8/30/2012

8/30/2012 Question

Q. You've mentioned a few times about eating with your hands.  Are most meals eaten that way?  Or just certain meals?  And who is your teacher?  Is it someone from Rotary, or...?  If the teachers mom keeps telling you to eat, have you lost so much weight that they are worried about you, or it is more social and you "should" eat more?

A. Indonesian eat almost everything with their hands. All meals and snacks are eaten using hands. Unless it is soup, then they use spoons and sometimes they use chopsticks for noodles. There is almost always a sink very close to the table (in restaurants too) so that people can wash their hands after they eat. My teacher is Mrs. Anita and I do not know if she is with Rotary but, she is good friends with my host Mom and my councilor (Aunt Melly). I have not lost a lot of weight... relax mom. They always say to eat more and more (just like you). To answer a previous question they do not eat steak like we eat it of even hamburger (unless it is at McDonald's). They normally cut their meat into chunks and eat it that way. Maybe in some western restaurant I will be able to find steak.

8/30/2012

I started today by going shopping with my host family's server. We walked a little bit and she tried to talk to me but I could only understand a couple of phrases. The shop was very small and all the vegetables were out in the open with flies everywhere. The chicken and the fish were just sitting out with no refrigeration. I can honestly say that shopping for my food did not make me more excited to eat it. So, we bought the supplies that we would need for the day stopped at a phone shore where the maid ordered something (I think, I really have no idea what was going on), and then we walked home again. I hung out at the house again, I studied the material from my lesson a little bit, watched some TV and relaxed while my family was at work or doing other things. My sister Diandra go home and together we went to one of the other Inbound's birthday party. We talked and celebrated for a very long time. My Aunt Melly and I joked around everyone had a great time I think. In Bandung we have three Inbounds, all girls one from Brazil one from France and me (from the USA). They all speak English and again I wish that the United States had a better language learning system in school.  

 

8/30/2012 Highlight

Aunt Melly told us today at the party that after orientation we will be required to put on a performance. Well two performances one with the people that come from our country (all the Americans together all the Brazilians etc.) and one with the Inbounds that live in our area (all the Bandung kids together). I am not a huge fan of "do whatever you want to do" performances and when Aunt Melly told me that there are no requirements, except that we do a performance I was not thrilled. But, then Aunt Melly suggested that we do a traditional Peacock dance and both of us started miming the dance by flapping our arms (the dances have long sleeves that look like a peacock's feathers then they flap their arms). We both laughed kept imitating until our traditional peacock dance turned into a chicken dance and the entire party laughed at us. I had a lot of fun messing around at the party and I can't wait to get to know all of the Inbound students better.

8/29/2012

8/29/2012 Highlight

Today I had my second Indonesian lesson. I learned some more ways to introduce myself and how to answer some questions that people might have for me. All of it was great information and I feel like I will look back at the end of the year and laugh at myself for struggling with these basic conversations. Right now I struggle to understand but, I think I am getting better every day. After my lesson I had a snack with my teacher and her family. They were all really nice to me especially my teacher's mother who kept telling me to eat more food and laughing at my attempts to use my hands to eat. I am meeting so many nice people here and I am learning so much about their unique culture.

8/28/2012

8/28/2012 Highlight

My food today was really good. I some beef with a really great sauce for lunch with a side of a fried corn thing and rice of course. For dinner I had a burrito filled with lettuce, sauce and lamb. I like the food more each day, thanks to my host families' super amazing server who prepares our food.

8/27/2012

8/27/2012 Questions

Q. First, you said they are big into family. Do they do genealogy? Second, do they take a lot of pictures of family and do scrapbooks?

A. I do not know if they do geneology as far back as you have done but they definatly know who their ansestors are and where they came from, they take tons of pictures everytime we do anything we take a picture but they like to upload them to fb more than printing them out. The walls in our house have family pictures all over them and I am sure that they have a photo album somewhere but I don't think they are on decorated pages (like our scrapbooking).

Q. Do they have dogs for dinner or as pets? Do they have swimsuits? How's your langauge coming along? When you hang with your host sister's friends, do they speak in Indonesian? What kind of music do they listen to? What did you eat for breakfast this morning??????

