i don't speak your language.

幸福是人人都要，又怎麼可能都歸你所有？要知道這世界幸福本來就不多..................... 幸福是人人都要，又怎麼可能都歸你所有？要知道這世界幸福本來就不多........................................

ok, so every once in awhile, i get a comment on a post that looks like what i just wrote above. well, technically, i copied and pasted it. anyways, it's in chinese (which i can now recognize after living in asia for 2 years). and it makes absolutely no sense to me. it's from nobody i know. is this normal? and how do i make it stop??

btw, google translator gives the following translation: Happiness is that everyone should be, how could the property of you all? To know this world well-being should not have to be more ..................... Happiness is all, how could the property of you all? To know this world would not have been more than happy ........................................

wait a minute moments.

4 great conversations that deserve a mention...

1. *in a restaurant, song playing in the background*
friend: is this eminem playing?
me: no. but it kinda sounds like him.
friend: hm. you're right, not him.
me: similar style, different voice.
friend: yeah... (long pause) ... i owe that guy a lot.
me: eminem?
friend: ya.
me: uh... why?
friend: he taught me english.

2. *in a coffeeshop, sitting on a bench*
friend: could you pass gas please?
me: WHAT?!
friend: over there. pass me my gas please.
me: uhhhhh.... pass YOUR gas?
*his lighter was sitting on the bench next to me*

3. *after dinner one night*
friend: you have bad breath.
me: sorry. i told you not to throw my gum in the grass at dinner!
friend: it's ok.
me: it's gross. i wish i had my gum.
friend: i like it.
me: freak.

4. *sitting in front of a friend's house one night discussing life*
friend: i wish i was muslim.
me: uh.. why?
friend: so i could do polygamy.

weekends

this weekend has been full of jagas (guards). we had a party last night at the home of a fellow teacher, and as i was leaving school, i decided to invite the guard. he's a young, single guy, and we chat often, so why not, right? he said he was too shy to come, but i convinced him, and sure enough, he was there with two other guards! it was pretty cool to get to talk to them and hang out with them. they didn't venture very far from sitting on the floor in one corner of the room the whole time. but they stayed for several hours and talked quite a bit! we talked about everything from karate and mexican gang tattoos to birthdays. i got one of the guards, mas bowo, to explain the meaning behind his two tattoos which are always covered when he's at work. he explained that his tattoos show his love for Jesus. he's had them since high school. and then i got to explain my tattoo and the meaning it has for me! cool stuff.

tonight, i ran into another guard at a coffeeshop here in town. he was there with a group of friends. i've been knitting a lot lately for some reason, and he happened to see my knitting in my bag and started asking questions until i finally just asked if he wanted to learn how to do it. and he said yes! so i taught one of the guards how to knit! he was oh-so-serious about it and did a great job on a few rows of a scarf i'm making for another friend. the rest of the group was teasing him about being so domestic and how now he carries knives at work and knitting needles when he's off duty. then he proceeded to demonstrate how he could severely injure someone with a knitting needle. at least now he'll have something to do when he's working the night shift here at school. (haha, just kidding casey!)

it's been a really great weekend. and a relaxing one too. tomorrow i'm leading worship for white church. i don't normally go there, but someone asked me to help out. so i'm playing guitar and a friend is singing. and like 150 people go there. and i'm realizing that i'm more scared of white people than i am of indonesian people.

oh, and if you think about it, would you please pray for my good friend yohanes? he just found out today (after being sick for most of the week) that he has typhus. it's not life threatening usually, but it makes you really sick for awhile. he needs LOTS of rest... and sadly, his next door neighbor is having some kind of dangdut (music) party. he lives about a kilometer away, and i can hear the music here. inside my house. poor guy...

one more point of interest - i think we're up to over 30 people this week alone that have died from drinking homemade alcohol made from a mixture of methanol and ethanol. just in this town. and at least 200 others have been hospitalized. why not just buy a bottle of rubbing alcohol and guzzle it? i think it would be just as effective. does it make me a bad person if i'm not super sympathetic toward this situation?? i mean, there's a simple solution: don't drink something that you KNOW could kill you! or... just don't drink. (that was for you, mom)

this is why i miss home.

