gotta love this country

today aswan and i rode the motorbike to semarang (an hour and a half away) just because we needed to get out of town. i love salatiga, but sometimes, a girl's just gotta get away. aswan too. he's not a girl.

anyways, we left after church and spent basically the whole day there. we spent 4 hours total on a motorbike, rain and all, and the day was still SO refreshing. i'm really glad we got a chance to spend some time together and to get out of town for a bit. because salatiga is like warsaw. (my college friends will understand) if you like bowling, you're set. or here, it's if you like playing ddr in public, you're set. but if you want a mall or a decent movie theater, you gotta drive an hour to get there.

after we got home, i was thinking over my day and realized i spent hardly any money. here's the rundown of the day's expenses.

1. roxy hoodie
2. busana (muslim) shirt that is fancy enough to wear to weddings (which is why i bought it)
3. one ticket to see the green hornet
4. a new headband
5. a dvd case that holds 80 discs
6. photoshop cs2
7. two new dvds (the tourist and life as we know it)
8. two packages of korean noodles
9. a can of imported peaches
10. two rolls of toilet paper
11. lunch at pizza hut (first time since JUNE!)
12. parking and gas

the grand total? care to take a guess?

just under $40. in america, just that first item would have cost that much. aaah, i love this country.

random part of our day - we visited aswan's family on the way home. they live just off the semarang - salatiga road. i get more and more comfortable with them every time we visit. but right as we were about to leave, it started to pour down rain. that's not the random part. that's pretty normal, in fact. what was really random was that we decided to wait out the rain, and while we were waiting, aswan's uncle showed up - they haven't seen or heard from him in SIX years. aswan's mom thought her own brother was dead all this time. she said he comes to visit at least once every two years, but not these past six, so she just assumed the worst. he lives about a 5 hour drive away in cirebon. so that was super random. he just happened to be in town. so now i'm meeting the extended family!

oh, and aswan's mom keeps asking questions about what american weddings are like. question of the night was how many people get invited. i didn't really know, so she told me to guess. i threw out 250. she said aswan's sister invited 200 but 400 showed up. so she decided we better plan for 500. haha... love this lady.