conspiracies

i just found a very illuminating website run by Christians (naturally) in which they claim that the wizard of oz was made by the occult, beyonce is practicing satanist mind control over her fans, lady gaga is a tool of satan, and rihanna's song "umbrella" is an invitation for the devil to rape her. i mean, it's so obvious... how did i miss all this? sigghhhhhh.... people.

i also just found out that the registration and license plates for my bike are FINALLY ready! they said 2 - 3 weeks. it's been almost 5. yes, i've been driving illegally. granted, only around this part of town. mostly. it'll be nice to feel free to go anywhere for the first time.

i'm gonna try to hike merapi this friday night. "try" being the key word. i'm not really sure if i can do it. it's an all night hike. we're leaving at 8 pm, and we'll be lucky if we see the sunrise. i'm going with a group of girls, so that helps. hopefully i won't be too far behind everyone else. i figure by saturday evening, i'll mostly just want to die.

but i can't! because i have a date with mr l to watch harvey! we love old movies, and so far, nobody else does. yo and gt, my usual weekend accomplices, are going to be on a different island for the weekend. they get to road trip to sumatra. i'm extremely jealous, but oh well. i have a job. and a girl - especially a white one - should definitely not be traveling alone with a couple indonesian guys.

i watched all 4 seasons of criminal minds in the past 2 weeks. it feels strange to have a life again now that that's done. one in which i'm looking over my shoulder and leaving lights on a lot.

it is hot hot hot these days! i was sweating by 7:30 this morning. we thought rainy season was starting a couple weeks ago, but it was only toying with us. hasn't rained all week, except a quick sprinkle 2 nights ago. my hair is reacting negatively, as expected.

charles and marie have a new baby, william. since they can't legally adopt him, he's technically a foster child. they're still not sure what God has planned for his future. but he's an adorable little thing who definitely needs some love in his life!

gramma taught me how to crochet when i was like 8 years old. unfortunately, i never progressed past crocheting one looonnnnnnnng strand that could wind its way through all the rooms in the house. until this week. mom brought me a ton of yarn and a crocheting needle when she came (among many other fantastic things that i had been craving for a year) and i promptly taught myself how to actually make something useful! so far, i've made 2 hotpads (can you believe i went almost a year and a half without owning any?!), and i'm starting on a scarf. which might seem ridiculous, given that i live on a tropical island. but you'd be surprised.

christmas plans are in full swing. yo found us an awesome bungalow to stay in on the nearly deserted tropical beach island of gili air for new years (thereby avoiding last year's bali madness), then after about a week of that - and once the holiday is over - we'll likely head to a semi-remote part of bali to spend a few days before coming back to java. i'm excited. come here, christmas!

ninth grade is undoubtedly my hardest class to teach. there's only 10 students, but i have ALL the loudest and most attention needy kids in that class. i also have 2 of the kids who get teased the most and 1 of the kids who tends to tease them the most. and there is no quieting them down. i had about all i could take last week, and so i decided to appeal to their intellect by explaining to them how disrespected i felt every day and how little respect i saw them exhibiting toward each other. they quickly got in a shouting match, trying to outargue each other in their claims that they did respect me and that they were just "social" kids. so the next day, i instated my first ever seating arrangement and laid down some rules with serious consequences. so they started asking questions, two of them being "do you hate us?" and "which class is your favorite?" so i told them honestly that i didn't hate them, but that they did sometimes frustrate me, and that geometry was my favorite class to teach. so they asked why. and i told them that it was because geometry is my favorite part of math and because the 10th grade class is very respectful, but at they same time, they get excited about learning math. so now the 9th graders have decided that they want to be my favorite class. and the loudest kids in class have now become the ones who remind others to be quiet or raise their hand. i have not heard a single insult hurled yet this week. i have not gone home from work frustrated a single day this week. this is fantastic... my only concern is this: did i just pit two grades against each other in a competition to be my favorite?

i'm the little one.

i'm the little one.
Originally uploaded by i_am_amity

this might be my favorite picture i've ever taken. i keep looking at it.

9th graders

me: ok, here's your test.
*i hand it out to everyone, then go sit at my desk*
david: *raises his hand* can i borrow a pencil?
me: yeah. *i take him a pencil*
*i go sit at my desk*
kenny: can i have a calculator?
me: sure. *i take him a calculator*
jose: can i have a calculator too? i forgot mine.
me: sure. *i take him a calculator too*
*i sit at my desk*
aditya: can i use my calculator?
me: does it simplify square roots for you?
aditya: kind of......nnnnnnnyes.
me: then no. get one of mine.
aditya: there are none.
me: *i look for my third calculator. take it to him. go back to my desk.*
kyuho: i ran out of lead. can i borrow a pencil?
me: yesssss..... *i take him a pencil*
jenny: can i use a piece of loose leaf? i'm going to need more paper.
me: fine. anybody need anything else before i sit back down?! maybe a nice glass of ice water or a shoulder massage?!
jose: oooooooh.... ummm...... i don't think it's very appropriate if you massage us.
me: sigghhhhhhh....

what? hey! how'd that get in here?!

Here's a fun game. It's called Find the Poser.

Ready? Set... Go!

"The other men charged were identified as Mohammad Abdul Bassir; Muhammad Abdul Salaam; Abdul Saboor; Mujahid Carswell; Abdullah Beard; Mohammad Philistine; Yassir Ali Khan; Adam Hussain Ibraheem; Garry Laverne Porter; and Ali Abdul Raqib." - CNNnews

hotel searching

i'm searching for a hotel for us to stay in while on gili over christmas break... here are some fantastic website excerpts. needless to say, we will likely not be staying at any of these hotels.

Lovely open-air bathrooms.
[Excuse me?]

The entire place decorated with "BOLLYWOOD" style.
[The fact that you wrote it all in caps is supposed to entice me even more?]

Each room facilitate with an open-air bathroom featuring natural stone from south, bathtub, terrace, king size bed, television,mini bar, safe deposit box and american standard toilet.
[Wait, wait, wait. . . the king size bed is IN the bathroom? And what is this natural stone you speak of? Does it have an accent? And what is with the open air bathrooms?!]

Enjoy a total relaxing by staying with us, .....Get........Catch.....Sea.....Sand.......Sun...and of course a lots of fun... this bungalow managed by a local family.
[Hmmm.... I'd bet the website is too.]

The hotels itself providing airport land.
[You can land a plane there? What?! The whole island of Gili isn't big enough to land a plane...]

Traditionally styled buildup of international standard and comprehensive support serious are keynotes of this Villa Hotel.
[Buildup just sounds gross.]

Hotel features grass roof .
[Bugs. Need I say more?]

Run by an Italian called Nino and his Indonesian partner.
[What exactly do you mean by "partner", partner?]

kodak moments

bethanie: can i come home with you?
me: sure, but we have to check and see if my cat is there.
bethanie: right, cause i'm lergic!
me: right. she's probably gone though. she ran away again.
bethanie: ran away?
me: yeah. sometimes she comes home, and sometimes she goes away for a few days.
bethanie: where does she go?
me: i don't know. maybe she has a secret boyfriend somewhere.
bethanie: yeah! or maybe she goes to visit her mom and dad!
me: maybe, but i think she's an orphan.
bethanie: oh. that's why you dopted her?
me: yup.
bethanie: i wonder where she is.
me: well, if you were a cat, where would you run away to?
bethanie: i would run away to you.
me: *thinking awwwwwwwwww!*

last night, i was at home reading when every single female teacher showed up at my neighbor's house. granted, there's only 5 of us... but still, the 4 who are not me were all over there laughing and chatting and eating. we really have good community here, and it seemed strange to me that the 4 of them were hanging out and i wasn't invited. especially when i live in the same building as 2 of them. and the longer i sat there and listened to the sounds of dishes clanking and loud laughter echoing, the more upset i got. i think i let satan get in my head and lie to me a little bit. right about that time, yo sms-ed to say he was going to kim's house to eat french dip subs. he asked if i wanted to come, but i was so down on myself by that point that i made some excuse about not wanting to intrude in someone else's house. so a couple minutes later, i got another sms from him saying that he had asked kim and she said i should come. after a few more sms-es, i finally relented. especially since ibu had only made me a salad for dinner - and not even with chicken like she normally does! i was pretty hungry by then.
so me and my bad mood headed over there to find kim recooking all the food for me (i guess they had eaten and already put the leftovers away). she helped me dish up and showed me what to do (can you believe i've NEVER eaten french dip before?!), and she left me in the kitchen. but as she was walking out the door, she turned around and said to me, "you know, you never have to have an invitation to come here." i almost burst into tears right there, with my head halfway in the freezer looking for ice cubes. i always feel so loved in that house.

yo had to leave, but a little while later, he came back with gentur and a guitar in tow. after playing a fanastic game of seeing who could make the stopwatch on yo's phone start and stop the fastest (i am the undisputed champion, with a record time of 00:00:00.07!), the three of us decided to go up on the roof. we grabbed the guitar and some candles and went up. at first we just passed the guitar around and played and sang a bunch of random songs (including christmas carols!), but we quickly turned to singing praise songs. and after one particular song (Lord, I offer my life to You), gt asked if we could pray together. his actual question was whether it was alright if we spent sometime interceding for one another.

i was kind of surprised. in a good way. a very good way. i guess i'm just not used to hang out time turning into prayer time. but i'm glad it did. we all had a chance to share with each other and lift each other up in prayer. and all of us have some heavy stuff we're dealing with and praying for right now.

i don't know how long we sat there. holding hands. praying. by candlelight. on a roof. in indonesia.

that's one of those "i'll never forget the time. . ." moments.

and i came away from it VERY blessed.

as of late

1. my parents are home safely... it was REALLY exceedingly good to have them here. i hadn't realized how used to living alone i'd gotten though. i could tell by the end that being around people 24/7 was wearing me down. but did i get a break? no, of course not. they left on wednesday night... luckily it was late enough that gt, yo, and i got to all take them to the airport, so i got some moral support from friends. (thanks, guys) and then thursday, naturally, i had school all day then fellowship in the evening.