[8:29:12 PM] Dad: there?
[8:53:23 PM] Me: ya
[8:53:57 PM] Dad: hey
[8:54:03 PM] Me: how are ya?
[8:54:19 PM] Dad: good, you?
[8:54:48 PM] Me: gooood.
[8:54:56 PM] Dad: good
[8:55:01 PM] Dad: so, conversation this morning . . .
[8:55:39 PM] Me: with?
[8:56:18 PM] Dad: I'm making coffee in the kitchen and mom is in the dining room and I hear this cartoon-sound-effect-like noise: "snap-ba-ding!"
[8:57:18 PM] Dad: then she comes into the kitchen holding what's left of an old toothbrush . . . just the handle with the brush part clipped off (hence the noise)
[8:57:54 PM] Dad: mom: can you sharpen this end and drill a hole in this end?
[8:58:05 PM] Dad: me: sure, what are you making?
[8:58:10 PM] Me: a SHIV?!
[8:58:14 PM] Dad: mom: A shiv

*much later in the conversation*

[9:28:14 PM] Me: HAPPY BURFDAY! U IZ WON YEER YONGERZ THAN TWISE AS MUCH AZ THA AJE OF FIFE BADJERS!
[9:28:20 PM] Me: - my birthday message from zach via fb.
[9:28:57 PM] Dad: Mr. eloquent
[9:29:26 PM] Dad: this will put some things into a weird perspective for you . . .
[9:29:29 PM] Me: haha. i loved it.
[9:30:08 PM] Dad: you are now 24. Your mom was 24 when she gave birth to you
[9:30:15 PM] Me: i know.
[9:30:17 PM] Me: point?
[9:31:53 PM] Dad: I don't know that there is a point, just the weird way my mind thinks sometimes .. . I try to put things into perspective in different ways. Sometimes I try to compare your point of view to mine to make sense of things.
[9:32:09 PM] Me: oh. so you're not saying i should be married and making babies by now?
[9:32:22 PM] Dad: no, no, not that at all
[9:32:41 PM] Me: because frankly, i think you and mom got married too young. i mean look at her. 25+ years later and just this morning, the woman was fashioning a shiv out of her old toothbrush. it's finally gotten to her.
[9:33:14 PM] Dad: I want grandkids some day, but would never push you. You know (seriously) that I want you to do what God wants first. Nothing else matters, right?
[9:33:25 PM] Me: thanks dad. love you.
[9:33:38 PM] Dad: no prob, its easy
[9:33:44 PM] Me: and if it comes down to it, i can buy kids here for $50 a head.
[9:33:54 PM] Dad: oh, thanks
[9:34:06 PM] Me: maybe less if they have some kind of affliction.
[9:34:09 PM] Dad: I love it when you slap me back to "reality"
[9:34:17 PM] Me: always glad to help.

does eating brains make you smarter?

well, saturday turned out to be QUITE an eventful day. i met some friends in town around noon and they led me to the house where a party would be taking place later that evening. they had just gone shopping for all the food for the party, and they needed my help to carry it back to the house… so me, alone on my motorbike, carried 8 kilos of oranges AND a large box of banana bread on top of that! it was actually more difficult than it might sound.

indonesians are very family oriented, so there was lots of family swarming around the house when i got there. in case i didn’t mention it before, this day was in celebration of a baby. forty days after a baby is born is an important day in javanese culture. and this was the 40 day mark for baby zizi. i knew a little of the background and some of the family, so let me take a sec to explain.

(beautiful baby zizi)

i have these married friends, jamal and navita. they are muslim. navita has 6 siblings. she cares for the younger ones because their mom works in singapore. her 17 year old sister, vivi, lived with navita up until a few months ago when, through a series of unfortunate events, they found out she was pregnant. now, in muslim culture, this is a very bad thing. in just about any other muslim country, she would be killed. she had sex with her boyfriend only once. and after they found out she was pregnant, boyfriend was going to do the honorable thing and talk to her family and accept responsibility and likely marry her. a very noble thing to do, especially when, as a man, he could have easily just walked away with no blame placed upon him. however, the day after he decided to do this noble thing, he got hit by a bus and died.

but imagine his (catholic) family’s surprise when, about 2 months after his death, navita came to them to tell them that her sister was carrying his baby… they were ecstatic. i hadn’t met his family before saturday, but they are incredible people. they love that baby like nobody’s business. she is all they have left of their son.

