Bali dong…

So FINALLY, here is my blog update about my New Years trip to the lovely island of Bali! This year’s trip was a little different from last year’s because instead of having 10 people, we only had FOUR.

I have to say that while I miss the many friends who came last year (who are now living all over the world), traveling with a small group is MUCH easier. This year, we also had only two guys and two girls, which made hotels, meals, and transportation MUCH easier to arrange. Also, we stayed in only two different locations rather than three. We spent the first five days of our trip in Ubud at our favorite place, the T-Houses.

We then moved to a city called Seminyak – a new location for us - for the last five days. Yohanes has had his left foot in a cast (due to falling down the stairs at his home and breaking his foot) since early December, so we were planning on having a very laid back and relaxing vacation.

I’m thankful that we weren’t planning on doing a lot of activities - I ended up getting very sick for two days, and the weather was fairly inclement for most of the trip – so nobody was disappointed when we spent lots of time hanging around our hotels. We did rent motorbikes at both places, so we managed to get out and see some sights, but many of our days were spent simply reading, ordering food in, talking until late at night, watching Rocky I – IV, playing card games, and just enjoying time spent with each other.

One of the most fun things we did on this trip was geocaching! I’d never tried it before. If you don’t know what this is (I’m surprised by how many people don’t – I thought it was a pretty popular thing) let me explain a little bit. Basically, anybody can create and hide a “cache” at a certain location and post the coordinates on a website, usually accompanied by a simple clue. Then other people, using GPS, come to the location and try to find the cache. In every cache, there is a small notebook and pencil so that every finder can leave a message. There are also small souvenirs inside, and as long as you leave one, you can take one with you. My favorite part of every cache was reading the notebook. People from literally all over the world had written in each notebook we found, and it was fun to read their little messages. Here is a visual rundown of the five caches we found.

Cache 1. Using the GPS on Peco’s phone, we drove out of town and found that the coordinates put us in a small village. The clue said that the cache was located in a community center above an art gallery and that we didn’t need to climb to find it. We found the gallery and asked an employee how to get to the second floor. She directed us to a staircase around back, and we found ourselves in a really neat open air room with spaces to eat and hang out, ping pong tables, musical instruments, and even a community library! It took a little while, but eventually Melanie found our first cache – it was hidden in the woodwork!

  

We hadn’t thought to bring anything with us to leave in the cache, so we all began to search our bags and pockets. Our options were: half used chapstick, half used hand sanitizer, my camera, some coins, or Peco’s cell phone. We ended up deciding to leave the hand sanitizer and take a little mushroom guy. He had a tag on him claiming that he was a travel bug and that we could go on-line, enter his ID number (printed on the tag), and see where in the world he had been. That seemed like a good adventure.

Yo, our resident cripple, became our resident note-writer. None of the rest of us really knew what to say, and since he was fairly immobile, we decided that his contribution would be to speak for us.

After a rousing game of ping pong and making friends with random animals that we found, we decided to take a group picture and head out.

On our way home, it started to get very overcast, so we stopped at a random roadside Indian restaurant we found way out in the rice fields. Just as we were sitting down at our table, the skies opened and it started POURING. This picture really captures what the weather in Indonesia is like during rainy season – 8 months out of the year.

The following day was the only day of the trip that it didn’t rain at ALL, so we made the most of it and found THREE caches.

Cache 2. The coordinates of this cache put us at a small pura (Hindu temple) by the side of the road. The clue told us that the cache was in a bottle within 10 meters of – but not inside of – the pura. Peco was the one to find this one, and he had it opened up and out by the road before I had a chance to take a picture. So after we were finished there, I made him re-enact his find for the camera. It was oh, so dramatic.

And here is our illustrious robo-cop (his words, not mine) writing our note…

It was about noon, and we were VERY hot and hungry at this point. I think our note writer got a little tired… and snarky.  Also, by this point, after reading the notes that other people left, we began to notice that many of them used curious abbreviations. So we made up some of our own.

We decided that the tiny, not-quite-waterproof bottle was no place for our little mushroom friend, whom we’d grown attached to. So we left nothing and took nothing from this cache.

We headed back into town for lunch at the infamous Warung Ibu Oka – some of the best spit roasted pork on the island. In fact, it’s SO good that when we made a deal on the first day of our trip to ONLY eat at restaurants we’d never tried before, we agreed to 2 exceptions – the Cuban restaurant (because we wanted to Salsa) and Ibu Oka. This was our fourth time staying in Ubud, and we realized how stuck on our favorite restaurants we’d gotten. Thank goodness for exceptions to rules though, because the pork here never ceases to satisfy.

We expected that it would be raining by the time we finished lunch (the usual progression of weather here), but it still looked pretty clear, so we decided to try and find another cache. I was SO thankful for the amazing weather that day, because what we found at the next cache makes it onto the list of the top five coolest things I’ve ever seen!

Cache 3. This was the hardest cache to find, because the clue simply said that the cache was at the top of the stairs. I mean, that sounds simple enough… But when we reached the location, we found over THREE HUNDRED stairs! And they were all broken up into 12 or 15 different sets of stairs going in different directions! We searched around the top of the first set of stairs, but without knowing what exactly we were looking for, we were getting frustrated and decided to move on a little further. So we went down the first set and found two more sets of stairs – one going down in front of us, and another going up to the right. According to the GPS, we were pretty much right on top of the cache. But once again, without knowing what kind of object we were looking for, we were pretty lost. So we went down the next set of stairs. The GPS still showed that we were extremely close to the cache. At that point the stone walls of the staircases ended, and we found ourselves surrounded by rice fields.

We searched around in the mud for a bit but found nothing. So we went down one more set of stairs. Now the GPS showed that we were getting colder. So we went back up to the top and poked around some more. By now, several out-of-breath people had passed us coming up the stairs. Intrigued, I asked someone what was at the bottom. A nice lady told me that there was a temple and that we should go down and see it. So since we were having no luck with the cache, Melanie and I decided to check it out. We kept going further and further and further down into what appeared to be a gorge with view like this:

Eventually, we started to see Hindu statues like these:

And then we found ourselves at this doorway, where a sign asked us to sprinkle ourselves with holy water before proceeding further (confession – we didn’t).

After we passed through the doorway, the hike continued going further downward. Finally, we came to a bridge over a river and caught sight of what was just around the bend.

What’s that back there? An 11th century Hindu temple + burial grounds carved into the face of a mountain? Yes, please!

I told Melanie that I felt like Indiana Jones. She felt like a jungle princess. She thinks these statements are very indicative of our personalities. I agree.

The history of this place ASTOUNDS me. I mean, how did people in the 1000s even BUILD these?! There are DEAD people buried here? People who walked the exact same ground that I was standing on, but ONE THOUSAND years earlier?! What are their stories? What sights did they see? What tales could they tell?  And how different would my life be if I had been born in THAT place at THAT time? When I stand in places like this, my heart beats a little faster and it gets a little hard to breathe as I contemplate all of these questions. It’s a little overwhelming to think about, really.

But anyways, back to the cache. We got an SMS from Peco saying that he’d found the cache up top, so we panted our way back up the 300 stairs. When we got to the bottom of the first set of stairs – where there had been one set going up and one going down – we went UP the second set of stairs that we’d skipped earlier. There was a little café up there, and the cache had simply been sitting on top of the fridge there! Peco had asked the waitress if she knew anything about this cache (it’s really hard to explain geocaching in Indonesian…), and she just handed it to him! We never would have found it if he hadn’t asked about it.

This seemed like a much safer/drier location for our little mushroom friend. We decided not to take anything with us though. When we got on the travel bug website to check our mushroom out of his last location and into this one, we learned that before we found him in the community center, the last place he’d been in was France!

And here is the note we left with our curious abbreviations.

Using his interwebs, Peco noticed that another cache was located very close by. Since the weather was still holding up, we decided to try to find it.

