Island Hopping: My life in Indo

2006-09-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

Well, first two weeks of school have been going great. stressful, crazy, and frustrating at times, but fun. I will post a list of funny things my students have done/said at a later time. this entry, however is a little insight into how indonesians think and why i may become a little crazy by the time i arrive back in america at the end of this year. happenings of today....
*Preface*
Previous plan today was that my friend Caitlin and i were going to go to a batik (traditional javanese textile) expo today with our friend who is a professor at a university here. we were going to leave pretty early (early being around 10 in the morning) so caitlin opted to just spend the night here instead of having to wake up and take the public transport to my house, especially since we didn't get to sleep till 1 cause we were making friends with one of the only bands in malang that will play michael jackson and bob marley for us.
ok...
4:00 A.M. We both wake up to the Sunday morning call to prayer (not unusual). fall back asleep
4:30 A.M. Call to prayer is not enough and we must listen to some dude singing/chanting/sermoning in indonesian through the loudspeaker in the mosque...this lasts about half an hour.
5:00 A.M. ish Caitlin's cell phone rings. Ignore. and again...ignore. third time she answers thinking it might be an emergency from the states. no emergency at all. it's a random guy from her school who feels it is his job to inform her that, 'in indonesia we get up at 5 o'clock and start the day right, miss america!!' caitlin hangs up on the guy and turns her phone off.
5:30 A.M. my house phone rings. Me: 'caitlin, what time is it?' Caitlin: 5:30 Me: ok, i'm not answering it. person calls and hangs up 3 times before i figure it would be best if i just answer it. it's my grams...probably thinking it was a decent hour of someones day. (i didn't inform her otherwise as this would have been unloving of me and proceed to talk to her for about 20 min.) hang up.
7:00 A.M. My house phone rings again. I don't get up. and again. don't get up. third time (i'm getting a little irritated at this point) i stumble into my living room and pick up the phone. it's one of the english teachers from my school.
him: Hello layne, are you ready to go to the retreat now?
me: whaaaa?? uhhh...i ahhh....
him: they are at the school now waiting for you
*pause to clarify* ok, so like 2 weeks ago (my first week teaching) all my students wanted me to go on each of their individual class trips with them. keep in mind that i have 20 classes and all the students look the same. of course i say yes and think they will give me a head's up before that time. right. well, the morning of is apparently all the heads up i get around these parts.
me: uhhh...i guess so...i mean i was going to go with my....-
him: great. i will come collect you in five minutes. -click-
me: hello? hello?
it takes my sleep-addled brain a few seconds to comprehend what is going on and at this point i'm not even really sure where this retreat is. i stumble back into the bedroom and explain to caitlin that i think i may have to be leaving soon. sure enough, 5 min later pak hamzah (the other english teacher) comes and 'collects me' to take me to the school where the students are overjoyed to see their crazy english teacher looking like she just rolled out of bed.
as expected, they glom onto me, asking me questions.
'miss layne, have you eaten yet? we didn't know if you would have time to eat, so did you? no? well we got you something on the way here this morning.'
HAHA. they pull out 2 mcdonalds cheeseburgers from one of their bookbags and give them to me like it was the most normal thing in the world for a growing young american to eat 2 mcdonalds cheeseburgers at 7:30 in the morning. they're so cute.

anyway, the rest of the day went great after i managed to wake up. first we went to a lake where we all got into boats and rowed across the lake to a guava plantation where we picked guavas and saw a guava snake in a tree.
came back across the lake where we ate fish and rice with our fingers. my first experience eating on the floor without utensils, javanese style. i kinda liked it.

then came our death ride into the mountains. after the lake, our next stop was a waterfall, copan rondo, on the top of the mountain town of batu. now, this trip would have been great-beautiful scenery, pleasant weather, etc. if not for the fact that i wished i could have said goodbye to my family one last time before i went plummeting off the edge of the mountain. most of the journey involved our bus driver laying on the horn when going around turns that looked as if they led into air in hopes that no one was coming down the other way or one of us was going off the edge. the other teacher who came with us (and who was supposed to be looking after me) would grab my wrist in a death-grip every time we went around these turns (or every 10 seconds) and then look bashfully at my terrified face as i pried her hands off of me, relieved that we survived the last one. fortunately, we only hit one car and gave another bus's side mirror a friendly love tap. and by love tap i mean that it is now bent completely to the side of the bus.

