My trip to Jogja, part I

This is my friend, Fera, that I often mention in my blog. She invited me to spend a few days before Christmas with her and her family in their town, Jogjakarta, which is an hour flight away, in central Java. (Sentul is in western Java.) They were very sweet people, and they tried to show me different traditional things about Java. I had wanted to see a shadow puppet performance, but that didn't work out...but I still had fun visiting Jogja.

Below is a brief outline of some of the highlights of the trip. I had too many photos to post them all into one post, so that's why there are 2 different posts about my trip. Enjoy!

This was an ancient "water palace" of former sultans from hundreds of years ago. We took a tour of the palace grounds, which weren't that fascinating, and learned all about the sultans. Basically, the sultans were polygamous perverts.

Fera and I walked to a waterfall one day. It wasn't a gushing waterfall-more like a trickle-but it was still fun to see it.





This is kind of a dumb photo, but there were monkeys above our heads along the trail to the waterfall, and I'm giving one a piece of trash to feed on. He enjoyed it. :)

Fera took me to a mountain overlook in hopes of seeing a volcano there, but it was too foggy. Bummer. So, instead, I was trying to figure out why these huge, peach flowers bloomed upside down...?

Another day, we went to see some ancient temple ruins. Actually, the temples weren't ruined from being old. The ones in this photo were ruined from the earthquake in Jogja 2 1/2 years ago. There were about 8-10 temples still standing, like the one in the background.

I climbed up on part of some temple. It wasn't as exciting as my face makes it seem, but I did see a dead bat inside.

I also frequently mention Detty in my blog, who also lives in Jogja. One day, she met up with us at Fera's cousin's house. This is the snake that Fera's relatives said was a nice snake that "wouldn't bite me". That's because it COULDN'T bite me, because its mouth was taped shut. I don't like snakes, but I think this is wrong. So I screamed and ran in the house until the relatives put the snake back in the bag. (Fera took this photo for me. Thanks, Fera...) Detty's wearing the snake and taunting me, trying to get me to wear the snake, too. No thanks...

This was Fera's little cousin, who played with the snake like a jump rope. Scary!

After everyone put the evil snake away, they offered me some fruit from their trees as compensation for my trauma. I'm eating a small, soft, spiky fruit called a rambutan. You have to peel them with your fingernails, and you eat the inside, which tastes like peeled grapes. They almost qualified as compensation. Almost.

My trip to Jogja, part II

On Monday night, the night before I left Jogja, Fera and Detty and I watched a Ramayana ballet in an outdoor theater, under the stars...for free! The Ramayana is an oral epic story that's all about kings and queens and giants and monkeys being kidnapped and/or fighting each other. Some are killed and come back to life, and some should have been killed but miraculously don't die. It was a lot of fun to watch, and even though I didn't understand the words, I had a general idea of what was going on in the story. Here are some highlights...

We met some of the monkey actors before the performance. There were about 10 little kids who jumped all over the stage, and parts of the rooftops, as monkeys.


We also got to meet some of the main characters after the performance. The guy on the left was a king who tried to rescue his queen (center) from the giants. The white monkey was a "good" character, as was the tiny little monkey, who did cartwheels all over the stage, even when she wasn't supposed to. :-P


Here's a good-looking guy... yeahhhh...

And here's one of the actors, trying to kill me. Great pose, huh? :)



This is part of the backstage, where the instruments and singers were. The singers wailed the Ramayana in ancient Javanese, so even Detty and Fera had no idea what they were singing. But it was still fun to watch and guess!


This photo is a little too dark, but you can kind of see the instruments they used for the performances. One of these is a gamelan, which has been used in these performances for hundreds of years. (But I don't know what it is.)

Merry Christmas! Selamat Hari Natal!

***MERRY CHRISTMAS!***

***SELAMAT HARI NATAL!***

It is Christmas Eve afternoon, and it's definitely THE hottest Christmas Eve I've ever experienced. I never have any idea what the temperature is, so don't ask me, but I'm sure it's in the 100's or so. I sweated like crazy when I went outside this morning to go grocery shopping. Ohhh, how I long for the freezing cold, snowy, Midwest Christmas Eve!

