medan. was. a. TRIP. (and a half)

one week later, i think i’ve finally recovered. mostly. ron, kim, and i left for medan last sunday morning. the trip there  - no problem.  mostly. until we actually got to medan – a formidable city. apparently, the medanese, if you will, are born with a special ability. they can navigate an entire city of 2.5 million people without the aid of signs. of any variety.

we were looking for one specific store the night we arrived. for 3 hours. ron made me ask directions. 3 times. we never found it. by 8:30 pm, we were starving. so we got directions about 4 more times to a mall we needed to go to. people kept giving us road names, which doesn’t help, because THERE ARE NO STREET SIGNS!

eventually, we found ourselves at a different mall. which was easily the highlight – the ONLY highlight – of the trip. we found a pizza hut – a RARE treat! we also found awesome ice cream in waffle cones. and i bought 5 new movies and a pair of red shoes. can’t go wrong there, right?

we made it to our hotel (finally) at 11 pm. i blew up my entire air mattress manually, meaning i used my mouth and not a pump. just in case that was confusing. and then we went to sleep.

the next morning, we all took turns with the hot shower. not so much because we NEEDED showers, but just because we could. then we headed off to do more shopping in the big city. not much is available here in tarutung. there is literally 1 grocery store here. for 27000 people. and said grocery store is about the size of my living room at home in america.

anyways, off track. we knew we would have yohanes, plus ron and kim’s dog and cat (who finally received all their shots and paperwork in order to move to another island), so we tried to get as much shopping as possible out of the way before they landed at 12:20.

we did good. the back of the truck was full before we went to the airport. everyone made it safely, though the animals were a little mad. ok… they were BURNING UP with rage. but they calmed down pretty quickly. sadly, yo’s luggage didn’t come, which is not good news since he packed basically everything he owned to move here. all he had was the clothes on his back and his much beloved guitar. the airport just told him they’d call him before 2 IF his luggage showed up. we all prayed hard. and shopped some more.

around 3, the call finally came from the airport. so we headed BACK across town (about an hour’s trip) to get his luggage.  2.5 hours behind schedule.

we were ready to head out at 4:30, 4 hours behind schedule.

and then gentur called from home to ask us to pick up some sinks for ron and kim’s new house that is being built. they were waiting for us. at the contractor’s uncle’s father’s grandson’s house. in an alley. far away from all discernable landmarks. in the middle of the city of 2.5 million people who don’t need street signs. THREE AGONIZING HOURS LATER, we found the house (“yeah, over by the railroad tracks”), threw the sinks on top of everything in back, tied everything down, and braced ourselves for the long drive home. 7 hours behind schedule.

we spent another hour trying to find our way OUT of town. there were not even signs directing us to the toll road. and once we finally found the toll road, none of the ramps had signs to indicate which one was the entrance ramp to go south. we got outta dodge at 8:30. 8 hours behind schedule.

because we were lost in medan, we left town on a different road than the one we came in on. this is dangerous in indonesia, because there are very few roads. from medan to tarutung, a 6 hour drive, there is ONE road that you can take. so we were hoping to pick up the right road at some point. luckily, the javanese way of traveling is to stop every 15 minutes or so and ask directions, or at least ask if you’re going the right way. and luckily, yohanes is javanese. he is, in fact, the only reason we made it out of medan in only an hour.

however, unfortunately, the city we were aiming for is named parapat. and what makes this unfortunate is that we discovered (4 hours too late) that there are TWO parapats on sumatra! well, i never…

every time we stopped to ask directions to parapat, people would tell us, “yeah, just keep going down this road another 2 hours or so.” eventually, we made it to parapat. now, the parapat we were looking for is  a resort town on the very edge of danau toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world. when we finally arrived in some podunk little village with a “welcome to parapat” sign and no water in sight, we knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. 12 hours behind schedule.

because there are so few roads, our only option at this point was to drive BACK 4 hours the way we came to find the right road. 16 hours behind schedule.

to complicate matters, the dog and cat were in the truck with us. somewhere between midnight and 1 am, right around the time we realized we had just driven 4 hours in the wrong direction, the cat got really restless. i said, “i think he has to pee.” we kept driving. roughly 2 minutes later, the cat peed. all over me. all over my only sweatshirt. all over the entire backseat. one word: awesome.

i voted to dump the cat there and leave. the stupid wrong parapat could keep him. everyone else just voted to stop more frequently to let the animals out.

anyways, we eventually made it back, stink and all, to the right road. btw, it’s really hard to find people to ask directions at 4 in the morning. i slept, albeit uncomfortably, for much of the night. i did wake up at one point to see some kind of muslim party involving exotic dancers in someone’s front yard. again: awesome.

the sun was rising when we stopped to take a rest for about 45 minutes. 17 hours behind schedule.

a few hours after that, we stopped at a little shack beside the road to stretch out and eat breakfast. 18 hours behind schedule.

a few hours after THAT, we finally made it home. our 6 hour drive officially took 20 hours total. can i say, once again: awesome.