(gramma and baby zizi)

it took me basically all day long to figure out who belonged to who and which side of the family was his and which side was navita’s. but i think i got almost all of them down. can’t remember a name to save my life though…

anyways, they were all very accepting of me and weren’t afraid to put me right to work! the first order of business was filling boxes with food. at any indonesian event, you have to have food. and the food is usually served in boxes so that people can take it home with them or eat their individual portion there. i never had any idea how much work goes into filling those boxes! we spend almost all afternoon on it!

(l to r: navita the master chef, indra, an aunt, me, mega)

(hotjaga and i – his wife decided that i can be his 3rd wife – their college friend dyah is 2nd. i wore his glasses half the day without realizing they weren’t mine! oops…)

(bowls of gule – soup – to go in the boxes)

(mega putting rice, veggies, and sate – goat meat on a stick – into the boxes)

ALL the food was cooked on 2 burners on the garage floor. this is the kitchen. that is nuts. all afternoon, mega wanted to go out in the sawah (rice fields) behind the house to take pictures… typical asian. but it rained for quite awhile, so jamal said we’d better wait or we’d get struck by lightning. in the meantime, we ate oxtail soup for lunch.

(a first for me! it was quite good! just watch out for tailbones…)

i got to meet navita’s younger brother, ook, who is deaf. interestingly enough, indonesian sign language is almost the same as american sign language, which i took a year of in high school! i remember basics. but besides signing, ook also lip reads indonesian AND english and he can semi-communicate verbally as well. a neat guy!

(me, mas ook, mega)

(me, mega, and navita – food preparers extraordinaire!)

after FINALLY finishing all the boxes of food, we decided to go out into the sawah to take pictures. it had stopped raining a couple hours earlier. but of COURSE as SOON as we walked out the back door and stepped out into the rice, lightning struck the sawah! AAAAHHHHH!

(mega and i trying to find cover from the lightning! mas jamal just laughed at us. and took our picture. our hero…)

eventually we made it out to the middle of the sawah and had a photoshoot with all of us.

(me, indra, jamal, and mega in the sawah)

when we came back inside and washed all the mud off of us, we showered, got changed, and made final preparations for the guests to arrive. some people just came to take boxes of food and leave. but most of them came and stayed. and most who came were men. at about 7 o’clock, the women were banished to the garage/kitchen where we cooked tea and chatted. the men were all in their prayer clothes sitting around the main room of the house.

(the men. the one in the white holding the paper was chanting in arabic almost the entire time.)

after awhile, one of the men came into the kitchen to get the baby. part of the ritual is that a family member carries the baby around and all the men there get to cut off a piece of its hair. i don’t really know what this symbolizes, and the baby’s gramma (remember, catholic) was equally as confounded as we peeked in the front window.

(cutting the hair)

after much more chanting and singing, the men all got their boxes of food, posed for pictures with the baby, then left.

(all the finished boxes!! the big one is a meal, the little one has 5 desserts in it.)

(zizi with great-gramma and great-grampa)

(navita’s family + zizi’s gramma. the girl to the left of gramma - holding the baby - is zizi’s mom)

(my turn with the baby! as soon as i held her, she started crying! everyone joked that it was because she wanted my pointy nose – pointy noses are considered beautiful to the javanese!)

after all the guests left, several close friends came over and we ate dinner together! have a look…

(gule – soup that uses ALL the parts EXCEPT the meat! i think it looks like the poor goat is trying to pull itself out of the pot!)

(this is what got put on my plate for dinner – a leg! i ate it, of course… with some rice.)