2. and then friday until saturday, on top of normal school duties, i was also helping out by babysitting a family of 4 kids while their parents are in padang doing earthquake relief. that was draining. i spent a lot of the time just wanting to retreat into some deep, dark, quiet hole. no such luck. we experienced things such as head wounds that bled profusely. twice. a dog trying to run away. a thunderstorm. fights over the remote control. a pembantu burning her arm. homework troubles. a head hitting a tile floor. lost keys. and the list goes on. the kids were enjoyable. and i was VERY glad to have some small way in which i could help with earthquake relief. i just wish i'd been in a better mood.

3. after all that, i spent sunday alone. all day. until nighttime. i was so emotionally/mentally drained that i slept straight until almost noon. NOON! it was perfect though, and i feel SO much better today and ready to face the week. this only serves to further confirm my suspicions that the Myers Briggs test i was forced to take in college that declared me an extrovert is nothing but a load of rubbish.

4. rainy season is finally moving in. it's rained every day for a few days in a row now. with that comes BIG winds in the afternoon (ushering in the change of season) and cooler temperatures, finally! unfortunately, that also means that the mold will soon rear its ugly head. ugh.

5. yohanes: hey, did you know that in america, you can just turn the faucet on and get a drink from it?
me: what? really?! just like that?
yohanes: yeah, it's really cool.
me: straight from the sink and you don't get sick?
yohanes: yes!
me: wow. and what does the water in america taste like?
yohanes: tastes like chicken!

Quotes of the day

"I've never seen you cry. So...... please cry now. Go ahead." - Mega

"I REFUSE TO ACCEPT YOUR BLASPHEMY!" - The quiet Korean kid who wears glasses and sits in the back of the class and never talks. While I was teaching about imaginary numbers.

Today

1. 3:45 AM
2. Old jeans/sweatshirt/flipflops
3. Cheese and pomegranate juice
4. Car crash
5. Peanut fields
6. Sunrise
7. Nap
8. Motorbike
9. Coffeecake
10. Meetings

parents are here!
thanks to all who prayed. :)

got an sms from dad about 30 minutes ago saying they're in boyolali.
if my estimate is correct, they should be arriving here within the next 1o minutes.
and conveniently, school gets out in ten minutes!

i am a goddess

parents are in bali!!
been smsing this morning.

tenth grade conversation
kang: ms *****, did you major in math?
me: math education
jimin: told you so
kang: did not
jimin: did so!
kang: ms *****, what does that mean?
me: i took math classes AND education classes. like a double major.
kang: oh.
jimin: what other kinds of classes did you take?
me: liberal arts
kang: what's that?
me: i took lots of bible classes. and i learned music and art and sociology and history and literature and astronomy and a foreign language and......
david: ms *****, are you a goddess?

status

"Our Dorm has a ShitZu" - one of the dorm boys' facebook status updates.

mom and dad are now in the same hemisphere as me! been tracking flights all day. they landed safely in japan 6 minutes ahead of schedule and took off again just under 2 hours after that. assuming they are on the correct plane, they are now en route to bali and should be landing in just about 5 hours from now. they'll spend the night there and reach java around noon tomorrow, then on to salatiga!

horse dance

horse dance
Originally uploaded by i_am_amity

pay attention to as much as possible. so many strange things are happening in this video.

menagerie

in light of some rather ________ (fill in the blank with whatever adjective you feel suits the situation best) events this past weekend, i've failed to mention some other important/humorous/worth-sharing things.

1. yo asked me out to dinner with "some friends" friday night. friends of his from college that i've also gotten to know. we all enjoy hanging out, and i hadn't seen them for awhile, so i was excited. yo picked me up and we went to a chinese restaurant and waited for about 10 minutes. finally, he got an sms and said that he had to go pick up mega and would be back shortly. looking back, i should have suspected something. like when yo ordered three drinks and plates of rice for dinner. or when mega - who has a bike - asked for a ride. at any rate, i was pretty near oblivious, and sat there by myself hum-diddling (or whatever else you call what it is that people sitting alone do) for a few minutes. then all of a sudden someone rushed up and engulfed me from behind. i pretty much freaked out. i had no clue who it was, but i could tell it wasn't a girl. so after a few terrifying seconds of being stuck in a from-behind-hug-headlock, i was finally able to crane my neck around and see....... PECO! my bestest indonesian white friend who left me in april! those two boys made a surprise for me! peco had just arrived by bus with all his luggage, and yo had gone to pick him up from the station. there were no other friends, just the three of us back together again. i think i smiled pretty much the whole night. the fact that he brought me chocolate covered pecans and season 2 of big bang theory didn't hurt either... except now i have the season and i can't watch it until christmas when the 3 of us are back together again. (he left again on sunday.) that is what is commonly known as torture.

2. conversation yesterday in 9th grade:
me: guys, i'm sorry the quiz looks rough... work around it. the copier is screwed up.
kyuho: that's because i screwed the copier!
me: uhmmmmmm.....
kyuho: i don't think i meant to say that.
*class erupts in laughter*
jenny: what? i don't get it. is there another definition for screwed?
kenny: yeah! kyuho just told the teacher that he had SEX with the copy machine!!!
jenny: KYUHO! AAAAAAHHHHHHH!

3. my parents are currently en route to japan. they land in bali tonight. they get to java (and me) TOMORROW!

4. http://thereifixedit.com is a fantastic website... if your name is red green.

5. my pembantu is super nice. she left me a note yesterday asking if it was alright to bake some cookies for my parents tomorrow. : )

6. my burn is healing super fast and is not getting infected! that is especially good news given that i would rate this as the worst/deepest burn i've gotten so far.

7. there's rumors of a restaurant in town that sells lambchops for $1.50 per plate... we'll be checking that out posthaste.

8. i was apparently more obvious than i originally thought at the horse dance. everyone and their cousin saw me there. people i don't even know have been walking up to me all week to tell me they saw me and to ask if i enjoyed it. that's a hard question to answer. obviously, i didn't enjoy it. but if i say no, i'm being kind of offensive - it's a cultural tradition for them. mostly, i've just kind of smiled and shrugged my shoulders at them. on the subject, i found out that it's pretty rare for white people tho show up at those (shocker)... not because they find it repulsive so much, but because the bah-wang doesn't want them there. they know that if white people are there (and in their mind/experience here, white people = christians), they can't exercise their power and the spirits won't come. i've heard of white people being asked to leave before. but that's only if the whiteys are there at the beginning. once the spirits are there, they're there.

9. an indonesian friend of mine went to a horse dance as a child where they cut a woman's head off then dangled it in his face by her hair. and she spoke to him. he's still traumatized. and my mild horse dance trauma suddenly seems so insignificant.

