A Great Man

A great man died today.
His name is Titus Boggs.

Unprecedentedly (Is that a Word?)

Three things.

1. Boyfriend has not had running water at his house for four days now. Last night, a guy was supposed to come fix it at 5. By 6, when he had not shown up, boyfriend went looking around the neighborhood for the guy, found where he lived, went to his house and asked him, "Dude?" (You know how guys do) The guy said he got busy and that he would come the next morning (this morning) at 8 to fix it. It was absolutely blazing hot today and boyfriend does not own a single fan. So I braved the Idul Fitri traffic (which, incidentally, I made multiple short videos of the other day when we drove to Semarang and back, but I am unable to upload a single one, sorry) to take him fresh juice popsicles I made this week packed in a ziploc bag inside an insulated lunch box packed with frozen pecans. I felt bad for him - no fans, no running water, and it was pushing 100 today. The popsicles were still frozen by the time I made it across town, so hurrah for that! Anyways, by the time 5 PM rolled around and we finally finished watching Never Say Never Again (Sean Connery, anybody?), we decided the guy was probably not coming to fix the water, so we scoured town for ANYPLACE that would serve us dinner (most are already closed for the holiday). Ended up with fried rice and dumplings. Not bad. Most of this is completely mundane, but it was a fun day, getting as much skin as possible to come in direct contact with boyfriend's tile floor in order to stay cool while watching oooold James Bond films. I love not going to work.

2. A few weeks ago, I was talking to an American friend about my troubles with buying work clothes while I was in the States. Try as I might (and I did!), I could not find a single secondhand thing that fit me in terms of profession/work wear. I looked at JCPenny, but even their sale SHIRTS were $30-ish. I bought a couple dresses I can wear to work, but I didn't come back to Indonesia with a single pair of dress pants or a dress shirt. I did bring back plenty of plain V-neck type shirts which are acceptable to wear, but I was hoping to actually find some legit professional looking clothes this summer. I mean, I'm 25. It wouldn't hurt. Anyways, said friend was telling me that before she moved here just a few short months ago, people already living in Indo told her that she would wear dress clothes a lot, especially for language school. So she ended up bringing lots. But as it turns out, she basically just wears jeans every day. So she gave me a whole bag of dress clothes today. We have slightly different styles and she is quite a bit taller than me, but every single thing she gave me more or less fit, and I like at least 75% of it! So hurrah for blessings!

3. Here is the weirdest thing of all. Ever since the beginning of fasting month, Idul Fitri (the end of the fast, and the biggest Muslim holiday of the year) has been slated for the 30th of August, aka tomorrow. So tonight, everyone broke fast at 5:45, as usual, and people, having successfully completed their month long fast, began preparing for the next two days of feasting and festivity. Women spent ALL DAY cooking delicious meals, men constructed floats and rehearsed marches for the city wide parade (that should have been) held tonight, grown children traveled to their hometown, kids set off lots of really loud fireworks, people cleaned their best prayer clothes for the community sholat (prayer) held at the town center at sunrise, etc. And then at about 7 PM, the government said, "JUST KIDDING, EVERYONE! Unless you stand in EXACTLY the right place in Block M (the scariest part of Jakarta, I'm convinced, since I got stuck there alone under a bridge one night), the sun is in the wrong position by 1.5 degrees and we cannot celebrate Idul Fitri. Hence, you have to fast ONE MORE DAY, and Idul Fitri will start on Wednesday instead, Ins'allah!" The island went into a state of uproar. Within 20 minutes of the proclamation, I received several jokes about the situation via text/facebook/bbm. And everybody's plans changed. Some feasts that have already been cooked now have to be delayed a day - in a country where most people don't own refrigerators. Some will still happen tomorrow, but nobody can eat - except the Christians. Lucky for me, only one of the four feasts I was invited to tomorrow got moved to Wednesday. So I still get to spend most of the day stuffing my face with delicious food. My hosts, on the other hand, get to watch me eat all the delicious food they have cooked. But tomorrow night, all the festivities will begin, hopefully. I am really craving cotton candy and a parade. Oh yeah! The parade! Every neighborhood makes some kind of float or march and they travel around their area of town, then eventually make their way to the town center, which is an open field with a road circling all the way around it. They all go around the circle a few times, then back to where they came from. It is great fun to be waiting at the center of town and to watch all the people go by while eating lots of unsanitary foods. I asked a few friends if something like this has ever happened before, and they all said that it hasn't in their lifetime. I mean, how difficult is it to calculate a month of fasting? Apparently, way more difficult than one would think!