Cache 4: The GPS coordinates led us to a resort and a helpful groundskeeper named Pak Ketut who was very curious about why we kept looking under bushes and peering through windows. The resort was very beautifully laid out with lots of gardens and tropical plants. But unfortunately, there was no clue given for this cache, only the coordinates. And with so many hiding places and darkness quickly approaching, it took quite awhile to find the cache. Yohanes and Pak Ketut gave up on us and sat down by the parking area to chat. I felt bad for abandoning Yo, so I eventually came and sat with them as well. I started taking pictures of the many snails I found while we waited for Peco and Melanie to find the cache.

  

Peco eventually called us to tell us that he had a feeling the cache was located in the resort’s restaurant. I’m not sure why he thought that, but since Yo and I were closest to it, I went to search. And I found my first cache!

Much like the cache #3, this one was located in a box on top of the refrigerator.  It was relatively small with only a few objects inside of it.

There was nothing in there that we were too keen on having, so for the second time that day, we left nothing and took nothing. Yohanes did write in the notebook for us though. We had figured out one of the commonly used abbreviations from previous caches, so Yo decided that we would look much more professional if we used it too. “TFTC!”

Once we found the cache, it was much easier to explain to Pak Ketut what we had been looking for this whole time. He had never realized that it was there, and he and I enjoyed looking through the notebook together and reading messages from people of many different nationalities.

Since it was nearing dark, we headed back into Ubud for dinner, and this ended our cache adventuring for the day.

The next morning I woke up with a fiery sore through, a hacking cough, a headache, and an upset stomach. I spent most of the day alternating between the toilet and the couch. I slept on the couch that night, knowing that I probably wouldn’t get much sleep at all and not wanting to keep Melanie awake or infect her with my disease. My entire breathing system was plugged up most of the day, but by night, it was flowing like a river. I managed to use every bit of toilet paper in the house (1+ rolls) three squares at a time as tissues (because there were no tissues in the entire house) during the night. By about 4 AM when I still hadn’t slept, I ended up just rolling over onto my side, laying 10 squares of toilet paper on top of each other under my nostrils, and just letting everything drain out. I think I slept for about 30 minutes before I woke up to find my head in a small pond. That was my longest stretch of sleep all night though!

I’m extremely thankful for patient, caring friends who made sure I ate well and went to town to buy me tissues and medicine and took good care of me. They also put up with having no toilet paper for a few hours before housekeeping brought us some more!

The morning after my sleepless night, we were due to check out of our T-House and move to Seminyak. There was one cache left in town that we hadn’t found yet though. It was located in a school for handicapped children. We’d actually gone a few days before, but since we were on vacation and had no concept of time or date, we didn’t realize that it was the weekend and the school was closed! By now, it was a weekday. I was feeling pretty rough and decided to stay home and pack and rest, so the other three went to find the cache. I sent Melanie with my camera, so even though I can’t tell you my firsthand account of finding the cache, I can at least show you the pictures!

Cache 5: We knew the cache was inside a school for handicapped children, but we didn’t know where. They found it at the top of a set of stairs. It looked like this:

This one had a LOT of travel bugs! Peco took one, planning to transfer it to another cache we knew of in a city we’d be passing through on our way to Seminyak later in the day. I’m not sure what they left in this cache…

This is possibly my favorite picture of the entire trip. Yohanes as the scream.

And here is the note Yohanes left.

So about that cache I mentioned… We rented a car to drive us to Seminyak, but on the way, we detoured through Sanur to eat at Mossimo, one of our all time favorite Italian restaurants! I had rested a lot that morning, but somewhere during that time, my lungs had filled up with lots of stuff that rattled with every breath, so I was having a hard time breathing and I just felt very weak overall. I couldn’t taste anything, which was really sad, because I’m sure my lunch was amazing. After nearly passing out at the lunch table (I’m being literal), I got a second wind and we went hunting for the nearby cache. Unfortunately after looking on top of walls, around gazebos, underneath rocks, and in many other places, a curious neighbor came out and told us that some other white people had been there recently and that they had found something and taken it. After further research online, we found out that we were not the only group that week to not find the cache. We felt disappointed, but we were glad it wasn’t just our lack of cache-finding skills that prevented us from succeeding.

After all of those adventures, the rest of the trip seemed quite tame in comparison. Once we got to our hotel in Seminyak, I fell asleep immediately in what can only be described as the greatest bed I have ever encountered. It may not be much to look at, but sleeping in this bed was like sleeping in a nice little cloud. Mel and I both said that we wished we could bring it back home with us.

Our hotel in Seminyak was set up like a small apartment. The guys stayed in one room and the girls in another. We had a shared bathroom and a small kitchen space. The really great part for this trip was the super comfy couch and flatscreen TV! While we were in Ubud, we were guaranteed at least a few hours of sunlight in the morning. Not so in Seminyak. It rained pretty much ALL day EVERY day. One morning, I woke up between 4 and 5 AM (yay for being sick) and it was already raining. So we bought decks of cards and lots of movies and ordered in Dominos Pizza and rotisserie chicken from the deli and many other delicious dishes. In fact, we only ate out in Seminyak once the whole time we were there. We drove into town and found a Japanese restaurant where we took our first tourist-like pictures of ourselves! Also, it is extremely difficult to get boys to take a nice picture – even the grown up ones.

And then, FINALLY!

And then Peco decided to dress up his chest hair with my hair clip. So that was extra special.

We rang in the new year in our hotel in Seminyak. The rain let up shortly before midnight, and the manager told us there was a nice rice field just a short walk from our room, so we headed out to watch all the fireworks and count down. Some friends from back home on Java were also in Bali and had come to our hotel to celebrate the new year with us. When they called a taxi at about 12:30 to take them back to their own hotel, they were told that all taxis were full until 7 AM!! Bali is such a mad house around the holidays! So we ended up cramming a couple of extra girls into our giant bed for the night for a New Year’s sleepover!

Peco left a day before the rest of us. On our way to take him to the airport, we decided to stop off in Kuta for our token meal at Hard Rock Café – the most expensive restaurant I’ve ever eaten at in my life. Since I taught my helper how to make burgers and can have them any time I want now, I wasn’t craving a famous Hard Rock burger the way I usually am. Instead, I just had pulled pork nachos. SO GOOD! I couldn’t even finish them all… It’s a good thing the closest Hard Rock Café is in Jakarta – a 14 hour bus ride away – or I’d be poor.

We took a few more pictures – in front of the accordion, naturally. The three perennials! Again with the faces…

The two girls! I think this is the first picture we’ve taken together in two years of knowing each other!

While we were waiting for Yohanes to get down the bazillion steps at Hard Rock and make his way to where our car was parked (Peco ended up carrying him), I jumped across the street and took this ONE picture of the beach. I refused to leave Bali without going to the beach at least once! Our driver was very concerned about why I was standing out on the beach in the rain, and he followed me and asked me to come back to the car with him.

Then we were off to the airport where we said our goodbyes to this goof…

FAR too early the next morning, the remaining three of us were back at the airport, ready for our trip home. We found this most amazing Christmas tree in the entryway! Isn’t it lovely?

Later that day back at home, it rained. Vacation felt very over. The end.

Oh, the Rains

Things I miss about dry season...

• Carrying gum in my bag without it melting into liquid.
• Keeping my bottle of vitamins on my bathroom sink without them growing fuzz.
• Wearing skirts.
• Feeling warm.
• Going anywhere any time of day without getting drenched.
• Not having to carry an umbrella everywhere I go.
• Going for drives.
• Growing plants and not having them drown.
• Having nice hair.
• Having clothes that don't always smell musty.
• Drying clothes in one day instead of three.
• Electricity staying on more consistently.
• My house not being struck by lightning on a regular basis.
• Pulling out a pair of shoes I just wore three days ago and not finding mold all over them.
• Major cities not flooding.
• The beach.
• Picnics.
• Soccer games.
• Health.
• Sunshine in the morning. Sunshine after school. Sunshine.
• Not caring when the hot water goes out.
• Wildlife living outside instead of always trying to come in my house.
• Having a conversation at a normal volume.
• Showing up to places with dry clothes on.
• Not having muddy footprints all over the floor.
• Working out after school.
• Predictable weather patterns.
• Having a dry helmet that doesn't make my hair smell musty.

