know how to take care of any of this on my own. i’ve never done it by myself. how did i survive the last year and a half?

after that talk, i didn’t want to go home and mope, so i went to marie’s house instead. the highlight of my day. i made babies laugh, and marie made pesto for me. first time in 2 years! those “first time in…” are always good moments. and she listened to me pour my heart out, on the verge of tears the whole time, and she gave me really, really good advice, like she always does.

i stayed there until everyone in the whole house was asleep and i came home. to find that i had been pranked. someone got in my house while i was gone and rearranged my furniture. the tv is now facing the wall. the kitchen table is in front of the tv. part of the couch is in the kitchen. the rest is in the bathroom. my plants are in the fridge and there is a fire extinguisher in my bed. also, whoever was here messed with my computer. it wouldn’t start. i just about lost it. but i eventually got it to work. obviously.

what does a girl do when she has a day this bad? call her best friend? yes, i think so. i tried. but realized that i didn’t have enough money on my phone to make an international call for longer than about 5 minutes. and by the time i realized this, it was too late to go out and buy more. the island is asleep.

i’ll fix the furniture in the morning. i really just need to sleep. with the fire extinguisher. in my bed that is still a little damp.

tomorrow will be better. it has to be.

oh, third world, you win again

Dear Mountainview Staff and Faculty,

Based on the letter we have received today afternoon, we would like to inform you that the electricity will be off on Saturday, 20 Pebruari 2010 at 08:00 am – 04:00 pm by PLN Salatiga (Salatiga Electricity Company) for maintenance.

Please be prepared for that condition.
Sorry for this inconvenience. Thank you for your understanding.


fantastic. no tv. no internet. no lights. no fans. no water. 8 hours.
i sound so spoiled.

i am glad that we at least get advance notice.
gotta give them that.

well, i'm no expert, but. . .

i went to the american church sunday. i don't think i've been there for over a year. there is no pastor, but every week, a different person speaks. i went this week. the speaker was a visitor. he and his family travel around different parts of the world, spending a few weeks here and a few weeks there with the main goal of encouraging and helping missionaries serving in that location. they will be here for the next few weeks.

he spoke a lot of encouraging words. he told us about what he has seen God do in various parts of the world. he told tales of his wife and kids. it was good to hear. he also spoke to us about david and about how even though he was God's chosen, he still had bad days. he told a story about david coming back from battle and everything going wrong, but david still praising God.

to put it into perspective, the preacher told us to think of the movie gladiator. when men in that day came back from battle, they were often returning without their friends. they were bloody, beaten, and bruised. they had wounds, they had gashes, they had broken bones. to quote our speaker (this is the best part), "war back then was NOT fun and easy like it is today."

hmmm?

monday puts everyone in a bad mood

9th graders.

aditya: WE WIN!
jose: SCREW YOU, ADITYA!
aditya: WHAT?!
jose: YOU SHUTUP NOW.
me: jose. i think you need to tell me 3 nice things about aditya. now.
jose: he's ugly, his nose is big, and he can't sing.
me: detention. today.
jose: fine.
aditya: oh, you don't have to do THAT. it's really ok. everyone knows indians are unattractive. i say worse things about.. umm... oh, never mind.

food groups

"i always eat my vegetables first." - bethanie, very seriously, while eating scrambled eggs before pancakes.

a fallen world

i have this friend. he is the head of his family and is very respected in his community. so when his uncle had a problem, he came to my friend to help solve it. the problem was this: his daughter, my friend's cousin, used to date a guy who treated her very badly. they eventually broke up, but now the daughter/cousin is about to get back together with him. the uncle came to my friend to ask him to talk to his daughter, to reason with her, to try to talk her out of making this mistake.