Anyways, it's past midnight now, so I should probably go to bed. It's the last chance I have for a few days to sleep without rockets going off loud enough to rattle my cement walls or all seven mosques within earshot blaring until 2 in the morning. Also, I've got to party hard tomorrow, so I clearly need my beauty sleep!

Selamat Lebaran dan minal aidin wal faidzin!

Tempayang and Selasih

After watching Aswan do it for me once, I was able to successfully make 2 more mugs of the seed-becoming-jelly water stuff tonight. My throat did feel better today, I have to admit, but still coughing up stuff. Gotta give it a few more days.

Also, I really love chewing the basil seeds slowly between my front teeth. After they turn into little jellies, they just have the weirdest texture! You should try it some time. Just drop basil seeds into hot water and eat them!

Good Morning

 

I’m not sure if the noisy mosque quieted down after the first few days or if I just got used to the noise and slept through it. But I didn’t stand a chance this morning… I think they must have had a different guy doing the wakeup call for the past few weeks, because this morning, Mr. LOUD was back. At 3 AM. I was so wide awake that I had the presence of mind to video the last 10 or so seconds of it.

So imagine this going off SUPER LOUD from just a few buildings down the road.

Old Wives Tales

So as you know (because I am good at complaining), I was sick last week. It’s mostly gone now, but one time in college, I got really sick and had a hacking cough for 5 months and so now pretty much any time I get sick, I have a residual hacking cough for anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. The flu or whatever it was that seems to be going around school only lasted for 3 days, but now I’ve got the cough. A guy in church happened to overhear me coughing and we struck up a conversation Sunday after church. He mentioned an Indonesian herbal remedy that involves a type of seed that is hard as a rock being soaked in hot water until it turns into jelly. Then you just drink the water and it is guaranteed to make any cough disappear within 3 days. He said he’d buy me some seeds at the market this week.

The goods arrived tonight. I have 8 of those seeds, which are called biji bunga tempayang. Not sure what that translates to. It’s the seed of some flower though. Pak Fil also sent a lot of selasih, which, when translated, appears to be basil seed. I asked what that is for, and Aswan told me it reduces your “panas dalam”. Inner heat? Best guess is that it’s for fever. Aswan explained that if your inner heat is too hot, it’s hard to get better. Sickness just festers. So you have to treat your inner heat in order to treat any other ailment.

Before I get to the pictures – and trust me, this foray into the world of Indonesian wives tales was thoroughly documented – let me just preface this by saying that I am normally a moderately daring person. If I’m reasonably sure it won’t kill me, I’ll try anything once. Brains, guts, chicken feet, etc. But it really sealed the deal when a) Pak Fil said he was buying, b) Pak Fil claimed that this stuff has no flavor, c) I realized how often I get sick here, so what can it hurt to try? d) rock sugar was included in the deal to sweeten the supposedly flavorless water, and e) the rock/seed thing turns to jelly! How could that not intrigue me??

Here you go:

(The something-flower seed and the basil seeds)

(Here they are in their bagged form)

(Hot water and rock sugar added. By the way, I was thrilled to find that the rock seeds float, thus enabling me to more efficiently photo-document this adventure.)

(Within seconds, the rock seed started expanding. It was like those capsule things you throw in hot water and watch them grow into sponges shaped like animals. Those are the best.)

(The basil seeds also turn into little jellies that look kind of like frog eyes or something! Who knew?)

(You look like you need a close up of what is going down in this mug)

(I forgot to mention this earlier, but boyfriend is the one who made me this concoction. Because he is the best. According to him, after about 5 minutes, you have to stir it to make it look like tea. Notice the water is brown now, not clear.)