A. My neighboor has lots of dogs for pets and so far I have not eaten dog and dog has not been on the menu. However, my Host sister is terrified of dogs, and they are not as popular pets as birds and fish are(we have a Coi pond in our house). They do have swimsuits but, the ones I have seen look more like wresling unitards. They have sleeves and little shorts with a big zipper down the frount. In tourist areas (Bali, etc)  Bathing suits are more popular. My language is coming along pretty slowly but that is partly because all the movies and most of the music that my family listens to is in English. My sister's friends speak Indonesian to eachother but, when it is a direct question to me they ask in English. They listen to popular American music along with some popular Indonesian music. I had fried rice and cereal for breakfast this morning.Indonesians do not have very different meals for breakfast/lunch/dinner, dinner is just the biggest. My family bought the cereal just for me no one else in the family eats it. I think I got all of them. Love you Aunt Sarah!

Q. Ok, so on introduction, you give your name and what to call you...how is that different.  And why do you give your age and birthday?  Do they view b-days like us with astro. signs depend. on when you were born? Or are some birth months better than others?  Or regarded differently?  The big question:  Have you had McDonald's delivered yet?  Or even gone to a "fast food" rest?  love mom

A. Well the first part is the same. But, I litteraly say "you can call me this". I have never had to say that in America because I am not a teacher or an adult introducing myself to kids. I have no idea why they give thier age and birthday. Originaly my host sister said that people often give their home addresses too but, she quickly realized that was too difficult for me to remember. For Rotary I had a long and complex intro that has been mostly worthless. My first meal in Indonesia right after I got off the plane was McDonalds and My family recently had McDonalds for dinner but I have not had them deliver.

8/27/2012

Today my host sister started school again which meant that I was home with only my brother (who is afraid to talk to me) and the servers (who speak little English). I started off the day by going with my host brother and one of our driver to Immigration. I had already been to immigration only a couple of days after I arrived and I came back for my "Kitas" which is basically a long term stay permit. I gave the officials the slip they had given me a week and a half earlier and they took my picture, gave me a different receipt and told me to come back on Friday. I don't know why I have to come so many times but, they have my Passport so I guess I have to listen to them. We came home, I studied Indonesian a little and I looked at my school schedule and decided what classes I want to take. I don't know if my choices will be approved so, I will put them online when I know for sure. For dinner I had a bite of Cow Brain and some Cow lung (cooked a different way) I also had rice, some fried veggies, tofu and a few chicken nuggets. My host family laughs every time they tell me what food is for dinner. I think they enjoy making fun of the fact that Americans are spoiled and only eat the meat from animals not their organs. I am loving Indonesia more everyday and I can't wait until I can speak fluently in the language.

8/27/2012 Highlight

I spent several hours today just sitting on our families porch that looks out onto the street from the second floor. I really enjoyed the breeze and the sounds of my neighborhood as I studied Indonesian and napped in the sun. :)

8/24/2012

Indonesia is so diverse, even more than America is. Only a couple of days ago I was participating in traditional activities in a couple of small towns and yesterday I visited Trans Studio. Trans Studio is a hotel, mall, and theme park combo and it is huge. It is only a couple of miles from my house and it is a popular place to go with friends. Complete with a full size movie theater on it's top floor the mall is significantly better than the town center mall in Ponte Vedra. My host father made a point to tell me that Trans Studio is only one of several large malls in Bandung and wanted me to point out a modern Indonesia... not the wild jungle that so many of my friends still think it is. We also visited my host father's family in the local graveyard. My host father's Mother, father and brother have all died and we went to pay our respects. The Indonesian graveyard was like nothing I have ever seen in America. It was huge but, more than that, it was crowded. The graves included a headstone and then a rectangular area marked with stone or tile. The graves were so close to one another that we were forced to walk on the graves to get to my host father's family. We found the graves and just sat there for a minute then my family spread flowers and water over the grave. Afterwards in the car they asked me how often I went to my families graves in Florida and I have to tell them that I have never been to one of my ancestor's graves because only my family lives in Florida. Family is very important here in Indonesia. For Idul Fitri they all meet up, no matter how far, to talk to each other. When they were explaining the tradition to me they kept saying "like Christmas, all of your family gets together for Christmas". I had to explain that my family is too far away and that I rarely see them. I see my grandparents in Virginia the most, but that is only a couple of times a year. Don't get me wrong my imitate family is very close. We play together, talk with each other do everything together but, I have never been close with my extended family. Sometimes I wonder if I really want to get to know my extended family better, according to all the stories, most of them are completely crazy. I don't know maybe everyone's family is crazy. Well, anyway my family here in Indonesia is doing pretty well, I have no complaints.

