PICTURE TIMES!

It’s been a really long time since I’ve done a good old picture post. This is basically where I dump everything from my point and shoot’s 8G memory card onto my laptop, delete all the boring pictures, and post anything even remotely interesting on my blog! Since I almost always have a camera on me wherever I go, I end up with quite a collection of shots. So here’s the most recent batch.

1. I was eating lunch at a really nice outdoor restaurant in town when this bird flew into the trees overhead and caused quite a stir.

Javanese people REALLY love birds. In fact, there’s not a whole lot of them flying around because most of them live in cages. They are more for decoration and conversation pieces than anything else. They have songbird competitions, and winners can then be sold for as much as $5000! Crazy, right? Well, since this bird was so unique – apparently, white birds are hard to come by here – some of the restaurant employees decided to use a large net to catch it!

Sadly for them – but luckily for the bird – they did not succeed, and the bird flew away, out over the nearby rice fields.

2. After lunch that same day, we went to see a marching band parade. I knew some of the students who would be in it, and I love me a good marching band. I quickly found out that Indonesian marching band parades are NOT AT ALL like American ones. We were told a certain intersection that the parade would pass through, and when we arrived there, there was nothing out of the ordinary except for a police man posted there. Traffic was flowing from all four directions. So we asked the police officer if we had missed the parade, and he told us to just wait. And sure enough, after about 10 minutes, we heard them coming! The police officer stepped into the intersection to stop the flow of traffic… But the band had to weave through oncoming traffic that was now standing still!

These kids were in their FOURTH hour of marching in uniform in the mid-day heat.

And of course, right behind them came a huge rush of motorbikes and automobiles.

After each band was about 15 – 20 minutes of nothingness before the next band came along. So in between, I took the following pictures. These two boys tore by carrying bags of uncooked rice. Look closely at their shirts.

This is my best boy, Jafro, whom I’ve mentioned in other blog posts. He was being a good sport about the heat and boredom and playing nicely with me. This is the kid that the noodle guy thought was my baby. As you can see, there is a very strong family resemblance…

      

And then we have a wall that I liked and a bunch of random advertisement banners, much more commonly used than billboards here.

    

And a political ad for the Democratic Party painted on the side of a wall.

It says, “One for all. All for one. All for all.” But what I really like about it is that it uses the old Dutch spelling. These days, the oe vowel that came from the Dutch influence has been replaced by the u vowel in Indonesian – they have the same sound. So written in modern Indonesian, this would say, “Satu untuk Semua. Semua untuk Satu. Semua untuk Semua.”

3. Ibu Sri, my helper, told me that she wanted to learn how to make burgers. Obviously, I am totally down with that, so I left her written instructions in Indonesian on how to do it, not really sure of how they would turn out… This woman constantly amazes me. Not only did she make HUGE juicy burgers, she also made homemade buns AND barbecue-ish sauce, and served them up with two burgers per bun. Burgers are now in the regular menu rotation at my house.

4. The emphasis on handwriting in the Eastern world is so much more than that of the Western world. Here are examples from two females in the 10th grade, one Asian and one American. This is the exact same homework assignment.

5. While I’m on the topic of food, which I’m not, but was two numbers ago (/\ /\), let me show you a picture of something I cooked. It’s the last of 10 pounds of frozen tilapia filets I bought a year ago along with an entire box of cous cous that my mom sent me from America. Sometimes it’s like I don’t sacrifice anything at all to be here. Please also note my new dishes that I bought over the summer!

6. This was my team for our all school field day a couple of weeks ago. The theme this year was Amazing Race, and each K-12 team represented a country and had to compete in many challenges. My team was South Africa. Our Kindergarten representative was the ever adorable Sammy who kept cheering things like, “I’M WEENER!” and “GOOOO SOUF APICA!!!” He’s the cutest.

7. This happens pretty much every day. The good news is I seem to be way less allergic to cats than I was before. Since it’s been at least threatening rain almost every day lately, the cats have been in my house more than normal, but I haven’t been sneezing at ALL!

8. When I first moved here, I bought this rug to put in my bathroom. I have loved it dearly because I love trees and circular things. But it’s been getting holes and such, so I bought a new, much more boring rug, and gave this one to a friend who wanted it. I took a picture of it before it moved to its new home. For posterity’s sake, of course. It was a good rug for 4 years.

9. A different parade that we went to at the town center. There were so many people pressing in to see, it was hard to tell what was part of the crowd and what was part of the parade.

