happy new year!!

Happy January first, 2012 from jimbaran, bali!! I'm actually writing this from my blackberry while using the wifi at an Italian restaurant here. Can't wait for my berry smoothie and pizza! The food on bali is definitely a highlight after a year of rice and chicken. I get to eat lunch with 4 friends who now live on papua as well as two others who currently live and work on another island in the archipelago. I have to say, this year is off to a great start!

We rang in the new year laying on the beach and watching airplanes take off and fly overhead. Several drunk people were in a particularly celabratory mood and were setting off fireworks in all directions. It was less than safe, but fun to watch!

We'll be headed back to java in 3 days. In the meantime, we're just enjoying the beach life, swimming a lot, hiking a little, getting a nice tan, visiting with friends, living in an open air bungalow, eating lots of delicious food, learning to salsa dance, and sleeping in! I haven't taken too many pictures (sorry dad), but I'll post as many as I can when I get back!!

It’s the Most Unusual Time of the Year

Let’s start with Christmas Eve. That was my first busy day of this holiday season. I’d been taking it easy and watching lots of Gilmore Girls up until this point when I realized I needed to crack down and get something done. My to do list (because I always have one) included these items: Do laundry, make Christmas cookies, clean out fridge, feed and worm cats, pick up bus tickets to Bali, go to market and get apples and aluminum foil, repot plants, bake an apple pie, wrap gifts.

Laundry went well. Our ghetto washing machine (which I’m thankful for because it was free and we don’t have to wash all our laundry by hand anymore) didn’t clog up or ruin or lose any clothes. I even got about 30 minutes of sunshine to let the clothes hang out in before it started monsoon-ing. I had my sister send me mom’s recipe for Christmas cookies since I haven’t had those for four years by now. I whipped it all up and tasted the dough (just like mom always used to let us), and it tasted so much like Christmases of my childhood! So I rolled the dough out and was getting ready to cut out shaped when I remembered – I don’t own a single cookie cutter. So I tried cutting some shapes out by hand, but that was getting messy, so I improvised. These became my cookie cutters for the day:

But I still love my hand carved Christmas tree!

But the red food coloring I bought was actually kind of maroon. Sadness…

While the cookies were baking, I cleaned out the fridge, gave all meat items to the cats, and repotted some pepper and cilantro plants I had planted a few weeks back. They were getting big enough that they each needed their own separate pot.

And I also wormed my cats as they were having a rare moment of tranquility.

Aswan ended up going to pick up the bus tickets and buy the things from market while I was at my friends’ house wrapping presents. They both are living here studying language, and this is their first Christmas away from home. We had all gotten packages from our parents in the mail, so we all traded boxes, locked ourselves up in separate rooms of their giant house, and wrapped the contents of the boxes so that we could all open up actual presents on Christmas morning, not just USPS flat rate shipping packages. I left all my presents there because Aswan and I were already planning on spending Christmas with them – our little family. We didn’t get a chance to make that apple pie, but we did stay up til 11 watching Rudolph (the oooold Burl Ives one), which Aswan was less than thrilled about.

So skip ahead to Christmas morning. Our friends wanted to experience the town Natalan (Christmas celebration) which is an annual sunrise service on Christmas morning. So after going to bed at midnight, we all woke up at 3:45ish and walked to the Pancasila, the field at the town center. When I first woke up, I had to pee as always, but I wasn’t ready for the florescent lights to be on yet, so I didn’t bother turning any on. I did my business and went back to my room to get dressed. Then I went BACK to the bathroom to brush my teeth and put my hair up. For that I did turn the lights on. And when I did, I found a surprise on the floor right in front of me:

He then tried to hide by forcing his way under the sink.

“Merry Christmas to me” was my first thought. Then my second was, “WAIT A MINUTE! I was in here with no lights on earlier! How did I not step on this?!” I call it my Christmas miracle that God kept me safe in the dark that morning…

Anyways, we eventually made it to Natalan where it was really cold and damp.

We sang Christmas carols by candlelight and marveled at the beautiful Christmas tree they had set up. The marvel ended when the sun rose and we realized it was made out of corn husks…

Can you say classy? Anyways, after all that was finished, we went back to our own homes to rest and freshen up. Aswan and I made that apple pie we didn’t get to the day before. We made one for his mom last year for Christmas, which was the first time I ever met his family. She’d been hinting lately about how much she enjoyed it. She’d never had one before. Indonesians don’t really do pie. So I really wanted to make her another one this year. After we finished that, Aswan went home and I got to sleep another 2 hours before we headed over to our friends’ house to open presents. They had made crepes and a breakfast casserole. Silly me didn’t bring a camera, but here’s a really rough phone picture of the tree (which is actually a potted plant from their back yard) that we spent the last week making decorations for.