(i also got to suck the marrow from the bones – i LOVE it!)

so for dinner i had brains, an eye, two legs, bone marrow, rice, and strawberry fanta. and i have to say – it wasn’t nearly as bad as you’d think! i’d go so far as to say that i liked it. my friends were super impressed, which was an added bonus! they asked if there’s anything i CAN’T eat. i quickly said DURIAN.

by 11 that night, i was exhausted… most of the speaking that day was done in javanese, which i don’t speak. i kept up with some of it, but it’s exhausting. people were patient with me and used indonesian when i needed to understand.  it was great just to be there though. i never once wished to myself that they would use a language i speak… just to be able to help out and to be a part of what was going on was enough. i love being surrounded by family, even if its not my own. and i love being a part of something and being useful. i learned a lot about islam and javanese culture. and i had LOTS of laughs with great friends. it was hands down a good day...

the continuation of events

so... the day got a little crazier and more ironic. after school, i went to work with marie for a couple hours at the coffeeshop. she found out just that morning that it's my birthday. so i was taking orders and money and making change and helping indecisive people choose drinks. marie had just finished making a drink and i didn't recognize it as one of the ones on the list of orders, so i asked her whose it was... she kind of just brushed me off, and i thought she was going to deliver it herself. but INSTEAD, she yelled, "HEY! IT'S HER BIRTHDAY TODAY! LET'S SING!" fantastic. so a whole coffeeshop full of people sang to me and i turned SO red. rough... but i got my all time favorite drink for free! and she got me GOOD :)

after working there, i met the 10th graders to go to s2 in semarang for dinner. what i didn't know was that we were all being treated by larissa's family at one of the nicest restaurants in town. so her family rode in one car and the other 13 of us piled in an 8 seat van for the 1.5 hour drive. s2 is so great because it is like a restaurant complex. it is many restaurants in one and from any restaurant, you can order from any other one. there is a japanese/sushi restaurant, a bakery, a gelato place, an ice cream place, a chinese restaurant, a western/european restaurant, and a bar. they are all arranged in a horseshoe shape around a very tasteful courtyard. we ate in the japanese restaurant. we each ordered a couple dishes from different menus (the servings are pretty small) and then ended up passing most of it around. so i had about 5 different kinds of sushi, sweet chicken, honey chicken, sweet and sour chicken, roast chicken and potatoes in cranberry sauce, spaghetti, and gelato for dinner. oh, and i ordered apple juice to drink... and it was ACTUALLY an apple thrown in a blender and poured into a glass!

after we ate, i heard a clapping noise coming from elsewhere in the restaurant. and as the clapping got louder, a whole parade of employees came to our table bearing a cake. (i didn't know they did that in indonesia!) larissa and i got into a fight about who the cake was for... the poor girl carrying the cake was so confused because i was pointing at larissa, and larissa was pointing at me. i think the cake got set in front of each of us (sitting on different ends of the table) about twice each in the time it took the staff to sing happy birthday in 2 languages to us! it finally ended up in front of me, but i made larissa come over and blow candles out with me. then her grampa got up and spoke (the one who prayed for us this morning). then he asked us to do something a little unusual. he asked me to pray for larissa and for larissa to pray for me. it was an awesome experience... oh, and it was basically the best cheesecake i've ever had in my life!

after dinner, stuffed full to the brim, i got to talk to larissa's grampa a little more - keep in mind he's indonesian - and i discovered that he has been to auburn, indiana!! (basically my hometown) AND i found out that larissa's parents met at ORU... CRAZY! also, he's a nuclear physicist. i've never met one of those before!

it's strange to think back over this day unfolding... an indonesian man who i had never met before prayed over me this morning at breakfast. that same man spoke blessings on me at dinner. long ago, he and i were only 15 minutes away from each other in america. and his children went to the same university my brother goes to. and then we come to this point in time where we meet face to face... the world is not nearly as big as we think it is...

and i had a VERY happy birthday.

oh, and tomorrow i'm going to a muslim goat slaughtering event? ok, here is the exact cut and paste email invitation i got (via a mutual friend) earlier this week:

"Navita [hotjaga's wife] and Jamal [the hotjaga] told me to invite you to their sister's house at Tingkir [the opposite side of town] for celebrating the baby born (her sister's baby) [she is 40 days old. apparently this is important] and they butcher a KAMBING [goat] on Saturday, 17 April 2010 at 07:00 pm. If you don't know the house :) pls meet the HOT JAGA and he can explain you as I don't know either heheheeh
It would be awesome if you can join us!"

so that escalated to now i'm going at like 11 am to help the womenfolk with all the cooking and preparations. i was talking to navita about plans earlier, and i mistakenly called it a pesta (party). and very seriously, she informed me, "oh, it is not a party. it is just a... umm... i don't know... to slaughter a goat to thank the god." so hmm... should be interesting!