the events of today

1. wake up. it's pouring down rain on my tin roof.
2. hang around the house preparing feed for cattle for about an hour.
3. go to the farm. feed cattle. go to rosemary's house, which is one room.
4. go visit kasmin's house (he's a 15 year old worker at the farm. his mom died a couple weeks ago and his dad is really sick (which is why kasmin works for us). his gramma only speaks batak, not even indonesian! she was supercute.
5. come all the way back down the mountain into town. bring rosemary's chicken with us.
6. go to bank to get an exorbitant amount of money for ron from his account.
7. take rosemary to the dentist. gt and i go to the nursing school dorm to hang out with some girls there.
8. eat batak food for lunch. choices: pork in blood, more pork in blood, spinach, pork without blood, water soup, rice. i had the last 4. it cost a dollar.
9. go to market. get stared at. by everyone. because at that very moment, i was the only white person in a town of 27,000. answer lots of questions, get called lots of things (boneka (doll), si cantik (beautiful), hutabarat (a batak family name that means westerner), bule (whitey), luna maya (an indonesian supermodel)). bought tempe so i can cook it later.
10. walk to the garage where gt is getting the truck washed. get stopped by people on the road who ask me more questions. wait for rosemary to pee in the ditch because she can't hold it any longer.
11. wait THREE HOURS for the truck to get washed ("um, sir. there's a chicken in your truck." quote of the day.) guard the chicken so the dogs don't kill it.
12. go to the hardware store.
13. go to rosemary's sister's house so she can get cooking oil.
14. come home. move all my things from the dorm to the house. drink hot chocolate gt made for me.
15. now rosemary is waiting for me to butcher the chicken. earlier, i told her i couldn't do it because i was wearing my nice pants. her solution? "just take your pants off!"

wow. we're going to medan tomorrow to pick up yohanes (i am EXCITED to see my friend!) who flies in monday morning. be back tuesday!

i'll just live out of a bag

well, my room was overrun by a group of people here from jakarta to make a movie for a couple days. i was planning to move into the hallway, but gt had to go to medan, so i ended up staying in the house with wiwik. i managed to not get super dirty those 2 days (meaning i didn't work too hard those 2 days) so never had to take a bath. i hate taking a bath here. because all our water comes from a mountain spring, so it's pretty much ice cold. we have one burner we can use to heat water on, but by the time we get home from the farm, that burner is basically reserved for dinner, which ends after dark, which is when it's really chilly out anyways and who wants to go to bed with wet hair in those conditions? oh, and we have to mix the boiling hot water in a bucket with the freezing cold water then pour it over ourselves with a dipper. whew. anyways, i got REALLY dirty today from transplanting grasses to put in a road, so it was time for a shower. and the people from jakarta left today (btw, they thought it was SO novel that they were staying in a building with americans).

holy cow, i am digressing left and right. sorry. the point is that i finally had my room back today. we came back from the farm exhausted and with pieces of earth in every visible crevice. i was ready for a mandi (bath). buttttttt... my room was locked. and somebody took the key. it took 30 minutes to track it down - it was at the home of the building manager (just up the mountain) who apparently has a need to be in control of every minute detail. so gt and i went up there to get it from him and he threw a minor fit, saying we never even paid for this room (he said we could use it for free) and that i couldn't have the key until he came first to see the room (uh... why?). i asked him when he would come (frustrated to no end by this point. i. seriously. just. wanted. a. bath.), and he said "nanti" (later) and walked away from me. so i called him back, stuck my BLACK hands in his face, and said, "PAK! AKU MAU MANDI TAPI NGGAK BISA!" (i want to take a bath, but i can't! - also, i think this is a sign of me converting to batak-nese. i would never yell at a javanese person). he changed his answer to "sekarang" (coming now). sigh. so he came down, unlocked the room for me, glanced around the room, and left. finally.

oh, but the whole point of this is that in the middle of all this, he thought it would be a good idea to let me know that a work crew is coming down from medan and staying here for more than a month and they need my room. they're coming monday. so i have my room for 2 more days and i'm once again homeless. so i guess i'm gonna move into gt and wiwik's house, where i stayed last time i was here. it's warmer and less mosquito infested there, but i always feel like i'm intruding on the newlyweds. oh, well.

in other news, i just got home from doing english practice at the nursing school in town, which ended up being me sitting in a room with EVERY second year student (about 50 of them) and trying to get them to talk. found out that not all of them even study english. they just made all the second year folks come. fancy. other things i found out about this school:
1. students are forbidden to own/use cell phones
2. all students must live in the dorms
3. students may not date
4. students may only leave campus on sunday mornings for church and must return before 1 pm
5. students have no access to media

whoa. interesting. everyone was mostly shy during out 1.5 hours together, but afterwards, when i was getting ready to leave, i was surrounded by girls wanting to talk. funny how that works. :)

they asked me to bring pictures of america next time. so i agreed, but i gave them a homework assignment that they all have to come with at least 1 question about america or english next time we meet. then they have no excuse to be shy. i seriously have to be the worst english language teacher in history. i have no clue what to do or what to prepare. hmm. hopefully next week goes alright!

ouch (not for the faint of heart)

i was cutting grass for the cows yesterday. again. what we do is go out in a big field of grass imported from taiwan, pick a section that has grown quite tall, grab a chunk of it with your left hand, and use a machete or scythe in your right hand to slice through it. start a pile of cut grass, then carry it to the truck when it's big enough to make tromping through the other tall grass worth it. i was thinking to myself yesterday about how cool it is that you don't have to see your hands to know where they are. you can just feel it. i mean, you get your left hand buried down in a fistful of grass, and you cannot see any of your digits. then your other hand swoops in there with an ENORMOUS knife and just hacks away. the only cuts you get are from the grass itself, and those are more like paper cuts than anything. anyways, right after i had that thought yesterday, my BRAND NEW machete slipped on the wet grass (it had just finished raining) and i cut right through the end of my left index finger. not that i cut the tip off. actually, the blade went in parallel to my fingernail. in fact, it almost went in right UNDER my fingernail. but it's about 3 mm away, thank goodness. it went deep enough that by the time i made the 10 steps to the truck to clean it up, my hand was covered in blood and it was running off me and leaving a trail in the grass. (seriously, do hand wounds normally bleed that much?) it took a good 30 minutes to get the bleeding stopped, and i actually got lightheaded and had to sit down. lightheaded? what?! blood NEVER bothers me! strange... long story short, the bleeding finally stopped, i threw a bandaid on that bad boy and kept working. got a chance to clean it out for real when we got home 3 or 4 hours later. of course it started bleeding again. it could use some stitches possibly, but no chance i'm going anywhere near an indonesian doctor. i'll just be a big baby about it and whine a lot instead. so there you have it.