last night, i was talking with my friend, and i asked him how his cousin was doing. he explained that she's being really stubborn. then he started to tell me more about the situation. his cousin is nana. one day, while this guy and nana were still dating, the guy came to my friend's house and was showing him pictures of himself kissing another girl (very culturally inappropriate). now, this guy doesn't know that my friend and nana are cousins. so my friend asked, "aren't you dating nana?" and guy answered, "no, we broke up 2 days ago." my friend also happened to know the girl in the picture, dian. she's a prostitute. and other guy was "seeing" her WHILE dating nana as well as after breaking up with her. he would tell my friend about it, but when my friend would talk to nana about it, she didn't want to hear it. obviously, everybody breathed a sigh of relief when they eventually broke up. everybody except nana.

my friend has been trying to explain this to nana lately. he's a jerk. when they were dating, he was cheating on her. with a hooker. he didn't sleep with nana, but he was having sex with other women. she should NOT get back together with him. but nana has rationalized this in her mind by telling herself that he was just with dian to "have fun" (an indonesian slang word for sex is "main", which literally means "to play"), and that he didn't really care about dian, he loved HER (nana). in her mind, they are meant to be together. things will get better.

so it's all pretty messed up. the story seemed very dramatic and ridiculous. and then my friend mentioned something about middle school. i thought he meant that he knew all these people since middle school. i asked a question to clarify. no. these people are all IN middle school. nana, the rebellious daughter. the cheating jerk who lives across the street from her and visits prostitutes. and even dian, the prostitute. they are all 14 and 15 years old.

i sat there for a minute to take this all in. i had a lot of questions. but the one i cared about the most was: what is dian's story?

when she was a child, she was traveling in a car with her parents and there was a bad wreck. both her parents were killed and she lived. so dian went to live with her grandmother, who is the madame of a brothel in town. not long after moving in with her, gramma sold her to a wealthy chinese man. and ever since then, dian has worked for her grandmother. one time, she ran away, and her grandmother threatened to kill everyone helping hide her. she is now 14 and has earned enough money to buy her own house, where she lives alone. but she still works for gramma.

when he finished talking, i sat in stunned silence. and then i just cried.

actual conversation. at the end of lunch.

me: jon, are you going to finish your test after school today?
jon: i can't.
me: uhhh... why not?
jon: i have guitar lessons after school.
me: so if you knew you couldn't stay after school, why didn't you finish your test during lunch?
jon: because i was going to do it later.
me: later like when?
jon: when is available?
me: today.
jon: i can't.
me: so you're going to turn it in as is?
jon: i finished less than half.
me: WHAT?!
jon: it's too long.
me: 15 other people are finished.
jon: some worked on it during lunch.
me: which is what you should have done!
jon: i was busy.
me: what time is your guitar practice?
jon: 4.
me: that is an hour after school! come take your test right after school.
jon: can't. i'll need at least 2 hours to finish.
me: jon, that is ridiculous.
jon: it's a long test.
me: ok, if only a few people actually finished, i could see why you would need to take that long. i understand that you are meticulous and take longer. but 2 hours is unreasonable. come work on it after school.
jon: i can't. i have to leave right away to get home at 3:50. just in time for guitar.
me: it takes you 50 minutes to ride your bike home?!
jon: yes.
me: you live one kilometer away!
jon: some of that time is getting ready to go.
me: getting ready!?
jon: i have to go to my locker first. that takes the longest.
me: it is up one flight of stairs!
jon: i know.
me: oh, my gosh.

the buzz

so. google buzz. i read about it today. this is what i read.

"Fast Company has done a thought experiment around this idea of intuitive ad targeting, taking us through a day and how Google Buzz could eventually be used. The day would start out like this:

7 a.m. Smartphone alarm wakes you, and you quickly scan it for emails, SMSs, and Buzz. Since Google knows you were at the bar last night, it offers you an ad for a hangover cure.