Beautiful, no? It’s way more fun to open presents like that than from a box! I hope that these particular friends are super dumb so that they will still be here studying language during Christmas next year!! Hehe…

After Christmas there, we left to go spend Christmas evening with Aswan’s family in Semarang. For part of the trip, we followed this truck, which I was super happy about!

Christmas with Aswan’s family was really nice. We all went to church together. The singing was a bit crazy with jumping and screaming and eardrums nearly bursting. But the sermon followed the national Christmas theme of being light. The pastor spent quite awhile talking about darkness and light and the world’s need for light. He even made the point that a tiny flame can make a huge difference in a dark room. And it was at about that time that all the electricity went out in town. So we all lit up the tea candles that we had been saving for singing Silent Night at the end. I was a little worried that the church was gonna burn down with all those candles lit, but it ended up being a great illustration and a very peaceful Christmas service. I enjoyed it immensely.

I forgot to mention one more thing I did this weekend – I started packing!

I’m leaving later this afternoon and will spend the next 10 days in Bali! Aswan says I’m bringing way too much stuff for 10 days, but I say that as long as it all fits in the bag, I’m doing OK! : )

Merry Christmas and happy New Year everyone!!

update on me

SCHOOL
IS
OVER

Six more Christmas parties/dinners/get-togethers.

Then...

BALI!

Breakfast

For some reason, I couldn't fall asleep last night until 2 AM, and I didn't crack an eyelid until 10:30 this morning. By then, I was pretty hungry since I never ate dinner last night (up til 2 and never got hungry! so strange) and I really wanted pancakes. But I had no syrup.

So what did I do?

I made syrup from scratch!

To go on my fluffy pancakes that I made from scratch.

LIKE A BOSS.

(Lest I become prideful, I did use store bought butter.)

Rain, Rain, Go Away

The first of many Christmas parties to come is tonight. It's been raining and thundering all day long and out any window I look, I can see at least one coconut tree. It doesn't feel at all like Christmas. I was feeling kind of mopey about that and wishing for some better weather until I opened up my browser to write this post and read the headline on my homepage, "At Least 180 Dead After Storm Pummels Philippines". I bet that's the storm we're catching the tail end of...

Tropical storms killing people doesn't really put me in the Christmas mood either, naturally. But after reading that, I do feel blessed to be safe and healthy this time of year, and I'm thankful that my family can say the same.

Bizarre

The (Indonesian) father of one of my (Indonesian) students has the same first name as my mother. Blows my mind every time.

Rotten Milk

YES. Rotten milk. In my mouth. My only indication? - It tasted like mothballs. So maybe rotten is an exaggeration.

Here's the story. On Sunday, I bought a carton of milk at a brand new import store just down the road from my house. Funny that I have to go to an import store to buy milk, but it's true. Indonesians just aren't down with the dairy. They don't even use butter. They use lard instead.

Anyways, I digress. I love milk in the morning, so I filled a thermos with cold milk on Monday and brought it to school with me. It tasted like mothballs. It was the weirdest thing. But I'd never tried that particular brand of milk, and some brands here definitely do have an off flavor, so I thought it was just the brand and drank that whole thing down. Yesterday (Tuesday) I got home from school and was craving a tall glass of milk again, so I pulled the carton out of the fridge. As I was pouring it into the glass, I remembered the mothball taste from the day before, stopped pouring, and set the carton down on the counter. I sniffed the glass of milk carefully as I pondered whether or not I really wanted to drink it.

Then the expiration date on the carton caught my eye.

22 11 11

That's right. My milk expired almost a month ago.

So last night I went to the store to tell them about it. I found a bunch of other cartons in their fridge that were also expired. Like I said, Indos don't do dairy, so they didn't know that you shouldn't drink expired milk. I wasn't upset or complaining or asking for my money back or anything. I just wanted to explain to them that you can't sell expired milk, especially not to a bunch of white people - their primary sales demographic. They were super nice about it and apologized and thanked me profusely for telling them about it. Then they gave me my money back, which was super nice, since I didn't have a receipt or even the bad milk with me to show them.