10. did i mention my parents are currently 3 hours away from japan and will BE HERE TOMORROW?! (i needed to have an even number of elements in my list.)

the sights

the horses

the whippings

the dirt eater/thrower upper/eater

the shredding of coconuts with teeth

the gas can/beverage of choice

the most possessed

the collapse

the horse dance

i was pretty wiped out yesterday afternoon, so i took a nap. i woke up about an hour later to the sound of javanese music playing VERY loudly somewhere nearby. at first i thought it was a wedding. but then i realized that it wasn't wedding music. so in my half asleep state, i decided to go find whatever it was. i grabbed my little camera and my phone and stumbled out the door.

the guard at the back gate saw me tripping toward him, and he was kind of chuckling at me. once i got closer, he said to me, clear as a bell, "hear something?" unfortunately, i was so out of it that i mostly just stared at him through squinty eyes, trying to translate "hear something" into english. once i finally realized that he had actually spoken english to me, i replied with, "yeah, and it woke me up." apparently his english is fairly limited, because he just stared back at me. so i translated into indonesian. i asked him what the music was, and he told me that it was a traditional indonesian dance going on. i asked him if it was alright if i went to find it, and he said yeah, but that it was far away. i told him i like to walk and he let me out the gate.

about 5 minutes of walking later (SO far away), i came upon a crowd in the road. they were all looking into a yard in front of a house. luckily, i am taller than like 95% of indonesians, so it was pretty easy for me to see what was going on. i saw men dancing around on horses woven together from grasses. i'd heard of the horse dance before, but this was my first time to see it. from what i'd heard, a horse dance is not a place you want to be. it starts out as a traditional dance, but once spirits are invited, it turns into a demon possessed frenzy. i'd heard all sorts of insane things, including children too young to walk getting possessed and dancing.

there were no children there yesterday, but even so, once i was there, i couldn't leave until it was over. it was like watching a train wreck. you can't look away... amazingly enough, everyone was so absorbed in what was going on, that they paid very little attention to the fact that there was a white person there watching too. i arrived after the spirits were already there and things were well under way.

from what i observed, this is the setup: off to one side of the open yard, there were about 6 musicians playing traditional javanese instruments under an open sided tent. in the yard itself, there were 3 "leaders". when i asked yohanes about it later, he called them bah-wang (i have no clue how to spell that, but that's how he pronounced it). they were not possessed, but had power over the men who were. there were several "handlers", as i call them. these men kept control over the demon possessed men, as many of them would try to run into the crowd or would lose control of themselves. (they're like the guys who stand in the corners with the panels at hog shows.) and there were about 10 possessed men ranging in age from (best guess) 15 - 50.

some of them were "riding" woven horses. some of them were dancing around. some of them were getting in fights. some were laying on the ground, twitching. some were doing flips and spins. some were shredding coconuts with their teeth. at various points of the "show", the head bah-wang would bring out a whip... he would go to one of the possessed men and they would bow in submission, then he would whip them repeatedly on the arms, legs, and back. but they wouldn't bleed. one of the other bah-wangs was giving the men gasoline to drink. one of the possessed man started shoving fistfuls of dirt into his mouth and eating it. a short while later, he threw it all up into his hands, then promptly proceeded to eat it all again. after the dirt was gone, he lit some sticks on fire, then ate those too. he also stole a lit cigarette from someone in the crowd and rubbed the burning end all over his face, then ate it too. he never got burnt. another guy spent the entire time trying to throw himself into the crowd. he was probably the most possessed. he had no control over himself. his eyes were empty, like he was dead. but he looked into my eyes a couple times, and i felt like satan himself was staring at me.

the bah-wang would let them dance until they were so exhausted they would just lay on the ground. then he would get them to stand up, and he would lead them over to behind where the musicians were. i don't think the people were supposed to see this part, but i was paying attention. once he had them back there, he would get the spirits out of them. it was a huge spiritual battle, because the spirits would fight with him. the possessed men would start howling and yelling like animals and their whole bodies would be convulsing. you could barely hear it over the music though. once the spirits were out of them, their bodies would just lay crumpled on the ground. they looked dead. then two of the handlers would come and carry them into a nearby house and lay them on the floor.

the dance went on and on and on until finally all the men had collapsed and the spirits were all cast out. i don't know how long i stood there watching. i've seen demons before. but not like this. i just stood there, and i felt completely numb all over.

i think that one of the worst parts of it was that for the people there, this was entertainment. whole families were there. the younger kids would try to press through the crowd to the front so they could see better. little kids were sitting on their daddy's shoulders. and they were laughing. every time one of the men threw themselves at the crowd, they would all run away screaming, then come right back. and every time someone would eat dirt or do a flip or get whipped, they would laugh and cheer.

when i got back to campus, the guard asked me how it was. i just shook my head at him. and he nodded. he understood.

i am fully mobile

bought a bike yesterday!

we went to the honda dealer, and i told them i wanted a black bike.
they only had pink but said black would be shipped in in 2 - 3 days.
so i ordered one and went upstairs to pay.
when i came back downstairs, they happily announced to me that while i was paying, the shipment arrived, and they would deliver my bike in a few hours!
true to their word, SIX HOURS LATER, they delivered.
along with a massive black helmet and a sweet honda racing jacket (just watch me rock that thing around town).
they were kind enough to put enough gas in it so that the guage ALMOST reached the E.
they kept my driver's license to make a copy, then forgot to return it with the bike.
and they said the registration would take 3 weeks to process.
so i can't get plates until then.
therefore, i bought fake plates.
BUT... the stupid fake plate people didn't drill holes in said plates.
so i can't attach them to my bike.

guess who went driving last night?
no license.
no plates.
no gas.
no registration.
no insurance.

that would be me.

ps - THANK YOU, CHUCK!

"I deal with hurt and, you know, so many, you know, celebrities, they never take the time off, and I've never taken the time off to really, you know, I just, music after music and tour after tour on tour." - Kanye West.

To Jay Leno. Making excuses and promoting literacy.

you got a message from the embassy

U.S. Embassy Jakarta
U.S. Consulate General Surabaya
U.S. Consulate Medan
Warden Message: Earthquake in Western Sumatra, Indonesia
October 1, 2009
On Wednesday, September 30, at 5:15 pm there was a major earthquake in Western Sumatra, Indonesia. The worst hit major population center was Padang, a coastal town, about 850 miles northwest of Jakarta. Aftershocks have continued. There is serious damage in the Padang area, and most roads and telephone lines are cut. Airports are open but travel to Padang is not recommended by other than essential emergency service providers due to the complete lack of infrastructure. Other areas of Indonesia, including Jakarta and Bali are unaffected. U.S. Embassy Jakarta and U.S. Consulate Medan staff are attempting to communicate with Indonesian authorities and affected Americans in the Padang area, and visit as soon as possible. We urge Americans in Indonesia to inform interested parties directly of their wellbeing to allow our staff to concentrate on assisting those Americans most directly affected and out of contact.


TRANSLATION: I had no clue there was an earthquake until I read about it in the news today. It was far, far away. You will likely hear about it in the news wherever you live. And when you do, don't worry about me. Also, anytime there is something going on anywhere in Indonesia that might affect Americans, I get an email from the embassy. They look out for us.

This made my day

The House of Representatives passed on Wednesday the amendment of the five-year-old fishery law, now allowing sea patrols to shoot-on-sight vessels found poaching in Indonesia's sea waters. [This is hilarious! We get to legally kill people.]

The ministry's director general for surveillance and control Aji Sularso said it needed the law to legitimize its "firing and drowning" actions on poachers and to discourage them from repeating similar actions in the future. [Drowning would seem to be an effective means of discouragement, yes.]

"Firing and drowning can now be done under certain conditions, and we will immediately prepare for operating procedures to carry out the measures," said Aji, who is also the head of the government's working committee for the fishery law revision. [Certain conditions? Prepare? Operating procedures?]

He added that the sea patrols, however, would only be allowed to shoot at vessels not sailors as they must respect human rights. [Shooting is a violation of human rights. But drowning is OK.]

"The implementation of the ruling shall not breach human rights and international law," Aji said in a press conference after the endorsement of the law revision. [How is legalizing drowning NOT a breach of some international law?]

He said the move was important to protect the sovereignty of Indonesia. [God bless Indonesia.]

The revised law also grants the authority to investigate alleged poachers in Indonesia's exclusive economic zone to civilian patrols from the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry in addition to the Navy, which was previously the sole authorized institution to do so. [Drown first. Ask questions later.]

- The Jakarta Post [With additional commentary]

top 5 reasons why i love 9th grade

"did you know that i'm more attracted to women than men?" - kyuho

"i could never be attracted to anybody not korean. i want my kids to be purebred." - kyuho

*throws shoe out of the room* "can i go get my shoe? and while i'm out there, can i pee?" - kohl

me: kohl, is that your phone ringing?
kohl: no. it's on silent.
me: your phone is in this classroom?!
kohl: yes. right here.
jose: mine would be too, but i'm out of pulsa.

jose: doesn't kyuho remind you of chuck bass?
kyuho: don't i remind you of brad pitt?

weekenders

adventure 1.
went to semarang all day saturday. last time i'll be there for awhile, likely. i usually go with chuck and marie, but they're moving into the dorm this week (so that the current dorm parents can return to their home country to have a baby!). so that means some serious ball and chain for them. we took the 3 kids with us (big mistake) plus one extra. 2 of them got carsick on the way there and whined the whole time. the baby was mostly fine, but by the middle of the day when he still couldn't fall asleep, he decided to pretty much just scream for the rest of the trip. a white girl carrying a black baby gets a lot of attention. a white girl carrying a screaming black baby gets even more. luckily for me, charles and marie carried him most of the time... it was bethanie's birthday, so she felt entitled to grab everything she saw off the shelves then get all cry-ey faced when you told her she couldn't have it, even if it WAS her bithday. then when josh was playing at the kids play station at the mall, he had some sort of freak accident that involved him falling from a high place, getting ALL the wind knocked out of him, and knocking himself unconscious. fantastic. oh well. got what i needed. glad to be able to help out with the kids. was ready for bed by 8 o'clock.