7:30 a.m. Commuting to work. Browsing your tablet PC on the train, among the string of emails, light web-browsing, and casual Buzz-chatting you do, Google serves you with an ad for a new coffee shop that's opened on your usual walking route from the station to the office. It also knows you're late, and a Buzz-linked local taxi company Buzzes you to check if you'd like a ride from the station so you can make that 8:15 meeting that's scheduled in your Gmail calendar." - MobileBehavior

i'm skeptical.
a little too close to big brother.
where are all the people?
they have been replaced.

spotted on a menu

"scoop vanilla ice cream with blueberry sausage"

so of course i ordered it.

they meant to say sauce.

it was delish.



but i can't stop thinking...
... what would a blueberry sausage taste like?

oh no. it's starting.

last night on the motorbike.
yohanes: i'm lazy.
me: lazy to what?
yohanes: lazy to learn things.
me: wow. i don't think you can actually say that.
yohanes: why not? i really am lazy.
me: no, not that. i don't think you can say "lazy to".
yohanes: oh. sorry.
me: definitely not your fault. i'm the one who asked "lazy to what?".
yohanes: so what is better to say?
me: uhhhhhhhhhhhhh......
yohanes: i am lazy at learning?
me: uhhhhhhhhhhh..... maybe. that doesn't really sound right.
yohanes: so...?
me: maybe say i am lazy for learning. no. that's not right either.
yohanes: what about: for learning, i am too lazy.
me: complicated. i am such a bad native speaker for you to copy english from.
yohanes: oooooh, no, don't say that. (pats my knee reassuringly)
me: I FORGET HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH!!!
yohanes: sssshhhhhh.

i kind of love this

...a family of mice lived all their lives in a large piano. To them in their piano-world came the music of the instrument, filling all the dark spaces with sound and harmony. At first the mice were impressed by it. They drew comfort and wonder from the thought that there was Someone who made the music--though invisible to them--above, yet close to them. They loved to think of the Great Player whom they could not see. Then one day a daring mouse climbed up part of the piano and returned very thoughtful. He had found out how the music was made. Wires were the secret; tightly stretched wires of graduated lengths which trembled and vibrated. They must revise all their old beliefs: none but the most conservative could any longer believe in the Unseen Player. Later, another explorer carried the explanation further. Hammers were now the secret, numbers of hammers dancing and leaping on the wires. This was a more complicated theory, but it all went to show that they lived in a purely mechanical and mathematical world. The Unseen Player came to be thought of as a myth. But the pianist continued to play. - THE LONDON OBSERVER

this is WHAT?!

on the bus ride home from madura, i don't know if we hit a bump or what, but i somehow managed to bite my lower lip pretty good. it bled and then turned into a canker sore that hurts. and i keep catching my front teeth on it, making it bleed and get even more irritated. it's obnoxious.

yesterday, i woozed over to kim's house to find some "gentle food". i wasn't feeling good and ibu had made spicy for dinner last night. kim had just made some baked potatoes, so i ate one of those. hurrah for moms away from mom! i asked her if she had any canker sore medicine, and she gave me some chinese medicine that an indonesian friend of hers raves about.

now, i tend to be a little skeptical of medicines. i sometimes get bad side effects. and i like to know what i'm putting into my system, so i always read the ingredients label. granted, i don't always know what all those big words are, but it somehow comforts me just to read them. and if they seem too scary, i don't take the medicine.

i really wish i had my camera with me last night so i could take a picture of the ingredients list on this stuff. the entire rest of the bottle was in mandarin, but the ingredients were in english. the three that caught my eye were, in order of appearance: watermelon frost, borax, semen. pretty much everything else was a 12 syllable word ending in "ide".

i was (understandably, i hope) VERRRRRRY skeptical of this medicine. but kim said that her friend goes on and on about how good it is and how it works right away. so i took a risk and poured a little bit out on my finger. the shape of the bottle was similar to that of a bottle of eye drops. so i was expecting liquid, right? imagine my surprise when i dumped a miniature pile of rancid smelling dust on my finger instead. i thought there must be a problem and tried again. more dust.

so i shrugged my shoulders and rubbed it on my lips.

