Jogjakarta

For New Year's Eve I went to Jogjakarta (Yogyakarta) which is the cultural capital of Java/Indonesia.  There I got to meet with most of the other students and tour Jogja.  We spend a day on Malioboro, a famous street in Jogja full of horses, bejak, and tourists.  There are random statues, and batik shops and street vendors everywhere.  I bought a pair of pants that were originally on sale for 50,000 IDR for 20,000 IDR thanks to Juj's amazing bargaining skills.
On New Year's I went with David's family and the other Americans up to Bukit Bintang which is a hill overlooking all of Jojga. There we all ate in several warungs on the side of the hill, slowly working our way up the hill as the night wore on.  We got Indonesian pizza at the top one, the last food of Dua-ribu duabelas (2012) as David's older host brothers played guitar and sang whatever songs we requested.  From the balcony of the warung we watched the fireworks in the city below until people started shooting fireworks sideways out of the window of the warung next to us into the empty night sky.  We almost died when someone fired one out of the window below us and it back-fired.  It was incredibly hot and loud and we left the warung after that, walking to an incredibly crowded bridge.  There were thousands of people were watching the city below and lighting off their own (illegal-in-America) fireworks.  One backfired gray ash all over Darles.  All in all, it was an excellent start to Dua-ribu tigabelas.
 On the second day of 2013 the Jogja Girls and I went to Borodudur, which is an ancient Buddhist temple from the 800s and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  It is full of tourists, mostly from Indonesia, but also other bule with whom we always nodded and shared a wry smile, knowing that both parties had already and would be experiencing the bule treatment.

At Borodudur there is a tradition that if you can touch one of the Buddhas inside the bell-towers then you will have good luck.

At Borodudur everyone must wear official sarongs over their pants and Juj and I became very hot in the afternoon sun so we sat.  Indonesians started coming up to us to request foto-foto.  We allowed them to take one each and they eventually started to form a queue.  We started to count after a while and decided at 50 we would just refuse foto-foto.  We hit 50 but they just kept coming.  Eventually we met up with the other girls who had been hassled in the same way so we decided to pretend we couldn't speak English or Bahasa Indonesia, so we would just speak aggressive gibberish at the people following us.  A couple of the more persistent ones "picked up" on some of the gibberish and started using the words like "Vhundrschlon" and "Zatta" to each other, even though they really have no meaning but we kept repeating them.  Later a professional photographer from Bandung asked us to model for him.  We were about to ride elephants when it began to pour.

Pernikahan Jawa

I worked as a receptionist at my English teacher's daughter's Pernikahan Jawa (Javanese Wedding).  In the morning I went to the actual wedding ceremony at the bride's house.  They are a Catholic family so they had the first dogs I've seen in months.  Ibu was really uncomfortable because if a dog drool lands on a Muslim they have to wash the skin seven times and use holy water on it.
Later we went to the the gereja (church) which was full of music and singing.  I couldn't understand the verses that were said because they were in traditional Javanese, but it all sounded very beautiful.  The bride was crying when she symbolically kissed her mother goodbye.  Because of Indonesia's modest culture when the priest said "You may now kiss the bride" the groom kissed her on the forehead.
I worked at the reception in the evening after about an hour of makeup and teasing my hair into a traditional Javanese cone.  The bride, Jessica, was a law student (here law school is a fall back school) so I worked with all of her college friends who were also part of the ceremony.
It was great to spend time with other kids my age rather than the younger high-schoolers that I spend all day at school with.  I quickly became very adept at small talk in both Bahasa Indonesia and Basa Jawa.



The ceremony itself consisted of the bride showing submission to her new husband (washing his feet) while he showed that he would provide for her (feeding her).  Then they sat in thrones and greeted the thousands (literally) of guests that arrived.

Hari Natal

For Hari Natal (Christmas) and Morgan's memorial, all of the Americans on Java were flown to Bandung (known as Paris van Java).  Which is a beautiful, mountainous city that is much less hot than Surabaya and is renowned for its beautiful people.
Because Indonesia is 88% Muslim, the Christmas spirit is not exactly strong here, especially in Surabaya where there are not very many tourists; so on Christmas Eve, we had to make our own Christmas.  Idaho decided we should do a Secret Santa, so on Christmas Eve we all went out on the back of a fleet of motorbikes driven by Hamza's horde of friends to buy our presents for each other.