10. Pak Kur, my friend whose rice field I often work in, invited me to his son’s baptism. So a few Sundays ago, I woke up at 5 in the morning in order to leave by 6 in order to get there by 6:30 so that we could walk to the village church by 7. This particular village church uses only Javanese. And not even the lower two levels, which I might have been able to understand. No, they use the third level of Javanese, Kromo Inggil. All I understood from the three hour service was “Gusti” (Lord) and “Amin” (Amen).

Two babies were dedicated and three men were baptized that day. The odd thing was that when they dedicated the babies, the pastor sprinkled water on their heads. But when he baptized the three men, there was no water used. He just prayed over them, and then they had to face the congregation and say something. Angga, Pak Kur’s son, is the one in the middle with the brown-ish shirt on.

Partway through the second hour of sitting on a stiff wooden bench in the growing heat while not understanding ANYTHING, I got REALLY drowsy. I was trying so hard to stay awake. Then God sent a miracle to keep me awake. We all stood for prayer. Then when I opened my eyes after the “Amin”, this is what I saw:

Do you see it?? Look closely…

This gecko randomly came out of nowhere and ended up on the shoulder of the nenek (grandmother) in front of me!! This woke me up and kept me HIGHLY amused for the next five minutes or so as Pak Kur alternated between whispering to me about whether or not we should try to knock it off of her before she screamed in church and elbowing me in the ribs for stifling my laughter a little too loudly. In the end, I used a piece of paper to brush it off her shoulder without her ever knowing. But it was so fast, I couldn’t knock it to the floor. It ran along the backrest of the bench she was sitting on and onto the shoulder of another nenek who was out of my reach!! That nenek then stood up (without knowing the gecko was getting a free ride) and walked to the back of the church because the baby she was holding had started fussing. After that, I didn’t see the fate of the gecko. But no old ladies screamed in church that day, so it was pretty anticlimactic.

After church, we went out to see the rice that we planted two months before. The grains of rice were starting to form, and it looked really, really good!!

11. And now welcome to a collection of really random things I have found around town/my house/my church/school.

a. The pimpest motorbike I’ve ever seen. EVER. Parked outside the karaoke place.

b. A new brand of ice cream I found at Alfamart. Dung dung anyone?? (It’s actually nangka (jackfruit) flavored.)

c. The biggest cockroach I HAVE EVER SEEN in my house. It lived approximately 4 seconds beyond when this picture was taken.

d. No church skit is complete without Sigit dressed as a woman. He’s such a good sport about it though.

e. I’ve been finding these NASTY bugs in my house. And nobody has any clue what they are. But apparently, just looking at one gives me a swollen rash on random parts of my body that lasts for hours or until I douse it with coconut oil. Weird.

  

f. I’m doing a senior portrait shoot. Our seniors at their finest.

  

e. Those seniors look an awful lot like how I found my cats the other morning. This is what happens when I forget to shut the front door before I go to bed at night. I wake up with two cats in my bedroom.

  

f. And for a charming touch, this is also what happens when I forget to shut my door on the same day that my helper feeds chili to my cats and they haven’t been wormed in about six months. IT ALL COMES UP ALL OVER MY BEDSPREAD. Then the intestinal worms crawl around and two of them end up on the floor before I find them two hours later.

  

And on that oh, so appealing note, I’m fresh out of pictures. Now I bet you can’t wait for the next time I upload a batch!!

A Lunch Scene

The scene: The lunch pavilion, near the garbage can by where the 7th graders eat.
The characters: Peter, a 10th grade boy. Me, his math teacher.

Setting: Peter goes to throw something away, and I reach around him from behind to toss in a napkin. Peter somehow senses that someone is behind him, and effectively uses his butt to shove me away.

Me: PETER!
*Peter turns around and sees me*
Peter: Oh.... Um..... Can we pretend like this never happened?
Me: Like you never shoved me out of the way? With your BUTT?
Peter: Yeah. That. I thought you were a seventh grader.
Me: You would do that to a seventh grader?!
Peter: *long pause while staring at me* Nothing to see here...
*Peter walks rapidly away with his head down*

End scene.

There's A Calm Before the Storm

That title really has nothing to do with my post. It's just that I heard an Indonesian friend humming it the other day, and it made me happy that CCR has made it this far.

Anyways, this past week has been an interesting one. It started on Saturday. I found some creepy looking worm/larvae bugs (they had legs!) crawling around in my clothes. Soon after finding those bugs - which I never actually touched - my neck started swelling, itching, and breaking out in hives. And it was spreading fast. Luckily, my best Hotjaga was posted outside my house at that exact time. I say "luckily" because he is the doctor in this country that I trust the most. Granted, he's not a real doctor. But he's my doctor. I described the bug to him and had him look at my neck. He wouldn't even touch it because of how bad it looked. He told me not to itch it, but that was just about impossible. He thought for a minute and asked, "Do you have any frying oil?" I said I did, and he told me to rub some of that on the infected area and "see what happens". By this time, the hives were down to my collarbone, all across the back of my neck, and down to my left shoulder. I said I'd try anything. So I went back to my house and slathered some coconut oil on it. And lo and behold, the rash immediately stopped spreading, and the oil soothed the itching.