i'm still alive today, so i guess that's a good sign.

oh, and the canker sore is more canker and less sore.

something is lost

an indonesian friend smsed me earlier to ask if i could answer an english question she had.

i said sure and asked what the question was.

she responded with the following. verbatim:

This is bout n0un cluster,my teacher want to explain it. what the mean for every word with ' sign like:'everyb0dy in the c0nference r00m is upset'wat the mean then the film director then received a call then the 1st actress in the summer nite

usually i can ascertain the meaning somehow. i can think backwards to what they are trying to say in indonesian based on how they said it in english, and then it makes sense. but this one really has me at a loss.

i finally had to sms back and say that i was sorry, but i couldn't help.

Maduran regalings

we got back from what was my second trip to madura at about 2 this morning.  before i interject my own opinions, let me tell you about the trip. we left thursday with 24 people total: 20 students, 2 teachers, and 2 indonesian friends – yohanes and aan.

the drive there was fantastic. no difficulties or stopped traffic anywhere. we passed the place where noordin m top, the terrorist, was killed a few months back. our bus driver was sure to point that out to us. we made really good time and got into madura at a decent hour. we took the suramadu bridge – one of the longest in the world (almost three and a half miles)! last time we went, all the lights had been stolen from the bridge, so it was entirely dark. but this time, the lights had been replaced and the suspension portion of the bridge glowed in a variety of irridescent colors. it was a little… strange. the bridge starts in surabaya, the second largest city on java. getting to the bridge is quite the feat. no main road goes anywhere near it. in american terms, it would be the convenience equivalent of getting off the highway, driving through six subdivisions, negotiating a couple ghettos, and driving up and down every lane of three wal-mart parking lots. in a tour bus. however, it is still easily the fastest way to get to the island of madura.

we had twelve hotel rooms waiting for the 24 of us when we arrived in the city of camplong. we quickly paired off, grabbed our luggage and keys, and headed to our rooms. nasreen, my roommate, and i were in for a rough night. as soon as we walked into our bungalow-style room, we were hit with the overpowering stench of kerosene. we took one look at the beds and quickly decided to strip them down to the mattresses. then one look at the mattresses almost made us change our minds. we instead found whatever blankets and towels we had brought with us and spread those across the mattresses. my mattress had blood stains on it. nas’s smelled like it had something dead in it. both our sheets and pillows had blood stains and large holes ripped in them. also, the windows in our room didn’t shut and there were no screens, so the room was full of mosquitoes. we decided to sleep in jeans and sweatshirts in the sweltering room to prevent bug bites. but there was no AC and the fan shut off when you shut the lights off. we jimmyrigged a way to keep the fan on with the lights off and jumped into bed fully clothed. notice i didn’t mention anything about showering or brushing our teeth. that would be because our bathroom had no running water and the toilet was unmentionable. there was a room above ours that 2 other girls were staying in. they also had no running water, but whenever  they used their toilet, some curious smelling liquid would drip down into our bathroom.

so back to sleep times. i think i slept a total of about 10 minutes when i heard the sound of something in my bed. i mumbled some kind of “what is that?” to which nas mumbled back a “ggrgrrrrrwhat?” i was too exhausted to say anything back. until she said. “rat.”  that woke me up. rat IN MY BED. WITH ME. i sat up quickly – a little too quickly for my kerosene fume induced headache, and scared it out of my bed. i was sitting there trying to absorb this all when i saw the rat thing run from under my bed to under nasreen’s. i have to say, it didn’t look like a rat. it didn’t look like anything. it was black. it had teeth. it ran with no sound. later i asked nasreen if she ACTUALLY saw that it was a rat. she said no. she just saw something black sitting on my bed, but it didn’t look like anything. we are still not sure if i had a rat or a demon in my bed. either one is equally as likely.