i'm quite convinced that my life can't possibly be anything BUT interesting...

birthday oddities

so it's not even noon and it's been kind of a random birthday. the 10th grade girls and i met at school at 7 to walk to larissa's house and jump on her in bed while singing happy birthday. we got her good... her mom knew we were coming and had prepared and whole spread for us for breakfast, so that was delicious. her family is indonesian, and i have to admit, sometimes indonesians eat [what americans would consider] strange things for breakfast. i had chicken strips and apple juice! delicious.

larissa's family knows that we share a birthday, so they wished me a happy birthday as well, and her grandpa who is visiting prayed for us. and i had one of those moments. an "ohmygoshwhatishappening?" moment where you're just struck by the enormity of the seemingly mundane situation. i was sitting there with my eyes closed, holding a chicken strip at 7:30 am in some random house on some random island while a TOTAL stranger prayed blessings over me on my birthday. um... wow.

we got back to school and ALL the boys were sitting outside my class waiting for us. i was unlocking the door as the final bell rang. we were all tardy! haha...

then the kids whipped 2 "cakes" out from somewhere, lit them up, and sang happy birthday as LOUD as possible. i'm pretty sure all of salatiga heard! larissa and i each had one candle. but it was the stupid kind that comes back on every time you blow it out. we finally got the situation under control. OH! - and the cakes. boy, 10th graders sure come up with some creative ideas. larissa's cake was a stack of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches about 8 inches high with slice of banana and pieces of chocolate decorating the plate. the candle was stuck in the top piece of bread. my cake was a layer cake in a pie pan. the first layer was saltine crackers with pb and j in between them. the second layer was chocolate cookies. and the third layer was oreos. and all that had frosting and sprinkles all over the top. i was so mad i didn't have my camera with me today! aaahhhh! it was the most adorable birthday cake i've ever had!

one of the korean girls drew me an awesome picture and wrote me an amazing letter, reminding me once again how blessed i am. she told me she wasn't going to give me the picture because she drew it at midnight but she ended up giving it to me anyways.

ok, i don’t know if you can see all these, but from the top left and going across, we have: me as an american, me as a korean, me as an african, me simple, me angry (caption: “luke, move your seat”), me with glasses, me with straight hair, me suspicious (caption: “why are you guys so quiet today?”), and me as a math teacher. should i be concerned that i turn into a monster when i’m a math teacher?? hmmm…

anyways, that’s all so far. a good day. :)

the world is going crazy! and i can't stop making lists!

here are my six favorite things of the day...

1. tomorrow is my birthday, yes, and it is shared with (among thousands of others, i'm sure), one of my 10th graders, larissa. so some if the 10th graders were asking me what i'm doing tomorrow night (since it's coincidentally a friday night), and i told them probably nothing. i mean, i'm not much of a birthday person. and i'm celebrating with friends next weekend as two of them have birthdays then as well. so i'm pretty whatever about it. about 5 minutes after that conversation, a group of 10th grade girls came to my desk with this proposition: we are doing to s2 (one of the best restaurants around - they even have GELATO!) tomorrow for dinner. you are coming with us. ok, so that wasn't so much a proposition... but still. i thought about it for a couple seconds and agreed. and they started screaming and hugging each other and me and talking about how fun it will be! haha... so tomorrow me and my best students are celebrating 2 birthdays together :) i love these kids. they make me so happy.

the other 4 things on my list are things i found around the interwebs today. things are going crazy...

2. click HERE to read about a croatian girl who was in a coma for 24 hours and woke up speaking german - but not croatian! some of the doctor's comments at the end are interesting...

3. ok, THIS is just funny!

4. THIS is also a hilarious video - it's a social experiment about a guy sent to buy tampons for his girlfriend and his quest to find someone to help him.

5. THIS is my favorite song right now. rainy window by masaaki kishibe. sadly, i can't find it as a download ANYWHERE. good thing i have 2 friends who can play it on guitar quite well. bad thing that they can't sit in my house and play it for me all day and all night.