I didn't really want to go to bed (it was 11:30 at night by this point) because I didn't want to saturate my pillow and sheets with frying oil, so I stayed up and read for awhile. Near 1, Hotjaga asked if he could see my neck, so I went back out and reported in for my check-up. He declared my rash to be in remission, which it was. I came back in a looked in the mirror, and while it was still a little red, all the bumps were gone, and the entire area was smaller than the palm of my hand. So I washed it all and went to bed.

Sunday was great - you couldn't even tell I'd had a near death encounter the night before. OK, so maybe not, but really, who knows? My throat could have swelled shut if Hotjaga hadn't saved me!

Monday I woke up feeling nauseous, and by the end of the day, I had a nasty headache and no appetite. That evening, I found more of those bugs in my room, and when I went to bed, I felt like something was biting me as I slept. It was hard to get to sleep because I was so itchy. I could feel bumps on my skin in the dark, but I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, all the bumps were gone - no sign of them.

Tuesday I woke up feeling nauseous again. I went out to dinner with Aswan, and I couldn't even eat my favorite sick food - chicken noodle soup! I was so nauseous and had a fever too. I sat in the open air restaurant in the cool mountain air dripping sweat off my face. I didn't sleep well that night either because I was hot and itching so much.

Wednesday I woke up with a REALLY sick stomach and spent the first 15 minutes of my day on the toilet. Then I spent the rest of the day being hit with waves of nausea. I went to Bible study that night as usual. I wanted to get out of the house, and I prayed we would be eating some gentle food. No such luck. Someone had cooked rica rica babi for us which is basically chunks of pork (including cut up ears and pieces of skin - with hair) saturated in oil and cooked in some seriously SPICY spices. Rica rica is just about my spice limit - and let me tell you, after living here for four years, this girl can HANDLE the heat! Since that was the ONLY thing served, there was no way around it. I grinned and bore it. Someone else had made jello for dessert, and after I finished my pork dish, I reached for some of that to cool my mouth off. It was yellow, and I asked someone what flavor it was, hoping for pineapple.

CORN. Wouldn't you know, it was CORN jello.

Anyways, needless to say, I spent at LEAST the first 15 minutes of the next morning on the toilet as well. But back the story up. Wednesday night when I got home from Bible study, I went straight to bed. I was feeling really warm again, so I slept on top of the covers. The feeling of being bit was really bad. It felt like I was being attacked by mosquitoes. I couldn't stop itching ALL OVER and it was keeping me up. So I turned on my bedside light and watched and waited. I could feel myself being bit, but I couldn't see anything biting me. By 1, when I still couldn't sleep, I decided to get up and shower, hoping that would help. It didn't, but as I stripped down, I could see red marks all over my body, confirming that I WAS being bit by something. Finally at 2-ish, I was able to drift off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion.

The next day, I decided I'd had enough, and I left a note for my helper explaining the situation and asking her to put my mattress out on the lawn to get some sun (this generally will kill anything that might be living in it) and wash all my bedding.

When I got home from school that day, she reported to me that when she'd cleaned my mattress, she found TONS of those same creepy looking bugs living in my luggage UNDER my bed. Now, they would definitely be big enough to see and feel if they were biting me at night. She said that maybe they were getting in my bed during the day and my skin was having some reaction to that, causing a rash. A valid idea. So anyways, she had deep cleaned my entire room plus put my mattress outside all day AND cleaned and dried all my bedding. She also sprayed for bugs. So my entire house pretty much smelled like a mix of toxic chemicals and freshly washed blankets and sheets. I took a nap, and it was the best I slept all week.

That night, I went out to dinner with some friends. When I got home, I was feeling nauseous again, and I was looking forward to my first full night of comfortable sleep all week.

Until I got in my bedroom.

And found cat vomit all over my bed.

With live stomach worms still crawling around in it.

On my clean bedspread.

And on my floor.

All my bedding was soaked with vomit clear through to the mattress.

So. I used a tissue to gather all the long, white, wriggling worms and those guys went straight down the toilet. All the bedding got gathered up and thrown outside my house. My mattress got scrubbed down with a brush and antibacterial hand soap, dish soap, vinegar, and febreeze. Then I left it to dry for a couple of hours with the ceiling fan on high. When I came back, I flipped it and put on clean sheets. But my only blanket was laying in the alley behind my house covered in cat barf. I found a small fleece blanket and slept with that. I left a note for my helper once again explaining the situation and asking her to please re-clean all my freshly cleaned bedding.