at the time though, i thought it was a rat. we decided to sleep outside. except we were locked in our room. after banging around with it for awhile, we finally got the lock to work (horray for skeleton keys) and let ourselves out. we slept on the porch with nasreen using me as pillow. until mosquitoes started biting her face and going up my jeans to bite my legs. and then a gecko pooped on me. so we went back inside and decided to sleep with the lights on to keep the rats away. oh, my. such a disturbing and sleepless night. including time spent sleeping on the bus ride, i think i slept a grand total of 2 hours that night.

nasreen in our bad, bad hotel room

our entire bathroom. the only water we had was in that bucket.

me holding up my bedsheet. notice the giant hole and the bloodstains.

friday morning, we woke up at 6:30, had some rice and coffee for breakfast, checked out of our hotel, then drove to the local middle school to teach english. i mostly walked around taking pictures of my students teaching. i helped teach head and shoulders, knees and toes to one class. later, i walked by another class that had no teacher in it. the students were reaching their arms through the barred windows of the classroom shouting “come here! teach us!” as a teacher, you can’t ignore that. so i went in and talked with them for awhile and then took a picture of them, which got them REALLY excited!

after the middle school, we headed to the pesantren – muslim boarding school – in sampang, the next town over. this was the school where i had such a bad experience last time, and i was just praying the whole way that God would help my attitude. we divided up between the middle school and the high school, and i ended up being the only adult at the middle school. at first, i was going from class to class making sure my students were ok. the kids there are extremely rowdy and have very little respect. one female teacher was trying to get her class to quiet down so that our students could talk, and one of the male students stood up and called her a whore in front of the whole class. she did nothing. i also saw a female student walk up to  male teacher to ask him a question. he raised his hand to strike her, and she ran away, back to her desk. emotionally, this school is a very hard place for me to be, because besides seeing others treated like that, that is how we are treated as well.

i eventually got pulled into a room to talk with some teachers, the head of religion for the school, and the headmaster. it was interesting… they wanted to practice their english, but when that failed them, i got to practice my indonesian! the headmaster was wearing a red track suit and smoking a cigarette. different. i spent about an hour talking to them. we had some good conversations. i had a lot of opportunities to mention Jesus, but because of where i was and who i was with, i felt like i had to hold back a lot. i was very unsure about how free i could be without jeopardizing our chances for being able to return to that school.  i got asked lots of interesting questions like “how many boyfriends do you have?”, “what is your opinion of terrorism in indonesia?”, “how much money do you make in a month?”, and “how free are christian men and women in their relationships with each other?” (they assumed that since america is a “christian nation”, all americans must be christians, and so what they see in movies and on tv must be what all christians are like.) wow. some hard stuff to answer. some interesting issues to address. in a foreign language.

after leaving the pesantren, we checked in to our (much nicer) hotel in sampang and the kids were free for the rest of the day. many of them met with old friends from previous trips and continued building relationships with them. i, however, was running on E and took a nap.  in the afternoon, some students from a language course came to our hotel to practice their conversational english with us. these students ranged in age from young children to people in their fifties. they were tons of fun to talk to because we could have actual conversations and teach them something at the same time! and they were all there because they WANTED to learn the language. i think that makes the biggest difference.

marjolein, a dutch student, talking to some students from the english course.

the students stayed at our hotel during a rainstorm, then after it cleared up, they walked with us to a local fish farm where we all hung out and continued to talk and take thousands of pictures.

on the shores of the fish ponds

after those students left, we gave each of our students some money for dinner and set them loose in town. white people are like magnets there. wherever a white person is, a crowd is sure to follow. so we just tried to spread out and talk to people. some girls spent hours in the dorm of the boarding school talking with and witnessing to girls. they understand that something is fundamentally wrong with their religion. they know the way they are treated in their culture isn’t right. but they don’t know what to do about it. this is how they’ve lived for generations.  our girls do an awesome job of being examples and lights to them.