6. and last but not least - i had a friend in college named dave. he was a computer nerd. he helped me out a lot. he was a senior when i was a freshman, but we kept in contact for awhile after he graduated. he's married now with two kids. he made this video for his wife and posted it on youtube awhile back. but just recently coldplay (the artist of the song playing) found it and sent the link to the video out in their latest fan newsletter. i realize that not everybody who reads this is really up with the music scene, but let's just say that coldplay is about the next biggest thing since michael jackson and the beatles. they are famous worldwide. this is a HUGE deal. i've watched this video 3 times already today, which is saying a lot given our third world internets... it is THAT good. it makes me laugh and "awwwwww" so much. so if you don't click on any of the links above, at least watch my friend dave HERE

today's firsts

1. first time to drive with 3 on my bike! plus a guitar!! it was me (the bule), dessy (the papuan), and jess (the orang kalimantan). haha... so intense! and illegal! and no helmets! aaaahhhhh! people stopped to stare and eventually laugh at us. it was great. and the 3 of us will be laughing about it for quite awhile.

2. first jeruk bali of the season. they've been in season for awhile. but this is the first one i've had in my house. i don't even know how to describe it, but it has got to be one of the most heavenly fruits known to man. and this one is perfect.

3. first time being completely exasperated with my 10th graders. they all chose to take a class trip to the beach this weekend. near the end of the last semester of the year. and now they are all tired but getting excused absences by calling in sick. in a class of 17, four missed class yesterday and five more today. vacation is not a valid reason to skip school. they disagree. we've never disagreed before. it's weird. but i'm standing firm and not excusing absences.

4. first time noticing how many books i have actually accumulated while living here. i came with 4 books in hand. and now i have four shelves of a bookcase filled. that makes me happy. and yet at the same time, i dread having to part with them when i leave. ah, the downside of a transient lifestyle...

5. first time to the kalimantan girls dorm for the local university. first time in that part of town period.

6. first time taking enough pity on my cat-lover house helper and letting her spend some grocery money on actual cat food instead of dead fish and rice.

7. first time seeing my cat terrified. and, coincidentally, first time getting clawed by this particular cat.

ok. that might be all. i love it when i have lots of firsts all at once. it makes me feel like i'm growing and stretching and learning more and more and more. and that makes me really happy.

things i did yesterday

1. got up early.
2. made french toast for me and yo.
3. drove to the bus stop.
4. hopped a bus to solo.
5. got another bus in solo to jogja.
6. chose the wrong bus and arrived late for our movie.
7. went to a grocery and bought an apple, cheetos, orange juice, and a bar of lindt chocolate for lunch.
8. went to a restaurant next door to get rice and tempe and eat all my good food.
9. caught a becak (rickshaw) to gramedia (bookstore) to kill more time.
10. found a whole wall of secondhand (rare) half-price (rare) books in english (SO rare).
11. talked to an intriguing papuan guy who was buying a bible in the checkout line.
12. caught a becak back to the movie theater.
13. got stopped in said becak at a stoplight where there were crossdressers dancing in traffic for money. eek. no window between them and me.
14. saw alice in wonderland!
15. wished that the movie didn't depend so heavily on wordplay, because the subtitled indonesian language doesn't hardly suffice and i was often the only one laughing.
16. went to the airport to pick up pita after 2 weeks in batam!
17. went to an indian restaurant for dinner. possibly the only one in central java. and brand new. so good. so exciting!
18. came home.

there were many highlights of this day spent with great friends. but one memory that will stick out to me for quite awhile happened on the second bus. the second bus musician that jumped on finished his song and speech beseeching our kindheartedness and wishing Allah's peace upon us, then he went from person to person holding out his wallet for everyone to deposit money in. as i reached out to place my obligatory coin in the wallet, he grabbed my hand, leaned his head down to mine, and said clear as a bell in english, "do you speak english?" i was so shocked that i just nodded at him.... people are supposed to ask me if i speak indonesian, not if i speak english... i'm WHITE, for heaven's sakes! of COURSE i speak english! (and before you think me presumptuous or ignorant - i KNOW that not all white people speak english. but almost all white people here (and especially in jogja) are tourists. and the universal language of white tourists is english. i've never encountered a single white person in indonesia who didn't speak at least the basics.)