8/25/12

Today, I was privy to a huge culture shock. Apparently it is completely normal to just show up at a relatives house with no prior notice. At about 6pm we had about ten people knocking at our door. Now, maybe they did call ahead and my family just didn't tell me but, I rather doubt it.We watched TV, ate snacks and talked. They were all really nice, and seemed happy to meet me when I introduced myself. My Rotary introduction was all wrong.. so my host sister helped me fix it. They don't identify themselves the same way we do. My introduction now includes my name, what they should call me, my age and my birthday.  After about two hours of casual conversation everyone said goodbye and left. When everyone was gone I ate dinner with my family. We had a great conversation about the faults in both our countries educational systems. In Indonesia, school is mandatory through the ninth grade. But, in the suburbs and small towns there often are not schools, or if there are schools they don't have teachers, or supplies. Children are often unable to go to school because they cannot walk to a school, and the government cannot force them to go to school and they do not have to resources to make schools and hire good teachers. So, many people stay uneducated, and they are forced to work in manual labor jobs of become a beggar, living on the street. In America we have our own problems, as you all know. We have great schools and terrible schools, inspiring teachers and teachers that make you want to slit their throat. As a family we talked about these problems and how they really hurt the people that need them the most. I really wish that government officials would stop looking at numbers from stupid tests that I am sure that I could pass with my eyes closed and start looking at how their decisions affect their country. I know that it can't be easy, that nothing will make everyone happy but, I hope that one day school systems will benefit more people around the world.

 8/26/2012

Today was the last day of the holiday for my sister, so my family just stayed at the house and relaxed while she prepared for her classes. So, I don't have any interesting stories to tell today. Instead I want to talk about the roads here in Indonesia. Let me start by saying that the "basic" rule is to stay on the left side of the road. Most people here drive motorcycles, they are cheaper, easier to move in traffic and they can fit up to four people. They are just normal motorcycles not extra long or anything but, I have seen entire families ride on one bike. Indonesia driving is kind of like driving in New York. For those of you who have been you know that there are rarely lines dividing a two lane road and if there are lines drivers do not try very hard to stay between them. There are always cars zooming everywhere. In Indonesia, the infrastructure is very bad. Most roads are much narrower than what any American would deem fit for two cars to ride side by side. One particularly bad road has one direction of traffic riding six inches lower than the other side. The higher side had lots of ups and downs it kind of looked like this     (----____------_---___-----) I'm not even sure how our car made it through. Because the road is so bad, it takes cars a long time to travel especially at night which is when I was on the road, so the less patient motorcycles ride on the right side of the road just so they can go a little faster. Let me tell you it is one of the scariest things in the world, to be driving minding your own business and then to have a motorcycle coming right at you. Almost every day in Bandung there is traffic and when my driver is behind someone that is going too slow for his liking he just zips around them. It doesn't matter if there is a car in the other lane coming right at us. I would think that my driver was just trying to kill me but I see other people drive that way to, so I know it is just the norm. Motorcycles drive between cars, cars do what every they want and buses play "my car is bigger than yours so get out of my way". I am glad every time that I get in a car that I am not allowed to drive here. Thank you Rotary for saying me from driving a horrible tragic death. Although, I am sure that even given the choice I would never want to drive here. I am going to start doing something that I did in America with my family every night. We would go around the table at dinner and all tell our  "highlight" of the day- the best thing or the funniest thing that happened to us that day. I plan on posting one every night just before I go to sleep (or at least I will try).

