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.