i was eating dinner with a couple of girls when a friend that one of them had made on a previous trip came up to talk. her brother was with her. unlike most madurese men, who can be very pushy, domineering, and inappropriately forward, he was very respectful, kept his distance, and didn’t try to talk to us beyond greeting us briefly. it was refreshing. the sister (i missed her name) invited us to go to a night market with her, and we agreed. her brother excused himself and left on his motorbike. we took becaks (rickshaws) to the market and ended up in a little shop owned by her sister, who is 9 months pregnant. she was a cute little lady and we spent quite awhile talking to her, and we met her husband as well. after a short while, the brother showed back up, but he was acting different. he was very pushy and aggressive. he kept coming right up next to us and trying to take pictures with us with his phone. he even asked us to take off our head coverings! (roughly like asking an american girl to take her shirt off). we were so uncomfortable that we came up with an excuse to leave, and we decided to jalan jalan (walk) back to where we had eaten dinner, about a kilometer away.  one of our girls asked the indonesian girl why her brother had asked us to take off our coverings and show him our heads. the girl got very confused and said, “that’s not my brother.”  we described him and told her that she introduced him to us as her brother back in town. she said that yes, THAT was her brother, but the guy in the store wasn’t.  she said she had never seen him before in her life. and among the 5 of us, there was NO DOUBT that this was the exact same guy. he and his motorbike were both very distinctive. right as we were talking about it, the brother/not brother rode up to us on his bike, coming from the direction of the shop we had just left. the girl said that THIS was her brother. again, same guy. she was getting frustrated about the confusion, so we let the matter drop. but it raised a lot of questions in our minds about possible demonic activity happening there.

old ladies asleep on the sidewalk. this made me really sad.

while walking back into town, another old friend passed on her motorbike and invited us to her cousin’s house, which happened to be right across the street from where we were, to try rujak. we agreed. who can pass up the adventure of eating vegetables and cow lips in hot sauce?!

a lady making our rujak beside the street, in front of the house

eating our cow lips! 

we got to go into their home and sit and talk to her family. i was talking to her cousin, and he asked if we were muslim (we get asked that a lot because we wear head coverings while there), and i said no, that we were christian. he got all excited and said that he was too. i was speechless! i’ve never met a christian on madura! it’s 100% muslim! but then he went right on to say, “but i’m not anymore. now i’m muslim.” danget. i got to meet his 4 year old daughter, who he said was very nakal (naughty). i thought she was really sweet! she kept sneaking up behind me to touch me but wouldn’t talk to me. they kept telling her “salam tantamu!” greet your aunt (term of respect), but she wouldn’t. until we left. she took my hand and kissed it. her dad told her that we were leaving, then asked if she wanted to go with me. she pondered it for a few seconds, then screamed, “NGGAK! RUMAH TANTA JELEK!” (no! auntie’s house is UGLY!) baha. nakal indeed.

as we were walking back to our hotel at 10 o’clock at night, God orchestrated this huge deal where i managed to run into EVERY SINGLE girl that was with us on the way, and so we all 9 walked back to the hotel together. that was awesome, because i was able to make sure that all my girls made it back safely. and also, we were a lot safer being in a group that large. there were no other women out at that hour, just men. we got a much better night of sleep and even got baths before bed! aahhh, so refreshing.

our MUCH nicer hotel room!

the next morning, we grabbed some breakfast at the hotel (fried rice… yum), loaded up the bus, and set out for home. but not before stopping at two more schools on the way!

the first was a local high school. it was incredible. the people there were super welcoming and had excellent english. two girls volunteered to give me a tour of the entire school. they had near fluent english. every classroom had a projector and besides having a library and a computer lab (most schools there don’t have ANY computers), there was also a physics lab and a chemistry lab. their school was more developed than ours! i think our kids had a really good time teaching there too. their students were very responsive and interactive, but polite and attentive. that’s the first time i’ve seen that in madura.