8/26/2012 Highlight

Today I spent some time with my sister at the local park which is right behind our house. A bunch of her friends were getting together before most of them go back to work or school. We just sat in the park, eating snacks  while some of the guys played soccer. It was fun in an unplanned sort of way. It is really obvious that they are really good friends and love hanging out with each other and I am just glad that I was allowed to tag along. I would also really like it if any of you people reading this would message me questions you want to know. I will answer all of them on the blog... no question is stupid. I have been asked all sorts of ridiculous questions about America by my family here so I am sure that I can answer some weird questions about Indonesia too. :)

Holiday cont.

 When we were done searching the rocks for any forms of life we walked to the forest. There was a trail through the forest and we followed it. We saw deer, lots of monkeys and a flying squirrel. We walked through a cave with lots of stalactites and stalagmites, a strange rodent-like-thing that kind of looked like a mix between a hedge hog and a two foot long rat and hundreds of bats. One of the rocks sounded hollow when we hit it, making a drum-like sound. The cave was not very big but it was large enough to walk through. When we were done we walked back down the path. I got within 6 inches of a monkey. We got back on a boat and went back to our hotel. The next day we had planned on going to the Green Canyon. Apparently, there is a green river where you can ride a boat to a underground cave. Complete with a 5 meter rock that you can jump off into the river below. I was so excited to go but there was too much traffic. It is a two hour drive from our hotel with no traffic so there is no way that we would be able to go with traffic. I hope that one day I will be able to go back and jump off that rock. We ate lunch in Pangandaran and then headed towards Bandung again hoping that we could get there with no traffic. We had no such luck. It took 5 hours to get to Ciamis where we were forced to spend the night at the great-grandma's house (along with several other family members). We slept for a couple of hours then got into the car again hoping to beat traffic, this time we did. At 4 am I guess no one is on the roads. We drove until we finally got back home to Bandung. Well that was my vacation. The food was good, I guess I am getting used to it. I successfully used a "squat potty" which isn't much more than a hole in the ground. I am still coughing a little but it is getting much better. I'm sorry I wrote so much. Love you all!!! Alaina :)

