10/4/2012
Questions
Q. Thanks for all the writing
you do. I love reading your experience over there. What kind of vacation id you
school for? Do you and the other exchange student get to switch lives in 6
months? I know I would miss toilets.
A. Thanks for reading! I
missed school this week because the classes all had exams and everyone knew I
would fail anyway so the Rotarians told me I could stay home. Then I missed
school because I was in Cirebon. We do not 'switch lives'. I stay at the same
school all year and I change host families four times during the year. But, none
of the families I will stay at will host any of the other exchange students
this year. Most of the time I can use Western toilets. In public places most of
the time there are only squat potties but, they are really not that bad.
10/4/2012
I just stayed at home
today. Nothing to exciting. I went to Angklung practice with Leti. The inbounds
in Bandung will perform a skit at orientation so we decided to play the
Angklung. We will be playing and singing a children's song. The song was pretty
easy to play even though we both had to play four Angklungs to play the song.
After practice I went to Leti's house and slept the night. Both of us would be
traveling to Cirebon again to help with a Rotary project and visit Bridget.
10/5/2012
It felt like I had only
been asleep for a couple of minutes when I heard Leti's phone go off. I woke up
to find the phone vibrating near me, and Leti still asleep. I knew I didn't
have to wake up until 5am so I moved the phone so that it would not wake me up
if it went off. At 5am Leti's alarm went off and things started happening very
quickly. Apparently the phone was going off because Aunt Melly had tried to
call it no less than thirteen times (opps). The car that we were planning to
take to Cirebon was already at the house when it shouldn't have been there for
another hour. Everyone in Leti's house was running around and Leti and I tried
to get ready really fast and get to the car. The car left without us. We were
going by 'travel' which is a van that picks people up at their house and then
takes them to another city. The car picks up several people and you all ride
together. How should we have known that when Aunt Melly told us the car would
be leaving at 6am that it would be at our house ready to go at 5am. Time is a
fluid concept in Indonesia but normally things happen after the allotted time, not
before. So we called the service and arraigned for a different car to pick us
up. When the car finally came we were the first people inside. The car picked
up more people from all over Bandung and then we headed to Cirebon. Traveling
in Indonesia is like a two-for-one you get to another really interesting place
and you also get to practice your mechanical bull riding skills. When I was
living in Florida used to complain
about this one turn that always had pot holes. Every time I had to make that
turn I would think "Someone should actually do their job and fill those
pot holes." I didn't think that I was spoiled, but now I know I was. The
Police system here is very corrupt. It is cheaper to pay off the cop than to
get a ticket so, to solve the problem of speeding the Indonesian government
decided to put in millions of "sleeping police men" (That is what
they call speed bumps). You can barely go down a road (except for the highways-
which are relatively few) without going over tens of dozens of speed bumps. The
drivers here are so used to speed bumps that they slow down just enough to not
hurt the car- and not a bit slower. Hence, the mechanical bull riding skills.
There is no highway from Bandung to Cirebon, which means we must travel down
mountains, threw small, desolate towns and across tons of acres of rice fields.
I ride there was not that bad, long, slow and bumpy; but not too bad. When we
got the Cirebon we were the last ones to get dropped off. We arrived at
President Melly (not Aunt Melly- this Melly lives in Cirebon is the president
of the Cirebon Rotary club and is the widow of a very wealthy German businessman).
Her house is huge and beautiful, I guess when you own a furniture store you can
really go over the top on decorating your house. A little while after we got to
the house Bridget arrived. President Melly made us lunch, which is very strange
because most rich people have their maids do all of the cooking. I ate steak
for the first time in two months, it was different from steak in America but it
was still delicious. The rest of the day was really relaxed. We explored the
house, watched Ice Age 3 in 3D on President Melly's super awesome TV.
10/5/2012 Highlight
I love being able to relax and hang out with
other exchange students. And I thought it was really funny that Leti and I
traveled by ourselves because we are technically not allowed to travel by
ourselves until the last two months of our exchange.
10/6/2012
We woke up, and ate the most American breakfast that I have
had since I was here. Normally I eat rice and whatever my maid made for
breakfast. Today, I got oatmeal, toast, cheese and Martabak (a type of cake). Yummy!
