I am a bad blogger...

So I am pretty much the worst blogger ever and have not updated this thing in over 6 months. So much has happened over those months, but to catch up now would be too hard. I have been home twice and back to Indonesia during that time. I finished up my grant, and now am back in Indonesia volunteering at the moment.

My Kids in Singosari Last Year




In the mean time, I have been keeping pretty busy in Jakarta...

Halloween

I decided to have a Halloween party for my kids at school. I taught about it all week, spent a lot of money on candy and decorations, asked permission to teach about it and to have the party. The day before the party I was told that the party would have to be changed to another day or be canceled. I was a little flustered about changing it. The next day I got a text message from a 3rd party who knows people at my school saying that people are concerned because they think it is a religious holiday (they said halloween sounds like halleluiah?) and that they were nervous that the Muhammadiyah Ulama would be upset if I had this party, and so on. I became veryyy upset about this misunderstanding, mainly because I was never approached about it and only came to know about it from an outside source. This came at the end of a not so great week. Earlier that week, my friend Erica found a massive scorpion in my house, I got a ticket (it was my fault, but very scary---I later found out that what I paid was not a ticket, but korupsi), got a flat tire, and my pipe in my bathroom was somehow leaking into my neighbor's house and flooding it.

Then came the Halloween fiasco. I had a breakdown about this, I do not know why but it was really upsetting to me. So I talked to Nelly from Aminef, and she had Pak Parto, her friend from Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang explain to them that it is not celebrated as a religious holiday, etc. So everything got smoothed over very quickly, and I got to have my party a week later.


It was so fun! The kids bobbed for apples, played pin the tail on the spider, did a candy jar guess,and carved jack-o-lanterns. Cultural misunderstanding has been fixed :)

Idul Fitri

It is almost December... that is crazy. Well I am way behind on this thing, so I have to go back long way to Idul Fitri, which was in October! For the actual holiday, I was in Singosari. But the day after Idul Fitri I took a train to Solo (Central Java) to visit my friends Putut and Elin. Putut and Elin both just finished their Phds at Ohio University in June and moved back to Indonesia. They live outside of Jakarta, but for Idul Fitri everyone goes home to their hometowns, and Putut's family is from Solo. It was really cool to be there because he has a large family (like 6 brothers and sisters I think) and it was the first time they had all been together at the same time in like 6 years! There were so many children running around, it was great. I went to a Wayang Orang show in Solo, and we also went to Gunung Lawu (Mt. Lawu).
Elin and I (above) Some future bobcats (below)

We also returned to the traditional Javanese house that Putut's father grew up in so that they could take a family photo, it was a really cool house.

After Solo I went to Yogyakarta for a day. Solo is not too far from Yogya and a few other ETA's were there, so I decided since I was so close I should stop by.

When I came back from Yogya (on an 8 hour overnight train ride--yuck), I went around to some of the other teachers houses at my school. It is a traditional Idul Fitri activity to go around and visit your friends or neighbors. You ask their forgiveness, because during Ramadan you are becoming closer to God, so after you have God's forgiveness you ask forgiveness from your fellow human beings. You say "Maaf mohon lahir dan batin" (or it is Mohon maaf lahir dan batin...I always forget haha). Anyways, what really happens is you stop by their houses, they make you eat lots of treats, and we did this at aout 10 houses. I was so terribly full, but everytime I tried to refuse food I was told I must at least try it because it is rude not to. I think I ate 800 cookies that day :( it was funny.

The last month

I have not been good at keeping up with this thing over the past month! A lot has happened, time kind of flies by...

I went to Bali for a week at the end of September and that was so much fun! My friend Matt is an ETA there, so I visited his school in Denpasar, and one of is students is an Indonesian friend from OU's little sister!

Talk about a small world. A few of the other ETA's were in Bali too, so it was really nice to hang out with everyone. We went to a city called Ubud for the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival which was nice, and then we hung out at Kuta Beach for a little while.

<-- this is a pic of me and my friend Eka's sister! Kuta Beach->













Rice Terraces in Ubud



I also cut my hair very short when I was in Bali!





After Bali my friend Danielle came to visit for a week, while she was here we went to this place called Taman Safari 2. It is awesome! We went with 2 of my other friends, and what you do is you drive through this park/zoo in your car, like a safari and see all of the animals. When you are done you park you car and you go to a walking zoo, and there is an area where you can hold baby lions and tigers!!! I also got a kiss from an elephant!


Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, also just finished up. Muslims do not eat or drink during daylight hours (it is much more complicated and religious than that). I will write about my post Ramadan and Idul Fitri (the big day that ends Ramadan) experiences next time.

Misc. and Yogyakarta

some of my students (the girls really outnumber the boys)

Things have been going well. Ramadan is underway so the pace of things is a bit different over here. Since the Muslims are fasting, there has been a special schedule for school. Basically they are not supposed to put anything in their mouths from sun up until sun down. Most people wake up at 3am for breakfast (and then go back to bed until they need to wake up). Then they are not allowed to eat again until 5:30pm when the sun starts to set and they hear the call to prayer. Many businesses have special hours and close early during this time.