1 week down

well, i’ve officially been on sumatra for a week now, if i’ve got my days straight. when there’s nothing to break up the monotony, it’s hard to keep track, you know? it’s been great to be staying with people who are a) tech savvy (wireless internet!) b) not morning people (we don’t wake up before 9 and we don’t work before 10) c) great cooks (we ate pesto for dinner last night.) and d) from the same culture as me (that always helps).

if i’m being completely honest though (and it’s my blog, so i will be), this past week hasn’t been without its stresses. ron and kim have a tendency to bicker. kind of all the time. about everything. i’m not used to that (thanks, mom and dad) and it is stressing me out. big time. lately i’ve been using my ipod when we’re all in the car together so that i don’t have to hear it.

another stress has been being kicked out of my room. underneath the church, there are 4 dorm rooms. ron, kim, and all their stuff from java are in one crowded room. i was in a second one. but then the owner told us that 50 people are coming from jakarta to make a movie and they need my room. they are actually planning to put 50 people in the other three rooms down here. there are 2 bunk beds in each room. nuts. so i am now a displaced person living in a hallway. only for 3 days though. i’m kind of interested to meet these movie people!

the third stress i have is coming from feeling like i have no direction. i have some tasks and projects i’m working on with the cattle. it is REALLY hard to work with batak though, i’m finding. for example, one of my projects is to tame the 4 calves. they’re all wild from living in the field their whole lives. so i had some guys build me a smaller pen to contain them. well, they made the fencing so that the calves can walk right through it. so we got that all fixed, then yesterday, one of the bigger calves decided he wasn’t having this, so he tried to walk through the gate and ended up pulling 2 fence posts out of the ground. i went over and looked, and neither fencepost was more than 10 inches in the ground! and these fenceposts are taller than me! anyways, i digress. besides those tasks at the farm, i feel like i don’t do much. kim likes to do the housework around the dorm and so she cleans my room and does all the cooking and laundry for the 3 of us. so i feel like i can’t even help there. ron and kim don’t have a church yet, so i have no connections there. and we live a ways outside of town with no way for me to get down there unless i ride in with someone in one of the trucks. so for the past week, the farm has been my life. but that only takes a few hours of my time a day. i’m sitting here, wanting to do ministry, only here for a few short weeks, twiddling my thumbs.

so today, ron needed to have a meeting with the head of the hospital in town and i asked if i could go with. on the way there, i prayed that just being there would open up some doors for opportunity. i gotta watch what i pray for. they took one look at me and decided they needed a native english speaker to help with practice for the students in the english department of the university (the hospital and university are kinda all rolled into one. i think it’s primarily a nursing school). without even thinking about it, i said i’d be happy to help but that transportation was an issue. they asked me to come in the evenings, during study hours. they said they would come pick me up and drop me off. but since i’m coming in the evenings, they suggested that it might be too late for me to come home, so they’re preparing me my own bed in the girls dorm so i can stay whenever i like. so on mondays, wednesdays, and fridays, you can find me at the university there practicing conversational english with college students.

so i’ll be working up at the farm in the mornings with my kids club (as ron calls it), coming home to shower and eat, then heading down into town for evenings. i think this will be a good setup. i mean, it was God’s idea, so it really doesn’t matter so much what i think, right? : )

but for the record, i’m excited.

ptl

morning time and feeling good!
about to go feed the cattle up top.

the end of the day

got this email earlier from my dad:

Hey,I just read your entry on the batak world . . . I'm sorry to tell you this sweetie, but someone has misled you. You are actually in Cleveland and those people you're with are Italians.


it made me chuckle. he grew up in cleveland. with italians. met some of them at my gramma's funeral 2 years back. man... talk about nuts.

after dosages of claritin, sudafed, ibuprofin, chloraseptic spray, and lots of suckers, i'm feeling somewhat better. thank goodness that ron and kim could pretty much run a pharmacy out of their house. the most i did today was make a large batch of salsa for everyone, which i did from the comfort of a camping chair because standing up hurt too badly. i even walked all the way up to the house (ok, so you can just about touch it from the dorm i live in... but still - it's up a flight of stairs!) to deliver it. but i feel pretty pathetic about not even leaving the property today. tomorrow though...

oh, one parting comment - i just moved my mattress to the floor in the hopes of sleeping on something more firm (and therefore more comfortable) tonight. and i noticed that of the SEVEN mattresses stored in this room, the one i'm sleeping on is THE ONLY ONE without its original plastic still on it. ewwwww.

