Hey everyone!
This is my first blog post from Indonesia, and I hope that many of you all will enjoy reading about my experiences throughout these ten months. First, I should get all of the complaining about travel out of my system. My itinerary was as follows: Louisville -> Chicago -> Hong Kong -> Singapore -> Jakarta -> Surabaya -(car)> Genteng
-American Airlines: can you make your seats smaller and food worse? Thx.
-SIXTEEN hour flight from Chicago O'Hare to Hong Kong -> Cabin Fever
-Two days in airports and I'm not sure how much sleep I got.
-Passed through Hong Kong and Singapore, but didn't get to see anything in either of these majorly cool cities
-An eight hour car ride from Surabaya to Genteng was the last thing I wanted after getting out of the airport, especially when you get stuck behind a car wreck on the way.
-Jet lag still makes me want to go to sleep at 4:00PM
Baiklah. Okay. Now that's out of the way. Sunday night, when I got to my house in Genteng (as of now almost a home), everyone wanted to make sure that I was welcome. Three teachers from the school rode with me from Surabaya, and the school's headmaster along with his niece, nephew, and a few neighbors were there to greet me. Indonesians are big on community, and being alone and independent is seen as somewhat odd, so they brought along a guy about my age to stay with me for a few nights in case I felt lonely. I politely declined. I also got to meet my neighbors across the street, who are already proving themselves to be wonderful people; just now (today is Tuesday) they invited in to chat and eat Kelengkeng (dragonfruit). After everyone (sat in my living room and tried to chat me up, then) finally left, I couldn't sleep, so I tried to unpack. When I say unpack, I mean wander aimlessly to and fro in my house checking everything out. At about 11:30 or so, I finally settled into bed and straight up KO'ed.
My house is pretty excellent. I was willing to settle for a tiny 1-bed-1-bath apartment, but instead I get a 3-bed-1-bath-huge-kitchen with a very nice entryway/living room. I guess I should say though that the two bedrooms not occupied by me currently stand empty. I have no idea what I'll use them for... The first thing that Pak Safuan (an English teacher at my school) showed me was a bike that belonged to the two previous ETA's. After seeing Indonesian driving, including two wrecks, I think it will serve me much better than a motorbike could. Bathing is a strange experience; there's a showerhead, but no shower per se. The entire bathroom is like a big tiled bathtub. I can shower or ladle tepid water over my head from the big reservoir in the corner. I like my showers very hot, and considering that the temperature of the water already makes every muscle in my body seize up, and that spraying the water through the air will cool it further, I'm going to stick with the ladle. Even though I'm worried about mosquitos, I've decided to keep the reservoir filled with water because a returning ETA says that sometimes the water cuts out. By the way, what's the incubation period for those little bloodsuckers? Actually, I thought that my water cut out all day yesterday, but flicking the wrong light switch in my kitchen serendipitously demonstrated that I have to turn on the water pump in my house for there to be running water. Life in Indonesia is going to take some getting used to. Oh! I already have pets in my house! There are geckos (cecak, sounds like "checha") EVERYWHERE! They're great to keep around since they eat mosquitos. Like I said, my house is pretty excellent.
Yesterday, I visited my school and met some of the teachers and administrators. Tomorrow is Indonesia's Independence Day, and I'll be watching a flag raising ceremony at the school in the morning, so I'll talk about my workplace and all the characters there once I have more to say.
Most of today and yesterday has been traveling back and forth from Genteng to Jember (about an hour, hour.5 in the car) dealing with immigration. I have to get my KITAS, which is kindof like a temporary green card, so I'm filling out a fair amount of paperwork and doing alot of waiting. Yesterday was 4 hours of waiting and today was another 4. From what I've seen so far, it seems that paperwork is not Indonesia's strong suit. It's all done now, except for picking it up when I'm finished, which I may not even need to be present for. Keep your fingers crossed. The "fun" part of all this was learning Indonesian and one sentence of Javanese (which I've already forgotten). Pak Safuan tried to teach me how to say "I can speak Javanese" in Javanese, which involved alot of moving my mouth in ways it never thought to move in. However, when I tried to get him to tell me how to say "I cannot speak Javanese," he thought it more prudent to teach me a different sentence. I was more successful at his other lessons: numbers, time, days of the week, and asking "How much for X?" I can now count to 999,999 if I can remember the words for hundred (seripu) and thousand (seratu), which I keep mixing up. There's nothing like learning your numbers to make you feel like a child. I'll get them down eventually, especially since 100,000+ Rupiah is not an uncommon price for some common household items.
That's all for now.