adventure 2.
bethanie's birthday party. 10 screaming kindergarteners. i designated myself camera person, thus minimizing contact with the little people. karma was swift and sure. a monkey man came around and decided to put on a show for us. this involved getting his trained monkey out of its cage and beating a drum furiously while the monkey performed a variety of tricks for about 10 minutes. those of you who know me well know that i HATE monkeys deep down in my very soul due to some tragic experiences while living in africa that i'd rather not talk about right now. so obviously, i was less than thrilled that one showed up at the party. but add to that the fact that i am pretty sure that both the man and the monkey were demon possessed... makes for one scary party. the kids thought it was hilarious when the monkey danced and rode a bike around and whatever (btw, the monkey's head and eyes were twitching the whole time, but not in unison). i tried to slowly back away from the evil creature... and backed right into a parked motorbike. and for the third time in six months, i managed to melt the skin off my leg. in retrospect, that was probably less painful than having more direct contact with all the kids all afternoon. for everyone.

adventure 3.
bike ride with yohanes. we ended up at some body of water outside town in a small village where i was the only white person in sight. i call it a body of water, because i'm not really sure what else to call it. it was a river that ran into and back out of a small pond, but parts of both were walled or stoned off to form a variety of pools. yo called it a swamp, but it was actually very clean water. there were lots of people down there washing dishes, doing laundry, and bathing. so basically everyone was staring at me while i was trying not to stare at them. because seriously - in what muslim country is it ok for men and women to bathe in public together? geez. at any rate, it was REALLY pretty there, and possibly the first clean body of water i've seen on java. oh, that place is also very spiritual for javanese. a javanese hero once killed a crocodile there like a thousand years ago, and they believe that the place gives special powers. during the full moon, people will come soak in the waters for 6 - 12 hours so that they can absorb some of his power. after i got tired of mostly naked people, we rode around for awhile, through some villages, then back into town. we ate a lovely dinner of jackfruit curry and whole catfish and curried eggs and peppers and white rice and orange juice (total cost for both of us: $1.80), then spent some time at our adoptive family's house where we watched the rocketeer on the projector. that was one of my favorite movies when i was little! i probably haven't seen it since i was 12. oh, and we also discovered that the largest snake in the world lives just a few hours away from here! that's definitely on my list of things to see before i leave. so all in all, it was a good end to a very exhausting weekend.

ouch. again.

di jalan, dekat rumahku.

cowok: hei! mbak!
aku: apa?
cowok: hai. bagus.
aku: bagus apa?
cowok: boleh saya berkenal kamu?
aku: nggak.
cowok: oooooh... sombong!
aku: *glare*
cowok: oooh.... londo yang SOMBONG!

oh, boys.

wednesday, the principal asked me what day would be good to interrupt 1st period so the 10th graders could get class pictures. i said friday. on thursday, i told the 10th graders that the next day, we would be taking class pictures.

we all assumed that meant a whole class picture.

it was yearbook pictures.

so today they all accused me of being a liar and misleading them. all the girls were fine and didn't really care. but the boys all decided they were underdressed and didn't look pretty enough. ONE of them knew it was actual yearbook picture day and had worn a nice button down shirt. so he let the other guys borrow it. ALL the other guys. they just kept taking it off and passing it down the line. this year's yearbook will feature every single 10th grade boy wearing the exact same black and blue plaid shirt.

awesome!

in other news, there is currently a butterfly sitting on my head. it has been there for over 10 minutes now. the lady who cleans my room declared it a "modern hair accessory" and had a good laugh about it.

rough day

i just got told by a student that i'm too immature.
ouch.

i did have him clarify that what he actually meant was that i'm too young to be a teacher - too close in age to my students. not that i, personally, am maturationally impaired.

but still...

i feel like i get that crap from other teachers (though not in so many words)...
and now students?

this one's gonna stick with me.

i love kids. from a distance.

bethanie comes and sits by me on the couch...
bethanie: *sigh* i am soooooo smart...
me: *ignoring her. watching tv.*
bethanie: i guess i am just SOOOO smart.
me: oh yeah?
bethanie: yeah. SO smart.
me: fine. what's the first letter in bethanie?
bethanie: B. that was easy.
me: ok. what's 1 plus 1?
bethanie: ummm.... two!
josh: hey, bethanie, what's 6 plus 6?
bethanie: twelve.
josh: what?! did you tell her?
me: no! how did you know that, bethanie?
josh: you told her!
bethanie: i am SOO smart.
me: what's four plus four?
bethanie: hmmm... this one is harder. it's ummm... fivesixteenseventeeneighteen!
me: nope.
bethanie: then what IS it?
me: eight.
bethanie: noooooooo, silly! you're making that up!
me: nope.
bethanie: you are SOO smart.
me: thank you.

IT RAINED!

amusement for the day

i found a prewritten message to send all your friends on a pro-obama website.

Friend --
Barack Obama was born in the state of Hawaii in 1961, a native citizen of the United States of America.
Smears claiming Barack Obama doesn’t have a birth certificate aren’t really about a piece of paper, though -- they're about manipulating you into thinking Barack is different.
See Barack Obama's birth certificate for yourself and help push back with the truth:
http://my.barackobama.com/birthcertificate
Together we can make sure these negative and divisive attacks don't affect this election.
Thanks for your help.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

more news is not always good news

i found out some interesting things about noordin top...
remember about a month ago when they thought they'd killed him?
well, that's because they were able to visually identify they body as him.
but the dna didn't match.

people are saying it's because he had powers which enabled him to project his face onto anybody else.
he got the power from his land, and that was the only place he could do it at.
and guess where that shootout was at? - his land.

i don't know for sure if this is true.
but things like that are real. they happen here.
if it is true, that man was more than just a terrorist...
he had the power of satan working through him.
but isn't that true in some way for all terrorists?
hmmmm....

i was watching video footage of last week's shootout on the news a couple days ago.
they like to make things very dramatic.
the footage was set to what i'm pretty sure was a song in the lord of the rings soundtrack.
and it all ended with them showing a photograph of noordin's dead face.
shot up, bloody, swollen, and very, very dead.

i can handle gore.
but i very nearly threw up.
i don't care who he was or how many people he killed... i don't want to see that.
it was disturbing beyond belief.
on national television.

oh, yeah!

another reason to celebrate....
after years of manhunts, gunfights, and close calls, noordin top is dead!
the police killed him in a gunfight thursday morning about an hour from here.

God and i have been talking a lot about if it's ok for me to rejoice in that.
and He says yes.

because one man is dead, hundreds more will live.

the only part of this that brings me sadness is thinking of his family.
imagine someone killing your daddy on christmas eve.
that's essentially what happened for those kids.
i don't necessarily feel so bad for his wives.
they knew who they were marrying.
but those kids didn't choose to have a terrorist for a dad.
and they didn't choose for him to die the way he did.
especially not on the eve of idul fitri.

idul fitri

once again, it is idul fitri.

ramahdan ended last night.

town was crazy. traffic and people everywhere.

parades of children dressed in white carrying torches and drums were marching through all the neighborhoods.

at the center of town, panca silla, all the action was happening.
it's a large, soccer field type area with a roundabout road all around it.
dump trucks FILLED to the brim with human bodies were cruising around with massive speakers playing arabic music.
people were shooting off fireworks, bottle rockets, and mortars on the field.
(and all night long)
food vendors had their carts of fried rice and tofu there.
and hundreds of people were milling about, being generally festive.

i stayed there until about midnight then came home and went to bed.
and theennnnn... woke up at 5:30 this morning for sholat id - idul fitri prayer.
i joined the pilgrimage back to panca silla.
all the muslims join together, filling the field and the surrounding road, for prayer.
the women were (almost) all dressed in white, and the men were in their nicest clothes.
(a photographer's worst nightmare once you throw in all the shadows from the trees)

it reminded me of christmas, when all the christians got together at the town stadium to pray.
but this had a different feel.

people who know that i went keep asking if it was creepy or spiritually dark.
but i think i've been desensitized to a lot of it.
it wasn't creepy. it wasn't particularly sad. it wasn't heavy.
i'm glad i went. i'm glad i saw.

but i wish i had been moved.

sr papers

senior paper rough drafts due tomorrow. guess who has spent the week proofreading? some gems....

"The Renaissance period experienced one of the greatest discoveries ever known to mankind; the removable printing press was one of the most important inventions of all times."

"This humanism movement created many people to think for themselves. . ."

"Due to some strategies the Spanish Armada was significantly dented because of the bad weather. . ."