sakit lagi

well, i posted yesterday that i wasn't feeling so well. last night was really rough. i don't know if it was from the cold (it gets down to about 60 at night here, which is VERY cold for me) or what, but my muscles got REALLY achy. i move around a lot when i sleep, but because my body was aching, every time i moved, it woke me up again. AND every time i coughed or sneezed. AND all 3 times i had to use the toilet (because i had drank SO MUCH water and tea yesterday to help my fiery throat). i had gone to sleep in a sweatshirt, partly because of the cold and partly as mosquito repellent (there's not screens), but at about 1, i woke up blazing hot. so off the sweatshirt came. and on came the mosquitos. uggghhhhh. i started checking the time everytime i woke up. i was up every 10 - 20 minutes. all night long. this was the second longest night of my life, the first, of course, being the night in madura in the hotel swarming with mosquitoes, rats, and bloody bedsheets.

i didn't go up to the farm with the guys this morning. i wasn't in any shape to. when i finally dragged myself out of bed at 11, i could acutely feel every muscle in my body, i'm pretty sure. and it hurt. even muscles in my chin hurt! i kinda walk like an old woman... it hurts to lay down, it hurts to sit in a chair, it hurts to stand up. i made myself a peanut butter and jelly so i could take some medicine, and i feel that kicking in some now (45 minutes later), so let's just pray that does the trick for now and that i'm back in action soon!

batak world

so wow. different island, different language, different people, different culture. entirely. it’s even hard for me to understand them when they use indonesian. partly because they mix in lots of batak words and slang, but also because the accent is very different. i mean, i do the same with javanese. many people can tell i’m from java because of they way i speak. yeah, i have an accent. i kinda like that.

i have no doubt i’ll pick up on the language sooner or later. but the culture… the culture will take some getting used to. javanese are very reserved. they rarely raise their voice. they never yell. they keep their emotions hidden, and though they might not always make the most logical choice (in my western-thinking opinion), they are almost always fairly level headed and even keeled about things. and in all my attempts (conscious and otherwise) to not be the typical american in a foreign country, i have adopted the ways of the culture i live in.

but ohmygosh… the batak are opposite in almost every way. they are  the people who flail their arms in the air and wail from the very depths of their soul for an entire funeral service. they are the people who, when they are excited about something, you actually wonder if they might have peed their pants a little bit. they have one volume - shouting. if they have a problem with someone, everyone and their cousin will know about it (partly because EVERYONE on the mountain could hear them talking about it to just one other person). and if they like you… well, i watched 2 people today get in a fight over whose family i was a part of. and i’ve only been here a day! they are quick to love and quicker to hate, they are passionate, they wear their hearts on their sleeves.

i met a lady yesterday, rosemary. she’s a worker on the farm. we talked for maybe 10 minutes at the most. in those ten minutes, she went from being so giddy to meet me that she was jumping up and down and grabbing me by the front of my pants (her hand was actually DOWN my pants) to drag me to introduce to more people to throwing her arms around me and sobbing on my shoulder, almost knocking me over backwards with her force. she laughed uproariously when she teased me. she threw her arm over her face and clenched her eyes shut when she talked about how much she hates living alone. she crossed her arms, wrinkled up her whole face, and stamped her foot when she talked about her wages and how she thinks she should get more.  then she was back to jumping up and down and clapping her hands when we talked about how long i’m staying here. rosemary is nearly 50. and she calls me daughter.

in other news, i’ve quite settled into my room here. if you remember from last time i was here, the actual farm is on the very top of the mountain. but we were given some land to use about halfway up the side of said mountain. it has a church, a house, and a dorm. last time i stayed in the house with my newlywed friends, gt and wiwik. ron and kim are currently in the process of having a house built up at the farm, but there is no indication when it will be finished. contractors… anyways, on the church property, the dorm is not quite finished, but beneath the church, there is a hallway with 4 rooms off it that are sparsely furnished with bunkbeds and a desk. each room also has its own bathroom, complete with a squatty and a bucket of water. ron and kim have managed to fit most of their old life on java into one of these rooms, and so i’m staying in the room next to theirs.

we were watching a tv earlier tonight that ron rigged up in their room when i heard someone come in the door at the end of the hall. since it’s not technically our property, we can’t really do anything about this. i asked about who it could be, and ron kind of shrugged and said that the owner rents rooms out by the night. and by the hour. uuuuhhhhh… so… awesome. i’m living in a brothel. ok, not quite that drastic. but still, i’ve never before been so thankful for indonesian people’s obsession with leaving everything wrapped in its original plastic (namely, my mattress). and for kim being able to find clean sheets that fit among the many boxes of stuff stacked up in her room, in the hallway, and in the house.

one last bit – i would ask for prayer for me. i have had allergies since october. well, it’s either allergies or the cold that won’t die. it’s not really bad enough to take medicine typically, but on worse days, i pop a claritin (thanks, mom), and it usually clears me up in 30 minutes or so. this morning i was sneezing almost nonstop and my nose was running like mad, so i took one of 10 claritin i brought with me. since it was raining and going up to the farm would be pretty useless, i fell back asleep until 10. then, after the rain let up, gt and i went up to the farm and worked until about 4. (btw, i spent a large chunk of that time cutting grass to feed cows. with a SICKLE! filled up the entire back of a pickup truck. AND gt let me drive the truck. first time i’ve driven anything with more than 2 wheels for almost 2 years now! felt weird. probably because i was sitting on the right and shifting with my left.) anyways, my sneezing continued, every 15 minutes or so, and i was just generally miserable. but i was still thinking it was my allergies, made worse from all the plant life around me. after work, we went down into town to get some dinner, and it quickly became clear that it was more than that. my throat is pretty swollen and fiery feeling. i had chills for a bit earlier, and a low grade headache. right now i’m doped up on claritin, sudafed, chloraseptic, and black currant tea. and i still feel pretty miserable. so please pray that i’ll be back on my feet in no time. i’m only here a month, and i really want to make the most of that! even a day of being sick is a day too many…

medan

list 1. or, things you can learn from indonesian taxi drivers.