Teaching has been going well. With the special sched. this past week, I had class from 7:30 til 10:30 everyday, they called it "English Club". I had one group of students do skits about tv shows or movies, and one group picked Tom and Jerry (tom and jerry and Spongebob are pretty big in these parts). The cutest little girl (jilbab and all-jilbab is the head covering), she's such a peanut, was Jerry in her skit. The skit was going really well, until the end...she ran up to Tom, flipped him her middle finger, and said f**k Tom! And then they continued their skit. No one in the class flinched when she said it, the other teacher did not even seem to notice. At the end we applauded the group, and I had the tricky task of explaining that we don't use that word haha, they were like "ohhh". Another funny thing was I was asking them about what they did during their time off last week (they had some vacay for the start of Ramadan). They kept saying they went to the mosque, but they were pronouncing it mos-q, like mos and the letter q. I was confused, because the Indonesian word for mosque is masjid, but I thought maybe it was another Indonesian word. No, it is how they thought mosque was pronounced. So I have been working on mosque with my students (and teachers), I say that it may look like mos-Q but it sounds like mosk. English is so weird.

Last week I went to Yogyakarta! That was really cool, Yogya (also sometimes spelled Jogjakarta) is supposed to be like the cultural capital of Indonesia. It was really fun because about 15 of us ETA's were able to go there to meet up! I went to Borobodor (below).

One of the main streets is Yogya (for tourists anyways), is called Jalan Malioboro (Jalan is the Indonesian word for street, it is also the word for walk...). There are many street vendors lining the street and wanting you to buy stuff from them, there is sooooo much cool stuff! You have to bargain with them though, which is no easy task. I think I am pretty good at bargaining now though (either that or I just think I am and I paid way too much for my gifts). It was really nice to hang out with the other ETA's for a few nights and compare experiences so far. While in Yogya, I was also able to meet up with my friend Chozin's sister Monic (Chozin is a friend from OU who is from Yogya), it was fun going around with her also.

these are becaks (pronounced bay-chak) lining the street, they are little carts pushed by bicycles attached to the back, they are all over Indonesia. The drivers sometimes rest and sleep inside when they are not peddaling around, it is hard work I think. They are pretty fun to ride, a little slow, but I think everyone should ride one at least once. I also would like to ask a becak driver if he will let me drive his becak...I think driving one would be quite an experience also.

Other than all of that, I have officially begun riding a motorbike on my own! Don't worry I have a helmet, it is pink :)

have added more pics on facebook:

http://ohio.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2165708&l=1e0d6&id=12311763

Things are still going well. I have started teaching, it is very fun and frustrating at the same time. Some of the classes are as large as 54 students, they are awesome but they love to talk. Last Thursday my friend Tam came to visit from Pandaan (about an hour away from me), and we went to breakfast with the consular general from Surabaya, so that was pretty cool. She also came to school with me. We got my one class playing the guitar and singing us some Indonesian pop songs! Tam got it on video, I will try to get that up soon. On Friday my friend Amanda came down from Probolinggo and joined us, so it was a nice not so lonely weekend.

On Friday night I took the two of them to meet the head of my neighborhood and we had to go copy their passports for him (strange I know). On the way to copy the passports, Tam and Amanda kind of screamed and started running, so I did too. There was a crazy monkey on a chain growling at us and really seemed to want to take a bite. I had been thinking about getting a pet monkey, now i no longer want one.

On Sunday morning my neighborhood had its Independence Day celebration (they celebrate for like a month here, no joke). It started around 6am, so I let Amanda and Tam sleep and ventured out there myself. I did a pretty good job blending in for a while, until the two DJs on stage saw me and made me come up. They tried to get me to sing a song, but I told them I was "malu" (shy) so I got away with only saying Dirgahayu Indonesia, enampuluh dua, Happy 62nd Bday Indonesia.

I have been practicing riding a motorbike, but am still too scared to drive on the real road :). Thats all for now.

pic links

i was in jakarta this weekend and was finally able to upload a bunch of pics!

http://ohio.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2151393&l=acd33&amp;amp;id=12311763>

http://ohio.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2158240&l=755b8&id=12311763

I took this pic from the airplane today

this is a pic of me and chozin (an OU friend) from today, he was stopping through Malang on the way to Jogya so we got lunch, this little outdoor restaurant behind us is quite close to my house, I have a feeling I am going to become a regular.

so since i was in Jakarta, we stayed at a hotel, and on saturday night me, jess, jamie, and jen stayed in the same room. apparently i was talking in my sleep....in indonesian haha,"tidak bisa, tidak di sini" or something like that jess said.

on friday in Jakarta we went to a lunch at the AMINEF office with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, so that was pretty cool. We also pulled a cliche tourist move and went to the Hard Rock Cafe friday night :)