On Christmas morning we made our way to Hamza's house to spend the day with his host family.  We walked to the nearest Angkot stop and rode Angkot (which is like a small, hollowed out van that has no schedule or researchable route and costs 10 cents) to a big grocery store.  There we bought pancake mix and all the makanan bule ("white person"/Western food) and hailed Ojek (motorcycle taxis) to bring us up the hill to Hamza's.
It began to rain, and that was an amazing moment, riding three people on a motorbike with Idaho and our christmas gifts (Juj was carrying a giant stuffed panda) up a steep hill, behind a leather jacketed Indonesian stranger (a professional public transportation provider-don't worry), part of a fleet of bule with the hot rain running down our faces and soaking us through the skin.
At Hamza's Sabs cooked a bule breakfast as Juj and I made a tree out of styrofoam from the local Indomaret.  Darles and the others made paper chains and stockings to hang from the ceiling and balcony.  David sang a surprising variety of Christmas songs, until we finally forced him to make a Christmas song medley which he performed with Sabs dressed as Rudolph as a back-up singer/dancer as we video-taped.  Then the street-singers came to our door, singing Indonesian pop songs, so Juj and I went outside to request Christmas music.  They didn't know any and asked us to demonstrate, so we ended up singing to them and paying them for it.

After opening our presents for each other we watched a horribly dubbed (and made) Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas movie on Indonesian TV.  Hamza and I went out with his little brother to play futsal in the yard.  We ended up at the local mosque where little children just appeared out of the bushes to join us.  It ended up being a swarm of maybe twenty little children against us three.  Eventually teenage boys showed up to watch and join.  When they asked me my name I told them "Hamza" and Hamza of course said his real name, so they were really confused but we explained "That's why we're friends," they were also amazed that Hamza was a Muslim and yelled "We LOVE Allah!" which was really adorable.
It started to pour so Hamza's big brother came to pick us up in his pickup truck, so we rode around the countryside scream-singing Christmas songs at the top of our lungs in the pouring rain.


 It was definitely an unforgettable Christmas.  I don't know how next year can possibly stack up.

Monyet

There are monkeys di mana-mana here.  They are pets, in the trees of the city, caged in the pasar, for sale at the pasar binatang for around $30, and roaming the streets performing for petty cash.  Several times I have been woken up by my siblings to go watch a monkey doing flips, or riding a motorcycle, or doing sholat (Islamic prayer) in the streets.  Or the worst is the monkey that wears a mask and plays a dischordant mini-guitar.  It's just about the creepiest thing I've ever seen.

Indonesian Muslims don't believe that animals have souls and that they were put on earth by Allah to serve and feed humans, so animal rights aren't really respected here.  Muslims believe that being kind to animals scores points for the afterlife, but it is not a major requirement.

Thus these monkeys are kept in chains and tiny cages.  People encourage them to smoke cigarettes because they think it's funny.  I hate watching the monkeys dance in front of my house because they obviously hate their abusive masters and have lost the spark of life in their eyes.

Modeling

At the end of November I modeled in Indonesia for the first time.  My city partner "Idaho" and I spend around three hours in hair and makeup.  Here they have different standards of beauty and think white skin is prettier than tan skin (and braces are attractive-but I was spared from those-sudah ("been there, done that"), so I think they may have actually whitened my skin before they applied foundation, which I was not very happy about.  Idaho ended up getting half of her eyebrows shaved off, which she didn't realize until after washing off all her makeup.  She had a permanent slightly quizzical expression for about a month after that.
Modeling here was incredibly fun, though it was basically impossible to stand in my 5+ inch heels.  It was great to work with the male model, Rexi, though, seeing as I hadn't been allowed to stand within touching distance of a male for about three months at that point.


Also I got to meet many of the secret gay Indonesian community, which was really fun.