Friday, my stomach was finally feeling better, and I got home to find everything nice and clean. Cats remained locked out of the house the ENTIRE day, and I got my first great night of sleep in days. Saturday, I went to Solo all day with friends, and when I came home, I found that while I was out, something small had POOPED on my pillow. That's right. Probably a gecko. Or a small bird. It was about that size. After I got that cleaned up, I went to get a glass of water, and that's when I realized how much like a dead rat my kitchen smelled. I SEARCHED. In the cupboards, in the sink, in the trash, under the fridge, in the toaster, in my dishes. Nothing. Then I noticed the plastic bag sitting on the counter. I opened it up and took a whiff to see if that was the source of the assaulting smell. I regretted that whiff. Inside were six small dead fish that my helper had bought at market to feed my cats. She forgot to put them in the fridge, and so from Friday afternoon until Saturday night, they went unnoticed in their bag on my kitchen counter.

By that point, I could not even roll my eyes with surprise. Because I had no surprise left in me.

No, For Real... I Am.

Some days I feel super confident about my ability to have an intelligent conversation in what is not my first language.

Other days, I feel the need to explain to people, "I'm really funny in English. I promise."

Photo Caption Contest

Earlier today, the US Embassy in Jakarta posted this picture on the internet:

It was captioned as follows (roughly translated): Next week, the American people will vote for the new president who will serve from 2013 until 2017. This photo was taken when President Obama met with Mitt Romney during the third presidential debate. What do you think they are saying to each other? Leave your answer in the comment column. Our three favorite responses will earn an interesting prize. You have until midnight.

Now normally for Americans, we would jump at the chance to see who could come up with the most snarky, sarcastic, or humorous caption. But as I read through several of the 700+ comments, most of which were in Indonesian and/or other tribal languages, I realized that Indonesians apparently don't see the same challenge that we do. 

Some comments made me roll my eyes. Some cracked me up. Some I just plain didn't understand. Here are a few of the ones I DID get.


1.
Obama: I will DOMINATE you next week.
Romney: I'm scared.

2.
Obama: Good luck.
Romney: Good luck.

3.
Obama: How are you?
Romney: Not fine.
*they laugh together*

4.
Obama: Your teeth are yellow, bro.

5.
Obama: Let's just laugh and make them wonder what we're talking about that makes us laugh.


But my personal favorite was this beauty:

Mitt Romney: Hey man, can you dance Gangnam Style?
Obama: Heck yes I can! What CAN'T I do? I like to sing Lady Gaga songs.
Mitt Romney: Let's start a band!
Obama: Yesssss... 


This one was a close second:

Obama: Rom, do you think they understand what we debated about earlier?
Romney: I don't even understand what we debated about!
Obama: You're dumb.
Romney! Hahaha... The important thing is to shake hands.


I'm pretty sure I will never get Indonesian humor, or the lack thereof... But I was glad to see at least a few witty comments. And every time I imagine Obama singing Lady Gaga songs to himself, I laugh a little bit...

Marriage Advice From A Jaga

"Marry someone who will help you wake up in the morning and who will make you breakfast. Marry someone who gives you lots of attention and loves you more than anything. Marry someone who loves kids and his family. Marry someone with a good heart. And marry someone who works hard so that you don't have to."

I guess that after four plus years of being stationed outside my front door, all the jagas have figured out that I am NOT a morning person. I didn't know they could tell... Haha...

And that is what I took from that little speech.

Test

Just finished grading the most recent 9th grade Algebra 2 test on matrices, determinants, and Cramer's rule.

NINE students scored 100.
SIX others got As.
TWO got Bs.

For a total of SEVENTEEN students in the class.

Some teachers would scoff at me and say that I made the test too easy. Ask any student I've ever taught if I've EVER given them an "easy" math test. I guarantee they'll all say no. I often hear students complain that I give the hardest tests at our school.

No, the test was not too easy. These kids are just THAT amazing and hard working.

Feeling good.

Spelling Bee

I helped out at a local school's invitational English spelling bee for 1st - 3rd grade on Saturday. I was their native speaker, which meant that I read the words with my "American accent". There were two other Indonesian teachers who served as judges and scorers.