Things I sometimes begrudgingly enjoy about rainy season...

• Hot beverages.
• Cardigans.
• Hot showers.
• Socks.
• Falling asleep to the sound of rain on the roof.
• How green everything is.

Oh, Children...

Student 1: Have you ever done drugs?
Me: No.
Student 2: Have you ever used nail polish remover?
Me: Yes, when I want to remove my nail polish...
Student 2: Then you've done drugs!
Me: How do you figure?
Student 2: You inhale it.
Me: But I'm not smoking, snorting, or injecting it, so I don't think that counts as doing drugs...
Student 1: Can you remember back to art time? Like when you were our age and you had art class. Because the markers...
Me: ...I was homeschooled. I didn't have art class.
*long pause while wheels turn*
Student 1: Did you have computers??
Me: Um... Yes.
Student 1: Did you have LUNCH??
Me: No. Lunch wasn't invented yet when I was in 9th grade.
Student 1: Oh...

TA

My sweet teaching assistant came back from making photocopies of a geometry test for me, and she started ripping up papers and throwing them in the trash! When I asked her why, she gave this very clear response:

I was trying to do the back and forth, back and forth with the thingie, but I didn't know how. And so I failed many times. And then the GRRRRRRCHUCKACHUCKACHUCKAGRRRRRRRRRR was full!! But I can't leave it, so I had to do it here!

The really weird thing (as if that wasn't strange enough) is that I immediately understood exactly what she meant. Here's the translation:

I was trying to copy the test front and back, but I didn't know how to do that. So I messed up some copies. And then the paper shredder was full. But since it's a test, I couldn't just throw it in the recycle bin there, so I'm ripping them up here!

I'm getting really good at Korean English. kk

Note to Self

Next time you give homemade body scrub to all your friends for Christmas, you should probably tell them what it is.

Before they eat it.
With a spoon.
And then kindly thank you for the delicious gift.

First Day Back

Me: I always had a hard time remembering which one was the less than sign and which one was the greater than sign. I used to get them mixed up a lot until I was in, like, high school.
Student 1: What?? How could you NOT remember that?
Me: I don't know.... Maybe because I didn't have a math teacher to explain things like that since I was homeschooled.
Student 2: You were HOMESCHOOLED?
Student 3: Dude! You didn't know that? She talks about it a LOT!
Student 4: Yeah, she was taught by goats. They studied pentagrams. Beneath the tree.

Sometimes I really wonder what I have said in the past that has caused them to think these things...

The Super Sniffer

I never really thought that I had any kind of extraordinarily olfactory ability. But I do have the often unwanted gift - usually while driving - to be able to tell that someone, somewhere is eating a durian.

Back to school tomorrow.
Bali post coming soon! Stay tuned.

Twas the Weekend Before Christmas

A week ago, I wished I could celebrate Christmas in a big city. Because the big cities are more westernized and hence, more Christmas-y. Our little town is barely touched at all by the Christmas spirit. No lights on houses, no decorations in stores, no Christmas music on the radio, no trees in the shopping malls. No shopping malls...

But this weekend, I spent a lot of time with a lot of very dear people, and it reminded me that the place you spend Christmas isn't nearly as important as the people you spend it with. 

I spent Saturday with our entire national staff, past and present, at Pak Jono's retirement party. I thought the teachers were invited too, but as it turns out, I was the only white person he asked to come! I felt very honored, and since I don't know when I'll see Pak Jono again, I was glad to have that extra time to spend with him! The only sad part of the day was when I let myself think about how much Pak Gono would have loved that party and how much I wish I could have seen him there.

Here is an awfully washed out picture of me and retirement boy. Pak Jono took a lot more pictures of the two of us with his camera, but unfortunately, I don't have a way to get those pictures from him. So this beauty is the only one I have. And I love it. Kind of.

Here are our two retirees this year, Pak Slamet and Pak Jono. Pak Slamet has possibly worked for our school longer than anybody in the history of our school. I will miss his smile in the morning! I think it is really cute that he is looking at Pak Jono instead of looking at the camera. And I was also thankful that Pak Jono took a 2 second break from his dangdut karaoke to smile for me.

And this would be Pak Wahyudi enjoying said dangdut karaoke. He may have been the only one. It was SO loud, we could hardly talk to one another.

And here is a picture of Pak Jono's car! Almost a year ago, he asked me if I could have someone send some old license plates. A former teacher had given him one from America, and Pak Jono liked it so much he put it on his car - but then someone stole it! So that was something I had my sister bring when she came this summer. I gave three to Pak Jono - two really cool looking antique ones that mom found for him, and then a newer one off my dad's truck. Hopefully dad got new plates and mom didn't just steal it. Though I could see her doing that... Anyways, when I gave them to Pak Jono, he did and jig and gave me a massive bear hug. At the same time. He was THRILLED. It makes me happy that of the three plates, Pak Jono picked the Indiana one to put on his little hatchback!

Both of these men will definitely be missed in our little community! In fact, as I was talking to some of the women staff members, Pak Tri, who retired 4 years ago arrived. And the woman sitting closest to me saw him and said thoughtfully, "You know, that's why we love working here. No matter if we're retired or still working, we have a kinship with one another. That's why people stay 10, 20, 25 years or more. We have a big family here."

I love that about our school!

After the retirement party on Saturday, I spent almost all evening baking and decorating Christmas cookies with Melanie! Then on Sunday, we took them over the Pak Kur's house. We ended up sitting in his front room and just talking for about 4 hours. And eating too. There is never any shortage of food at his house. His wife even served us an entire meal at 2:30 in the afternoon!! Fried chicken, vegetable soup, cow stomach in hot sauce with pigeon eggs, rice, crackers, rambutan (fruit), and peanuts! Oh, and two glasses of coffee. Whew... I love conversations with Pak Kur because in one sitting you can talk about the weather, gun laws in various countries, Javanese culture, land prices on Sumatra, women with moustaches, how to tell by smell alone if a cow has delivered the afterbirth or not, and so much more. I always learn a lot when I go to his house.

It rained the whole time we were there, so he told us we should just spend the night instead of driving home in a storm. But we had another engagement that evening. We spent 4 MORE hours at our friend Atik's house eating fried rice and Christmas cookies and talking about life with all of our close friends. Dewi, Ayu, and Sani wanted to practice saying the names of cities and states in America correctly, so we were practicing. We were all laughing hysterically by the end, and they tried to convince me to open up an English pronunciation school. Maybe someday... When I got home, I made baggies of Christmas cookies (we made like 230478 dozen cookies, people) and delivered them to all of the jagas that were on campus. They kept me up talking until midnight. I love our jagas, and I appreciate them so, so much!

Today I'm making up for all that time I spent hanging out and being relational. I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow going to different Christmas parties in Semarang, then we leave for Bali at 2:30 in the morning the day after that. So today, I'm doing laundry, cleaning, packing, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, and tying up all those loose ends one needs to tie up before going out of town. I kind of feel like a crazed woman. But I wouldn't trade the time I got to spend with friends this weekend for anything. I am very, very blessed.

Soto Kalkun

Soto is a delicious Indonesian soup that is pretty much like chicken noodle soup, except that instead of noodles, they use rice. And usually you put hot sauce and lime juice in it. Deliciousness in a bowl. Anyways, Hotjaga told me awhile ago that there is a place near his house that sells turkey soto (soto kalkun). That is weird, since Indonesians don't generally eat turkey. Hot knows how much I love turkey, so he's invited me a few times to go try it. The stars all aligned properly this week so that Hot is working afternoons, Nav (his wife) is on break and I am also. So we decided that Friday morning (today), Melanie and I would drive over to the next town, Ambarawa (about 30 minutes away), to try this turkey soto we'd heard so much about!

The day did not go as expected. AT ALL.