Holiday in Ciamis and Pangandaran

8/22/2012

I just got home from a one week vacation for Idul Fitri. Idul Fitri is the huge celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. It is one of the largest holidays on the Muslim calendar, much like Christmas in Christianity. Every year people flock home to where their oldest family member lives, or where their family lives. For my family, that meant driving to Ciamis, a small town about two hours away from Bandung. But because most people in Indonesia leave the big cities and migrate to the small towns, all of the roads are full of dead stop traffic. Now when I say traffic, I don't mean "wow there are a few more cars on the road than normal", I mean that if we are lucky we will travel three kilometers in an hour. The short two hour drive took almost ten hours to complete. (When I get back to America I am sure that I will never complain about traffic again). When we finally got to Ciamis, my family stayed at a hotel for the night. At one point, the power went out for no apparent reason. When I asked my host sister why the power went out she said it could be any number of reasons, including a government  forced power outage to save power all over Indonesia, the hotel  might not have enough money to pay for power so they turned it off to save money, or there could be too many people in the city using too much power and the city could not handle it. Coming from a wealthy part of Florida, I am not used to losing power in anything less than hurricane like storms and all of these reasons made little sense to me. In the morning we woke up early, and the family all got in the car. I had no idea what was going on so, I did not have my camera with me. As we rode in the car, there were hundreds of people walking in the same direction. I was now very confused I did not have any idea what was going on. After a couple of minutes we arrived at the "Alun-alun" or the town square. We got out of the car and my host dad and brother went somewhere else while my host mother and sister walked together. My host mom bought newspaper which they laid all over the ground. On top of the newspaper they laid their prayer rugs and we sat down on the ground. We were soon joined by my host grandma and great-grandma. We all sat in the same area while we listened to the Mosque sounds (I don't really know how to describe then kind of a megaphone sound with a man singing or chanting in Arabic).  While we were waiting everyone started putting on elastic skirts and head-dresses that covered every inch of them (except their face). Even the youngest little girls were wearing their own. I suddenly felt naked in my short sleeved shirt and jeans. My host sister told me that the outfits are special and are for praying. After a little while, everyone stood up at once (there must have been a signal that I missed) and my host sister told me to stay sitting with her great-grandma (she must have been at least 90 and she could not stand up by herself very easily). Then with more of the chanting the congregation broke into prayer. They brought their hands to their mouths folded them, put them by their sides again, then they put their hands on their knees, stood up, then knelt down. They did this a couple of times all perfectly timed so that everyone did the same thing at the same time. The entire process took less than five minutes as I sat on the ground watching in wonder. I have never seen anything like that in my entire life, and I am sure that I would have never seen that if I had stayed in America. When the praying had ended my host sister walked me up to see another area so I could see how many people had been there. Thousands of people were all around a mosque that was at the front of the town square. I have never seen that much devotion in one place before, all of these people had traveled endless hours so that they could get here to pray for five minutes. My family took their prayer clothes off and we got back into the car. We went to the great-grandma's house. My family got to the small house first. My host sister warned me that some of her family would be coming to ask the great-grandma for forgiveness. Apparently for Idul Fitri it is tradition to ask everyone in the family older than you for forgiveness. To do this, we all stood in a line oldest to youngest. One at a time a person would ask forgiveness of everyone older than them until no one was older than them, at that point they would take a seat in the line and people would ask them for forgiveness. I participated hugging and kissing my great-grandma, my grandma, my dad, my mom, my uncle, my aunt, my brother and my sister. After this ceremony we ate a little and as we relaxed more and more people started showing up. I cannot remember  who I met, or how many people I met. All I know is that the small house was full to the point of bursting. After tons of people had arrived we repeated the 'forgiveness' ceremony with even more family members. After talking and hanging out for about an hour everyone started disappearing. Our family was one of the last people to leave. We finally made it out to the car and drove down the road a little until we ended up at a little graveyard. Everyone that had been at the house had relocated to the graveyard where we would remember those who had already passed away. The older members broke into a sad sort of song that I think was meant to morn and praise those that were already dead. We sat in the grave yard for half an hour listening to the singing.  We then drove to a different set of relative's house where we had another light snack and more social time before we went back to the hotel. I was then told that we would rest for an hour before we would leave for Pangandaran (a small beach town that my host family often vacations in). Apparently we had finished what we needed to do in Ciamis. This drive was much better, with much less traffic. It still took almost three hours to reach our destination, the Sophia hotel.  My host family is full of surprises, one of which might be that they own the Sophia hotel (named after my host mom). Diandra (my host sister) and I unpacked in our room and then we walked down to the beach. As I stood at the edge of the Indian Ocean and watched the sun set I could only think of the wonderful people that I know on the other side of the world, standing on different beach, with a different ocean watching the same sun rise. We played some games on the beach as a family, eat some local food and then went to sleep. Fanny is one of my cousins and she lives very close to my family in Bandung, so I had met her before. She also stayed in Diandra and my room. We woke up early in the morning and ran straight to the beach. There was already tons of people on the beach. We played in the ocean for a while, jumping in the waves then we ate some local vendor's food for breakfast. After breakfast the water was too cold for us to want to get in it again (a little colder than the ocean in Ponte Vedra) so we went to the hotel pool. When we were done we went back to our room to take a shower. The bathroom was set up so that the shower had no boundaries and the water sprayed all over the bathroom. Which meant that the floor in the bathroom was always wet. My cousins, my sister and I played cards for hours. I learned how to play lots of their games most of which were fun, some of which were confusing. After playing their games they begged me to teach them an American card game. Well, I love card games but most of the ones I play have complicated rules or need special cards so I taught them the only thing that I could think of "BS". It took several minutes of explaining and example giving but my Indonesian family picked it up quickly and it is now one of their favorites. They get so excited and are always asking me to play BS with them. They laugh every time someone gets called out on a lie and is forced to take tons of cards. Diandra turns out to be very good at BS and after a couple of rounds she was the reigning champion.  It was so much fun messing around and playing with my cousins. Eventually we were all tired, so we decided to take a nap. The power was out so the lights were off and we all tried to get some sleep. After a few minutes the power came back on, with several groans as all the lights turned back on. I quickly got out of bed and turned the lights back off then laid back down. The youngest cousin in the room was a little boy who had been randomly flipping cards over while we were playing (making lying even harder), so I already was not very happy with him. He thought it would be very funny to go turn the lights on again so he flipped the switch on again while we were all trying to sleep. I calmly got out of bed again turned off the lights then, I grabbed the little bay opened the door and carried him out to the cheers of my other cousins. This girl does not like people messing with her nap time! We then we able to get a couple of hours of sleep before one of my uncles called us to lunch. (Lunch is served at 2 or 3 and dinner is served at 8 or 9) We slowly got up and went to go eat. After lunch we were told to get ready to go to the national park. I grabbed my camera and we started walking. We must have walked one mile so that we could get to a different area of the beach with even more boats than our beach had. After our long walk we got on a boat and took a short ride to the "white sand beach".  (The sand in Pangandaran is all black). We landed on the beach and went to explore the ocean life. The place was so sad, there was trash everywhere and I cannot believe that it is a national protected park. Tons of people were walking on rocks in a shallow part of the ocean and searching for wildlife in the rocks. I was surprised to see a man carrying a plastic bag with an eel in it. I have no idea what his is going to do with it. Most likely leave it in the bag until it dies and he has to throw it away. It was too small to eat, only 7ish inches long. The amount of destruction was disturbing. I have never been an environmentalist but, this was sad. Trash was everywhere (like most places in Indonesia). When we were done