The rules here are a bit different than they are in America. There were about 25 students, and each student came to the front of the room one at a time to draw three numbers. Each number corresponded to a word on the spelling list (that I held). A "helper" would open the first slip of paper and tell me the number. I would then say the corresponding word to the student. The student could then ask me to repeat it once and/or ask for a clue. For example, if the word was "kitchen", I would say, "A kitchen is a room in a house". I had to come up with the clues off the top of my head - the hardest part of the job. The student then had one chance to spell the word. If they got it right, they got 100 points, and if they spelled it incorrectly, they got 0 points. The other two ladies kept track of scoring.

We repeated this process for all three words, then that student would go and sit while the next came up. For the first round, we used words that were 5 - 8 letters. After this round, all the students were dismissed while we totaled their scores. The top 10 were called back in, and we moved on to the next round which used words up to 12 letters. The same process was repeated, and at the end, the winner was the one with the highest total score.

Indonesian is an extremely phonetic language, and so many of these English words got some interesting - but understandable - spellings! Garlic became garlac, picture became pixer, library became librery, lettuce became lates, violet became vilot, and cheese became cese (c makes a ch sound in Indonesian). Other spellings were a little more nonsensical as nerves got the best of some. Gerf was giraffe, snanace was spinach, soucsg was sausage, corthye was curtain.

Now cover up the right side of your screen and see if you can tell what the second round words on the left side are supposed to spell!

brekxdes                                                                                                                   breakfast
labbratorry                                                                                                                laboratory
feberay                                                                                                                     february
cloot                                                                                                                         balloon
labbryaian                                                                                                                 librarian
danggerous                                                                                                               dangerous
dragoi                                                                                                                       drugstore
ermchair                                                                                                                   armchair
brokoly                                                                                                                     broccoli
meadball                                                                                                                   meatball
expendfe                                                                                                                  expensive


My personal favorite was the spelling of the word "aquarium". Based on her total deer in the headlights look, I was pretty sure that the poor girl had NEVER heard this word before. She asked me to repeat it, which I did. Then she asked for her clue. I was stumped for a second, but then I said, "An aquarium is a type of glass box that fish live in". Still stumped, she asked me to repeat the clue, which I did.  I'm pretty sure all she understood from my clue was "fish live in". Because then she confidently and quickly spelled, "W-A-T-E-R".

Jaga Talks

Since all my white friends end up leaving, I've decided that my new best friends are the jagas at school. They are pretty constant. The only time they ever leave is when they retire, in which case, they still live around here. So I've been hanging out at the jaga post having lots of good conversations lately. It's fun to get to know people's stories, especially the people you see every day.

Yesterday morning, I cooked blueberry muffins for breakfast (thanks for the mix, mom). Usually when I bake something, at least one goes directly to the jaga outside my house. I like to be nice, but even more importantly, if we are ever under attack, I need to have those guys on my side. Anyways, I took a blueberry muffin to the jaga, and he in turn offered me some boiled cassava - not my favorite food, but I ate some anyways. And we stood around and chatted.

Me: Oh, did you cook this yourself?
Jaga: Yeah. It's better if it's fried, but I didn't have time.
Me: So you just boiled it instead?
Jaga: Yes. It's really easy to fry it.
Me: Oh yeah?
Jaga: Yup. You just put some water in a bowl with some salt and mash up one small clove of garlic and put it in, then cut up the cassava and let it soak for a minute. It has to be a small clove of garlic though, or else the taste will be too strong. Do you have any garlic?
Me: Um... I think so.
Jaga: OK, so then you just fry it up in a pan until it is brown.
Me: Brown like your skin or brown like my skin?
Jaga: Brown like your skin. If it's brown like my skin, it's already burnt.
Me: Nooooo, your skin is a nice color.
Jaga: Mmhmm... So that's basically it. It's REALLY easy....
Me: ...............
Jaga: ..................
Me: Hey, do you want me to fry this cassava for you?
Jaga: Oh, sure. I mean, if you WANT to and you're not busy.

So now I know how to make some good fried cassava. Haha... And I learned that it tastes WAY better fried than boiled. Kind of like garlicy french fries!

Tonight, I got home late after it had rained for part of the evening. It was a little chilly, and I made some tea. I took some out to the jaga who pulled out a stool for me to sit on, and we chatted for a little while. We compared sermons from our respective churches this morning and talked about our families and practiced English and Javanese. I complained to him about how my motorbike was parked in yesterday and even though there were lots of men around, nobody offered to help me get my bike out. We thought about that for awhile, and we eventually came to the conclusion that if everyone would respect each other, the world would be a better place. I wish that was always possible. We then realized that that will only happen in Heaven. And he really hopes there is a place for him there.

PACKAGE!

I got an interesting package today. It looked like this.

And it had a label on it that said “broken/messy”. That was a first… I was a little scared to open it up for fear of massive quantities of mold and stink, but the possibility of something salvageable kept me going.