I meant to go into town at 8:30 this morning to pick up ingredients for baking Christmas cookies and to get a new battery for my phone, which is regularly freaking out lately. I needed to go to three different places (it is so complicated when ONE STORE can't sell both butter AND brown sugar) before picking Mel up at 9:30. But the jaga at the back gate was Pak Kur. So I didn't actually end up leaving until 9. But I now know all his family updates, what he is doing for Christmas, and I am invited over on Sunday to help cook for the out of town guests they will have for the holidays. Pak Kur informed me that at school, he is not berani (brave) to treat me like family, but in his own home he is berani, and he WILL put me to work. I said OK! Anyways, by the time I got a new phone battery and a kilo of butter, I didn't have time for the brown sugar, so I just headed to Mel's house. The whole house was still dark, but Mel's roommate let me in and told me that Mel had JUST gotten up. So by 10 o'clock we headed back to my house to drop off the butter and pick up my raincoat, because by now it was sprinkling.

Right as we were getting ready to leave my house, I got an SMS from Navita saying that she had very bad news - the turkey soto place was randomly closed FOREVER. We decided to go anyways and make the best of it.  We raced (and BEAT) the rain, and since we were all hungry, we decided to go out for normal soto. After eating until we were full, Navita said she wanted to take us to the train station. The Ambarawa station was built by the Dutch and is now a museum. Lots of old steam engines are parked all around, and a lot of equipment that was used in the original station is on display. So we went there. And it was closed. For renovations. So we snuck in a back gate and looked at everything anyways!

After that, we decided to go to the war museum. With our luck, we figured it had probably burned down during the night or something, but as it turns out, it was the ONE place that was open! So we got to see lots of old German and Japanese weapons from WWII along with unexploded ordnance. That seems very safe. Then we found an American airplane - a Mustang - that had the Dutch flag painted on its tail! Mel and I both climbed up on it and explored the cockpit. Because this is Indonesia and there are really no rules about climbing all over antique aircraft. It was fun locating the "Drop right bomb" and "Drop left bomb" levers and reading the warning signs for ejecting the seat.

After hanging out at Hotjaga and Navita's house (where Hotjaga cooked and served us French Fries and flavored water), we drove back home. In the now POURING rain. Hotjaga had to come to work at the same time, so I kind of felt like we had a police escort. It was nice to drive with someone watching over us though, because the road we took home is very winding and FULL of nasty potholes, but it has NO drainage, so when it rains hard, the road turns into a river of running water that pulls your motorbike all different directions and prevents you from seeing the asphalt and knowing where dangerous holes are. It just makes the challenge of driving that much more exciting, I guess. The funniest part was when we passed a minibus going the opposite direction - it was going FAST and spraying water everywhere, but right as the bus got even with us, I think it hit a particularly deep patch of water, because it felt like a tidal wave hit us! I came out of that one sputtering and spitting out a mouthful of brown water and feeling like a drowned rat, but I managed to keep the bike on the road, thank God.

When we got home, we went to go to the seamstress who, naturally, was closed. So we ran a bunch of other errands instead - still in the rain, though less torrential. Then we went to Melanie's house to order pizza (a recent exciting development in my town!) and watch a Christmas movie - only to find that we were locked out! Thankfully, Mel's roommate got home about 10 minutes after we did and let us in.

I am exhausted from all the driving and the cold rain and the errands and going to 13 different stores/houses/museums/restaurants in two different towns. But sometimes the most unexpected days are the best days.


Aaaand tomorrow, I am going to Pak Jono's retirement party. Apparently we are fishing? I expect a good adventure.

Counting the Days

1 more day of school.
7 more sleeps until Christmas.
8 more sleeps until Bali.

And I made it almost all the way through the day before I realized that my underwear were moldy. How many more sleeps until dry season??

Brain Aneurysms, Rainstorms, and A Life Well Lived

In my last post, I left you hanging at the beginning. I'm ready to talk now because I think I finally have things sorted out in my mind. So I'll probably spent the next few days writing this post and sorting my thoughts into words...

One of the greatest people I have had the opportunity to work with here died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on Thursday. Pak Gono was 38, and he left behind a wife and a young daughter.

Every single time I go to a funeral in Indonesia, I come home feeling very upset, and not only for the obvious reason that someone I know just died. There's more to it than that. It wasn't until I went to Pak Gono's funeral on Friday that I finally realized why. Sometimes I'm a slow learner...

The kind of death that I grew up with is not the same kind of death that I find here. Yeah, death is death. It always equals a loss of life. But death in America is somehow... softened. We make it prettier than it actually is. Because things that look pretty maybe aren't so difficult to face. 

When someone dies in America, a stranger comes and takes the body away, and a medical professional generally performs an autopsy or, at the very least, states the cause of death so that the family can have the closure of knowing exactly what happened. Then we pay professionals to dress and preserve the body and to make the deceased look as healthy/happy/peaceful/lifelike as possible, because that's how we want to remember them. And families have three or four days to grieve privately before they have to face the funeral and the onslaught of family, friends, neighbors, and near strangers coming to pay their respects. We put our dead in fancy boxes that shelter them for as long as possible from the elements, because there is some solace in knowing that we are protecting them, even in death. We use fancy cars to transport them from the funeral to the graveyard, and we say some comforting final words there before we leave. Someone else lowers the casket and buries the body safely, deep below ground and puts up the expensive headstone that we picked out. We don't have to hear the thud of the dirt hitting the casket. It might be too much finality for us. We have an entire multi-BILLION dollar industry built to soften the blow of death.

When someone dies in Indonesia, the family washes and dresses the body themselves. No makeup or preservation tool of any kind is used. No doctor is consulted, no autopsy is performed because - let's face it - dead is dead, no matter what caused it. If the family can afford it, a small wooden box is ordered for the body. If not (or if the family is Muslim), the body is just wrapped in strips of cloth. It is laid out somewhere prominently in the home for mourners to see - often on the kitchen table or on top of sawhorses in the front room. The family stands around the body, greeting and receiving condolences from those who come. Then, the family often undresses the body (dead people don't need pants) before nailing the lid on the box. Men from the neighborhood carry the box to the closest graveyard where they unceremoniously drop it into a hand-dug hole. Then the family stands around and watches the hole get filled back in. Sometimes the family themselves shovel the dirt back into the hole. The headstone - a piece of wood or a block of cement with the deceased's name carved into it - is stuck into the ground somewhere in the fresh mound of dirt. And all of this happens within 24 hours of death. It has to, both for religious reasons and also because bodies have a tendency to decompose quickly in this heat.

It is hard for me to comprehend why one of my friends wears the same pair of shoes his grandfather wore at his own funeral. Or how my other friend carried her mother's freshly dead body to the backyard and used a hose to wash her off. Or how yet another friend can even eat off her kitchen table anymore after her mother's body laid there for an entire day. I don't understand why mourners would want to look at a dead body that hasn't been preserved in any way - the jaw sometimes hangs slack, and weird fluids sometimes bubble out of the nose, and it ALWAYS smells - who wants to remember someone that way?! I have a hard time wrapping my mind around these things because I am so used to the way Americans do death. It is prettier. It is gentler. It is easier.

Pak Gono's funeral was the hardest one I have ever been to. His house has two doors - a front door and a side door. Usually mourners go in the front door, but it seemed like everyone was going through the side door, so the group of people from school that I had come with got in line. I hesitated because I didn't want to see his body. That is the worst part of every funeral for me. I hate looking at the body, I hate that that is the last view I have of them. We didn't know yet what had killed Pak Gono - we only knew that he had been found dead in his room by his nephew after complaining of  a headache and going to lay down - so I didn't even know what condition to expect his body to be in. Even as I hesitated, one of my friends grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the line and told me not to worry because the body wasn't inside. I was confused, but knowing that I wouldn't have to see the body made it easier to go in. 

Until I got in. I really think that Ibu Erna, Pak Gono's wife, was still in shock. It hadn't yet been 24 hours since she got the call that her husband had died, and he'd been in Jakarta at the time, so she had only seen his body for the first time 3 hours before people began arriving for the funeral. She was sitting on the kitchen floor leaning against a wall in her pajamas, sobbing into a dish towel. I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I have seen someone so broken down. I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream at everyone else in that room to leave. To let her mourn in peace. To hold her daughter. To give her time to wrestle with this and to say her goodbyes without a room full of people watching her. But that's not the way things work in Indonesia. 