8/17/2012

I guess I should start by saying that the mosquitoes here are even more vicious  than they are in Florida. After the first night here I had more than a dozen bites and after a week here I have a dozen bites on my right foot. I must always wear mosquito lotion all over my body to try to keep the bugs off me but, no matter what I do they continue to eat me alive. If my itchy limbs were not enough I have had a terrible cough for the last 5 days. By my second day in Indonesia I was coughing a little and by the third I had a high fever and was coughing a lot. The fever came down fairly quickly but, the cough is unending. I drink water, more water, take cough medicine, sleep... everything that my host family and I can think of but I will not stop coughing. A food update: I have now tried chicken intestine, chicken guts(I'm not really sure what part I ate), cow guts, dried cow lung, and a whole fish. When I say a 'whole fish' I mean that someone literally chopped the fish in half took out the inedible parts (not the gross parts just the parts that are impossible to eat) and then fried the entire thing. The fish still had its tail, its eyes and I might have thought it was a joke (or a gag) until my host father took a huge bite of the fish head first eating everything in his way. Not lying I almost threw up, the fish was staring at me the entire time... watching me eat it. I could only eat some of the meat and told my family that I was afraid to eat the rest of the fish. This of course brought on a huge amount of jokes and teasing from my host family. In Indonesia they eat all of the parts of the animal when I told my host sister that fish in America are served without the head she said "but the brain is very delicious". I am sometimes scared to see what is for dinner because my family always says "try this" and when I ask them what it is they tell me that I should eat it first. I feel like my journal should have been called, "weird things I ate in Indonesia". Tomorrow I will go on vacation with my family. We are going to the beach where we will eat lots and lots of seafood. I will make sure to take some pictures so all of you that read this will not think I am making it up. Well I guess the good news is that I will lose some weight on this trip and I will never starve because rice is served with every meal.  