(By this point I COULD.NOT.WAIT to try my drink. Aswan kept telling me to be patient and just keep taking pictures.)

(FINALLY ready to drink!!)

(I got boyfriend to document the first sip for me.)

(Not bad for medicine! Really all I could taste was the sugar, but that just might be because I’m still a little stuffed up.)

(The flower seed turns into this. Appetizing. I chose not to eat mine.)

(EYEBALLS! OK, not really….)

(The seed thing before and after.)

Boyfriend says he’ll make me another mug of it tomorrow. Now to see if it actually works. If so, I am so sold on this remedy. It is cheap and easy and tastes sweet. Also, it looks like I am drinking tiny eyeballs and that is so cool.

Furniture

I got really into making things in the past year or two. I don’t like my hands being idle, so when I’m watching a movie or just sitting around, I’m always almost knitting, stitching, cutting, gluing, painting or just generally creating something. I don’t have a whole lot to show for it since I usually give everything away.
Anyways, I bought a bunch of craft stuff over the summer in America to bring back with me. It’s hard to find a lot of things here like yarn, knitting needles, cross-stitch fabric, skeins of floss, etc. I did learn that felt and fabric scraps are in abundance though!
I like my things to be organized, so in a desperate attempt to classify and store all my craft things, I constructed a crude shelf out of 5 cardboard boxes. One for knitting things, one for needlework things, one for painting, drawing and coloring things, one for paper and pictures, and one for broken things from around the house that I’m convinced I can repurpose. Like old guitar strings and pane of glass that broke in half.
When Aswan saw my sad little cardboard boxes, he gave me *a look* and said, “Let’s go visit my friend Deny. He can build something for you. Out of….. wood.” So we went to visit Deny. I really had no clue what I wanted because I so thrilled with my cardboard box construction. But Deny talked with me for like an hour and we came up with a plan. And 5 days later, I had my first piece of custom built furniture!

(Before and after)

Even though we never talked about it, Deny went ahead and made all the shelves removable and made each side look paneled (or at least that is the word I would use to describe it. I don’t really know what the correct term is). It only cost $40. It is made of mahogany. I think I’m in love. 

Telemoyo

Neither boyfriend nor I particularly enjoy planning for large groups. And small groups in Indonesia always turn into large groups. You can invite 5 people to do something, and before you know it, all 5 people have also invited 5 people and it just goes downhill from there. However, boyfriend and I did decide that we should hang out with friends more. Not that we don’t ever hang out with friends. We do. A lot, actually. But most evenings if we’re going out for dinner, it’s easier if we just go out for dinner alone than to have to try to arrange a time that is convenient for 75 people, not to mention a restaurant where they’d all fit!

Anyways, in the spirit  of doing things in groups and wanting fresh non-city air and taking the two new teachers on an adventure, I got a group together to go up Mount Telemoyo, which is one of two dormant volcanoes we can actually see from campus. Telemoyo is my favorite mountain to climb because you never actually have to set foot on the ground. A lot of internet and cell phone companies have towers at the peak of the mountain, so there’s a service road all the way to the top! Granted, the “road” is only barely wide enough for a car, drops off steeply to the left, and is washed out in a lot of places. But still, the view is amazing! You can see six mountains from the top. When it’s not completely covered in clouds like it was when we went up. It was still beautiful though – and a really fun drive!

We ended up with 13 people going. I was a little apprehensive because some of those going have only recently bought motorbikes and have never driven on scary mountain roads. Also, it’s easy to burn brakes out coming back down if you don’t know how to drive downhill for extended periods of time. But everyone did really well! We were slow and steady and took lots of sightseeing/photo breaks since it was completely clear up until just below the peak.

Here are some pictures I took!!

(The chicken manure truck we got stuck behind on the way to the service road – you can see a bit of Telemoyo in the background)

(A view of Telemoyo from before we actually started ascending it)

(Entering the service road)

(The next mountain over – Gunung Andong, which I’ve also climbed! That one you actually have to hike)

(Picture time with Yo, Kari and Pita)

(Stopping for pictures just below the peak)

(Some of the many towers at the top)

(Not much of a view from the top. But we could spy on the people coming around that bend in the road!)