"As notified, all of these events truly influenced the face of literature."

it's on

"you and ms morgan should have a contest where you throw math books at each other. whoever wins is the best math teacher." - kohl

a curious sound

i was getting ready for bed last night when i heard a curious sound.
it was a sound i recognized. a sound i missed.
it was rain on my tile roof!
just a little bit of rain.... but rain!

about a month ago, it sprinkled a tiny bit.
but other than that, i can't remember the last time it rained.
it's definitely been a few months.
that's normal. i mean, it IS dry season.
but everything is so brown and dead and ugly.
the ground is cracked and dry.
and the sun just blazes down on us every day until it feels too hot to move.
i think somewhere down in the farmer part of my soul, i've just been craving rain.

so last night, i ran outside and stood in my front yard and got rained on.
i was thanking God for this rain. and then i started thinking. about kenya.

this week i heard from a guy who was my neighbor when i lived there.
he's been going out into the bush villages to check on people.
he went to one village and met a widow there.
she has 6 children and she takes care of her father-in-law as well.
her mother-in-laws died of aids.
they usually dig down in the riverbed to find water underground.
but this week, they dug down to rock.
there was no water.
it has not rained in that village for two years.

it was bittersweet as i celebrated the rain last night.
i felt like i could hear the dirt and the plants singing as they swallowed the rain.
but my mind was on my kenyan family...

so after i thanked God for the rain, i told Him africa could have it instead.
and then it stopped raining.
and i went to bed.

theology gone awry

a conversation between varun - a hindu and my TA, kelsey - a Christian student, and me.

varun: aish. why do i have to type all this up? why can't i just photocopy it all then cut out the parts you need, then tape them onto one page, then photocopy it again?
me: because that would be a waste of paper.
varun: no it wouldn't. it's not like you're ever gonna kill all the trees anyways.
me: i'm more concerned about the money. if you copy all that, cut it out, tape it, then copy again, it's gonna use like 9 pages, whereas if you just type up and print the parts i need, they fit on one.
varun: but it says in the bible that man has dominion over the earth.
me: sure, but it doesn't say we can be wasteful.
varun: do you know how many THOUSANDS of sheets of paper are coming from one tree? you're not even hurting a single tree, really!
me: it also says in the bible to be a good steward of what is given to you.
varun: but God gave everything to adam and eve to name and to do whatever they wanted with. including trees.
me: i'm pretty sure God just let adam name the animals. i don't think he marched the plants by him too.
varun: yes he did.
kelsey: how do you know? were you there?
varun: yes.
me: you're looking awfully good for your age.
varun: thank you. i was actually reincarnated. i'm not that old.
kelsey: reincarnated?
varun: yes.
kelsey: then how come adam and eve didn't get reincarnated?
varun: because they're CHRISTIANS. obviously! *exasperated sigh*
me: *laughing and laughing and laughing and laughing and....*

oh, now i remember...

last sunday, the sermon was on exodus 1. and it made me think about how i usually tend to avoid reading the old testament. well... not in all cases. i enjoy psalms and proverbs. my favorite chapters are in job. my favorite book is ecclesiastes. i have a verse from isaiah tattooed on me. but really, i've read through the entire new testament like 4 or 5 times by now. and i've read through the entire old testament exactly once. i'm not really sure why. i guess when i think of the old testament, i tend to think of the long lists of rules and laws that i'm no longer bound by (therefore, irrelevant) or i think of the tedious genealogies that i usually skim anyways (boooooring) or i think of stories of ancient races of people being totally slaughtered (God did THAT?!). but the sermon brought back to mind how many COOL stories there are back there! stories of God's love and faithfulness and wrath and vengeance that those of us who grew up in church tend to get bored of due to the watered-down-for-children versions we heard over and over and over all the time in sunday school.

so this week i've been reading - like, REALLY reading - exodus. the grown up version. and for the first time i can remember, i am truly ENJOYING the old testament.

but when i got to chapter 4, i remembered another reason why i usually don't read this part of my Bible. it confuses me. more like it confounds me. i don't really understand why a lot of what happens is going on. here's what i got hung up on...

v. 19: While Moses was still in Midian, the Lord said to him, "Go back to Egypt, because the men who wanted to kill you are dead now." (this is right after Moses saw the burning bush and got in an argument with God, and God was all, "look here, boy, you will do what i say because i am God and i made you and if i say you can, you can. and if you STILL don't believe me, throw that little stick in your hand on the ground and just SEE what happens.")

so moses packs up his new wife, his kid, and he sets out. here's where it gets good.

v. 24 - 25: As Moses was on his way to Egypt, he stopped at a resting place for the night. The Lord met him there and tried to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife and circumcised her son. Taking the skin, she touched Moses' feet with it and said to him, "You are a bridegroom of blood to me."

WHAT?! God JUST got done telling Moses to do as he is told, Moses obeys, and then God tries to KILL HIM?! He must not have been trying very hard though. i mean, seriously? moses didn't stand a chance. and there's no explanation. no background. no reason. no battle scene. no play by play. just that one tiny sentence and it's over. and then there's the "but". as if what zipporah did was to somehow counter what God was doing. because yeah, that is everyone's first reaction when... oh, never mind. that is gross.

sighhhhh....

wait for the punch line.

"The photo on page 47 is of the Great Mosque of Cordoba, built in the 8th century. The Arabs crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711 and conquered almost all of Spain. They remained there until 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella conquered Granada, the last Arab territory in Spain. Ask the students if they know what a mosque is."

- Our (published in America) Spanish textbook, teacher's edition

things i miss

i miss my dog a lot.

she doesn’t poop in the bed.

she doesn’t pee on the couch.

she doesn’t howl when she’s alone.

she’s not afraid of stuff.

she doesn’t bite or chew.

and i’m not scared to step on her.

sadie

i'm dogsitting this fantastic little retarded ball of fur.
she's sadie.
a 2 month old daschund.
she doesn't come when she's called.
she poops and pees on the floor with no shame.
she sleeps in ridiculous positions.
her toy ball is bigger than her.
she runs kind of like a chicken.
she walks into things.
she's scared of cracks in the floor/ground.
and she's scared of heights (the couch).

but she's adorable, and i love having her!
my cat decided to come home today. great timing.
needless to say, she was absolutely appalled.
and ran away spitting, with her tail poofed out like a raccoon.
sadie didn't even see her.

i just made her walk with me all the way to school.
and now she's asleep on my lap with her little heart beating a thousand miles a minute.

while we were walking, one of the penjaga came around the corner in front of us.
sadie rushed to greet him.
he sure did some fancy footwork to avoid her onslaught of love.
then i got embarrassed, because i forgot muslims aren't supposed to touch dogs.
so i had to all but dive on the poor thing right by the guard's feet and apologize profusely to him.
closer to the school, we came upon someone's driver sitting on a curb.
sadie again rushed, and i tried to grab her, but the guy welcomed her and played with her.
whew.
so i guess this dog is like religion radar.
but way cuter.

hotttttt DOG!

so finally, after a whole year of being here.....
I ATE DOG!

and surprisingly.....
it was pretty delicious.

except for it was REALLY pedas (spicy).
and i had to drink a whole glass of grape juice to counter the effects.

but it was so worth it.

in which i discover i can't not swallow

someone told me last week that during ramahdan (fasting month), some people take the "no eating or drinking anything" rule so far that they don't swallow ANYTHING.

from 3:30 AM until 5:45 PM, there are people who don't even swallow THEIR OWN SPIT.

so i decided to do a little experiment the other day.

my hypothesis was this: "i can totally walk to the neighbor's house without swallowing my spit. no problem." (i clearly missed my calling. i should have been a science major.)

i made it about halfway there before my eyes started bulging out of my head and all my throat muscles were twitching.

then i nearly gave myself a panic attack as i contemplated actually doing this for 14.25 hours straight.

and then i had to swallow. and swallow again. and swallow again.

and then swallow one more time, just to reassure my throat that i would never ever put it through 14.25 hours of not swallowing.

this is what is known as: epic fail.

gotta love these early morning moments

my question is:

WHERE'S

A

GOOD

GECKO

WHEN

YOU

NEED

ONE?!

temple adventure

the main temple at prambanan
Originally uploaded by i_am_amity

so there was this guy who loved this girl. he was totally crazy about her. she was the most beautiful woman in the land. and he tried and tried and tried to win her heart, but she wasn't really in to him. so finally, as a means of getting rid of him, she told him that she would marry him ONLY if he could build a thousand temples for her in one night only. so he set about his job. he worked furioiusly all night long, constructing different buildings and prayer rooms and pagodas, laying every stone carefully into place. he wanted to succeed so badly that he got spirits from the underworld to come help him. near morning, the beautiful woman woke up and realized that he was almost finished. she got scared. she never expected him to actually finish the temple! so as he was finishing the 999th temple, the lady started to run around town, waking people up, and telling them to pretend that it was morning. and because she was so beautiful, they did what she said. they even lit a huge fire near town so that the roosters would see the light and start crowing. so right before he laid the last stones of the 1000th temple, the spirits abandoned him - they heard the roosters crowing, and they can't be out in daylight, so they had to go. and he lost. prambanan temple still stands as a memorial to his efforts and as a place sacred to hinduism. it has stood since 900 AD. and yesterday, i went to see it. : )

kepada parjo

ini untuk mas andre aja.
karena dia bilang "merdeka" bukan bhs indonesia.
andre = parjo.
parjo besar.
:p

andre,
skarang ada dua blog dlm bhs indonesia!
bkn bohong!

dn aq menulis ini dngn "code".
tdk ada orang d mrika yang bs terjemah online.
ckckckckckckckck.