That's me. Saving the world, one import food store at a time.

Ideas

I just got this message from my friend, Liz, who is from Jakarta but goes to college in Salatiga. It made me smile, and as you read it (unedited by me - straight up copied and pasted), marvel at how amazing her English is, y'all!

"ok so I couldn't sleep last night. and i came up with this brilliant idea. I found you and mas Aswan a great business project after you guys get married. it's selling Salatiga post card!!!!!! first, there's no Salatiga post card available yet (as far as I know) and two, since you are really good at photography, bet you'll make a very awesome post card with awesome Salatiga views in it. "the post card that actually shows the true identity of Salatiga" third, it'll be perfect for the Mountainview community, since you guys send letter and packages to home/sponsor, right? people are longing for it. Salatiga post card--that's the dream. ah it's so perfect! so what do you say?"

So besides the fact that it's kind of weird that my friends think about my future as they try to fall asleep, I kind of like the idea! It would be a fun thing to do - and she's right, there are no Salatiga postcards yet. This is going on my list of future jobs! Thanks, Liz!

December in the Tropics

Yup, so that was my Saturday. How was yours?

PS – See that person in the water over by the rocks? I went exploring over there and found lots of jellyfish, sea urchins, crabs, fish, and TWO octopi! They made my day.

Projected Costs

Aswan and I were just talking about college. College for our kids, which are as of yet nonexistent. He wants two or three kids, I'm shooting for four. We'll see how we feel after the first few. But worst case scenario, we pay for 4 kids to go to college. I looked up a state school in Indiana and we calculated that to send four kids to a four year university twenty years in the future will cost a minimum of about $700,000 (because they most likely won't be residents of any state, and possibly even listed as international students, for which the costs are higher). Our total combined annual income is currently $8500. If we save EVERY penny at that rate (which is likely to go down considerably, because I eventually won't work for an international school anymore most likely) and spend no money for the next twenty years, we will have $170,000. This is bleak.

The options we came up with are:

a) Pray that our kids are super smart and/or athletic and get really good scholarships to really good schools.

b) Move to a village, start a family cult, and never educate our children so that they have no chance of going to college.

Obviously, option a is the ideal one. It's always good to have a plan b though.

Teaching

Well. Next semester should be an adventure. I'll continue teaching my four math classes every day, which means grading homework for four classes every day. I'm pretty sure that math teachers have more work than other teachers, but I might be biased. Also, the yearbook teacher is in America until March due to his wife giving birth (and wanting to do it stateside for legal/processing reasons), so since I "taught" that class last year, I'm subbing for him for two double periods per week. Our art teacher left in November (I bought his desk, remember?), and since he was the only art teacher we had for K - 12, we've been trying to come up with ideas for art classes next semester. After much thought, the administration finally settled on offering a graffiti/street art class, choir, and batik making (taught by a local Indonesian) for the 9th - 12th graders.

At this week's teacher meeting, the batik class was brought up, because at that time, nobody had met the person who was going to be teaching the class, so nobody knew if he/she spoke English or had ever even taught in a school before. It was recommended that another teacher sit in on the class to help translate, to enter grades in the system, and to try to maintain some semblance of classroom order. Naturally, I'm not busy enough, so I offered to help. I like batik, and it would be sweet to learn how to make it! So for the first half of next semester, I will be teaching 6 classes, and I will have one prep period per day. Aish.

This morning, I met the man who will be teaching it, Pak Agung. He's an older man, VERY soft-spoken and reserved, and doesn't speak a lick of English. Absolutely perfect for teaching a class of 20 rowdy foreign high schoolers. Or not... So we'll see how that goes...

If you are reading this and you have no clue what batik is, I've linked the Wikipedia link HERE, so check it out! It's really cool!

Stats

I just happened to notice that blogger now has a “stats” feature. Of course, I clicked on it, curious as ever. Found some interesting things such as which pages of mine are most viewed and what sites viewers are referred from. Then, at the bottom of the page, I found the stats about what people are searching for online when they stumble across my website. Here’s the list:

This makes me feel like I have an incredibly varied blog. I’ve got everything from “pacuan kuda” (horse race) to “penguin classics” and “abercrombie” to… umm… “suck out marrow”? Do people really do Google searches for “suck out marrow”?!

Insect Invasion

I went to brush my teeth last night to find what I can only assume was the beginning of mass suicide emerging from beneath my sink.