(And yes, I'm basically rubbing it in for those of you who ARE freezing right now, although I really do miss snow...)

I've been playing with Alia for the past few hours with random Christmas stuff. I've got a terrible cold/cough, and either Alia's getting sick, too, or else she's doing a great job imitating me whenever I cough...

At any rate, Alia would like to wish you "Selamat Hari Natal", which translates as something like, "Happy Day of Birth".

She helped me decorate my Christmas tree. She did a pretty good job, I think!

Ornaments! Silver beads! A Christmas tree! How exciting! :)






Caaaarefully putting on silver ornaments takes much concentration!

Here is the result of an exciting activity: cutting Christmas trees and snowmen out of wrapping paper and taping them onto a piece of paper, after pronouncing them correctly and counting them about 20 times. Naturally, Alia's a ham and insisted a photo be taken of this amazing accomplishment. :-P

Tonight, some other expats and I are doing some Christmas caroling down the streets at their house. We're also doing a Christmas cookie exchange. (I think mine will be the only cookies that aren't homemade; they're store-bought because I'm too scared to use my oven.) I bought some Swiss Miss hot cocoa, so we're trying to make it feel like home as much as possible. I think it'll be too hot to drink cocoa, but I'm sure we'll do it, anyways.
I came back last night from being at my friend's house in Jogja for a few days. I'll post photos and commentaries later this week. Right now, I need to shower...to cool off...because I'm so hot and sweaty as I write this...and now I'm done rubbing it in!
Merry Christmas!

It's finally Christmas break!

I am now officially on Christmas break! It’s definitely a weird thing, because I know I’ll miss my kids next week. (THAT has never happened before! It just says a lot about how awesome the students are here!) It’s weird to not be with my family, or not be freezing cold, or not see snow or real-looking snowmen, not the creepy-looking things in window displays here…

On Monday night, I had a (small) party in my classroom for the dorm students who were still here. Only four kiddos came, which was fine. We ate junk food, did a wrapped gift auction with big money, and watched “Elf”.

Here, little Nina is decorating my Charlie Brown Christmas tree. (The tree topper is the ribbon from my flowers from "JT and the Pirates".)

Aprilia and Malvin are ardently bidding $45,000 for 3 rubber bouncy balls.

After Deborah (right) outbid Nina for a $75,000 present (felt reindeer antlers), Nina realized she was all bidded out.
Poor Nina.
:)








Yesterday was called "Christmas Chapel Day". The actual chapel program took all morning, but then the student council kids had activities for everyone in the gym for the rest of the day. It was crazy, but fun. :)
During the last week of school, before Christmas break, the elementary kiddos go to all of the senior school classrooms and sing Christmas carols, in hopes of being fed candy as a reward for good singing. These second graders were SOOOO cute and precious! They visited me right before lunch and had been singing all morning, and you can see it on some of their faces.

Here, they're singing "Away in a Manger". Awww!
(I think the little boy on the left was burned out from singing and performing at this point. He's clearly lost all sincerity...)


They sang something else that I didn't take a picture of them performing, and then they finished with "Feliz Navidad". They actually did the Spanish pronunciation quite well, especially considering they probably had no idea what they were saying.

I decided trying to teach today was going to be pointless, so I did "educational play". Here are some photos of my silly seventh graders from this morning. They were supposed to be acting out random Chrismas songs.
Here, Vicky, Melani and Larissa are doing "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town"...


...and Regina, Jackie and Nicole are three of the eight reindeer for "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer".

My only other class on Wednesdays is tenth grade drama. Only two-thirds of them showed up, and they'd done some hard work for the Christmas chapel program yesterday, so we watched the movie "Elf", which, sadly, most of them had never seen. (I love this movie; can you tell???) I made it educational; we observed and discussed Will Ferrell's awesome facials and reactions. :)

I leave for Jogja tomorrow morning with my friend Fera, who's been in some photos on here. I come back to Sentul on the 23rd, so I'll write about my trip then.