1. their entire life story. plus their entire family’s life story.

2. everything you could ever want to know about the town you are currently in. for example, medan is the third largest city in indonesia, 2.5 million people live here, many of whom are of chinese ancestry but actually still speak chinese as their first language. also, they will feel free to tell you that you don’t really want to go to the place you are going because some other place would be much better for your assumed needs.

3. what to eat to help you poop more lancar (fluently/smoothly). seriously. i got this lecture from a cab driver today.

4. christians and muslims are the same. we are all going to heaven. it doesn’t matter how you get there. the only bad people are the terrorists.

5. it is the government’s fault that there are poor people in indonesia.

6. i look like a muslim. apparently. because my cab driver asked me if i am one.

7. their phone numbers, which they freely give out. in case you need a ride in the future, of course.

8. indonesia is very kaya (rich). the only problem is that the people don’t know  how to use it, and so that’s why such a rich country has so many poor people.

list 2. or, all the things i bought for less than $30 and why i love indonesia.

1. a pair of nice, heavy duty, rubber workboots for the farm.

2. aloe lotion, facewash, shampoo, conditioner, a toothbrush, a bottle of listerine.

3. a big container of vaseline petroleum jelly which i have been looking for for quite a long time now. i found it imported at a drugstore!

4. five mini heads of cheese.

5. two rolls of toilet paper. (all i am allowing myself for the next month)

6. three packs of indomie (indonesian ramen. but actually good.)

7. a heavy duty 1 liter water bottle.

8. some craft stuff to work on in the evenings.

9. two 30 minute rides in a taxi.

writing this while i don’t have internet. staying in someone’s house in medan. will post later. headed to tarutung via jumper flight in the morning. been up since 4 am.

EDIT – made it here safely, settled into my one room. i have my own bathroom! no bath, but a squatty and a faucet coming out of the wall to fill up buckets for flushing with. need to wash my windows. ate pork for lunch. (first time i’ve had pork in months) and now heading up to the farm to visit with cows. posting now…

pacitan

ok, i’m gonna make this quick (relatively) because i’m in the midst of packing for sumatra. it’s currently 9 pm and i’m leaving at 4:45 tomorrow morning. wah!

anyways, i wanted to catch ya’ll up on my last trip before i head off on the next one. i went to the beach for 3 days with 14 indonesian friends. i had some apprehensions, what with being the only whitey and the only non-native indonesian/javanese speaker. but it went well. or as well as any vacation with a bunch of asians can go. after just 2 days, i came home with 739 photos on my camera alone. and EVERYBODY else had their own camera too! they just liked to use mine because it’s fancy. also, we woke up and started laying on the beach and swimming in the ocean every day - AT SUNRISE. yup, that’s right. a cup of tea, and catch some waves.  indonesians like it early. a weird adjustment. for me, vacation means sleeping in!

ok, so a few quick takes of highlights of the trip.

1. you know how if you stand in the sand at the edge of the ocean, the waves wash over your feet and you sink a little each time? i’m not sure of the science of this, but the waves cause the sand to shift just enough that you slooooowly sink down into it. i like to see how far i can go down before a wave inevitably knocks me over. the second day of our trip, i was buried up to my ankle balls (what is that protruding joint called anyways?) when i noticed something – i could feel a pulsing in my feet. my first thought was that i had awoken some giant turtle sleeping beneath the sand that was about to eat my legs off. but almost instantly, i realized that i was feeling the pulse of the earth. in fact, it took me several more waves to realize that what i was feeling was actually MY pulse due to the sand pressing down so heavily on my feet. but for about 1.5 minutes there, i was completely in awe – i could feel life flowing through the earth. creation was living and breathing and i could feel it! even after i realized it was my own pulse, i wasn’t too disappointed. because after all, i AM creation too. i AM living and breathing and life IS flowing through me. and that is equally as awesome.

2. and speaking of sand, a couple days while i was laying out on the beach catching some rays, i could hear sand crabs tunneling underneath my ear. they  make funny little grunting sounds; the kind of noises i make in response to people when i first wake up in the morning. so i started talking to them! if i grunted twice, they would do it twice back. if i did it three times, so did they. and if i did it one time, they responded in kind. it was cool. i just prayed they wouldn’t bite my ears. and that nobody would see me laying facedown in the sand grunting to myself. oh, and you should have heard them go nuts when my stomach started growling! i think they thought it was the crab god speaking to them from above.

3. we drove 2 cars to the beach. kind of like this one (i got from the internet, but the photo interestingly enough appears to be taken in indonesia):

anyways, there’s the driver and passenger seats in front, and then a row that seats 3 (or 4 if you squeeze) in back. then in the VERY back, there are 2 little rumble seats that fold down from the sides. that’s where i rode the 5 hours there and back, mostly because everybody in my car gets carsick except for me. so i was happy to curl up with the luggage and get some rest since i woke up before 5 AM every day. anyways, one day we were driving to a different beach further down the coast, and one of the people in the middle had their window cracked open a few inches. the rest of the windows were tinted a bluish hue and they were quite dirty, so the contrast between what i could see through the open window and what i could see through my window was vast. through the open crack, the trees were VIVID green. but through my window, they were ugly brown/blue in hue. it made me think about how i see the world. what if there are brighter colors than what i can see even through the open window? what if my eyes are like the tinted, dirty windows? what if i’m somehow missing out? seeing things through tinted eyes? and then i realized that we are ALL like that. and that won’t go away until we get to heaven, when imperfection fades away and all things become perfect. it gave a new meaning to 1 corinthians 13:12. this world is but a dim reflection. it made me think of heaven in a different way than i ever have before…

4. navita: everybody is staring at you.

me: welcome to my life.

navita: wow.