I wasn’t 100% sure at first what was all over my stuff, but it wasn’t moldy or too stinky. I pretty quickly traced it to those Ziploc bags of chocolate. Basically, the entire contents of my box were coated in a layer of liquid chocolate. So that was a nice surprise.

Mom had told me when she sent the box that “the book” would be of “special interest” to me. I had no idea what that meant, but I was definitely intrigued. So I gingerly started pulling items out of the box, hoping to find the book in decent shape. At the VERY bottom of the box, I found the only  book.

I had no idea what was supposed to be so interesting to me about a blank journal. Until I realized that mom had stuck my new credit card (my old one expired last month) inside. Sneaky, sneaky. The melted chocolate all over everything on the top possibly prevented that card from falling into the wrong hands. This is the first box I’ve ever received that didn’t have the contents all jumbled up and massive quantities of tape all over the outside in a frail attempt to hold everything in. Like the customs/post office employees/school guards think they could EVER unpack, inspect, and repack something that my mother packed. PUH-LEASE. She is the master of packing many things into a tight space. Sometimes they just give up and dump everything into a garbage bag and deliver it that way. True story. Anyways, this is the first box I’ve ever received that I’m 99% sure still has its original packing job. So the melted chocolate was, in a way, a good thing.

I didn’t want to carry the 40 pound chocolate soaked box all the way home with me, so I found some plastic bags and put everything in those. I looked like I was coming from the grocery store on the way home. But my bags were FILLED with foods you could never get in Indonesia. BEST. GROCERY. STORE. EVER.

Thankfully, pretty much everything was packaged, so the chocolate didn’t ruin anything except for that cross-stitch fabric in the top center of the photo. Also, I want to point out in mom’s defense that she DID put all of the meltable objects in plastic bags. But somehow, the plastic bags got holes in them. There was also a hole in the cardboard box. So I wonder if maybe something ATE holes in them?? At any rate, this package sat somewhere hot for a loooong time. This is how chocolatey things got.

Also, my chocolate chips pretty much became one GIANT chocolate chip. But I can still cut them up and use them for baking! At least this bag didn’t leak…

So, what did I do about this? Well, some things went straight into the sink for a good washing.

Other things were in cardboard and couldn’t be washed or had holes in their packaging, so they ended up getting repackaged.

And then the chocolates. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized what they were – Lindt Swiss chocolate truffles! My favorite chocolate in the world!! I was NOT about to let any of those go to waste, so I threw all of them in a cake pan and put it in the freezer. Once they’re solidified enough, I’ll transfer them to a bag in the fridge and hopefully be able to eat them!

 

Oh, and as for the journal, all I had to do was brush some dried chocolate off the outside, and it was as good as new!

Thanks, family people, for the awesome package!! I am SO EXCITED for all of this food!! And extremely thankful that you didn’t try to send clothes with the chocolates! : )

Barbie

I have some Indonesian friends who have a newly-turned-two-year-old daughter. She has a Barbie. A princess Barbie. Tonight, I found out that the Barbie's name is the same as mine. Nobody else called the Barbie that or coached her to call the Barbie that. She named it after me all on her own.

I don't know if I should be disturbed or flattered...

Piranhas and Declarations of Love

Sometimes I have food laying around that I just don't know what to do with. I mean, in America, we say things like, "Don't waste your food. There's a starving kid in Africa who would kill to eat that right now". But when you actually LIVE in a third world country, there's even more pressure to not waste anything. Ever. It's not like I'm gonna go to a slum and hand a kid a Tupperware dish full of peas though..

Or that bag of dried plums I bought months ago. I thought dried fruit sounded yummy. Turns out, dried plums taste suspiciously like raisins. GIANT raisins. I hate raisins with a passion. I gagged my way through one dried plum and left the bag in my desk drawer at school in case of emergency. They're expired by now. I had them sitting out on my desk this morning when a 9th grader spied them and asked if she could have one.

WHY DID I NOT THINK OF THIS SOONER?! I said, "Why, YES, I suppose you can have JUST ONE of my dried plums...." loudly enough for the entire class to hear. Thirty seconds, people, and there was not a trace of plum left in my classroom. Teenagers are like piranhas, and now I know what to do next time I have unwanted food lying around.


In other news, I was walking home from school today when I spied an off duty jaga hanging out. The same jaga who told me he cried when I got a boyfriend.

