Circumcisions

My pembantu (helper) didn't come into work all week this week. She was busy preparing to host 1000 people this weekend in honor of her son Yoel's circumcision. Circumcisions are a big deal here, as they mark the passage to becoming a man. Usually the boy is around 12 or 13, and the celebration lasts a few days as guests come in shifts according to their invitation. My time to come is tomorrow at 9:30 AM, but Ibu Sri asked if I would drop by today and take some pictures with my "nice camera" of the family and friends who came. I was happy to have a chance to help my helper - she does so much for me!

As I was sitting, snacking on some traditional Javanese sweetness (Ibu Sri told me she bought roughly 100 pounds of sugar for all the cooking she did this week!), one of my good friends' fathers arrived. After shaking the hands of all the family members, he came and sat with me. He asked where Yoel was, so I pointed him out, and he walked over and handed him some money. He came and sat down again, and we chatted for awhile, until Ibu Sri motioned for me to come take some more pictures.

After I took some family pictures for her, she told me to sit down beside her, which I obediently did. I made polite conversation, telling her she looked great, the food was delicious, and that it was obvious how loved her family was by how many people came that day. Then I asked how she knew my friend's dad.

Ibu Sri: Who?
Me: Him. That guy sitting over there in the orange shirt. *pointing*
Ibu Sri: Oh! Him... Yeah, I don't know him at all.
Me: What??!
Ibu Sri: When I told my friends to hand out the invitations to people, I told them to give one to Mr. Bambang who lives in Klaseman. They accidentally gave one to that guy. I guess his name is Mr. Bambang too, but I've never met him.
Me: Oh. Well it was nice of him to come anyways.
Ibu Sri: Oh, yes. He seems like a very kind man. He doesn't know us, but he still came and gave money to Yoel.
Me: He's my friend's dad.
Ibu Sri: Really? You know him?
Me: Yeah.
Ibu Sri: When he came earlier, we all shook his hand, then I asked my husband if that is one of his friends, and he said no, and then my husband asked if he is one of my friends, and I said no. But we didn't know what to do, because he already came in!

I was just cracking up the whole time. I can't wait to tell my friend that his dad crashed a circumcision today.

Panin

I cut and carried rice for 7 hours yesterday.
And I'm feeling it today.
Who knew rice could hurt so much?

Well, Now I’ve Done It

I was helping a friend re-arrange furniture in her house in anticipation of her mother’s arrival from Germany tomorrow. We were switching out a twin size bed in the guest room with a  double bed from the other guest room (her house has a lot of rooms). As we were carrying the bed frame out, it started to slip, and for some silly reason, I ended up catching it on my wrist. It didn’t hurt, and we finished carrying it out and moved the other bed in, and I happened to glance at my wrist and noticed that blood seemed to be pooling under the skin. That kind of freaked me out a bit as that doesn’t happen every day and you have some serious veins in your wrist. My first thought was that I was probably going to die. But then I thought I might be overreacting a little bit, so I texted my dad and woke him up to double check. He told me to take two aspirin and call him in the morning (after checking with my mom – the medical pro in our family – and reassuring me that I was most likely alright).

But I feel like it’s a new adventure! I’ve never had blood pool under the skin in my wrist before! I’ve never burst a blood vessel before! It looks pretty cool. My wrist is all black and purple. I made my friend take a picture that does not do it justice, but here it is.

And then later this evening, I took anther one myself close up without the flash and after I had actually painted ALL my nails so that you can see what it actually kind of looks like in real life. So here is that one:

It’s like a bruise that doesn’t hurt UNDER my skin. The jaga at school earlier told me to rub some oil on it and it’ll be fine. Seems about as sound as dad’s advice.

A Man

Tonight I met a man. He was very nondescript. Then again, it's hard for me to really describe Indonesians in any great detail. "He had black hair, brown eyes, his skin was pretty dark..."  He was dressed in very Muslim garb. In fact, he looked like he was on his way to pray at the mosque. Except the last prayer time of the day had just ended.

I listened to him talk. He is Muslim. His national ID clearly states that he is. He went to an Islamic college. He has memorized most of the Koran. He knows all 26 prophets. He prays 5 times a day facing west, towards Mecca. He sacrifices goats on the appropriate holidays, and he gives to the poor. He rejoices when a church is bombed. Allah is his God, and Muhammad is his prophet.

He feels very strongly that people of any religion need to know the history of their faith. He is sad that most Muslims only know their history from Adam until Abraham. After that, he claims, they know very little until Muhammad. So he has taken it upon himself to teach them. He is a teacher. At schools, at universities, at mosques.