Thy kingdom come

you ain't seen nothin yet

ORANG TUA-KU AKAN DATANG!
BULAN OKTOBER!
AKU GAK BISA MENUNGGU!
: )

human of the year

lunch time was very, very strange today.
i always eat with the students.
because i guard the girl's dorm food from theft by non-dorm kids.
and i get a free lunch in exchange. :)

i was assembling me a chicken sandwich when glory plopped down next to me.
then he leaned over and dumped a spoonful each of kimchi (korean fermented spiced cabbage), tuna, and fruit salad in mayonnaise on my half-made sandwich!
then he swiped my juicebox and passed it off to another kid who drank the whole thing.
then mr jameson (who guards the boy's dorm food) took pity on me and told me to come drink some of their beverage.
but i think their pembantus put tea leaves in the cold orange juice mix drink.
it made me gag. and mr jameson laughed.
then a little while later, mr jameson invited me to try a cookie he had.
it was a snicker doodle. and it tasted EXACTLY like moth balls.
truly a baked marvel.
i took a bite, threw the cookie back in the bag, then spit my bite back in the bag too.
i exclaimed loudly enough over this cookie that students HAD to try it too.
so mr jameson began breaking them off pieces.
and then, not knowing that it had been in my mouth, he fed the last damp piece to poor unsuspecting won.
i told jameson what he'd done, and we had a good laugh over it. and after she swallowed and asked why it tasted so bad, jameson told her it was because i had already chewed it.

so there we were, all huddled around the boys dorm food screaming and gagging and spraying juice and bites of cookie everywhere. and ye jun actually threw up a little in the grass.

then glory came over and gave me a brand new juice box.
i think he went and bought it from the school snack shop.
my goodness - the boy has a conscience!

lunch today was truly a culinary adventure.

flickr mail

horns
Originally uploaded by i_am_amity

Hello,

I would like to seek your permission to use the picture of the goat (titled Horns) that you have on your profile. I am helping a friend to compile a leaflet about the safe transportation of livestock in Australia. It is not for profit and the leaflet will be distributed to farmers, truck drivers and stock men.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Steve.

(my thoughts: what? hmmmm...... interesting.....)

moon over parma

the fun conversations never end. : p

bethanie: what do you want to be when you grow up?
me: i don't know. probably a cowboy.
bethanie: oh.
me: what do you want to be when you grow up?
bethanie: six.

in makro yesterday (the indo equivalent of sam's club)
charles: hey parji (my slightly offensive nickname given to me by chuck), you need some of these? *points to an enormous bag of adult diapers*
me: WHAT?! NO!
charles: you can plan for 30 years.
me: you're only giving me 30 years til i need some?! until i'm FIFTY?!
charles: *laughs*
me: because if so, mister, i've got news for you! you're a heck of a lot closer to fifty than i am!
charles: no. i'm 26.
bethanie: PAPI! no you're not! you're 78!
charles: YOU'RE 78!
bethanie: no. i'm 4.

at the checkout line, after replaying the above conversation for marie.
marie: bethanie. how old is mommy?
bethanie: uhmmmmm..... 25?
marie: i love you.

marie has always told me about how awkward she feels carrying sammy (her adopted son) around in public. she's a white lady with a very, very dark indonesian baby. often people will ask her rude questions such as why she would adopt/love such a dark baby. these typically come from chinese indonesian people, who take a lot of pride in their lighter skin color and can't understand why a white (high class) person would choose to have a dark (low class) baby. i've always sympathized with her, but yesterday i got a taste of it... i carried baby sammy around most of the day. in makro, in the mall, in the grocery store... and i got so stared at i wanted to hide and cry. i couldn't believe the audacity of people! people would walk right up to me and look down at sammy, up at me, down at sammy, up at me, down at sammy, shake their heads, walk up to someone else, and start pointing and whispering. i am not even exaggerating. this happened multiple times. it was AWFUL! i learned how to say "what are you looking at?" in javanese. too bad it's really really hard to say = "ndeleng apa?" it's good to know these things anyways.

haha. i just asked the cleaning man in my room how to spell ndeleng. and now he's teaching me javanese. i now have the words for eat, drink, write, buy, travel, and look written on a piece of paper on my desk with their indonesian translations. : )

i love how excited people get to teach me things here.
and i wish i could teach people not to stare at me and my sammy.

eating spaghetti

i think my favorite phrase in indonesian is this:
badan saya tidak enak.
my body is not delicious.
(i don't feel good)
and the best word to use is:
nggak.
no.

my favorite food accessory now is:
yellow peppers.
they are great in everything.
or even just mixed in with plain white rice.

my favorite sight lately has been:
the mountain in the morning.
it has been so clear and the mountain has so many folds and hills.
i can see the shadows filling every crack and the sun hitting every rise.

my favorite sound right now is the bamboo man in the morning.
he walks down my street banging bamboo together at 3:30.
this is to wake everyone up so they can eat before prayer.
then they fast until dark.
i don't know why i like waking up to the sound of the bamboo man.
but he is a very comforting sound.

and my favorite feeling is:
falling back asleep, snuggled in my bed, after the bamboo man leaves.

that's why the lady is a tramp

ella fitzgerald is so enjoyable.

yesterday, i ate a bit of lunch which seemed to compound my problems.
so i taught one more period, then got permission to go home at the beginning of 6th period (i don't teach then).
i walked into my house where my pembantu, ibu sri, was cleaning.
she asked why i was home early, and i told her i was sick.
so she made me sit down, gave me a 15 minute back/shoulder massage, then gave me a glass of water and sent me to bed.
i swear, that lady is magic.

i woke up after three hours, feeling even worse, and mostly just laid around all night.
one student brought me over some korean cure-all remedy stuff and made me drink it.
it was quite tasty - like warm, fermented apple juice.
then yohanes came over with some alka seltzer (which he pirated from another ex-pat family for me) and peppermint tea.
so after i drank all my drinks, my stomach was really full.
but after the initial "my stomach is deciding whether or not to (r)eject this stuff" stage, i actually felt QUITE a bit better!

so thanks everyone who prayed for me and brought me medicines. : )
God takes care of me in so many little ways.

if you have 5 minutes to spare, check out this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8206280.stm

best thing i've seen all day.

feeling the love

last night i was hanging out with a couple friends, practicing our english. (yes, "our" english - they were teaching me some things - like past tense for drink. aish.) we had the following conversation.

me: guess what i thought of today?!
dedy: what?
me: i have been here for 2 tujuh belas-es (independence days).
dedy: yeah.
yo: so?
me: that means i only have ONE MORE LEFT!
yo: i can't even imagine the day you leave. that is too sad.
me: i know, right? when i leave, i'll probably cry for a month.
yo: me too...
me: *struck by how loved i am and by what wonderful friends God has given me*

at some point while we were hanging out last night, i got food poisoning. thankfully, not nearly as bad as last time. but i still only slept 3 hours, from 2 - 5. at 5, evacuation of the bowels began. at 6.30, when i realized that this was not going to just go away, i called the principal about 8 times at 3 different numbers from 2 different phones. nothing would connect. i decided that was God telling me to suck it up. i've never had a sick day. why start now? 4 periods down, 2 to go. i think i can, i think i can, i think i can....

i cannot wait for 3 o'clock.

SBY

"After more than four weeks of waiting, finally we can pop the champagne corks or cut the yellow rice cone, and celebrate the final outcome of the presidential election." - Jakarta Post

1. If Americans had to wait 4 weeks for election results, there would be some seriously negative repercussions. Like, someone would wake up with a severed horse head in his bed.