5. even though we live in an imperfect world, some things come pretty darn close! here’s some pictures from our beach weekend!

(the beach at 7 AM… so THAT’S how it looks at this hour…)

(this took a long time to do properly…)

(a second beach we visited)

(so this is the hotjaga i always talk about. and his lovely wife.)

(with all the huge waves crashing, it was quite a chore to keep my camera lenses dry!)

(natural bridge. i hiked up and sat on top of it!)

(the whole group)

(the view atop the land bridge. the peninsula looks like a dinosaur!)

(waves crashing below me)

(sunrise over pacitan)

(yoga on the beach at sunrise)

(looking down into the biggest known cave in southeast asia!)

(another of all of us. again, it took forever to get it right!)

(“take my picture by the ocean!…… NOOOOOOOOOOOO….!!!!!!)

(i love the beach!)

orang desa

my cat is currently getting a histerektomi. i love it when words are the same in both languages. makes me seem smart when i understand those big words.

i am currently watching COPS while getting ready to go to the beach for the weekend! woo.

good morning

so last year they changed sears tower to willis tower.

and now... THIS

i don't know if i can handle all this change.


also, german girl stood me up last night. i guess she decided to just head straight to jogja without passing go. or salatiga. or solo.

hallelujah!

i don't know if anyone has noticed (or cares), but i've been updating my to-do list below. and like half of it got checked off today. i wrote out a list last night of things that NEED to be done before i leave on friday and threw in a few things i would just LIKE to accomplish before then. but i reasoned that i would be satisfied if i finished half of that sublist.

i asked an indonesian friend to go into town with me.
between the two of us, we finished the ENTIRE LIST.
plus some.
today.
before noon.

omg. i am ecstatic. my bike got taken apart, cleaned out, tuned up, and re-oiled. for $3.20! i have pillows on my couch for the first time ever, which will be great when german girl comes tonight, because both of us will be able to have pillows! (before today, the ONLY pillow i owned was the one on my bed. and technically, i don't even own that. the school does.) i got new hangers for my closet so that all my things can go in there. i got the pictures printed off for bu iis. i was afraid that was something that i would procrastinate about so badly, as is my habit. but it's done. i have a REAL rain jacket - finally, i can stay dry on my bike during rainy season! as can a passenger, as i opted for the roomier poncho. heck, i bet we could fit 4 under there. assuming the other 3 are asian.

some letdowns though - i can't get replacement lights for my string of christmas lights that don't work because they only sell colored christmas lights in this town. and those are tacky. we asked at 8 different electric shops.
- i got my eyes checked for free. and the lady told me that my eyes are exactly the same prescription as the glasses i was wearing. they haven't changed. in 8 years. which is a lie. because i had to get new glasses 5 years ago, due to my prescription changing. but i prefer wearing the older frames. they're cooler. sooo... no new glasses for me. for now. maybe after sumatra.

but - my favorite part of the day. i bought an electronic dictionary! even if you don't care, give me a little cheer. this thing is sweet. basically, all my friends in language school have one. and they use it constantly. i, on the other hand, went old school (some might call this "cheap") and bought a dictionary. which i have used. extensively. but i don't want to haul it all around the country with me this summer. or ever again, really. so i bought this. it even adversises having games! it has hangman. in 2 languages. which i guess is ok for a dictionary. but the games icon has a pacman logo next to it, so i was still a little disappointed.



so, a couple things i learned today:
- if you need to accomplish a lot of small tasks in a short amount of time, take a native. they know where EVERYTHING in this crowded little town, crammed with a million and one storefront shops selling everything EXCEPT what you need, is.
- if you are looking for stuffing for pillows, don't go to the sewing shop. because they will send you to toko besi (the steel shop - kind of like carter lumber. but without wood).
- it takes 1 kilo of stuffing (called dakron) to fill 4 pillows.
- when the papers that came with your motorbike say to get a tuneup at "2000 km or 4 months", the monthage is more important than the mileage... err... kilometerage. the guy at the garage almost wouldn't do it for me. i'm at 2000 km, but 7 months. we had to fight for it.
- indonesian optometrists are quacks.
- claritin costs 44 cents per pill here. but when the lady at the apotek told me how much a pack of 10 costs, i was flabbergasted because of how expensive it was. sometimes i have to put things into an american perspective to feel better again.
- the english word for penjahit is tailor. not "sewer person" as i've been referring to them for the last 3 days since i decided i need one. my friend happened to use that word in conversation, after which i interjected "YESSSSS! that's IIITTTTT!", much to his confusion.

all in all, it was a successful day. highly. berhasil.