First, he makes sure they really do know from Adam to Abraham. Then when they get to the part about Allah commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son and Allah sending a sheep as a replacement, he stops them. Why, he asks, did Allah do that? What was the point? Well, they reply, today we sacrifice sheep as a remembrance of Abraham's obedience, and in doing so, our own sins are forgiven.

But that does not satisfy him. It was man who sinned. How can an animal cleanse man from sin? It can't happen. Only a man can serve as payment for the sin of man. But a sinful man can't atone for the sins of sinful man. Only a perfect man can.

So they continue through the rest of the Koran, learning and discussing as they go. Then they get to a verse that says, "If thou wert in doubt as to what We have revealed unto thee, then ask those who have been reading the Book from before thee." - a reference to the Bible.

So then he pulls out a Bible, and they read the Gospel together, like the Koran just told them to. Jesus is in the Koran. He was a prophet. Was he a Muslim prophet? Most Muslims would say yes. Was he the son of God and the savior of the world? Most Muslims would say no. But the Bible says differently.

So once they have read the Koran AND the Gospel, they talk. They think. They wrestle. He has lots of hard questions for the people he teaches. Why does the Koran point people back to the Bible? Is Jesus who the Bible says he is or is He who the Koran says He is? Why do two books that are so similar differ so drastically in certain areas? What is the relationship between Jesus and the lamb Allah sent to replace Abraham's son as a sacrifice? Who is the perfect man that we need to save us from our sins? 


"It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else's foundation. Rather, as it is written: 'Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.'" - Romans 15:20-21

Summer Goals Update

 

1. Finish curriculum maps for school by June 18th. (HALLELUJAH!)
2. Clean out and reorganize the filing cabinet in my classroom to make it more efficient to use.
3. Teach Kohl how to play piano. (2 lessons so far and going strong!)
4. Get access to a piano and practice it at least once a week as well as guitar. (Doing good.)
5. Have a picnic on top of a mountain.
6. Climb to the top of the Beringin tower (the tallest building in town) and spend an afternoon looking at the rooftops of the city.
7. Go on drives/walks with the express purpose of taking pictures at least 3 times. (I’ve done this twice already.)
8. Finish season 1 of Downton Abbey with Melanie.
9. Read at least 100 chapters of the Bible. (About a quarter of the way there.)
10. Drive my motorbike to Solo. Talk to the homeless man at the stoplight north of town.
11. Go swimming and get a tan.
12. Stay at a local hotel once just for the fun of it. Order room service and try not to notice that the fried rice probably costs five times as much in the hotel as it does on the sidewalk in front of the hotel.
13. Go to Semarang to have lunch with Vartika at least once before she moves to America.
14. Read and translate at least 10 Indonesian fables. (I’ve done 2.) 
15. Learn to make grilled stuffed burritos with all local ingredients. (Still tracking down all of the ingredients.)
16. Find a good tailor and take the pile of slightly-too-large hand-me-downs that has been building up for a year in to be altered so that I can finally wear them.
17. Leave the island once. Ideally, leave the country once - to Singapore or KL. (Leaving the island twice this summer, but probably not the country.)
18. Go on dinner dates with Liz. (First one scheduled for next week!)
19. Re-learn calculus so I can teach it next year.
20. Don't avoid goodbyes. Spend lots of time with people who are leaving, even when I feel like I should be accomplishing something else on my list.
21. Exercise. At least once. All summer. (I would say I’ve exercised at least 3 times. Above and beyond, that’s my motto!)
22. Read the books I own that I haven't read yet, and don't download and watch seasons of TV shows instead. (Haven’t downloaded ANY new shows. Finished two books already.) 
23. Be intentional about learning more Indonesian. Read the dictionary.
24. Take a vitamin every day. (I missed one day while I was in Karimunjawa. I’m a failure… (JK))

Dear mom and dad,

Within the next 8 – 10 business days when you get get the two pound bottle of hair gel that I had shipped to your address and you wonder to yourself, “Why on earth did our daughter buy a TWO POUND bottle of hair gel online?”, I want you to look at the photograph below and think two things.

1. Wow, look how attractive she is. She really knows how to work the camera.
2. Is that her real hair, or is she wearing a wig? Because her real hair is usually much larger and poofier and lion-like than that. Hmmm. I bet it’s a wig. But if it was a wig, why would she need to order a two pound bottle of hair gel? Do you put hair gel in wigs? I doubt it. Thus, this must be her real hair, and this particular hair gel must work MIRACLES. I will give it to her younger sister to pack in her luggage to deliver when she goes to visit in July.