  me and my two tour guides

the 10th grade courtyard

  a team of our students teaching new vocab words

after our visit at the high school, we headed to another middle school in a village, jrengik. that’s a fun word to say. try it.  they were very excited to partner with us as they try to find new methods to teach english at their school. their teachers were watching our students teach to get ideas from them. i got to sit and talk to several teachers at that school, and i had opportunity to share with them about my faith. after about an hour, nasreen came in and said she needed some help, so i excused myself and went with her. she had somehow ended up by herself in a room with 50 elementary kids who wanted someone to teach them something. that “room” ended up being the school mosque. so i introduced myself and practiced some conversation with them and then let them interview me. they asked a lot of really good questions! then they wanted to learn an american game. so i taught them heads up, seven up. it was really hard to keep the nakal little boys from cheating, but they seemed to enjoy it. then their teacher asked me to teach them a spice girls song. uhhhh… i had to tell him that i didn’t know any. he seemed surprised. hmmm… i am a regular myth buster. i taught them some other songs though. slightly more appropriate ones. in a mosque. in indonesia.

playing games in the mosque

  the middle school students waving goodbye to us as we pulled away

on the bus once again, we headed back across the bridge to surabaya where we spent a few hours readjusting to javanese culture in the mall. one floor of tunjungan plaza mall has more square footage than my hometown. and the mall has 7 floors! it is definitely culture shock to go from seeing all women wearing head coverings to seeing women in tank tops and mini skirts! at the mall, i found havarti cheese, my all time favorite! i haven’t had that since america. so good. i also found barbecue sauce and droste chocolates and martin guitar strings! i got really excited.

suit for sale in a fancy store in the surabaya mall. fashion almost always makes me laugh.

our bus driver was basically amazing. he got us back fast without driving maniacally. throughout the course of the weekend, he made three u-turns on indonesian roads. in a tour bus (think greyhound). at one point, we turned left when we should have turned right. the driver realized it mid-turn, and managed to back up into rush hour traffic coming from two directions, and make the right turn. brilliant.

i really think that God designed this trip in a such a way that i was obligated to go and give madura a second chance. i was dreading it for days, but i spent a lot of time praying about it. and every single one of my prayers, big and small, was answered. so many good things happened on this trip. no hardship was too big. no situation was too unforgiving. i still don't know that madura is a place where i feel called to minister. but i do know that i no longer hold resentment in my heart toward madurese culture.

being at the mall yesterday made me miss america. so today, i had my havarti cheese for breakfast. i made blueberry muffins for lunch. and then barbecue pork sandwiches for dinner. all things i haven’t had for almost 2 years now. except for i have had 1 other blueberry muffin but it cost a lot of money because a 10 ounce can of blueberries costs almost $12.

the end.

on the interwebs and in the streets

well, today was an interesting day. the first day this week that i didn't take benadryl before bed last night, and i was so wired and awake and refreshed and accomplished about 34087t54 billion things. however, i was also stuffed up and sneezed all day. but i've scouted it out and found some indonesian drugs that work well for allergies and don't have the drowsy side effects like benadryl. now just to buy them.

i have to say, i really love having internet at home. i waste time so much more entertainingly this way. my new best hobby is to play with google's autocomplete feature. i type in random things like "God is" and i get results like "God is an astronaut". or try "Bill Clinton was" and you get a hit reading "Bill Clinton was the first black president". Wow.

while googling chuck norris, i got this.