I don't know if it was because she was sitting on the floor or because of some other religious/cultural custom that we all dropped to our knees as we entered the room. We literally crawled across the tile floor to her to shake her hand, give her a hug, and whisper meaningless condolences into her ear before crawling back out to sit in the street for the remainder of the funeral. As I exited the side door and passed by the front door, I noticed several people I knew standing there, so I went over to say hello. Some other men were ripping up strips of fabric and carrying them in through the front door. I asked what was going on, and Pak Jono, our school driver, told me that they were going in to wrap the body up. I asked why they had the body in a separate room, and Pak Jono told me very matter-of-factly, "Because he's still bleeding out his nose and mouth".

I wish I didn't know that. Because even though I never saw his body, I still see the blood in my mind every time I think about him. That information though is what makes us think he probably had a brain aneurysm. And with that, I am choosing to believe that he died peacefully and painlessly in his sleep.

As I was talking to Pak Jono, some men carrying an odd looking contraption came, and I moved out of their way so that they could get in the front door. They were carrying a piece of wood about 6 feet long and 2 feet wide with 4 or 5 bands of metal arched up over it. I didn't realize it right away, but that was the coffin. The next part happened so fast, it kind of seems like it didn't really happen at all. But as the men carried the coffin into the front room, I was walking away from the house and felt jostled from behind. I turned around to find several men carrying a table OUT of the house - they had accidentally bumped a corner of it into me. I didn't even realize what the table was for at first, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something shiny on it. I glanced at it. It was a blood slick. It was the table Pak Gono had been laid on, and his blood was on it. The blood from his head. The blood that was still coming out. I thought I was going to throw up. I don't know how long I stood there, staring at that blood. It can't have been long. I must have gone pale or something, because suddenly, a co-worker materialized by my side and told me to close my eyes and follow her.

I did, and she led me over to some chairs set up under an awning in the street. Shortly after, several men carried the body outside and the funeral began. The wrapped body had been placed on the piece of wood, and a tapestry of sorts had been laid over the metal bands. A priest began speaking in Arabic as several people placed flowers on top of the coffin.

Right after the ceremonial part of the funeral started, the skies opened up and began to POUR rain. Everyone tried to cram under one of the three canopies set up in the yard and in the street, but it still wasn't enough to cover everyone. As we all huddled there, attempting to stay dry, I looked around for the first time and realized how many people had come. Hundreds. Some simply stood in the pouring rain because there was no place dry to go.

I've always thought of a full house at a funeral as a sign of a life well lived. And Pak Gono's was. He was always willing to lend a hand any time someone needed help with anything. He taught me a lot of the Indonesian and Javanese words that I know. He ALWAYS made me laugh. One of my favorite memories of him is how he would come to school in the morning singing and dancing ridiculously just to make everyone smile. It worked every time. He painted my classroom for me last summer. The color looked great on paper when I picked it out, but I've always kind of hated it on my actual wall. But now I know I can never re-paint it.

There are no words to express how much Pak Gono will be missed in our community. The chair that I'm sitting on is wet with tears even as I write this.

I think I could live here the rest of my life and still never get used to the rawness of Indonesian funerals. But I know that I'll never stop going to them. It doesn't matter how nauseous I feel or how much I hate dead bodies or how hard it rains - I'm learning more and more that even in all its harshness, I NEED that time to honor the dead, to show respect to the living, and to allow my heart to say goodbye. I'm slowly learning to accept the way Indonesians do death.


(** All pictures taken from Facebook**)

Highlights

Today was a really, really, really hard day emotionally. But I'm going to leave you hanging, because I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe tomorrow. There were a few highlights though.

In Algebra 2, we were studying for exams (next week!!), and several students asked if they could listen to music with their headphones. Our school policy is that students are allowed to use headphones during study hall, but they are forbidden at all other times. So I told them no since it wasn't study hall. Then one asked if she could just use her iPod's speaker to play music out loud without having to use headphones. I said I had no problem with that. Then like 4 other kids wanted to play their music too. So I taught them the word cacophony, and we all agreed to just play Christmas music on my laptop instead.

"I'll be Home For Christmas" came on, and one poor girl in the back corner seat yelled, "MISS!" I looked at her, and she looked back at me with wide, watery eyes, and just shook her head at me. She's new at our school this year. Her family lives in Jakarta, and she lives here in the dorm. But she's originally from Korea. So I sent someone to change the song, and we landed on "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause". Harmless enough. After that came "Ave Maria", which also almost made my corner sitter cry. We skipped that one too. She asked if she could use her headphones, and I said no, but that we would avoid all sad songs. In the meantime, I caught THREE other students creatively attempting to listen to their earbuds - one had it wired down his sleeve and kept pretending to scratch his head. I am pretty good at spotting he-who-thinks-he-is-stealthily-doing-something-he-should-not-be-doing.

About 20 minutes from the end of class, sad girl slouched down very low in her seat and held her math book vertically in front of her face. Very sneaky. I knew what she was doing, but I also understood what she was feeling, and I chose not to fight that battle. That class gave me all the more reason to love them as not a single one questioned why she could listen to headphones when they couldn't. These kids get it.

The only thing that drove me a little crazy about the situation was that she probably thought that she got away with something without me knowing about it. I thought that she thought that I had noooo clue at all that she was back there with earbuds on. I can't have students thinking I'm losing my edge! So it was a little bit of a heartwarming surprise when I passed her hanging out with her friends on my way home 45 minutes later, and she grabbed my arm as I walked by and said, "Thank you for letting me listen to my music earlier. I just needed it."


I had a student refer to me as "girl" yesterday. I thought it was strange. Then I realized today that he intends to keep using that form of address, and instead of finding it rude or disrespectful, I find it oddly heartwarming. I have a nickname. Kind of? It's at least better than "bro", which I have also been called several times this week.

I also had two 9th grade boys who didn't feel like studying busy themselves with cleaning things in my room that probably haven't been cleaned for months - like my chalkboard and my erasers. And then two 9th grade girls decided to give me a back massage until I finally made them go study again - that was a hard call to make.

The kids knew that I was having a rough day, and when I got home from school, I had a Facebook message from yet another 9th grader telling me not to feel sad and to distract myself by playing games with him instead. So yes, I am not ashamed to admit that I did spend a large part of my afternoon playing Songpop with students.

Have I mentioned how much I love my 9th graders?

Kevin. Again.

On my way home from school, I passed Kevin walking with a boy whose father grew up in Kenya, so to test his memory, I asked him, "Kevin, what is Nairobi?" Here's how that went.

Me: Kevin, what is Nairobi?
Kevin: What?
Me: Nairobi.
Kevin: What?
Me: Nairobi!
Kevin: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Other boy: Are you serious?
Kevin: Yes.....?
Other boy: It's where my dad grew up!
Me: Kevin, what did we talk about at lunch yesterday?
Kevin: What?
Me: Lunch! Nairobi!
Kevin: Lunch? I forget.

*I recount our entire lunch conversation from yesterday*

Other boy: Are you SERIOUS? You don't know what Kenya is?? It's a country in Africa!
Kevin: No it's not!
Other boy: Yes it is!
Kevin: It can't be! Africa is a....
Other boy: .... continent.
Kevin: No, no, no. Africa is a country!
Other boy: CONTINENT.
Kevin: Oh yeah. It's a continent that contains.... Africa?
Other boy: NO!
Kevin: I think I mean South Africa.
Other boy: Yes. South Africa is a country in Africa. So is Kenya.
Kevin: Kenya is a state?
Other boy: Country.
Kevin: In South Africa?
Other boy: NO!
Me: Kevin. You know Asia?
Kevin: Yes, of course.
Me: You know how Asia has a lot of countries in it?
Kevin: Yes, of course.
Me: It's like that. Africa is the continent, and it has lots of countries. Like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and others.
Kevin: Oooooooooh.
Me: So to recap, Kenya is...?
Kevin: A country.
Me: On the continent of....?
Kevin: Africa.
Me: And its capital is.....?
Kevin: Nairobi.
Me and other boy: GOOD!