Friends and pirates and grading--oh my!

If you haven't heard from me in awhile, have no fear, I am here. You haven't heard from me for one of a few reasons...
A.) The Internet company shut off my Internet at home because I didn't pay the bill. Yes, I know that makes total sense, but it's a long story why...
B.) I've been sailing the high ocean seas with play rehearsals and performances of "JT and the Pirates"...
C.) I've been drowning in the sea of grading that I couldn't grade because of the play.
The play has now been over for a week-and-a-half, and I've used every waking minute since then to catch up on the grading. The grading is now FINALLY over (and there was great rejoicing), and I can finally catch you up on my life. If you care.

So my birthday was 2 weeks ago. For my birthday, the other expat girls and my two Indonesian girlfriends and I wanted to go somewhere. We ended up going to the richest mall in Indonesia called Plaza Sanayan. That place was ridiculous; all walls, ceilings, and floors were either glass or marble, even the Starbucks. But what was really ridiculous was the way Indonesians decorate here. (Note: when we decorate for Christmas in the U.S., we usually stick with a color scheme and decorate tactfully, thinking "less is more". Here, that phrase isn't applicable whatsoever. Indonesians think "more is better", so there are gaudy decorations EVERYwhere.) It was really overwhelming to see all of these ugly, shiny things hanging off of perfectly nice decorations from the ceiling. We were all ready to leave after a few hours. (I didn't buy anything because I'd just bought furniture, which I'll show in a future post.)

Here we are, eating an eclectic assortment of ethnic food... ....mmm...
Chrissie, Shirley Anne (sisters), Alison (all Canadian), Detty, me, and Carrie. (Fera took this photo)




It didn't really feel like a birthday to me, mainly because no one sang "Happy Birthday" to me... :( We were just too tired to really enjoy our night out, so it was a super, low-key night out. (Read: kinda boring) But I shouldn't complain because the girls are very sweet.

The first weekend of December was filled with the play. We had 2 performances on Friday and Saturday nights. Each performance had many glitches, but I was past the point of caring because I was so proud of my kiddos. :) We had students running the sound cues, lights, and learning backstage work, so it was an enjoyable learning experience for everyone.

Here are some of the wonderful actors from the play: me, Chikara, Jan, Abhi, Sherwood, and Priscilla; in front, Ivana, Jerome, Kristie, and Fabio. They're so awesome!


And here's a cast and crew photo of most of our amazing set that the backstage students constructed themselves. (Or they hired people to do it. Either way, Eric and I had nothing to do with the set construction.)

On Saturday night, I took a much-needed break from grading my acres of papers to go to the cast party at the (extreeeemely affluent) home of 2 of the actors.

Here is a picture of a small taste of what we did at the cast party. Here, Jerome (a.k.a. "Cheffy", the pirate) is battling a mud fight with Jennifer and Cattyla, the backstage crew. The answer is obvious who won this fight: Cheffy vs. Backstage Crew, 1-2.

Normally, a cast party involves the actors and directors regrouping one last time to chill out, eat junk food, and watch the play, and then leave the party. Not so here. Apparently, this was an all-day affair, but Eric and I only went for a few hours. I joined the mud fight (against my will), battled several pirates single-handedly who tried to throw me into the pool, and taught someone how to play "Chopsticks" on the piano. Because we both had grading to finish, Eric and I left before the barbecue and fireworks. Yeah. High-class entertainment!
I'll post again in another day or so. I now only have Internet at school until I can figure out how to communicate with the terrible Internet company...