Me: Hey!
Him: Where ya goin?
Me: Home. Where are YOU going?
Him: Nowhere, just sitting here.
Me: Oh, well, see you later.
Him: WAIT! I was waiting for you.
Me: What? No you weren't. Why?
Him: I want to talk to you.
Me: Oh, about what?
Him: (whispers) My love for you.
Me: (knowing exactly what he just said) What?
Him: I'll walk you home.
Me: OK.

Model

Yesterday, a former student asked if I would be her model for a photo shoot. She’s gotten really into photography lately, and I think she’s getting better and better every day. Coincidentally, this former student’s father owns the horse ranch where Aswan works. So this photo shoot involved horses! My only instructions were to wear cowboy clothes. She said she had a hat and boots at the ranch that I could borrow. The hat ended up being more of an Australian shepherd’s hat, and the boots were just some worn – but very comfortable – riding boots. I told her that I can’t ride English and that no saddle at all would be alright with me. The groom who got the horse ready for me thought I was pretty crazy, but he helped me mount anyways. It felt weird! I don’t think I’ve ridden for almost 5 years by now! But it’s like riding a bike, and I was surprised how comfortable I was on the horse.

That last one… They kept telling me to hug the horse! I think I really worked it. By about that time, I had not one but THREE photographers and a bit of an audience too. I just kept hoping I wouldn’t fall off the horse. My main photographer asked me to have the horse trot. That presented a problem. These horses are trained for dressage. And I don’t know how to post. Especially not without a saddle. But I also have no idea how to ride with an English saddle. These poor horses – I think I just confused them, because I was definitely riding Western. They ended up deciding to have me ride one of the “aggressive” horses with a saddle on. That made me nervous, but it ended up that he was eating (whew), so they had me ride one of the smaller, slightly blind horses instead. So once again, with the last of the light fading, I mounted up. Riding English feels REALLY awkward when you’ve spent your whole life riding Western. And I about got dumped a couple of times. And I’m pretty sure my trot was me flopping ungracefully all over the horse the first few times. But I eventually got it down. And we got these pictures:

It was really fun to get out there and ride. And I have an open invitation to come back and ride whenever I like. So that’s pretty sweet!

*All photo and edit credits go to Jacqueline Gabriella!*

Baptism

My friend, Pak Kur, invited me to his house this morning for his son's baptism. This meant I had to wake up at 5:30 in order to be at his house in the village in time to walk to church at 7. Pak Kur kindly SMSed me at 5 to make sure I was already up. So much for that alarm I set... He knows me so well.

In his tiny little village church, Javanese is the only language spoken. If it had been the lowest level of Javanese, I might have stood a chance of understanding what was happening. As it was, the entire service was conducted in the third level. So basically I spent 2 hours sitting on a hard wood bench in the tropical heat, and all I understood was Gusti (Lord) and Amin. Also, I could find the verses in the Bible when the pastor said them because the names of the books are the same in Indonesian, and I know my Javanese numbers pretty well. So that was loads of fun.

My favorite part of the day (even beating out trying to gingerly chase a gecko off the shoulder of the blissfully unaware elderly lady sitting in front of me) was this conversation with Pak Kur:

Pak Kur: Why haven't you been to my house for 65 days?
Me: (joking) Sixty-five days? I'm pretty sure it's been 64.
Pak Kur: (completely seriously counting mentally) Oh yeah, you're right! Why haven't you been to my house for 64 days?

And the most awkward moment award goes to Pak Kur's older brother who, upon getting ready to leave after lunch, came to shake my hand and loudly asked, "Do you want to marry Pak Kur's son??" Unfortunately, he asked me in Javanese, and I think the verb he used actually meant something like marry into the family of. So what I understood was, "Do you want to (that verb) Pak Kur?" And when I told him I didn't know that word, he explained it as "married". So I thought he was asking me if I want to marry Pak Kur, and I had NO. IDEA. WHAT. TO. SAY. Pak Kur, his wife, their three children, and their extended family were all sitting there! Um.... Awkward silence... Someone in the room saw my hesitation and quickly explained that they want me to marry his 21 year old son who just got baptized. And still, I really didn't know what to say. So that happened...

I love that family. And I love that I feel like a part of their family. But I probably won't be marrying into it anytime soon.

Cats in Odd Places

After I'd been sitting and writing that last post for a few minutes, I started to feel something moving behind me, and I freaked out a little bit. Imagine my surprise when I realized I'd been sitting on a cat. Meh, sometimes these things just happen, I guess.

Conversations With Crazy

Yesterday was a good, good day. One of those days where you sit back at the end of it and feel so content with everything in life and wish that every day could be like that day. And I started to write this post three different times last night, but I couldn't really figure out what made the day SO good. I wrote about my friends and spending time with them, and I wrote about going swimming in the middle of the day together because all of us got off work, and I wrote about randomly going to eat noodles in town still in our swimsuits. But that wasn't what made the day so great. I couldn't figure it out, so I kept erasing what I'd written and trying again. I didn't realize until today that the reason the day was one I want to remember in my mind for a long, long time is because it was a day in which I felt like I REALLY belonged.