My first days in Indonesia

8/13/12

Four days ago I got on a plane in JAX. From JAX I arrived in JFK New York. JFK was huge and dirty. The service was terrible and I was forced to stand in a line for almost two hours to get my boarding pass. While I was waiting though, I made some new friends... a mother with her two younger daughters was traveling to Frankfurt and another lady was going to get married in Jakarta, Indonesia. When my six hour layover ended I boarded the plane. After eight hours we stopped in Frankfurt for one hour and then we got on the plan again to continue to Singapore. That leg of the flight was twelve hours long. I got the window seat, which sounded good but we quickly had to shut all our windows and I had to ask two people to stand up every time I wanted to go to the bathroom. Everyone who knows me knows that I can sleep anywhere, whether that place be in the middle of Chemistry or Physics or English or any number of classes/movies/activities that I have slept through over the years. Well it might come as a surprise to you that I did not sleep a wink. Instead I watched four in flight movies (The Lucky One, Mirror Mirror, Battleship and The Hunger Games). I think I did sleep a whole hour towards the end of the flight but then I was woken up for breakfast service.  We landed in Singapore at 6:30 and my connecting flight did not leave until 2:55. Which meant that I had a lot of down time. ... and more time.....and more. When I finally got on my flight to Bandung I was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly. The plane landed and I went to go through Customs and to get my luggage. When I walked out of the airport there were so many people waiting for me. It was so nice for everyone to come and say hi to me. I went home unpacked and promptly fell asleep for several hours (I guess not sleeping for 2 days does that to you). My host family is so nice, they are helping me learn Indonesian quickly. Yesterday we went to a traditional dance and music show. They were amazing! There were tons of little kids all playing instruments and dancing around, I wish I was that talented. The main instrument that is famous for Indonesia is called the Angklung. It is made of bamboo, and at one point in the performance we all got to play the instrument but we only have one Angklung, most of the musicians had fifteen (or more) of them in different sizes to make different pitches. When the show was over we went to a restaurant where I sat on the floor and eat with my hands. The food was very good, including the tofu and the orange and coconut drink I had. After doing and learning so much I again collapsed into my bed. Today I woke up, watched TV with Diandra my host sister and then we went to Immigration. The entire process was very confusing and involved making copies, taking pictures, signing mysterious documents, making more copies, handing tons of people my Passport and waiting. So after all of that I will hopefully get my Kitas Visa (which allows me to get a one year Visa). After all of that I went with Diandra to my school where they where happy to see me but, had no idea why I was there. Apparently the headmaster had been changed and the old one had failed to tell the new one about my arrival. All of the teachers were very nice and open and promised to get everything worked out. When we finally got home we walked to my host family's grandparents house where I meet more family. Two of Diandra's cousins walked us home and we played some traditional Indonesian games-- none of which I was very good at. The games were all very fun and I guess they only take years of practice. Again after an exhausting day I collapsed into my welcoming bed.

8/14/12

Today I woke up and we went straight to my school. Aunt Melly had worked everything out and the school printed me a schedule. Actually I have four schedules.... one for each grade in the school. If I have a class that I don't want to take in one grade, say Chemistry for example I can switch to another grade to take another class say Manual Drawing. I will be taking a lot of animation classes here and I have to bring my laptop to school everyday. I do have a school uniform which will do little to hid the fact that I am a foot taller than most people here, I speak very little Indonesian, and I am white. The school had to search for a uniform big enough for me because I am so large in comparison to the average Indonesian, some of my things they had to order because they didn't have my size. HAHA. I took a tour around the campus and while I was walking around I passed a class that didn't have a teacher and was comprised mainly of teenage boys. All of them stood up and started shouting as I passed. I waved to them and they really went crazy all shouting questions at me in both English and Indonesian. As I moved on some of the teachers actually walked out of their classrooms to ask me if I would be in their class. It is good to be loved :) After I was done touring and talking to the administration I got in Aunt Melly's car. I thought she was taking me home but an hour latter I found that we were driving up the mountain, the opposite direction of our house. We ended up at one of Aunt Melly's friends house. The parents were Indonesian but the children were all raised in Seattle. We had a very nice lunch together. I had chicken satay and sorry mom but theirs was even better than yours. Then we drove back down the mountain with the family. Then we went to the Rotex meeting where we helped put boxes of food together for poor people. After that we went to dinner with the family we meet today. We got home, slept a couple of hours and then woke up at 1:00 to give the boxes of food we had made away. Because it is Ramadan, most people in Indonesia (all the Muslims) do not eat while the sun in up. The poor people suffer during this time because it is hard to get food, which is why we went around in our cars passing out boxes of food to people that were working. I found it hard to believe that anyone would be working that early in the morning, but they were. It was a great experience, all of the people were so thankful to get any food at all and they were all more destitute than the poor in America. I felt so bad for them, and I wanted to hand out more but we ran out. Together the Rotex passed out nearly 400 boxes of food form 1:30 to 4:00am. I was so glad that I woke up so that I could take part in something so great. This is what Rotary is all about, helping those who are trying their hardest to survive by giving them the basic necessities of life. Thank you Rotary for letting me come on this great adventure.