Are they ants or termites? I don’t know. Either way, I was kind of freaking out, so I left the bathroom light on and shut the door tightly, hoping they’d stay in there, attracted to the light. It must have worked, because only one made its way inside my shirt during the night. The rest were scattered around the bathroom this morning when I got up to take a shower, mostly dead. I mean the bugs were mostly dead, not me. Although one might be able to consider me mostly dead as well at 6 AM. Live ones were crawling up the walls and in the towels on the shelf and inside the toilet, but they were moving really slowly like they were drugged. It was bizarre. I didn’t take a picture this morning though because a) I was mostly dead and b) all my available powers of concentration were geared toward not stepping on the dead insects all over the floor.

I kind of left them there, hoping that Ibu Sri would know what to do about that when she came into work this morning. I’m still at school and won’t find out for a few more hours, but hoping for pleasant results and no more night raids.

Meet Soon

His name is Soon. He’s my student, he’s in the 10th grade, and he’s Korean. He has given me a few reasons to smile this week. The first was when he nonchalantly showed up to school yesterday “wearing” a moustache for no apparent reason.

Also, I was introduced to his YouTube channel this week. He is a fantastic musician. He’s posted a bunch of covers he’s done on his YouTube site. My favorite is probably the Bob Dylan one. Not a favorite (or terribly wholesome) Dylan song, but still – a 17 year old Korean singing Dylan? Awesome. And he plays all the instruments himself. So check it out HERE.

The picture below is a little off topic, as it was not drawn by Soon. I found it drawn on the bottom of a PreCalculus quiz I graded this morning and it made me smile.

So in case you haven’t heard, I’m engaged! : ) Here’s a rough but real picture of the ring…

And here’s how he did it…

Things and Things

Thing 1. This was our Thanksgiving evening.

Thing 2. As of November 27th, as close as we can figure, Aswan and I have been dating for one year! I spent the whole day working on my TESOL final paper. Seventeen pages, baby! Turning it in today. Anyways, unbeknownst to me, while I was working on my paper all afternoon, boyfriend went all the way to Semarang to buy me a pizza from Pizza Hut because a) he wanted to do something to celebrate our anniversary and b) he knew I was a little homesick because of not being able to be with my family on Thanksgiving.

Thing 3. I just found this bug outside the girls bathroom. At first it seems insignificant. But then it begins to seem like some kind of mutant scorpion bug. So I took lots of pictures.

Boxes

I have this tradition of sorts that mandates that any package received after Thanksgiving must be saved for Christmas. Usually it's only my mother who mails such packages, but I know a couple other people have recently sent things as well (HOORAY!), so I just want to check and see if there is anything in the aforementioned packages that needs to be extracted immediately. This might include things that will break down into a puddle in extreme humidity or might otherwise go bad and/or melt if left to sit for a month.

So if you mailed me a package recently, could you kindly comment and let me know? Terima kasih banyak (many thanks)!!

Holidays

My five favorite holidays are:

1. Fourth of July

2. Thanksgiving

3. New Year’s Eve.

4. Pi Day

5. Idul Fitri

I’ve only ever spent three Fourth of Julys away from home, but this will be my fifth Thanksgiving overseas. It’s hard to feel like it’s really the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas season when you wake up sweating at 6 AM to this:

It was so bright and sunny out! My room just filled up with curtain-filtered sunbeams, and it was all but glowing when I got up this morning. I like waking up on sunny days.

On a side note, remember how my camera broke? Well, I gave it to Hotjaga, because he is the master of fixing everything broken (even the Christmas lights that my cats chewed through). It took him about 4 days, but he was finally able to fix it completely! Good as new! He gave it back to me yesterday morning when I was on my way to school. He had originally told me that he was giving up and giving it back to me, so I thought it was still broken. Then he told me to open it up, and it worked!! So I took his picture and almost gave him a hug before I remembered that he’s a married Muslim man and I probably shouldn’t, even if he is my good friend.

Indonesians hardly ever smile with their teeth, but when I took this picture, he was laughing at my reaction to my camera actually being fixed, so I got a real smile! He must have taken a few pictures himself while he was working on my camera, because I found a picture of my apartment on it, taken from the vantage point of the jaga post at the gate.

See what I mean about it not feeling holiday-ish? It’s so GREEN!

Anyways, happy second best holiday of the year, everyone!!!

The Spot. I am on it.