now that i wrote that all out, it doesn't seem so illustrious. but to me it was a landmark experience. an old beggar man on the bus just asked ME if i speak english... hmph.

well, that was... interesting?

so today i got to be a mom for a day. if you read my earlier post, you will see that i woke up this morning at 7. today being saturday. the reason was that i had received an sms. from charles. marie is in malaysia for the weekend, and charles needed to do some shopping in semarang. with a 1 yr old, 5 yr old, and 7 yr old in tow. so he wrote to ask if i'd come along and nanny. i agreed. anything to get out of town and have an adventure.

what i didn't take into account was that i was basically going to be mommy for a day. and not just because i was taking care of 3 kids, 2 of whom are half white anyways... but also because everybody ASSUMED that i was their mom and treated me as such. that part wasn't too bad compared to people assuming that i was married to chuck. that felt a little strange. people stared at our "family" a lot. but i have to say, NOBODY bothered me. it was niiiiiice. no high school guys heckled me or asked for my phone number. no girls asked to practice their english with me. nobody asked me my country of origin. nobody asked me why i live in indonesia. nobody called me "meester".

in fact, the only person who talked to me all day was a lady at the playplace in the mall where i was watching the kids play. she came to tell me that she thought my daughter had accidentally picked up her daughter's toy, thinking it was hers. it was a happy meal toy from mcdonalds where we had eaten lunch. i knew the toy was bethanie's, because i had JUST gotten it for her out of my bag. but i called bethanie over and explained the situation - in english, so the other mom couldn't understand - and asked her to give her toy to the other little girl. i love that bethanie is at the age where she is learning logic... she understood well enough what was going on, and graciously went and handed her toy to the other girl without complaint.

we let sammy, the 1 year old, play in the playplace too... he LOVED the trampoline part (the kid has awesome balance! he hardly ever fell down, even when other kids were jumping on it!) and also the ball pit. he had a hard time walking through it though. he kept falling over and disappearing under the balls. and he's also at that age where he still has to push himself up with his hands in order to stand up. so everytime he fell, he'd disappear, then his little head would pop up. then he'd get his feet under him and reach down with his hands to push himself up, and then all you could see was his little butt sticking out of the myriad of germ infested plastic balls. josh is an awesome big brother though and kept a very watchful eye on sam.

in the grocery, bethanie ran off to go get something and came back a minute later complaning, "my dress is wet and my bum-bum smells like fish!" it took a lot of questioning to figure out that she had been running by the seafood part of the store and had slipped and fallen on some water "by the guy cutting some dead fish." haha... that's life, kid.

anyways, the day went without incident. i was exhausted by the time we got home. so i slept for 2 hours then went to a PARTY! have i ever mentioned how much i love my friends and how blessed by them i am? because it's all true. indonesia has its moments... especially lately. but i still love it. and every day is really an adventure!

i have a dream...

ok, actually, i HAD a dream. last night. i came home to america. my mom picked me up at the airport and we went DIRECTLY to wal-mart. and the entire rest of the dream was the two of us walking up and down every single aisle in the store and me marveling at all the things i had missed, all the things that had been "invented" in my absence (glow in the dark fish? please tell me those really have been invented!), and joyfully running into tons of people that i know.

i woke up happy. and then i realized that i am still in indonesia. but the rays of morning sunlight streaming across my bedroom were so beautiful. i tugged my blankets up a little higher and watched the light. and i was still happy.

then the neighbor started mowing his lawn right outside my window and i realized it was 7 on a saturday morning. and i got a little less happy.