(On the way down. This is the only picture I have that actually has everyone in it! We did take one group picture at the top, but unfortunately, it wasn’t with my camera.)

(Back down at the bottom)

NEWSFLASH!

Boyfriend’s roommate finally cut off his mullet!!!!! I have been waiting for this day. And waiting and waiting and waiting. I’m gonna chalk this up to the recent addition of his first girlfriend in his life.

Also I am sick. School always makes me pretty consistently sick, every year. Boyfriend spent all day with me yesterday (because it was Indonesian independence day so we didn't have to work) and gave me a leg massage. It was fantastic.

And when we went to get lunch, we wanted to eat at a new-ish restaurant outside of town. But it was closed (due to the holiday). So we were a little ways outside town and then we got a flat tire so we had to push the motorbike to a tambal ban (tire patching place) in the desa (village). A one legged man who lives in a clapboard wood house fixed the tire for us while his baby duck came and sat down in the dirt by my feet and the neighbor kids came out and stood by their well to watch me shyly. I didn’t even care that I felt like death or that it was 2 o’clock and I was ridiculously hungry. It was so quiet and peaceful and just sitting on a bench in the one-legged man’s dirt yard with all his poultry cackling about made me so happy my eyes actually filled up with tears. It was a beautiful day.

Happy independence day, Indonesia. But don't confuse independence with freedom.

School Days

Well, we're halfway through the third day of school. And I gotta say, I love these kids way more than I expected to. I really don't enjoy middle school aged little people, and this year I have 9th grade AND 8th grade (and 10th grade and 11th grade). I still have bad dreams about 7th grade three years ago. So I was somewhat dreading teaching middle school again. But really, they are awesome. Way more awesome than I thought.

Yesterday, we were going over unit conversions in 9th grade, like converting miles per hour to kilometers per hour. And we got into a discussion about why they have to learn American units of measurement instead of just using metric all the time. The entire class is Asian except for one American who was born and raised in Indonesia. None of them use the American system for weights and measures. I concur that it's pretty stupid when compared with the metric system. But they gotta learn it, so I provided several valid (or so I thought) reasons for learning the American system: they might someday go to college in America, it's good to learn how other people in the world do/measure things, being open-minded is a positive thing, because their textbook and teacher are both American, because I say so, etc.

On their homework assignment, one problem asked them to compare the weight of a bumblebee (given in ounces) to the weight of a whale (given in tons), meaning they would have to convert either the bee's weight to tons or the whale's weight to ounces. The first part of the question just asks them to convert one to the other. The second part asks them to tell how many times heavier the whale is than the bumblebee. And the third part asks them to explain another way they could have worked the problem. Suggested answers are, "convert the whale and bee's weight both to pounds and compare" and "instead of converting the whale's weight to ounces, I could have converted the bee's weight to tons".

One Indonesian student came up with a unique solution.

"By converting the weight to the glorious master race metric system."

My poor grader had no clue what to do with something that in no way resembled what was in the answer key, so he asked me to look at it. I told him not to mark it wrong and laughed kind of a lot.

Sleep cometh! Finally!

Kept myself awake all the way until 10 last night! Only marginally woke up for sahur and prayers, but otherwise slept straight until 6:30. Teacher meetings start today at 8. Oh boy... can't wait...

A Dire Miscalculation

Well, I made myself stay awake ALL THE WAY until 9:30 last night. WOW! By that point, I was just about sleeping on my feet. But even though I woke up for sahur this morning again, I was able to fall back asleep after. When I did wake up, for some reason I looked at my phone to see what time it was. 3:15. Yesterday I said I woke up at 4. I was wrong. Sahur starts at 3:15. Wow. Well, I guess if they can start their day at 3:15, so can I. Right? Ugh.

After I fell back asleep, I woke up for call to prayer. This new mosque is gonna be a challenge, I am realizing. But then I fell back asleep again! All the way until 6:30 when some people were walking on the track nearby my house talking REALLY loudly.

So now I'm gonna go make some delicious mom's potato salad for the school "family reunion" later this afternoon. Have a great day!