There is this one worship leader at my church who really likes to sing songs 8 times in a row. And I'm not even exaggerating. Verses, chorus, bridge... all of it. Over and over and over. Sometimes it drives me nuts. This morning we were on the 6th round of "Dimuliakan, ditinggikan", when I started to feel really queasy and short of breath and my vision started going black around the edges. So I sat down and lip-synced the next three rounds. At least that song isn't a long one. Then pastor got up front and burst into a rendition (in English - I have no clue why he does this, because most people in my church don't understand or speak very much English) of "Jesus, I believe in You" as he does EVERY TIME HE PREACHES. So I sat through that too, and by the end of the song, I was thinking I was going to throw up (not because of the song, though I am pretty sick of it) and had a pounding headache. So pastor finished his super emotional rendition of the song (three times through), and then started preaching.

The sermon was on the power of thanksgiving. Right as soon as he said that, I remembered that I was supposed to call my family while they were at Thanksgiving dinner at gramma's house before I went to church. I must have been starting to be sick last night because I left a candle burning all night long on accident. I get really forgetful when I don't feel good. Anyways, right then, I grabbed my phone to text dad to ask if they had already left gramma's house. As I was texting, I felt Aswan jab me with his elbow. I looked up and realized that everyone in the congregation was looking at me expectantly, including the pastor.

Know how even when you're not paying attention to something, your mind kind of backlogs everything that's going on around you, and if you think for a second, you realize that you actually did just hear what was going on? Well, I am happy to report that just in the past couple months, I've been able to do that in Indonesian. It used to be that I had to really, really focus on everything that was being said because the second I spaced out, I would miss everything. But now I can kind of be half focused and still keep up. So anyways, I realized that pastor had just asked me what the population of the US is. Uhhhh.... I have no clue, and I told him so. So he asked me again. Yeah, I still didn't know. Not even ballpark. So he went on with what he was talking about (which was how all Americans have a whole holiday for giving thanks). Aswan whispered, "How can you not know the population of America?" So I replied with, "Do you know the population of Indonesia?!" He said, "Of course." And then he told it to me, but I forget.

Dad replied to my SMS saying that they'd already left, so then I had a stomach ache, a headache AND was feeling bummed that I forgot to call my family for Thanksgiving dinner. Laaaaame.

Pastor was still talking about how about 250 million Americans (he made up a number and went with it) celebrate Thanksgiving every year and how great that is that they all love God enough to have a whole holiday just to thank Him. I'm thinking, "Mmmhmm... That's what the holiday is about these days... The whole population of the US thanking God. Riiiiight..." And of course, right at that moment, he said to ME, "Can you please come up to the front and tell us about Thanksgiving? In Indonesian, please". And he stands there, smiling, holding his microphone out to me expectantly. I asked if I could do it from my seat, but he told everyone to cheer for me to get me up to the front, so you know I had to go to the front then. Peer pressure and all that. So I'm thinking he's asking what Americans do for Thanksgiving. But no, I get up to the front, and he says, "Tell the people the history of Thanksgiving!"

So I did. And I made it through explaining how people came from England and lots of them died because of how cold winter was and because they didn't know about the crops and animals there. And I talked about the Indians and how they helped them and there was a great feast and all that. There was one other white person there too, and I got her to come up front with me and feed me information. Because like I said, when I'm sick, I forget stuff. And I'm not fluent in Indonesian. So it was a lot easier to have this girl (who is new here and doesn't speak much Indonesian) feed me stuff in English that I could just translate instead of having to remember the story and form translatable thoughts on my own. She's studied a lot more history than I have too, so through her, we got to share about how George Washington made it a national holiday, then Abraham Lincoln reinstated it as a holiday after the Civil War.

When we finished, I asked Aswan if he understood it, and he said it was really clear and that we'd done a great job.

So today I had my first experience speaking to a congregation in Indonesian. The funny thing is that I don't get nervous about speaking in front of large groups in Indonesia the way I do in America. You'd think I would, Indonesian being my second language and all. But it really doesn't bother me so much. So there's an up-side.

So This is Still Happening

Went outside to take some pictures of all the red ants that have moved into my front yard. I am praying for hard rains today.

Oh, what’s that last one, you ask? Well, that is the picture that my camera somehow took by itself when red ants started going inside my boots and I accidentally dropped it. It broke.

(Don’t worry, dad, it wasn’t the Nikon.)