BAHA! what?!

on a slightly more serious note, i had to go to the bank today to get some business taken care of. you see, there is either a thief or a ring of them that has been targeting atm machines, gaining access to people's accounts, and taking EVERYTHING from them. so far, they have not been caught, and i don't know if the police even have any leads. i don't know how this all works except that the thieves have been able to sneak surveillance equipment into the atm kiosk places and have gotten people's sensitive information through that. and of course, the one bank they have targeted is my bank. this hasn't yet happened in salatiga, but because of the worsening situation, the bank is taking major precautions. it's been great to see that in a country where i feel like there is so often little to no efficiency or logic used. but it meant that i had to make a trip to the bank today to get a new atm card and change my pin number. the lady there told me that EVERYONE is getting a new atm card. and it's the biggest bank in the nation. wow. 

they told me i HAD to come today before 3:00 to do this and that i couldn't use my atm card before then. fantastic. i'm leaving for madura tomorrow, i had $7 in my wallet, couldn't access the rest of my money, AND had to teach almost all day. i do have one period in which i don't teach, so i snuck away then (with the help of my lovely translator, ibu dewi) and made it to the bank. i was praying that the trip would be quick (last time i was there was to withdraw a large amount of money to buy my motorbike. it took 1 hour of standing in line for one window, filling out withdrawal forms in front of the teller, then taking those and waiting thirty minutes in another line to actually get my money), and i was dreading it. but my dread was all for naught - i was in and out in about twenty minutes. that may seem like a long time to my american friends, but i was thanking my lucky stars today. i was also really happy that i did all the talking in indonesian and i didn't need my translator! i was glad to have her along though, for sure.

i was intially told that i would have to wait 2 - 3 weeks to get my new atm card. that really won't work given my weekend travel plans. but then they said that if i wanted my card to make the atm be in indonesian, they could give it to me today and i could use it right away. and i was like, "what? there's a language option on the atm cards? my atm has ALWAYS been in indonesian! that's how i learned the only money/banking words i know!" apparently, you can get a card that causes the atm screen to translate to english for you. and that was the one you had to wait for. well, duh... i got the one in indonesian... no change for me. and i got my card, my new password, and enough money for the weekend right away! (thanks, God)

on the way back to the school, there was a HUGE mass of people in the road and there were pink flower petals all over the asphalt. so i asked bu dewi, "oh, was there a wedding today? so pretty!" to which she replied very matter-of-factly, "no, someone's dead." whooooops. once we navigated our way to the front of the parade-like crowd, sure enough, there were 4 guys carrying a bizarrely shaped casket down the road on their shoulders. they were walking to the graveyard to bury the guy. and there was a girl walking in front of them, jubilantly flinging pink flower petals everywhere. that was a first.

have i failed to mention?

i started sneezing about 4 months ago (mid october). i thought i was getting a nasty cold for awhile there. but it's still going on. 4 months later. i came to the realization months ago, though was unwilling to admit it, that i have allergies. i've never had allergies in my life. i hardly ever even get sick! but throughout the last four months, that sneezing has turned into 7 - 8 sneezes at a time about 20 times a day. it wakes me up during the night. it makes my eyes cry. it makes my nose run.

after kim's whole ordeal with double pneomonia and infection in all her major organs at the end of november, she was telling me that the doctors gave her antihistamines to take at night. they told her (i don't know if these were the doctors in semarang or in singapore) that salatiga has unique plants and allergens and that people who have never had allergies in their lives come live in salatiga and get sick as dogs. she had to take the meds because they were afraid she would inhale something that would cause her fragile lungs to fill up with liquid while she was asleep.

it was at that point that i was willing to admit i might have a problem beyond a two month long cold. i got some allergy meds from kim that i took for 10 days in a row, but they didn't put a dent in anything. and mmmmbuddy, it's really annoying when you're trying to teach a 50 minute class and you have to stop two or three times to sneeze repeatedly and violently.

what confirmed my suspicions was christmas break. out in the islands, i was great. i was healthy. there was the minor issue of catching a cold from melissa, my roommate for the trip. but even that was a marked difference from what i had here. i felt like the sun had risen on my sinal cavities (is there such a thing?!). until we got home. just a few days of being back here, and the allergies were back.

i really hate taking meds, but the sneezing is getting worse. mom sent me benadryl for christmas. i guess what i'm getting at here is that i took one at 10 last night. it is now 7:30, i'm sitting at school, and i can't wake up. errggghhhhhCHOO.