todaaaaay. last night was a going away part for 2 friends. so i kept the kid (remember, i'm babysitting until tuesday) out late. a whole 30 minutes past his bedtime! he was a little cranky. but the clingy kind of cranky, not the screaming kind. so it was alright. he slept late this morning, so i ended up being awoken by the helper trying to get in at 7. awesome. right as she came, the second helper also came and they got into a discussion about who would work when. it was decided that first helper would work 7 - 3, and second helper (who is a little dumb and we all know shouldn't be left alone with the kid for extended periods of time) would work from 3 - 6. i come at six and the kid goes to bed at 6:30. fancy.

anyways, after the helpers came, i came home and slept more. but i was again awoken. this time by an sms from the kid's dad who is currently on another island. the sms mentioned that he had met a german girl who was backpacking alone across asia and australia and was trying to get to solo next (an hour south of where i live). he asked if she could spend tomorrow night at my house. my mind turned to the possibility of being murdered, maimed, ransacked, or other equally horrific things. then someone whispered, "what you have done for the least of these..." so i said sure. i think the plan is for the dad to bring her here, but by the time they get in, it will be late, and the buses to solo will have stopped running. so she'll stay here for a night, then i'll get her to the bus station the following morning. who doesn't love a foreign stranger sleeping in their bed?

at 11 when i woke up, my helper came in and greeted me with a hearty "SELAMAT PAGI!" (good morning - which ends around 10. then the day switches from pagi to siang.) i chuckled at her, and we chatted for awhile. we were talking about summer plans and what i'll be doing in sumatra. she's a christian lady, so i don't mind sharing with her. (around other people, i have to be a little more cautious about what information i give out.) she told me how grateful she is that foreigners come here to tell others about Jesus because so many indonesians are afraid to in their own country. i contemplated this a second (i know it's true - other christian indonesian friends have told me how scared they are to share the gospel. btw, proselytizing is illegal here. but answering questions or having a discussion isn't.), and then i told my helper that i think that's true for the foreigners here too. most of us probably didn't share the gospel with fellow americans. or at least not to the extent that we do here. but in a foreign country, it's somehow easier. my helper thought about that one for a second and came back with, "really? you have to tell americans about Jesus? they're not all christians already?"

WHAT?? wow... i know america has kind of a reputation for being a christian nation and all. but among most people here, i usually find the assumption that all americans are like what they see in hollywood. NOT that all americans are christians. hmm... misconceptions always amaze me.

to do

starting next week, i'll be gone for most of the rest of the summer. i think i'll be in salatiga for a total of a week between next friday and school starting. a day here, 2 days there, just passing through to do laundry and bathe between trips.

soooooo..... things i need to do this week:

1. fix the other strand of christmas lights left by amanda so i can hang them in the living room. - apparently they only have colored lights in salatiga. oh well. i tried. - OFF THE LIST
2. get a yoga mat. because she also left me a handful of pilates dvds. - CHECK
3. find a good penjahit (uh... sewer?) to get a batik dress altered. - CHECK
4. get new glasses. finally. - gotta wait. got my eyes checked and they told me my prescription hasn't changed. in 8 years. i know that's a lie. probably have to go see an optometrist in semarang. - OFF THE LIST.
5. go to the immigration office to get my visa renewed. - NEXT WEEK
6. see if i can find generic claritin here to help with allergies. - CHECK
7. take my motorbike to the garage for its 2000 km tuneup. get it washed also. - CHECK
8. buy rain gear. mine disappeared while i was in west java somehow. - CHECK
9. get photos printed for my classroom and also for ibu iis. - CHECK
10. mail a letter and the picture to pak supri and bu iis. - CHECK
11. get the pillows stuffed that i've had laying hollow around my house for more than a year now. my couch is forlorn. - CHECK
12. babysit sammy until tuesday. - CHECK
13. make sure internet bill gets paid.
14. buy ticket to sumatra. - CHECK
15. make some more progress in terms of schoolwork and preparing for next year.
16. finish making a scarf for andre. - CHECK
17. teach yuvi how to knit.
18. see if i can track down an electronic dictionary to take to sumatra with me. - CHECK
19. buy a camera to replace the one that got stolen. if i have enough money left after all of the above. - not gonna happen
20. going away party for dana and carolyn. - CHECK
21. bible study on tuesday. - CHECK
22. figure out finances for the summer so that the internet bill, phone bill, and helper all get paid while i'm gone. - CHECK

and then on friday... GO TO THE BEACH!

whew. six days. i can do it!

new room

in a sudden burst of home interior-ishness, i decided to do something new with my room. and thanks to some contributions from my living room, loot from the apartment of my recently departed neighbor (she went home to america. she didn’t die.), and some creativity on my part, my bedroom is now that much more awesome.

it all started with some little white christmas lights. i have been wanting to hang christmas lights over my bed for a very long time. years, in fact. but my childhood bedroom is butt ugly. hanging christmas lights in it would be an insult to the christmas lights. i thought i had my chance in college, but turns out christmas lights are a fire hazard.  then i moved to a muslim country, and where do you get christmas lights in a muslim country? i mean, you can, but maybe i’m just lazy. anyways, amanda, my neighbor, left some behind. so up they went.

but they clashed with the curtains. or rather, the curtains clashed. with everything. under the sun. they were perhaps sewn by an 80 year old colorblind amish missionary woman in 1942. they were a bold mix of various shades of blues, oranges, purples, yellows, and greens. in fact, theo, dr huxtable’s son, might have worn a pair of pants cut from the same fabric. bottom line: the curtains had to go. in my front room, i have much more attractive curtains in muted tones of cream and green (which match my bedspread and why did i never realize this before?!?). i never close them since i have a bamboo blind outside my front window. so into the bedroom they went. a much more subtle and rustic feel.