All my love,
A

Walk #2 – 16-06-2012

 

Walk #1 – 01-06-2012

 

One item on my summer goals list was to take walks with my Nikon and just photograph things around me. Well, a few weeks ago, I went on the first of these walks. I took a friend and her visiting parents out to a nearby sawah (rice paddy) and river to get some fresh air and photograph what we saw. I think I’ll not caption any of these picture, but instead, I’ll let them stand on their own and speak for themselves.

Karimun Memories

 

Contained within the following posts are several highlights and memories of my recent trip to Karimunjawa. Some are only for the benefit of me remembering the inside jokes and sweet moments we had together, but others are memories that hopefully you can enjoy reading about as well. During quieter times on this trip, it really hit me hard that this same group of people will probably never be together again. Fifteen of us spent 4 wonderful nights on a tropical island together, but in just one short month, only 6 of us will still be living in Indonesia, and of those 6, three will have moved to other cities/islands. For the next month, I will say goodbye one by one to these twelve friends, new and old. I am so thankful for this time that we could spend loving on each other and having crazy adventures together, as you will soon read. Because I am a logical person, I am going to break this post up into phases by day.

Day 1

Day 1. We left Salatiga at 6 AM on a bus. We had to go to the harbor in Semarang, a city on the north coast of Java, to catch the fast ferry to Karimunjawa. But on the way, we had to pick up one more friend. When he jumped on the bus, he had a recorder in his hand. For whatever reason, he had been sitting on his front porch playing it while he waited for us to come, and he forgot to put it back inside. That became kind of a trip joke, and several of us took turns playing our own renditions of everything from Celine Dion to patriotic anthems on that recorder. We hit some really rough traffic but still made it to the ferry with about 15 minutes to spare. Shortly after we found our seats and settled in, the captain came over the loudspeaker and gave us the standard monotone speech over the crackly PA system, “On behalf of the staff and crew, I thank you for traveling on our ferry today. I hope you are comfortable, and if you need anything during your journey, our staff is ready to serve you. We will be embarking shortly, and our trip to Karimunjawa will take approximately 4 hours. We are expecting good weather and smooth sailing”. Then he went on to say, “We would really appreciate it if everyone would take a moment right now to pray that we make it there safely.” I kind of looked around the cabin to see if other people thought this guy was serious, then all of a sudden, the captain SHOUTED over the PA system, “BERDOA MULAI!” (START PRAYING!). So I prayed frantically for about 20 seconds until the same voice barked, “BERDOA SELASAI!” (STOP PRAYING!). And then, back to the monotone, “Thank you for your prayers”. And with a loud screech of feedback as he hung up his microphone, the welcome speech was over.

So that was a little disconcerting… At any rate though, we made it safely to the main island of the Karimunjawa chain. I don’t know how many islands there are in Karimunjawa, but the majority of them are small and unpopulated. The largest island has one small town on it, and this is where all the ferries dock. Many hotels and things are here also, but we stayed on a different island. So when our ferry docked, we had to load 15 people and their luggage into the back of a pickup truck and drive partway across the island to another smaller harbor where we got on a fishing boat that took us out to our island.

This is a view from the boat looking back at the town on the main island.

And here is the island that we stayed on. It is called Menjangan Island.

The island we stayed on is largely uninhabited. On one side there are a few bungalows and some small shacks that the people who work for the “resort” live in. Other than those few people, there is nobody else on the island. We settled into our bungalows quickly and took a few minutes to explore the shallow inlet out front.

One of our bungalows.

The inlet and beach in front of our bungalows. Also, the boats we traveled on.

The staff had prepared a late lunch for us of rice, eggs, vegetables, and a sweet coconut drink. After we finished eating, we changed into our swimsuits, and walked to the far side of the island where we were told over 2000 species of fish lived.

I have to interject a seemingly unimportant story here. Before we left on our walk, I tried to lock our bungalow door only to find that the key was rusted into the lock and could not be removed. I asked for assistance from one of the resort staff, Mas Wawan, but try as he might, he couldn’t get the key out either. A heavyset older man in boxers and a stained wifebeater sauntered over with half closed eyes and asked if he could help. We explained the problem, and he tried to get the key out. Due to his old man strength (which I’m convinced is a real thing), I feared the bungalow would be destroyed with his attempts to strongarm the key out of the door. Finally though, he turned to me and said, “It’s not a problem. I’m the guard here. There are no thieves on the island. I’m the boss of this island. Nothing ever gets stolen. I’m the police around these parts. You don’t have to worry about a thing. I’m even the boss of the police on this island. I’ll guard your stuff. I’m the boss. No worries.” His story kept on getting bigger and bigger, but I didn’t have much choice but to trust him, leave the key in the door, and go swimming!