things i have learned lately

1. life goes on. like it or not.
2. i have a family here who loves me.
3. my bestest friend in the whole wide world got engaged!
4. how to manipulate the gears in my (automatic) motorbike in order to not have to use the brakes while driving.
5. there is not enough internet at our school for all the 7th and 8th graders to do stanford testing online AND allow the rest of the school to have internet access.
6. i can drive in asian traffic. you know, the nightmarish stuff you see on tv shows. bumper to bumper traffic with thousands of motorbikes weaving in and out between every vehicle. ya. i'm the one with the red helmet.
7. cats give me the sneezes.
8. eleven of my closest friends are either moving away for good this summer or taking a furlough. that leaves 3 here with me. heartbreak.
9. i actually enjoy a very wide variety of indonesian music. it is catchy and sometimes very meaningful and the lyrics are usually quite easy to understand.
10. javanese people rarely say what they mean. and no matter how well you think you know them, you will still never understand them.
11. i am actually scared of earthquakes. maybe even terrified a little bit.
12. four star hotels are glorious places. i never had any idea...
13. a student here was raped as a child.
14. the prophecies of nostradamus.
15. some ancient javanese prophecies. after the five great leaders, there will be a disaster that will split the island of java in two and everyone on it will die. we are on the third leader now. i've got some time.
16. i miss doritos more than any other american food. pierogies come in second. but i don't think those really count as american.
17. i miss having two cameras more than i ever thought i would.
18. i'm going back to sumatra this summer.
19. haunted houses are not really that scary. especially if you don't pay any attention to the ramblings of the tour guide.
20. i can be the only white person in the building and never even notice.
21. if i scroll down a page, and kitten sees, she will freak out and attempt to "catch" the images on the page.
22. even the most reserved koreans have no problem publicly discussing their bowel movements.
23. it is good to be missed.
24. easter might be my favorite holiday here in indonesia. because i get to talk to everyone at church.
25. i am not highly fashionable. but somehow, fashion inspires me.

puji Tuhan

well, we made it back safely from semarang, no thanks to several bus drivers. nothing too dramatic happened. lawang sewu was actually fun. the only place where it felt a little dark to me was when we were touring the dungeon and the lady was telling us stories of how they used to torture and murder people right where we were standing (uh, creepy). it was also felt spiritually dark in the room where they were selling souveniers. i can't really put my finger on why, but i didn't stay in there long.

there has been no electricity since sometime during the night last night, so we had easter church service in the great outdoors. it was really great. churches should do that every easter. :)

i can't write a whole lot now, as i'm getting ready to head to solo to spend the night with my adopted family, the linegars. since there was no electricity at my place, i asked them if i could snatch one of their (seven) computers to check my email and let everyone know i lived through yesterday. thanks for all your prayers!

oh, and to my church family: i will hopefully be calling you later on today! can't wait!

lawang sewu

well, far as i can tell, tomorrow holds in store adventures like none other. the first part of the day will be spent driving my motorbike to the next city over, semarang. i'm nervous. first of all, i've never driven my bike to a big city. driving around salatiga is hectic at times (it's asia!), but it's a piece of cake compared to the big city. for my hometown friends, imagine someone spending their entire lives driving around placid rural indiana, then one day dropping them in the middle of new york city traffic during rush hour and expecting them to not kill anybody. yeah, that's about what it's like. but in america, there's at least laws. here, there are unspoken rules of the road, and if a cop doesn't like what you're doing, he can invent an infraction and make you pay him money for it. the alternative is to go to jail. the other nervewracking part is that it's a holiday weekend. which means added traffic. AND since i'm going with friends, the plan is that i'll have a passenger, which entirely throws off the equilibrium of driving that i've spent the last 6 months learning in my safe little haven of salatiga. if it was just me, i'd be more ok. but i have a healthy fear of killing someone else.

nerves aside, the reason we are going is to visit a place called lawang sewu (the house of a thousand doors). it is a famous historic building, constructed during dutch rule. and for the record, the dutch have awesome architecture. also, the building is haunted. it has been for years. because of this, it sits abandoned, visited only by thrill seeking tourists. now, normally, i wouldn't intentionally walk into a building that is demon possessed. but i'm making an exception for the sake of... um... i don't even know what. maybe the fact that it's a tourist location so that somehow makes it seem safer? maybe because my friends want to go? maybe because i've never been there before? maybe because i think it will be a cultural experience? maybe because i'm just too curious?

we drive by this building almost every time we are in semarang, due to its central location. it is beautiful from the outside, and i always wonder what it looks like on the inside. i'm taking my camera with me to photograph the place. however, of all the ghost stories i've heard about this place, the only ones i remember are from people saying over and over how they took hundres of pictures while inside, but when they came out, every photo had been erased. i've seen pictures taken from the outside of the building, but never any from the inside.



so i guess we'll see what develops? i may or may not come back with some awesome black and whites tomorrow. i may or may not come back at all depending on how cantankerous the bus drivers are...