2. Where else in the world are champagne and yellow rice equally valid ways to celebate elaborately?

3. Is there a misplaced comma in there?

MERDEKA!

whoa, nelly

i had an indonesian friend ask me what it means "when australia person say to me 'get away from me you dirty f&^^%$# pirate whore'. is that bad?"

how do you even answer that?

aish.

also, i totally forgot to mention costs when i was regaling you all with tales of backpacking adventures.... one of the best parts of the trip was that we spent 9 days backpacking here for around $75. and what makes that even better is that the train to and from jakarta cost a little more than half that (about $42). and our first meal (we splurged, knowing we wouldn't get good food for awhile) was $5. let me do the math for you. we ate, slept, traveled, and lived off of just about $28 in 9 days. that's an average of $3 and some odd per day for ALL our expenses.

i tell you what... anybody up for some adventuring, get yourself to indonesia, and i'll gladly foot the bill for the rest. :)

oh! also, tomorrow is tujuh belas (lit: seventeen) - indonesian independence day! and indonesians LOVE to party. last night, i went to bed at around 1, and the karaoke was still thumpin in da hood. loud enough that the walls were shaking. the CEMENT walls. the music is still going today, and will be tomorrow as well. accompanied by a variety of fireworks and what sounds like cannon fire.

and yet... on 4th of july when we set off 2 roman candles at 8 pm, the neighbors threw rocks at us and cursed us in javanese. sighhhh... the injustice of it.

as a side note: please do pray for indonesia tomorrow. during the police shootout 2 weeks ago when they uncovered the 600 kilos of bomb materials, they found out that those bombs were set to go off on independence day. and though the police obviously confiscated all the materials they found, top, the man behind it all, is still on the loose. and we do know that they have other safehouses in the area with access to other supplies.

this week (sometime midweek) also marks the beginning of this year's ramadan - month of fasting. from sunrise to sundown (5 am to 6 pm), muslims will not partake of any food or drink for an entire month. this is a really hard time for me as i see the lengths to which my neighbors and many of my friends are willing to go in order to earn their way into heaven.

and now i've been sitting in the dark typing for so long that my eyes hurt. time to go home. until next time. . .

some colors

so in my (rather small) classes this year, i have:
18 koreans
11 americans
3 indians
1 dutch
1 indonesian
1 costa rican
1 chinese
and 3 halfies:
1 singaporean/american
1 dutch/malaysian
1 indonesian/british

39 students.
18 of them are in one class.
the other 21 are divided into 4 other classes.
good thing i like small class size. : )

happenings

well, yesterday marked the beginning of school year 2009-2010.
a day which will go down in infamy...
... as the day the math teacher set her alarm an hour late for the first day of school.
fantastic. i woke up at 7:30.
BUT! - i was at school, ready to go, when the 7:40 start-of-the-day bell rang.
ok, so i was actually arriving at school right AS the bell rang.
but still... impressive, no?

meanwhile, back at the ranch, swine flu has now managed to reach indonesia.
a country in which 95% of its residents don't eat pork.
so i say props to swine flu.
unfortunately it's in central java.
and unfortunately, so am i.
and even more unfortunately, 5 people (recorded) have died so far.

also, if that weren't tragic enough, it seems there's a terrorist on the loose.
definitive test results came out today - it was NOT noordin top killed in last week's gunfight.
also fantastic. one of asia's most wanted terrorists was last seen about an hour from my house.

are we worried? nooooooo.....
top (and other world class terrorists) have been in the area for years.
if they were out to get us, we'd be gone by now.
that's actually a really comforting thought.

ready, set

school starts in 16.5 hours.
i am so ready for this.

teroris

noordin mohammed top. does this name ring any bells?
(i really don't know how much of this yall hear about in america.)

he is from malaysia.
he now lives in indonesia.
he is a genius.
he is a criminal mastermind.
he is a terrorist.
he is indonesia's most wanted man.

he was formerly a part of jemaah islamaiah, the southeast asian faction of al-qaeda.
but he broke away to start a more violent terrorist group.
he was behind the bali bombings.
he was behind the bombing of the australian embassy in 2004.
he was behind the bombing of the jakarta marriott in 2003.
and he was behind the bombings 2 weeks ago.

yesterday morning, we got word that he had been killed.
there was a 17 hour gunfight at a terrorist safehouse about 1 hour from my house.

after the smoke cleared, the police found 600 kg (a little more than half a ton) of bomb making materials in the house. (there seems to be some conflict in the reports i've heard as to whether the materials were found in this house or in another house near jakarta.)
these bombs were to be detonated next week, 17 august 2009.
indonesian independence day.
(fireworks?)
100 kg were going to the president's house.
the other 500 to the presidential palace.
they clearly want him out of the picture.

i was glad to hear that the plan was thwarted.
i was even more glad to hear that noordin was no more.
they estimate that he is responsible for about 250 innocent deaths.

but then last night, we got word that it wasn't him after all.
during the gunfight, he escaped.

i hadn't realized how relieved i was that he was dead.
until i found out that he wasn't.
and then i felt a little guilty.
i don't think i've ever wanted someone dead before.
but indonesia isn't safe as long as he is alive.

the body of whoever they mangled in the gunfight is now in jakarta for testing.
we'll know for sure in a week.
but as for now, they're telling us it wasn't him.

An interesting news article regarding all this: http://www.smh.com.au/world/reports-of-escape-add-to-growing-legend-20090809-ee5w.html

the end of the tales

so to (finally) end my traveling tales, let's move on to suka bumi.

we came down off our mountain after saying many goodbyes at the farm and made the beautiful drive to bandung. someone was kind enough to give us a free ride (score!). on the drive, we came upon a yard that appeared to have about half a dozen white brahma bulls with chains wrapped around their necks connected to metal stakes driven into the ground beside the road. as we passed by, one of them turned around and looked at me - it was a boer goat. possibly the biggest buck i've ever seen in my life. i ACTUALLY thought they were cows. i was in shock. someone explained to me that they use them to have buck fights (the indonesian version of cock fights - which they also have). apparently, there's big money to be made.

shock for the day over, we boarded a bus in bandung and headed 3 hours west to a town called sukabumi. it was on this bus that someone approached nasreen and, speaking to her in indonesian, asked her if i was 12 and if she was my chaperone. his face was priceless when i replied, also in indonesian, that i am, in fact, 23 and HER chaperone. another shock for the day. TWELVE?! seriously??

sukabumi was actually quite uneventful. we took an angkota up a mountain where we camped in a national park. this was the only part of the trip where we actually paid to sleep somewhere - a whole 50 cents per person! we pitched our tents in a clearing in the woods, ate some rice, and pretty much went to bed. it was already dark and about 50 degrees (it was a tall mountain) by the time we got there. and there were leeches and mosquitoes everywhere. this made it even more exciting when i got diarrhea in the middle of the night and the closest toilet (squat pot with no electricity) was about 1/4 km away, across a river.

the next morning, a group of campers (bank employees) from jakarta shared their breakfast and campfire with us, which was a huge blessing! it meant we didn't half to hike 1/2 a kilometer down the mountain to get food. we also got to watch them do aerobics for their morning exercise... humorous. and they got to hear all about my digestive issues of the night before. (you know you've lived in indonesia too long when you don't care that a whole group of strangers are talking about your diarrhea over breakfast.) after breakfast and chatting and aerobics, we decided to hike the mountain to a waterfall near the top. a trail had been blazed (though mudslides made it less than visible in some places), but it still took us about 2 arduous uphill hours to get there. when we arrived, we found a group of about 100 indonesian students there, admiring the beautiful waterfall. they were quickly distracted by us. and we got our picture taken with every single one of them. have you ever smiled so much that your face actually started to cramp? after they all left (big sigh of relief), we lounged around the waterfall area. some guys started a fire, which we took advantage of. it was still quite cold at this point, because the sun hadn't risen over the neighboring mountains yet. after a couple hours, we hiked back down the mountain. between farm work and hiking for 4 hours, we were especially sore.

we packed our things up at the site and went back down the mountain to get some food at the warung makans located there. we were contemplating how to get back into town, as this campsite was far enough outside of town that public transportation was pretty sparse. we had gotten there by commissioning an angkota in town the day before. however, the driver ripped us off pretty badly. he tried to get us to pay $6, but we got it down to $5. we found out later it should have been $2. just as we were contemplating, an angkota pulled up. who should be the driver, but the very same guy who ripped us off the day before! nasreen went over to talk to him, but he refused to give us a ride for less than $4. while nasreen was bartering with him, i asked some of the warung ladies how much a ride should cost. they didn't want to tell me, in case it was different than what the driver said. indonesians stick together. i told them i understood and that it was ok.

driver guy got mad at nasreen, so i told her we had all day and that we could wait. so we waited. a few minutes later, another angkota pulled up, but before nasreen could go talk to him, other driver ran over and they had a nice little chat about who knows what. by the time nasreen got to him, the guy tried to charge her the exact same price as the other guy (who left with an empty vehicle shorly after). we refused. by now, the local ladies were all sticking their covered heads out of their shop doors and asking me for the play by play. one by one they gathered around me and eavesdropped on the conversation between nas and the driver. it was escalating. it ended with nasreen telling him we'd wait, walking away, and the driver screaming at her that she is a whore and probably already slept with every man on the mountain. that got the ladies on our side. they began yelling at him in sunda (which i didn't understand), and they began reassuring us that they only pay 50 cents each and so that's all we should have to pay too. they also said that if he wouldn't do it, another angkota should be coming soon. horray, team!

so we sat. and we waited. and we waited. and we shot darts with our eyes across the way at the driver sitting in his angkota who would occasionally curse us. after about 15 minutes of this, he finally relented and told us to get in. the women all cheered. and right as we climbed in, the next angkota came over the ridge and into eyesight. i began to feel guilty about "breaking" our driver's spirit. i also became afraid that he might try to kill us by driving the vehicle off the side of one of the mountain roads. maybe i'm just paranoid. that obviously didn't happen. but he was pretty disgruntled. i had nasreen talk to him when we got into town. she told him that it wasn't that we minded paying extra, it was that we didn't want to be ripped off or be treated unfairly. and she thanked him for being honest and giving us an honest price in the end. he glared and drove off. oh, well.