Then we got in the car and went to the Rotary convention that was our excuse to
be in Cirebon. Rotary was sponsoring a free testing for Cervical cancer for the
women in a very poor part of town. We
took pictures said hi to lot of people and 'supported' the event but, there
really wasn't very much for us to do. We stayed at the event for about 2 hours
until we decided that we had done our Rotary duty and we went back to President
Melly's house. We packed up our stuff and moved to President Melly's mountain
house, which is also huge and ornately decorated. We then had a lunch of Spaghetti,
Sate and other great foods. Bridget had a party that she had to go to with her
host sister so, while she was at that I took a nap. I woke up from my nap in
time to sunbathe next to the pool and talk to Leti about school. She goes to
SMK 1 (vocational school 1 in Bandung) and she studies tourism. It turns out
that tourism is much more boring than multimedia. She has to memorize the names
of airports and other useless stuff. Ironically, the people in her school can
barely speak English. You would think that people majoring in tourism would
need to be able to communicate with international tourists. Anyway, her school
is very strict and the teachers do not understand the fact that her grades are
not important, so they yell at her and put lots of pressure on her to do well.
She is not happy at her school and it turns out many of the other exchange
students are not happy at their schools. This year is the first year where
almost all of the exchange students are going to SMK (vocational school)
because Rotary thought it would be more fun. Orientation is coming up and I can
already tell that we will be having some long conversations about school. When it
started to get dark (about 5:30pm- it gets dark really early here) we went to
dinner. The restaurant that we went to had a great view of the city of Cirebon.
The food was good. One thing about
Indonesians, they are never in a hurry to end a meal or a social event even
though we got to the restuarant at about 6 we didn't leave until 9. Bridget,
Leti and I spent the time taking funny pictures and walking around the restaurant
(it had several floors). While we were walking around in the gardens below the
restaurant I caught a toad. When I was younger I used to catch frogs all of the
time. When I went to show the other girls they refused to touch it, apparently
not everyone likes frogs. We went back upstairs hoping that the adults were
almost done with dinner-- They were not. In the restaurant there was a singer
and electric piano player that were playing the live music. The singer was not
very good and she kept singing the wrong words to the songs. The adults got
tired of her singing so they shouted "Stop, stop! They sing" And then
they pointed right at us. We were just standing in a corner minding our own
busness but no, now we have to provide entertainment. We reluctantly made our
way up to the stage where the singer asked us what you group was called and
what we wanted to sing. We ended up singing "Someone like you" by
Adele. The lyrics were very confusing and skipped all over the place (I now
understand why the singer was messing up). We were each given a microphone but
quickly learned that only one of them worked. Wanna get who got stuck with the
working mike? It was me of course, my terrible voice was the only audible one. When
the song finally ended we were all too happy to sit back down but, we didn't
get that far. Instead of releasing us we were then asked to dance to the next
several songs. None of us can dance. It was like Prom all over again except in
this version of prom only three people were dancing while everyone else just
starred. The Rotarians joined in the dancing after the first song. It was
actually a lot of fun. In a thousand years I would never have expected myself
to get up in front of a group of strangers and then sing and dance but, I did.
And now I have one more funny story to share with my friends from "when I
was in Indonesia". After the dancing finished we went home. Bridget and I
went swimming in President Melly's pool at about 9:30pm. Because it was late at
night and we were high up on the mountain it was very cold. It is a weird
feeling to be cold after being hot for so long. After our short swim we
showered and went to bed.
10/6/2012 Highlight
While we were at the Rotary convention there was a little
girl who so cute. Most little kids are scared to death of me because there are
almost no white people but, this little girl kept walking by me and waving. I
said hi and then told her that she was very beautiful which caused her to run
off again. When she came back I asked what her name was, it is Sophia. Then I
asked her if she would take a picture with me and she said no. But, she didn't
leave again so I had her take a picture with me anyway. I chased her around the
building and she kept waving at me. When it was time to go I said goodbye. I
love little kids :)
10/7/2012
We made pancakes this morning. They were so good. We packed
and then took 'travel' back to Bandung. The trip felt like it took forever.
When I got home I got the best surprise ever.. two packages from Mrs. Crocker.
If you don't know Mrs. Crocker all you need to do is she is a mix between a
fairy godmother and wonder woman. Really she is great. I got everything I could
have possibly wanted including Easy Mac, Hot Chocolate, Skittles, Starbursts,
Assorted Chips, Betty Crocker cake and brownie mix, peanut butter and tons of
other perfect stuff.
10/7/2012 Highlight
The packages Duh..
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