Lunchtime

Kevin: Hey, Miss, do you know any black people?
Me: Uh.... Yes......?
Kevin: Really?
Me: Yeah. I used to live in Africa.
Kevin: WHAT?!
Me: Before I moved here, I worked there for two months.
Kevin: Where?
Me: Nairobi.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: The capital of Kenya.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: A country.
Kevin: Where?
Me: East Africa. Near Ethiopia.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: Umm... Mount Kilimanjaro?
Kevin: You're making this more harder!
Me: MOMBASA!
Kevin: What?
Me: Mombasa - it's in Halo. Do you play Halo?
Kevin: Yes.
Me: Mombasa is in Halo.
Kevin: OH YES! I know Mombasa!
Me: OK. That's a city in Kenya.
Kevin: No, it's not.
Me: WHAT?!
Kevin: It can't be in Kenya. IT'S IN AFRICA!

Don't Remember Buying That...

I had a nice surprise this morning while I was cleaning out my wallet and found a receipt. I was trying to decide if it was important to keep or not. Since I'm treasurer for two different church groups, I often have receipts in my wallet for stuff I need to reimburse people for.

This particular receipt was from a local mini-mart. I recognized the first thing on the receipt as something I had bought when I used the ATM located there - a bag of garlic roasted peanuts. The second item though, I didn't remember buying AT ALL.

 It read, "P/ORN".

I tried to think back two weeks to what else I'd bought along with my peanuts. Finally I remembered...

PULPY ORANGE JUICE, people!

DURING the Geometry Test

Student: What does it mean when it says, "Be careful - extra information may be given"?
Me: It means extra information may be given.
Student: Like, extra?
Me: Yes.
Student: OK.


Student: Is it OK if I don't use all of the given information?
Me: Did you read the instructions?
Student: Yes.
Me: Did you read the part that says, "Extra information may be given"?
Student. Yes. So?


Student: OOOUUUUCH!!!
Me: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
Student: Putting out your candle with my fingers.
(He had actually gotten into my desk while I was helping another student, gotten my matches out, dropped a match into my candle, then when it caught fire, he tried to put THAT fire out WITH HIS FINGERS. I now have an entire match stuck in my nice Christmas scented candle.)


Student: What does this mark on this diagram mean?
Me: I don't know, you made it.
Student: Oh. Thanks.


Student: Is problem 3 based on problem 2?
Me: Did you read the instructions?
Student: No, why?


Student: Can I use the information in problem 5 to answer problem 6?
Me: No.
Student: Why?
Me: Because the instructions say, "Each problem is completely separate from the others".
Student: Oh.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: PUT YOUR TEST ON YOUR DESK. NOW.


*student opens a candy and throws the wrapper on the floor*
Me: Please pick that up and put it in your pocket.
*student puts it on his desk then 30 seconds later sneakily knocks it back onto the floor*


Student: Is New Year's Eve on a Sunday?
Me: Do you need to know that right now?


Student: Where is E in this diagram?
Me: Look at the diagram.
Student: I did.
Me: Look closer. Where could E possibly be?
Student: Is this it?
Me: Does it say "E".
Student: Yes.
Me: Then...
Student: Oh, there it is!


Student: I HAVE A QUESTION.
Me: Then raise your hand, please.
*student raises hand*
Student: I HAVE A QUESTION.


Student: Can I take this test next week instead?
Me: Are you sick?
Student: No.
Me: Did you miss any class periods during this chapter?
Student: No.
Me: Why do you want to take it next week?
Student: I don't know.


Student: What does "choose the best answer" mean?
Me: It means decide which possibility most closely fits the information given.
Student: So there can be more than one?


I have mentally forehead palm-slapped myself a dozen times already. I'm about to forehead palm-slap someone else. And we're only 29 minutes in to a 70 minute test period.

Pointy Noses

Pretty much every race of people share a common physical trait that they are generally not content with. For example, a lot of white people don't really like being pale so they tan a lot in order to darken their skin. Indonesians, on the other hand, don't like being brown, so they use lotions with chemical whiteners and carry umbrellas in the sun. Koreans don't like having straight black hair, so a LOT of Koreans get perms and dye their hair (even the men!). Also, it's not uncommon to have eye surgery in order to change the shape of the eyes and to create a folded eyelid. One day while I was riding the subway in Korea, I even saw an advertisement for a hospital offering facial extension surgeries - to move out the cheekbones and upper jaw so that the face wouldn't be so flat! It wasn't until that point in my life that I even realized that Asians have flatter faces than Westerners. 

As a bule (white person) living in Indonesia, I often hear people marveling about my physical features that they wish they had. This list includes:

• My pointy nose
• My small ears
• My curly, brown hair
• My big eyes
• My blue eyes
• My white skin (though I'm darker than a lot of Indonesians!)
• My arm hair
• My thick eyebrows

Once, when a friend of mine was pregnant, she told me that she hoped her child would have a pointy nose like mine! On multiple occasions, I've had Indonesian men come up to me and ask if they can feel my arm hair. It's also not uncommon to find people touching my hair or to hear people talking about my eyes. Things I've never even thought about before are things that other races are envious of!

Sometimes I think it is a little crazy the extent Indonesians will go to to try to look more western. They buy color contact lenses and bleach their hair. They draw in bigger eyebrows with black pencils, and some women will actually get eyebrows tattooed on! A lot of times, I see old women who have damaged skin from so many years of using chemical whiteners. 

But when I saw this little device online this week, I thought, "Well, this one takes the cake". It is basically a nose clip that promises a pointier nose after just 2 weeks of wearing it 5 - 15 minutes a day!

Accomplished

Badminton doubles tournament WON!
A gallon of turkey stock made, dished, and in the freezer.
This week's menu, shopping list, and market money ready for Ibu Sri.
Books closed for both treasurer jobs I'm doing.
Choir songs practiced for two different Christmas choirs.
House straightened, clothes folded and put away.
Backpack packed and clothes set out for tomorrow morning.
A week's worth of cat food made.

Feeling ready for this new week.
Christmas break is so close, I can just feel the anticipation building!!

A Goat-Raiser

It's getting to be that time of year when students realize they spent all quarter doing sub-par work, and they begin to beg for extra credit to make up for it. God forbid their grade card actually reflect the quality of the work they spent the first 95% of the quarter turning in.

Geometry is a rough class, and we just finished a rough chapter. So I beat the kids to the punch and told them - before any of them even asked! - that they could earn up to 5 extra credit points if they made an instruction book on how to do each of the fourteen main geometric constructions we learned in the last chapter. Of course, most of the kids who NEED the extra credit didn't bother to do it. But over half the class did! So now I have that to grade.

One student made his whole book, then on the very last page, cited his source.

"A goat-raiser".

It made me smile.

Juniors

Student: Is the quiz hard?
Me: It's excruciating.
Student: What does that mean?
Me: I mean it's SO hard, you might actually die.
Student: Wait. What?
Me: What?
Student: I don't get it.
Me: Don't get what?
Student: First you said the quiz is squishy, then you said it's really hard. How?

These Things

I have a good friend here named Melanie. One of Melanie's good friends from America came for a visit this week! I like it when new people come, because I like seeing Indonesia through their eyes. I'm so interested in what shocks them, what they marvel over, what is totally new to them, what they have questions about, and what breaks their hearts. So many things become so normal for me that I forget what it's like to see this country and these people with new eyes. I forget what it's like to have to take everything in for the first time - the sights, the sounds, the language, the foods, the smells. It feels like everything is moving at a million miles an hour all around you all the time.

But now that's just my everyday, ordinary life. I don't hear the mosques anymore. I'm not surprised when I see people sleeping on the sidewalk. The spicy food doesn't burn my tongue. Weaving through traffic on a motorbike is fun for me. I don't miss a beat in my conversation as I drop some coins into the hand of the guy standing next to my table in the restaurant loudly playing a ukulele and singing obnoxiously. I don't even check to see if the car HAS seat belts anymore. I can switch back and forth between formal language and slang language - depending on who I'm talking to - without thinking about it. Power out is no problem. Wildlife in my house is to be expected.