My trip to India

So I went to India over the weekend and came back 2 days ago. I've now gotten some rest after pulling an all-nighter on the returning flights, so now I can write about my trip.
But...in all honesty...I really don't have much to say. India was India. Basically, everything you've ever read about or seen in magazines and in photos about India was what I saw. I also think I smelled every possible smell, all at once, too. I saw 23 cows just walking through the streets-8 were tying up traffic-or sleeping on the sidewalks, next to people. (We almost walked into a sleeping cow! They're monster cows!)
Anyways, I went to Mumbai for a 3-day workshop with 2 other women teachers from my school. We went to get training for some curriculum we're using for our subject areas, but that's boring to write about and no one wants to hear about it...so I won't talk about it.
The photo above shows a developing site for business buildings. Our convention center building was somewhere in there. It was a 25-minute bus ride from our hotel to the convention center. On our bus ride, we drove by both extreme wealth and extreme poverty, often next to each other. There was also this inherent layer of dirt and dust on EVERYthing outside, which bothered my eyes. Also, the weather wasn't burning hot; it was MUCH hotter in Jakarta when we came home than it ever was in India. It was actually very breezy there.
Anyways, at one point, we needed to meet one of our workshop leaders for something at the hotel they were staying. The leaders get to stay in this POSH, 7-star (out of 5) hotel-no joke. I took the above picture from this hotel.

Here's a terribly fuzzy photo of a man playing the sitar for hours non-stop in the lobby.

And so...I got bored waiting in the lobby for the leader...so I took out my frustration on the scary man on the golden wall. There was an ENTIRE wall of various scenes from the Ramayana, and from other mythical stories. Very weird.

I don't know how well you can see it here, but there was a cute little rocking elephant by the front desk. :)

This was on the back of some vehicle I saw, haha...

These scary-looking, mafia cars are taxis. They're even scarier once you get inside them. They're majorly ghetto, but then, all vehicles in India were ancient. The traffic was decent; it was still crazy, but it flowed, unlike Jakarta.

Lastly, here's a photo of the group of ladies that sat together at my table for the workshop: Miriam, Chan Chan, and Laura. Miriam's a Filipino U.S. citizen teaching in Osaka, Japan; Chan Chan's Malaysian and teaching in Shanghai, China; and Laura's Canadian, teaching in South Korea. Yay for culture!
You'll notice you don't see any photos of any street life in Mumbai. This is for 3 reasons:
1. I didn't want to risk losing my camera in public.
2. We were in sessions most of the day, so I didn't want to take night photos when it's hard to see things.
3. My batteries died.
Oh well. Such is life.

Inside my house--downstairs

DRUUUMROLLLLL.......!!!!!!!!
FINALLY, here are some photos of the inside of my house! I came back last week from being on our youth camp retreat and hung up some final things on the walls. Unfortunately, I'd left my camera at Eric and Christine's house. Anyways...here's my downstairs!

This is the blue wall of my foyer as soon as you walk in. Samini does the ironing here.

Here's my kitchen. My entire house was painted this creamy, eggshell color, which, naturally, drove me completely crazy for color, so I painted parts of the kitchen blue. However, I'm just going to to leave the upstairs alone; it's fine with this color.







Kitchen cupboards....dishes... microwave....exciting, yes, I know....


Turn right out of the kitchen and you're in the living area. I don't really know what to call this area...







...but I call this "Alia's Playing Area". See the lovely white TILES??? This is the area that used to be a dirt breeding ground for cockroaches for a month-and-a-half, but...no more! Praise the Lord!!! However, it does still rain into the house, as you can see along the wall. Grr. At any rate, Alia's very happy playing here, rain or not, and so I'm happy. The window peeks into the kitchen, for some reason.

Kitchen table.

'Nuff said.














Living room. The gross, filmy white curtains came with the house, and they serve their purpose, so I'm keeping them for awhile.













I bought Eric and Christine's TV from them because they upgraded to a bigger one. However, I never have time to watch TV, at least, not until "American Idol" comes on in January, so I'll just use it for movies. Once I get a DVD player.

And here's where I sit whenever I'm Skyping with people and working on the Internet, because this is where my Internet is plugged in.

So anyways, hope you enjoyed my little tour, albeit not that exciting. It's still a work in progress, but it's made leaps and bounds since 3 weeks ago. Yay!

Upstairs photos coming soon! (As soon as I clean up my room.)