Even though I've lived here more than four years now, I'm still very, very much an outsider. My skin is a different color, for starters. I have curly hair and blue eyes and I'm tall. I have a completely different worldview, mindset, culture, and background. I have a different religion. I speak a different language. I literally live half a world away from home. People don't get me. People usually just stare at me. And I struggle with that.

Belonging is important. Everyone wants to belong. And most of the time here, I feel like I don't.

So many little things happened yesterday though that made me feel like I'm really a part of this place, like I'm one of these people. Nothing huge happened - it was all in the little things.

Like when my friend's one year old baby who hates everyone except his momma came straight to me, wrapped his chubby little hand around one of my fingers, and pulled me out the door to play outside with him. And when he used the few words he knows to communicate with me and then laughed hysterically when I repeated them back to him. And when he fell asleep while I was holding him and a stranger asked if he's my Indonesian baby. Oh, how I love that little boy.

Or when I went out for ronde and noodles with friends, and the cashier, without missing a beat, told me my total in Javanese like he didn't even notice that I was white. I've eaten there several times, and he always speaks Indonesian to me. But not yesterday. Yesterday, I was Javanese like everyone else.

And when I ate dinner with another friend's family, his dad, whom I've never met before, said to me in the middle of the meal, "Where are you even from that you can speak Indonesian like that?" and then later, when I was on my third helping, "You speak the language, you like the food, so you're pretty much Indonesian now, aren't you?"

And I can't forget about the completely bat crap crazy woman who came and sat herself down next to me while I was reading by the pool and proceeded to tell me her whole life story. Apparently, she has two husbands and three children, and she was dead but came back to life and has tried every religion and settled on Islam so now she can't drink pig water (whatever that is). But she really likes Buddhists and dogs. And she's read the Bible, and she was really convinced that the book I was reading was the Bible, so she tried to steal it from me. "I want to kiss you because I don't like you. I hate you! Where? Over there! I don't care! I love you! I love you! I love because it's Christian! I don't care! I need a husband. Where is the exit here? Where are my kids? Over there, I don't care! Oh, are you French?"

Oh, and maybe the littlest thing of all was when I found a back way to my friend's new house. I love back roads, but I don't use them very much here because none of the roads go straight, and it's really easy to get hopelessly lost and facing 180 degrees away from where you started. But I found my way on my first try, and it made me happy to know that I can find my way on the back roads sometimes.


I just read over everything I wrote for the 10th time since I started writing yesterday. And I think I finally nailed it this time. I realize that none of these things seem important. But they really are to me. And on the days when I really feel like this place will never feel like home no matter how long I stay, I want to read this again and again and remember yesterday. Because yesterday, I belonged.

elpiji

EVERY TIME I try to order a new tank of elpiji (yes, that's Indonesian for LPG) for my water heater or stove, I end up having the following conversation on the phone:

*ring ring*
Lady: Hello?
Me: Yes, I'd like to order a tank of elpiji.
Lady: Where would you like it delivered?
Me: (I tell where I live, a place they are very familiar with and know the exact location of)
Lady: OK great, and who am I speaking to?
Me: (I tell her my name)
Lady: Who?
Me: (I tell her my name a LITTLE LOUDER)
Lady: Who?
Me: (I tell her my name with as strong of an Indonesian accent as possible)
Lady: Um... WHO?
Me: Ibu Sri (my helper).
Lady: Oh, Ibu Sri's house! OK, we know the place. I'll send a man. He'll be there in a minute.
Me: OK, thank you.
*hang up*

Today was probably the fourth or fifth time I've had that conversation. Apparently my pembantu orders elpiji for us so often that they don't even know who actually lives here, and according to them, Ibu Sri owns the place. I actually told Ibu Sri about that once, and she thought it was hilarious!

The guy who just delivered my elpiji seemed very weirded out that Ibu Sri was not here. He actually asked me first thing, "Where did Ibu Sri go?" Well, hello to you too, sir.

Fall Break

 

It seems that our week long fall break and rainy season both began on the same day. Just my luck. So here I am at 12:30 in the afternoon on the first full day of break. Still in my pajamas. Watching movies on Youtube. Rubbing volcanic mud all over my face. Wondering if I’ll see the sun today… Or tomorrow… Or at any point during break.

But still oh, so thrilled that I get to spend the entire next week living by my OWN schedule. That is a good feeling.