But there are still a few things that surprise me every time. One thing is how little stuff costs. I went out to dinner tonight with seven friends. We all ate until we were full, and then some more. We all drank tea and fresh fruit juice. And when we were done, I wrote down everything we ate and gave the list to the owner so that she would know how much to charge us. (Usually, we pay one at a time with each person listing off in turn what he or she ate for the owner who then adds up the cost in her head. Tonight, I was paying for everyone, so rather than having each person say individually what they ate, we wrote it all down and had her add it up all at once.)

Once she had added it up, she told me the total. I made her add it up again because I thought that surely she was wrong. She added it up again and got the same number. So I had her show me what each item on the list cost, and I went through and added it all up myself. Same number. It was correct.

Eight people ate dinner.
For $5.

White Raps

As I was standing outside my classroom this morning, unlocking my door, I heard a strange chanting behind me. I turned around and saw a very white 8th grade boy walking by, on his way to his locker, rapping quietly to himself. I thought that was very humorous, and I had to stifle a chuckle.

Then I realized how often I rap to myself.

The Few Pictures I Actually Took of Thanksgiving

Since we celebrated on Friday, Yohanes baked the desserts at my place Thursday night, and then I did all my cooking Friday morning and afternoon.

Thanksgiving Day. Pecan pie and apple cake baked. Caramel sauce made, and the turkey thawed and ready to go!

Stuffed and ready to go in the oven!

And after… The turkey on the left was brined (by Melanie) in apple juice, orange juice, and salt, so it came out a lot darker. The one on the right I simply rubbed down with butter.

It rained sooo much. It made it feel particularly Thanksgiving-ish.

Hotjaga and Navita came in their car to help me transport all the food to Melanie’s house. It would have been really tough to carry two turkeys, a pan of stuffing, two apple cakes, a pecan pie, crescent rolls, and deviled eggs on my motorbike by myself! By the time we loaded up, drove to Mel’s house, and unloaded, our friends were already there waiting for us!

But they had to wait a bit longer while Pak Hot cut up the turkeys for us. Pretty sure this was his first time slicing a turkey, but he did a great job!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

Thanksgiving Day

Not much is happening around here on Thanksgiving. We didn’t get the day off of school, but we do have Black Friday off, so celebrations with friends will take place then. My white friend, Melanie, and I are cooking a whole Thanksgiving dinner (complete with two turkeys!) for about 15 Indonesian friends that we love very, very much. I’m excited for the day! Since I’m cooking both turkeys tomorrow, I’m trying to get other things out of the way tonight, so crescent rolls (made from scratch, thank you very much) are in the oven now.

Rainy season is truly in full swing starting this week. It has poured down rain every single day, and it’s been starting earlier and earlier every day. Today it was raining by lunch time. The cold and the damp have made things feel really fall-ish though, so for possibly this week only, rainy season is not entirely unwelcome.

Since I really have nothing exciting to report today, I’m going to post instead about what I did two weekends ago. Remember how I went and planted rice at Pak Kur’s house approximately 3 months ago? Well, at 91 days, Pak Kur declared the rice ready to harvest, so three of the four same ladies who planted the paddy went and harvested it! One moved back to Germany temporarily and due to that, we ever so kindly excused her from her harvesting duties.

Dunja, Melanie, and I in a nice self portrait after we were dirty, sweat, and sunburnt in front of the petak (section of a rice field) we planted all by ourselves! The baby rice that we used to plant the big petak is growing right behind us.

The bule (white person) petak! All the neighbors knew that bule had planted this petak, so they joked with Pak Kur that the rice would grow more quickly and the harvest would be more plentiful and that if that really did happen, they were going to start having us plant their rice too! Also, we came back the next day with one other friend to plant that empty part on the right.

Here is the bule petak after 64 days, I think it was. So about two-thirds of the way grown. The rice is starting to get heads on it – a lot like wheat! This is the time when Pak Kur started spending a LOT of time out there making sure the birds, bugs, and rats didn’t eat all the rice!

Aaaaaand here we have our full grown rice – precisely 91 days old – along with the majestic farmer himself, Pak Kur! (The following five pictures are courtesy of Kathryn, who helped plant the second day and came to harvest with us.)

Whenever we work in the fields, Pak Kur’s wife, Ibu Indah, brings us lunch, and we eat it beneath the chocolate tree (as I affectionately call it – it’s actually a cocoa tree or a cacao tree or something like that).

Pak Kur’s aging mother grew up working in the rice fields. Nowadays, they generally don’t let her come out for fear she’ll fall and hurt herself. But the day we harvested, there she was, walking around making crazy bird noises to keep all the animals away while we cut the rice. I kept a close eye on her while we worked, and she fell into one paddy once, but out of fear of shaming her, I merely watched from a distance to make sure she could pull herself back out. It took her roughly 2340793457 hours, but she slowly but surely got back up on her feet, no worse for the wear. I love this picture Kathryn got of her looking out over the lower paddies.

And here are some more pictures that I pulled off my camera.

   

Our petak completely harvested! We left the front bit because that’s where all the baby rice was growing when we planted, and so it ended up being planted later than the rest. It needed three more days, Pak Kur said. Rice harvesting is a VERY precise event.

We did the easy part of the work. We used sickle type knives to hand cut and stack all the rice. Later, the men of the family went out to thrash the rice on pieces of wood to get all the grains of rice off. THAT is hard work.

  

While we were eating our lunch beneath the chocolate tree, I could have sworn I heard the sound of horses walking nearby. I turned around, and instead of horses, I saw a neighbor herding his two buffalo along! Indonesian tractors!

Standing on one of the mud walls that separate one petak from another. Look how dirty my feet are! (PS – That rice is about three weeks old. It’s not Pak Kur’s.)

One time I noticed a bare light bulb hung on a piece of bamboo out in someone’s rice field, and I asked Pak Kur about it. He said that most rice farmers in that village run electric lines through the water in their paddies to keep the rodents out at night. He comes out in the morning and fishes up to 50 dead rats out of the edge of his various petak. He told me that if the light bulb is on, you shouldn’t go in that particular petak because it means the wire is live. They only turn the electricity on at night though, so in the daytime, it’s safe. I asked him what would happen if someone’s kid wandered out into the fields at night and got into the sawah (the Indonesian word for a rice paddy. I’ve felt awkward calling it a paddy throughout this entire post because I’m so used to calling it a sawah!). Matter-of-factly, he told me, “The kid would die”. I asked him how much electricity they have running through the wires, and he said, “Oh, more than enough to kill a buffalo”. Call me crazy, but that seems a bit overkill for keeping rats away…

So the moral of this post is: If you see a rice field with a light bulb shining in the middle of it, DON’T GO IN IT. I may have just saved your life.

Stations

I have geometry students in teams of five rotating between different stations today. I just told them it was time to rotate but that they could have a 5 minute break first since they'd already worked steadily for 40 minutes. Of course, they were being loud and obnoxious as they moved their things to the next station, and everyone just sat down and started working right away. Naturally, I figured they hadn't bothered to listen to me, so I asked, "Did anybody hear me say that you can have a 5 minute break?" Several students said, "Yes, we heard!" So I asked why they weren't taking a break. They said, "We don't want a break. We want to keep learning."

WHAT IS HAPPENING?!



** Edit - 30 minutes later **

And now we have this.

Pedro comes to my desk feeling very frustrated.
Pedro: TEACHER. The people in my group DON'T GET IT.
Me: So help them.
Pedro: But THEY CAN'T DO MATH.
Me: So be patient with them.
Pedro: I have to teach them EVERYTHING!
Me: Yes.....?
Pedro: You don't UNDERSTAND.
Me: Pedro. I teach them math EVERY. DAY.
Pedro: HOWWWWWW?????