but this created another problem. a little over a year ago, i was awoken in the middle of the night by demons in my house. at that time, i wrote down the verses in romans 8:38 – 39 on a notecard and taped it at the head of my bed. and over the past year, it has become a security blanket of sorts for me. i see it every night before i go to bed. and every night, it stands as a reassurance to me, a constant reminder that God’s love is here. no matter what. in this house. even while i sleep. and as long as His love is here, there is not room for fear. but the curtains from the front room go almost to the floor. and the head of my bed is right inside the window. hence, the curtain covered the security blanket notecard taped to the wall at the head of my bed. down the notecard came.

those Words, those verses are still important to me. so i woke up this morning with the great idea to paint it on the wall beside my bed. i think my helper thought i was crazy for writing on the walls. but she said she liked the finished product. i’m a fan of the overall effect. and sad that i won’t be around for most of the rest of summer to sleep in my awesome new room.

Friday nights at home…

because this is how we roll.

JABAR (part 10) the end

i met up with the group back at the hotel and we walked to a nearby restaurant for dinner. i had the best ravioli i have ever had in my life. it is common practice in indonesia for street musicians to come to restaurants and stand in the door and play and sing until someone gives them money. sometimes they’ll go from table to table with their hand extended, hoping for some small coins. as we were finishing our dinner, i heard some guitars start playing outside. we weren’t within eyeshot of the door. but when they began to sing, i had to go see – they sounded like they were only 6 or 7! i was shocked (and not in a good way) when i got to the door to see that these street musicians were 2 boys who looked no older than 10. after they finished their song, one of the guys in our group began talking to them. we learned that they are both 14 (or so they say – neither one even came up to my elbow and they both had little girl voices), and they are from bandung – 8 hours away! they just jump buses, traveling from town to town, hoping to make enough money to survive. that broke my heart…

the next morning, it was pouring down rain again. by now, the rest of sharon’s family had come by van, so we used their vehicle to drive around after waking up at 5:30. it was pretty dismal, and the only thing worth reporting is the 8 reindeer type animals we saw crossing the road over to the beach! strange… sadly, it was too dark and they were moving too fast to get a clear shot.

sharon was really hoping to get some shots of school kids in their uniforms, so at about 7, we headed toward the town elementary school. sadly, it was still raining, so most kids were coming to school in vehicles and under rain gear rather than walking. but sharon had the great idea to park across the road from the school. in her van. and use my zoom lens to take pictures of kids as they entered. i mostly just kept praying that nobody would mistake us for pedophiles until i was able to convince sharon that i really wasn’t getting any good shots and we should head home.

(2 girls heading to the middle school down the road)

i needed to be on a bus by 8, but sharon had a trick up her sleeve. to thank me, she wanted to drive me to a local silver shop and let me pick out any one thing as a gift. i spent about 15 minutes poring over the shelves… i love looking at the intricate earrings and rings and bracelets they sell in these shops, but i’ve never actually bought anything for myself there! i ended up settling on this pair of earrings:

they’re made of indonsian coins from 1940, while it was still under dutch rule. the front is in dutch and on the back, there is both javanese and arabic script. i’ve had a few people try to translate the javanese writing for me (by the way, most javanese today cannot read or write using the javanese alphabet. it’s similar to sanskrit.), and i have had the following translations: a) who feels like 10 cents? b) one per ten. c) one-tenth of a cent.  i think that last one seems the most likely.

after the silver shop, we headed straight to the bus stop where i actually happened to get on the exact same bus that brought us to pangandaran 2 days earlier. when i got back to the train station in banjar, the same becak guys were sitting out front and greeted me heartily! i wanted some food to take on the train with me, so i headed to a warung nearby. a bunch of old guys were hanging out in there, eating their breakfast, and they were happy to help me choose my meal. they got me to buy a bit of strange looking fruit that i’ve never seen before along with some bread. exactly what i was looking for!

the train ride was uneventful. i wasn’t sitting by anyone, so i slept almost the whole way home. for some reason, there was a buttload of dutch people on there, dressed very minimally - a stark contrast to the indonesian ladies with their head coverings and long dresses. also, they kept waking me up from my sleep by getting into food fights and general screaming about stupid things. for possibly the first time, i was GLAD to be the american on the train. (usually americans have a bad rap as the culturally insensitive, obnoxious tourists. but not that day!)

so basically ,the end of my trip was the same as the beginning, only backwards. the only interesting part was when the creepy guy sitting beside me on the bus from solo – salatiga decided i was tired from all my travel and tried to give me a massage. ugh… could not WAIT to get off that bus.

437 photos. 672 km. 6 modes of transportation. 29 people’s stories. 4 languages. 36 hours.

but there’s no place like home.

a word from our sponsors

sorry to interrupt the tales of jabar, but this was too good to wait...

some friends and i went out to eat tonight, and i was really hoping for some tempe. my body was craving protein. i haven't had any meat since lunch yesterday. anyways, the place we ended up at only had noodles and rice. so i walked to a couple other holes in the wall nearby, but everyplace was out. i had some luck at the 4th place. they had 4 pieces left. the lady running the place was super nice and gave me a chair to sit on and chatted with me while a girl wrapped up my tempe for me to take it back to the other place to eat with rice. she said that next time, all my friends and i should eat there. so i asked to see the menu... and i totally found what we should all go out for after fellowship next week.

CRAPACCINOS!

it's awkward to snort-laugh uncontrollably. it's even more awkward when you're one of only two strangers in a room.