all in all a good time, though. waterfall was gorgeous. i saw wild monkeys hopping around eating bananas and tried a traditional dish of baked banana, chocolate, and cheese sandwich. mmmmm. good. more pictures and stories later. :)

2006-09-04T09:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I have run out of excuses for not doing anything on this blog thing. Haha. Sorry all. Last month was a bit of a blur, but that's no excuse. :) Hopefully, I can give it a shot now that I'm in my city. I thought this may be a good place to start because it was my first day of school, but I'm gonna back up just a bit. Right now it's Monday night (Labor Day for all those state-side). I arrived in Malang from Jakarta on Friday into an airport with only one terminal. As I flew in, I saw the ash from a nearby mountain. Way cool.
Saw my school and my brand new house. By brand new I mean that no one has lived here before and by my house I mean that I'm the only one here!!! I have 2 bedrooms (3 if you count the maid's quarters), 2 bathrooms, living room, dining room. I like it a lot. I'm looking into more furniture in the near future.
I also have a friend in Malang. Fulbright decided to put 2 people here, so my friend, Caitlin is here too, which makes things much more bearable. Yesterday Caitlin and I went to a mountain town called Batu to buy some plants for our house. I know what you're thinking...I'm becoming dangerously domestic, here, but my plants look nice and I haven't killed them yet, which is a step in the right direction.
Umm...ok...a few culture shock things...
Mosquitoes suck-probably the worst thing. I went with my new friend, Win, who lives a couple houses down from me to buy some groceries and he helped me find this spray stuff that is lethal to the little buggers, but after further inquiry i learned that it is also lethal to me. am planning on researching that soon. on my list of things to do. :) why don't you just use a mosquito net, you ask? well, how intelligent of you! yes, that would make sense, wouldn't it, but the thing about that is that my friendly neighborhood volcano likes to spew ash around my city everyday and we have to dust/sweep/mop the house everyday or there is a dusty film over everything. therefore, if i had a mosquito net by the time i was ready for bed the dust would have accumulated on the net and come down on me as i sleep. not good. i can feel the black lung coming on as i type this.
first day of school was great and exhausting at the same time. kids are great, but classes have 40+ students in them and are 1 1/2 hours. yeah. honestly. i opened the floor to questions about the new weird looking white girl english teacher. i got a few good ones like "are there a lot of gangsters in america?" "do you have a boyfriend?" "are all black people cool and why is Eminem the only white rapper?" When i walk through the hallways every classroom hoots and hollers and will crowd around the door to say, "hello miss layne." I'm actually getting quite a big head and feel a bit like a celebrity, so I'll have to watch myself.
Ok, random things...they tried to get me to eat dog saturday night, but i tried to explain to them that I had a dog at home as a pet and didn't really believe in that sort of thing. (Other than that, the food is delicious).
They drive on the "wrong" side of the road, but i believe i'm getting a 'sepeda motor' or motorbike because i like to live dangerously and just really really want one.
KFC has rice balls packaged in a hamburger-like wrapper here instead of biscuits. i was way disappointed.
You have to take your shoes off before you go into someone's home a la japan. i'm getting a little concerned about ringworm, so i may start wearing socks or something.
apparently the little indonesian i have learned is fine, but the language i really need to learn is the 'island language' of java-javanese. that's how everyone speaks to each other.
Basically, I'm having an awesome time so far. I know this is a wee spik all over the place, but go with me on this first one and i promise later entries will have more order as well as pictures. :) i have some good ones.

2006-08-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd try posting a picture to see if it worked. This is the best one of me that I could find at the moment. This is what I've become.

2006-06-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

Hey all!! For those of you who haven't heard yet I will soon be living halfway around the world for a year teaching English to Indonesian high school students. I have used my limited computer skills to somehow figure out how this blog thing works. I decided to use this as a sort-of travel journal so everyone can stay in contact with me and find out what kind of crazy adventures I have gotten myself into this time. :) Hopefully, this should be at least mildly entertaining. I mean, Indonesia has had its fair share of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, and bird flu outbreaks as of late, so that should be interesting. I'll try to spice it up with some pictures, but there is also apparently some way you can write comments to my entries, so do that!!
I can't wait to start this adventure, but I'll miss everyone here!! I will definitely be needing some support from home sometimes, so keep in touch!!