Zee Avi

There is a Malaysian singer that I really like. Her name is Zee Avi. The two songs she does that I love the most are "First of the Gang to Die" - an excellent Morrissey cover - and "Kantoi" - a song that blends Malay and English (Manglish). Malaysian is so close to Indonesian that I can understand the language, but if I were to speak it, people would know that I live in Indonesia, not Malaysia. There are some grammatical differences, and there are also a few words that have slightly different meanings. For example, budak in Indonesian means slave, but in Malay it means child.

But back to Zee Avi. "Kantoi" just came up on my iTunes (which I have playing on shuffle for the majority of the day), and I thought to myself, "I should blog about this". There aren't many songs that blend two languages into almost every line of the lyrics, much less one that blends two languages that I can understand! So this song makes me happy. Also, it tells a story, and I like songs that tell stories. Admittedly, this song doesn't tell the most edifying story in the world, but it's meant to be a silly song.

You can watch her sing the song live here:

And the lyrics are these:
Semalam I call you, you tak answer                   You kata you keluar pergi dinnerYou kata you keluar dengan kawan youBut when I called Tommy he said it wasn't true
So I drove my car pergi DamansaraTommy kata maybe you tengok bolaTapi bila i sampai you, you tak adaLagilah I jadi gila
So I called and called sampai you answerYou kata sorry sayang tadi tak dengarMy phone was on silent I was at the gymTapi latar belakang suara perempuan lain
Sudahlah sayangI don't believe youI've always known that your words were never trueWhy am I with you, I pun tak tauNo wonderlah my friends pun tak suka you
So I guess that's the end of our storyAkhir kata she accepted his apologyTapi last last kita dapat tahuShe was cheating too
With her ex-boyfriend's best friend
Tommy

Geometry

We just finished a chapter on geometric constructions today. At the beginning, I told students to be careful with their compasses so that they wouldn't poke holes through the paper and into their desks. When doing constructions, I made them put their papers on top of their binders or on top of a few other papers to protect the desks. The desks in my classroom are the only desks at our school that were not made in the cold war era. I'm not even joking. They are nice desks, and I'd like to keep them that way.

Today, I made everyone check their desks. TWO out of TWENTY had no holes in them. Geometry got a nice long lecture first thing this morning. And then the test was a disaster. (This was my crazy 9th grade class from last year...) Everyone actually brought a compass. But TWO of them didn't bother to tell me until after they'd started the test that they'd brought BROKEN compasses to the test. Then I had to answer the same question, "What are concentric circles?" NINE times. Out loud for everyone to hear. I was exasperated.

On the test, I decided to have them do a little writing. It never hurts to get the kids writing, especially since only three in the class of 20 aren't ESL. So the last question on the test (after all the excruciating constructions and other geometric work they had to do) was, "Which construction did you find the most interesting and why? Write three to four sentences explaining your answer".

From my lowest scoring student who has turned in roughly 25% of his homework so far this year, I got this answer:

My favorite construction was the heart. Mostly because that is how I feel about this class. Love for geometry drives my motivation and I strive for success in this class. That is why I love the heart the most.

(I taught them last week to make a perfectly symmetric heart using only a compass and straightedge. It's pretty cool.)

And then I found this one on the second to last test I graded:

Constructing an equilateral triangle. Why? It's because of the sharpness of its edges, the beauty of its simplicity, and the fact that it's so easy it reminds me that one day I'll get out of this dark limbo of suffering called school. That one day I won't be slaving my days away like a rice farmer in China getting relocated to a government facility. Also, the triangle looks like a flat Dorito chip. Doritos are delicious. With cheese it's better, but plain Dorito is fine too. I wish they sell Doritos here. Then I'll go full Mexican and eat all day. Maybe I'll even swim the border to Australia with my Mexican border crossing powers."

I may or may not have audibly snorted while grading that response.

In other news, I have now been called "bro" three times today by students.

This Is The Life

Sitting at my desk at school.
Drinking fresh, cold mango juice (that I made myself) out of a Mason jar.
Tropical sunshine pouring in through the window.
All five AP Calculus students working diligently on integration homework.
I declare this Monday A Good Day.

Prayers

For those of you reading this who are of the praying type, prayers would be appreciated for my friend, Amber. After living and serving here for two years, she left this week on Wednesday to move back to America to get married. She was met at the airport in her home state yesterday by her boyfriend, parents, and sister. While they were still on their way home from the airport, her mother passed out and was rushed to the hospital.

She had a similar attack three years ago when it was discovered that her heart was very weak. Doctors recommended putting in a pacemaker at that time, but the family chose instead to let God be God. They have known about her weakened heart for the past three years and have known that an attack like this was probable, but in day to day life, their mom has always appeared healthy, making this attack seem very sudden and unexpected.

When she arrived at the hospital yesterday, she was put on a ventilator. The family made the decision to wait for Amber's brother in law to arrive at the hospital (he was in another part of the state at that time) and then to remove the ventilator. Doctors warned them against this, saying that she was not breathing on her own and that her heart was extremely weakened. The family chose once again to let God be God.

If I have my time zones correct, they should have taken her off the ventilator nearly two hours ago. I haven't yet heard any information at this time as to her mother's condition.

After three days of travel, Amber hasn't even made it home yet and is now in the hospital with her family. Needless to say, this is a hugely emotional time for all of them, but especially for Amber as she is jet lagged, tired, and dealing with the emotions of all the goodbyes she has said over the past week.

I know that Amber and her family are firm believers and that all their hope and trust is in Christ, even through this time. But even so, please lift them up in prayer. We are all part of the Body, and when one part hurts, we all hurt.

** Update **
Directly from Amber.

Hello friends, thanks so much for all your prayers, love and support. Mom's levels have stayed pretty stable for the last day or so, not a whole lot changing. The doctors say that she has some sort of brain function because she is breathing on her own, but other than that we don't really know or have proof of any other brain function. We know this is the end and are just waiting on the Jesus to take her home.
We are still in Wichita this morning and are hoping that mom can be moved to hospice care in Salina so that we are all a little closer to home. We were hoping that this could have happened yesterday and then at the last minute the plan changed and it didn't work out, still not really sure why. The doctors say that it could be anywhere from hours to days and for this reason we decided it would be best for the whole family if we could get her moved to Salina and only be 30 min from home as opposed to 1.5 hrs from home.
Everyone was able to shower and at least get a little sleep yesterday afternoon and evening, which we are praising the Lord for!! So thankful for friends that live close and have opened up their houses for us to come over and use. It's amazing how much difference a shower can make. =)
Anyways, I think we are all hanging in there. This has been really hard on dad as he was the one who made the call into 911 when everything happened and now he feels like the condition that mom is in is his fault, and he feels bad because he knows this is not what mom would want. Pray for him that he will be relieved of this guilt that he is carrying and know that God has a plan in all of this even.
Thanks again so much for the outpouring of love and support!!
-Amber

** The latest update **

We got mom moved to Salina around 1, and the doctor this morning said we were probably looking at another 24 hours. The nurse said earlier that they are starting to see more signs of death (there is a special term, but I can't think of it), so we are thinking that maybe tonight mom will finally get to see Jesus.

** The final update - Thanks to everyone for continued prayers!! **

From Amber this morning:

Heaven is a wonderful place...
And that is just where my mom is, in heaven worshiping her Lord and Savior. She is healed and worshiping Jesus, and I'm kind of jealous that she gets to see Him first. She was a great mom, wife, friend and she will be missed, but we know that God is, has been and will continue to be glorified through my mom's life.

We made funeral arrangements this morning and picked out cemetery plots this afternoon. Because of Thanksgiving the funeral won't be held until Saturday morning.

I think we are all holding up alright, I am quite tired and looking forward to hopefully getting a good nights rest tonight, my first real nights sleep since last Thursday night when I was in Jakarta before heading out. There is a lot to figure out in the weeks to come, finances, life, budgets and all that, but with the help of my sister, we should be able to get that all figured out for Dad. I am so thankful that I'm here to help Dad during this time . . . guess I'm going to have to teach him how to cook.

Thanks again for all your love and prayers, we are such a blessed family!

-Amber