Gimana, Miss Erin?

Heya,

It’s been a while, a 17k cycle to Prambanan temple on a bike with no gears (but a basket!) and a beach trip involving getting splashed by high tide and frightened by angry geese since I last wrote…

The internet cafe I’m at doesn’t seem to be able to upload my photos which is a shame but nevermind, suffice to say it is the end of Ramadan tonight and the mosques, fireworks and celebrations are going off!

Tomorrow and the next day are public holidays, where people generally go and visit family, ask for forgiveness for any wrongdoings over the past year and eat.

I’m at a wonderful homestay in Salatiga, a town in the mountains of central Java. It took about 3 hours by minibus to get here through the winding roads, by car or motorbike is more like 2 hours (less too-ing and fro-ing droping people off, waiting and so on). After a week of assignments and progress exams, five ACICIS people chose Salatiga to spend this uni break, and yesterday we trouped out to a waterfall that was so powerful you only need go in the general vicinity to get soaking wet, and saw Merapi quite close up on the way back. (Mt Merapi is the local active volcano, quite spectacular but often obscured by cloud and maybe a little Yogya pollution. From Yogya we can only see it occasionally despite it being so close to the city.)

Today I started my research (for a research unit) on Festival Mata Air, an environmental/arts festival to be held this year in October. More on that later, it’s going to be great (concerts, street parade of costumes made from rubbish, stalls and sculptures involving recycled stuff, mural painting etc etc etc)!

Apalagi….oya, just for fun, here are some of my favourite new Indonesian expressions. There are some great ones too, people who study the language tend to sometimes say lots of new words just ‘make sense’, for eg ‘jam tangan’, literally ‘time arm’ means ‘watch’. My new faves are:

Shortcut – Potong Jalan – literally, ‘cut street’

Back streets – Jalan Tikus – literally ‘mouse streets’

Speed bump – Polisi Tidur – literally ‘sleeping police’ (is that not gold??!!)

Subheading – Anak Judul – literally ‘child heading/title’

Satu dayung, dua pulau terlempaui – means ‘with one stroke two islands can be passed’ (as in rowing) – Indo expression for killing two birds with one stone.

I like that one. Alright, back to the homestay for me, lots of eating (home cooked meals, yum!) for me to do the next couple of days!

There were a couple of rooms with exhibits, around a courtyard with graffiti, bands and really old trees. We’re talking wow where did you get branches like that twisted old skool trees.

Hm keep leaving my camera at home – but have some great photos from earlier this week to put up, soon I promise! This past week has brought lots of surprises:

*No. of yummy meals eaten at ‘buka puasa’ (break the fast) time in the evening – at least 5, about to be 6 with chocolate pudding date set up for tonight!!

*No. of realisations that things just don’t happen quickly and it’s best to just relax/slow down…..several. At least 10.

*No. of days ridden to uni on purple bike with basket – 2.

*No. of days lost riding to uni on purple bike with basket – 2.

*No. of cute kids, awesome little stalls, fun hills and chickens spotted while lost on bike – countless.

*Instances of ‘sakit’ from dodgy food – one but recovered stronger than ever!

*Number of assignments completed in Indonesian – 2 so far and one was a group presentation! Yes, spoken in Indo! Also 3 incomprehensible comments attempted in Indonesian.

Also other cool stuff:

*Sunrise from balcony listening to call to prayer.

*No. of art exhibitions attended = 1. And awesome. I’ll post pics – there’s a museum in the South part of the city which is basically a garden/graffiti work on the ground surrounded by a couple of buildings. Went opening night when there were bands too.

*SALSA!! Whoo hoo, there’s a bustling salsa dance scene in Yogya. The ‘class’ on Tuesday was in a cafe, very relaxed, learn/practice/relax as you will/when you get tired type thing…

Hmmmm that’s it for now…

*Went with a friend of a friend to her village last saturday to drink fresh coconut juice, paddle around the local river and generally get fed until I popped! Eight of us went, and learned a new word. lintah. means leech.

*Wayang Kulit performance Saturday night was great, actually a performance not just for tourists – there were Indonesian people there too! After an hour of table tennis awards and welcome speeches (?) the show began.

Then after another hour of Gamelan and high Javanese one of the puppets actually moved.

After another hour there was some dancing, then a fight.

Sounds boring but it was very zen, especilly the sweet tea on the side of the road with the gamelan going in the background!

*Have tried to settle schedule for uni copious amount of times, but alas, it’s common for lectures to be cancelled the first week, or move times, or for more attractive classes to come to one’s attention (African politics is the place to be, banget!) or for disappointment (others went to modern Indonesian history which turned out to be run by the archaeology department. So still working on that one.

*Got a push bike today, to get to uni. Hopefully the pedal won’t fall off as Tom’s did on the first day.

*Did I mention it was Ramadan? A host of fun, getting up at 3 in the morning with kos mates to eat in the dark! Eating during day still ok for me but just trying not to do it in front of anyone is hard in a country of so many people. So will probably end up quasi-fasting sometimes!