We snorkeled around in the shallow water off our island for a few hours until the sun set and it started to get dark. We saw tons of ocean wildlife including jellyfish, manta rays, star fish, sea urchins, eels, and fish in every color imaginable! I was allergic to something back there though, and after sneezing roughly 30 times (a difficult task in a snorkel, I assure you), then being attacked by some small fish trying to protect its eggs I presume, I decided to lay on the beach and read for awhile. Of course that made me fair game for being buried in sand and transformed into a merman! A very muscular merman, I might add…

By the time I busted out of my merman sand trap, the sun was setting over the water, and what a beautiful sunset it was! Even after the sun went down, the sky kept changing into one beautiful color after another!

Later on, after we showered and changed, they served us a dinner of rice, fried fish, tempe, and veggies. And then, while we ate, the resort staff built us a bonfire on the beach! I went out and messed around with long exposures on my DSLR camera. Before too long, my friends caught on to some cool stuff we could do, and they decided to firewrite. Below are just a few of their many attempts. Can you tell what they are trying to make in each photo?

That evening, a group of people from Jakarta came and stayed in the unoccupied bungalows. We chatted with them a bit and learned that they had all gone to college together, and they had a pact that once a year they would do a reunion trip. They’ve been doing it for 10+ years now. It made me really miss my college friends. I wish we all lived in a place where we could do that!

Day 2

Day 2. We woke up and had a breakfast of fried rice and a fried egg (they really like to fry things on this island), then we loaded up on our fishing boat and headed out for a day of snorkeling! And much to my chagrin, I realized that the driver of our boat was none other than our island’s guard/boss/police/police boss. If he was with us, then WHO WAS WATCHING OUR STUFF?! Oh, well…

First, they anchored the boat in a shallow part of the ocean where there was lots of coral. We were disappointed to find that most of the coral was pretty dead looking. Out a little farther from the boat was a large patch of very shallow water with white sand below it. A few of us swam over that way and just floated around looking for sand dollars and other creatures that like to hang out in sandy spots. One friend swam a little farther beyond the sand and discovered some AMAZING coral. The ocean floor dropped down to about 20 feet, and there were TOWERS of live coral that came almost all the way to the surface of the water with hundreds of fish and other animals swimming around them. He and I explored around that area for quite awhile. Unfortunately, we were about half a kilometer from the boat by this point, which is where my underwater camera was. I hadn’t expected to find such beautiful coral there, so I have no pictures to document it as I didn’t feel like swimming to the boat and then back out.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I am beginning to get over my irrational fear of coral. I still have a healthy respect for it, and I would prefer it to be at least 6 feet away from me at all times, but I no longer hyperventilate in my snorkel when I am close to it. So that’s good news!!

Resting on the boat.

After we had our fill of floating around at that spot, we got back on the boat and ate a boxed lunch of rice and green beans. Pity the seasick ones among us… As we drove to our next destination, we passed a large ship that we had also seen the night before from our beach. It was anchored not far from our island, and as we passed it, we asked the police boss driving our boat about it. He said that it was an Indonesian Navy ship and that they come out to the islands periodically to do training exercises. While they’re there, they also go around to all the uninhabited islands and check for terrorist cells hiding out. I never thought of it before, but with the tens of thousands of uninhabited islands in Indonesia, it would be the perfect hiding place for anyone up to no good!

The Navy ship

One of the many uninhabited islands of Karimunjawa.

Our next stop was back near our own Menjangan island, but on the far side from our bungalows. We dropped anchor offshore and jumped off to swim. The water was much deeper here, and there wasn’t as much coral to see, so we mostly just dove off the boat, some more creatively than others. Some of us swam for awhile, but something invisible kept stinging us sharply. The police-boss-boat-driver explained that those are jellyfish no bigger than a human hair. They are nearly invisible in the water, but they feel like a papercut when they sting you! He eventually jumped off the boat and started using a small net to catch fish which we later ate for dinner. He also found a very large oyster that he threw onto our boat. We happened to have a very large knife with us (don’t ask), so we busted that sucker open so we could look for a pearl inside. No such luck, but one of the guys and I promptly proceeded to “explore” its insides. Since my hands were covered in oyster guts, I have no pictures of this. It was really interesting trying to identify the parts. We had cut it all up before we realized that Mr. Police guy intended to eat it. Then we felt really bad for messing up his catch, but he looked at our work and told us we’d actually done a very good job butchering it. He told us which parts to keep and which to throw back. So hooray for us butchering an oyster properly without even knowing it!

After that stop, we headed back to our bungalows to shower and change for dinner. After dinner, we headed to the other side to watch the sunset again. It wasn’t QUITE as good as the day before, but still beautiful!