from there, we drove into jakarta, got back to nasreen's mom's house at about midnight, then left the next morning at 7 to catch a train back to central java.

for this leg of the trip, i have to give credit where credit is due - pak jayudin. he was the ranger at the site we stayed at, and he helped us in every little thing. it was him who told us how much to pay for the angkota on the way down. it was him who woke up in the middle of the night to come check on us in our tents. it was him who guarded our things when we went hiking to the waterfall. it was him who called his buddy up the mountain and told him to let us into the waterfall area for rp 2000 instead of rp 3000 (we saved a whole ten cents!!). it was him who came to check on us if he thought we took too long getting food or going to the toilet. it was him who gave us his lighter so we could start a fire (which we then broke and he would not accept any money for). he was great and we appreciated him so very, very much!

all in all..... this was an amazing trip. i now know the indonesian words for tent, sand, corn, shooting star, and waterfall. i even learned some sunda! we planted some seeds. we built some relationships. we picked some corn. we got to know each other. we got sore. we got to be a blessing. and through it all, we were blessed.

continuation continued

now feri is standing on the side of the road and we are heading to the closest town.
and we have no clue how to get where we are going next.
so we do what any white travelers in a foreign country would do - we walk up to a group of strangers and ask! (this is pretty much the only way we got anywhere on this trip...)

we eventually made it on the correct bus, which took us back to jakarta, where we met a connecting bus headed to our destination.
interestingly enough, our route took us directly by the jakarta marriott and ritz carlton hotels...
please note that in this section of the telling of my adventures, i won't be naming any places or names.
the town we went to was very heavily (99.9%) muslim, a fact that became painfully obvious when i left the house the following morning to buy water in gym shorts and a t-shirt.
since we had arrived after dark the night before, i hadn't really seen anyone out and about to know that i really needed to cover ALL my skin.
besides walking through town half naked, being white also generated a lot of attention - i was now one of 6 white people in this town of approximately 500,000.
a family affiliated with our school gave us a place to stay that night, and though they didn't have a shower, they heated water on the stove so that we could all clean up a little bit.

the morning after we arrived (i put on way more clothes), we headed up a nearby mountain - to an organic farm!
we drove as far as we could, then hiked up the rocky last kilometer or so.
the next two days were two of the best of our trip...

this farm is owned by an indonesian man (because foreigners aren't allowed to own indonesian land) and managed by a western couple.
it is divided up into "patches" (fields) and they use it to teach indonesians agricultural skills.
there is a person in charge of each patch, and besides earning daily worker's wages, they get a portion of the crop/income after harvest.
so there are managers and there are also field laborers who are divided up to work wherever they are most needed.
everything is done organically and by hand (no machinery besides a weedeater).
oh! and there are also goats (hurrah!) and sheep (boo!) and cats (one is named manis (sweet), not because she is sweet, but because she can eat an entire cob of sweet corn!) and 12 dogs.
they recently got electricity all the way up there, but it doesn't really work most of the time.
and all running water is piped down from freshwater springs further up the mountain. (cold!)

we were eager to work and to do something meaningful with our time, but we were a little afraid that we would just be underfoot and create more work for the already busy laborers.
but as it turns out, we came at the perfect time.
besides many, many fields needing mulched (they use dried, shredded coconut husks/shells), several of the corn fields were ready to be harvested, and there weren't enough workers to get it all off.
the indonesian man who owns the farm also owns several chicken farms, and he goes through 50 tons of dried corn per month (that's a LOT of chickens!)
so the farm supplies him with corn in return for manure for the next crop of corn.
the way we see it, they're giving him corn, then he gives it back a few months later...

so they needed to get ALL the corn out of the fields, husked, shelled, and dried before it rained again.
we spent 2 days doing nothing but corn, corn, corn. and a little mulching.
in pants and long sleeves (because we were working side by side with lots of muslim ladies).
we picked and husked the corn in the fields and threw it in old feed sacks.
then all the feed sacks had to be hauled up the mountain to a flat-ish place where we had tarps laid out to dry the corn on.
it all had to be laid out one layer thick in the sun.
then before sundown, all the corn had to be put BACK in bags and hauled into barns, to be laid out again the next morning.
our hands were raw and our faces got sunburned and our legs and backs were sore as they've ever been.
in exchange, we got free food and a loft to sleep in for 2 days.

i'd say we got the better end of that deal.

i learned a lot about that area from talking to people there.
one of the most interesting things i learned was this: on that entire mountain, there are fewer than 10 believers.

the rest of anyer

and here is the continuation of my not-so-sordid tales....

i left you last time after 1 day in anyer. after leaving the internet cafe and grabbing lunch (which cost $1.30 for ALL four of us), we climbed a lighthouse. once we finally made it to the top, it was fantastic. who ever knew there were old lighthouses in indonesia?

from there, we made our way back to our tents, which had become veritable ovens in the midday heat. we quickly jumped in the ocean where i got my first bath of the trip - i even washed my hair! while in the delightfully cool water, we met a guy named blong. now, mind you, i don't normally make a habit of meeting men in large bodies of water. but we made an exception for him. he was pulling in an inflatable banana boat (a large thing that gets pulled behind a speedboat for tourists to ride on), and we jumped on. our weight caused him to stop hauling and start chatting. he was a senior in high school, same as my 3 traveling companions; however, he was in tech school, learning to be a mechanic 4 days a week and working 3 days a week to help support his family. we all talked until his boss told him someone wanted to actually ride the thing we were sitting on, and he had to go.

later that night, blong and a creepy friend of his (who we met the night before when he came to our tent in the middle of the night) happened to be at the same fried rice stand we were at for dinner. after eating, we all walked back to the beach together. on the way, creepy friend asked if we liked mangos. we all said yes, so blong and creepy guy promptly jumped a fence, scurried up a tree, and started shaking down mangos. stolen mangos. oops. we got about 8 or 9 of them, and carried them back to our tents, where our new friends were kind enough to build us a campfire. while sitting around the campfire eating stolen mangoes and peanuts, a few other friends kind of trickled in and we all just talked and ate together. until feri came. none of us are really sure what transpired here, but the instant feri (the nice guy from last time) and his friends walked up, blong and his friends stood up and made themselves so scarce that we couldn't even find them when we looked for them later. we were surmising about the awkwardness of what had just happened when i realized that our new friends understood more english than they let on. so we began speaking very quickly and in "code". i said that perhaps there was bad blood, so in keeping with the code, we should call the 2 groups "the capulets and the..... romulans?" (i never was a shakespeare fan). the names stuck. we never did figure out what was going on, but we enjoyed our time hanging out with feri. his friends (twins, in fact!) were not so savory, being mildly vulgar and enjoying being around white girls a little too much.... but in a very non-typical indonesian manner, feri was quick to defend us and kept his friends at bay.

as soon as feri and his group of friends left, at about midnight, blong and about 4 other guys materialized out of the darkness and came to join us once again. throughout the next 30 minutes, more and more beach guys came to sit around our campfire until there were about 16 of us altogether. the guys, mostly fishers and squidders, were a bit rough around the edges, but were super excited at the chance to teach us all some sunda words and to learn some english ones. so we sat and talked and chilled some more. until a squid boat came in. all the guys ran over to help pull the boat up on shore, and for their efforts, they were rewarded with 2 squid (this is apparently the unwritten code of the beach). so they ran back over to our fire and one guy began devouring one of the squid raw. he offered me a tentacle, but i declined politely, preferring to NOT have food poisoning for the remainder of the trip. another guy held one over the fire with his hand for about 30 seconds, then pulled out a knife from somewhere and began slicing it up to share with us. it was raw and cold in the middle, but a really fun experience. half baked squid that was alive 2 minutes ago at 1 am on some beach in the middle of nowhere. we stayed up talking a bit longer and got to share with these guys about who we are and what we believe. (they were amazed that the guys were sleeping in one tent and the girls in another...) they all agreed that they really respected us and our faith. (they were all muslim, and one, we think (aforementioned "creepy guy"), was a dukun - a witch doctor) right about then, a spirit decided to show up in the form of a terrifying looking woman sneaking up behind our tents. i saw her first, and all the men ran over to chase her away. and then we went to bed. interesting end to an interesting day.

the next morning, we sadly packed up to leave the beach. feri came to help us and to say goodbye. again the gentleman, he took the bags from the girls and carried them on his motorbike out to the road for us (the beach is about a 300 meter walk through a muddy alley from the road). nasreen and i just looked at each other and were like, "good thing we trust this guy. because there he goes with all our possessions for the next week... wallets... cell phones... clothes..." he was waiting for us at the road when we got there and hailed an angkota to take us to town. it was sad to leave him standing there on the side of the road waving. but more adventures were calling us...