Minggu Kedelapan

For the Islamic New Year we had the day off so my family decided to go to the beach and take a traditional boat to Madura.  We went to a cultural area where I saw Buddhist, Confucianist, and Hindu temples.  There I performed a ritual of freeing caged birds over the sea.  This ritual was slightly ironic because the local people know the nearest grove where the majority of the birds immediately fly to, so they recapture them and sell them to the bird-seller to be released once again.
Once we got on the boat, which was about twenty feet long and five across we motored out to a mountain in the middle of the ocean.  It was far from shore, but there was a circle of water about two feet deep at the summit of the underwater mountain where boats were gathered.  There were children playing in the warm, extremely salty water and there were lots of jellyfish which made me a little nervous.
We also passed friendly fishermen who stretched their nets across the parts of the channel with the strongest current.  They all had almost black skin from spending their lives in the reflection of the equatorial sun.  I got the first serious sunburn of my life that day and consequently convinced my host family to buy a potted aloe plant.
We passed under Suramadu, which is named in the Indonesian style of combining two words (Surabaya and Madura), and is (one of) the longest bridges in Southeast Asia.  Indonesians love to exaggerate, so here I've already been on the "longest escalator" in Asia/the world and the "longest bridge".  As a non-engineering oriented American Suramadu honestly doesn't impress me that much, but all of the Indonesians in Surabaya are very proud and interested in it.  There are many tourists who go to visit the bridge as a destination rather than use it for its utilitarian purpose of crossing to Madura.

In Madura the boatsman brought us to his village to see the traditional process of boat-making there.  There was a woman on the empty beach of Madura "trash-picking" and bringing the salvageable bottles, sandals, and other miscellaneous trash that the tides bring in to the market to sell.  At the boat-making house there was a small bug wriggling in the sand that all of the adults pounced on, much to my confusion.  Apparently it was a traditional medicinal bug that is very valuable.

After returning to the city I went with my neighbors to visit the Wali.  Ibu told me not to request anything from the Wali  because it's rude.  I was nervous about meeting a "religious leader" in Indonesia and even googled "What to wear when meeting a wali" to no result.  I ended up wearing jilbab (headscarf and modest clothing) for the first time.  I was surprised to learn, upon arriving at Masjid Ampel that the Wali are actually the holy Muslim men who spread Islam throughout the archipelago.  They have been dead for hundreds of years and we were going to pray at one of the Walis' tomb.  Near the Wali's tomb there was also a little graveyard with nine tombs, one for each of the nine lives of the fabled janitor who died, but was resurrected eight times in his passion to keep the mosque clean.

Fact:
If you say "Friday night" here it can mean both the night before Friday (Thursday night-like "Friday's Eve") and Friday night, which can get very confusing.

Morgan

On December 1st, 2012 one of my fellow exchange students and a close friend of mine, Morgan Lide, drowned in Bali.  It has been really hard to blog in these past months.  I have opened up my computer many times, feeling guilty about not documenting my journey, but it is too painful to talk about but also too important to leave out.  Basically my whole month of December was dedicated to working through my personal pain and issues with her loss, and even after that, her memory and my feelings about her loss have been twisted into everything I do.  It's finally now, that I feel like I can extract the personal from the factual and describe my adventure in Indonesia to the internet in general.

Minggu Ketujuh

This past week I've been switching classes every day in school so that I can get to know all of the students and classes offered at my SMA.  It's been interesting for sure, to be the New Kid, day after day, and everyone is super friendly and welcoming (asking me to stay with their class for the rest of the year) but answering the same questions over and over has gotten frustrating.  

• "What do you think about Indonesia?"
• "Is American school different than Indonesian school?"
• "Where have you already been in Surabaya?"
• "What is your favorite Indonesian food?"
• "Why are you vegetarian?"
• "What do you think of our class?"
• "Do you have a boyfriend?"
• "Who is the most handsome boy in class?"
• "What is your religion?"
• "Why aren't you practicing?"

Every single day.

This weekend I went to the Indie Clothing Expo with one of my classes.  It was strange to be in a friend group made up entirely from one class.  It was almost like a field trip.  I asked one girl why her boyfriend didn't come too and she said it would be "inappropriate" because it was a class trip and he was actually playing pool with some of his own classmates.  Surabaya has an amazing population of independent clothing designers.  Everything was very cheap and unique.

Sunday my family went into the countryside to spend some time with my sixteen year old host brother who lives year-round at an Islamic boarding school.  I wore my new jilbab and we went to an outdoors park.  There we did a rope course and zip lining, here called "Flying Fox" (which with an Indonesian accent sounds exactly like "flying fuck" and caused quite a miscommunication beforehand).  My host siblings rode four-wheelers but I declined to because it's so common in America and I think it's just a waste of gasoline.  And they were driving at a max of 10mph.  We also went to Terapi Ikan (Fish Therapy-note the Bahasa Indonesia word for Therapy is Terapi-they absolutely cannot pronounced the "th" sound so they replace "th"s with "t"s when they borrow English words) where swarms of little fish eat the "dead skin and stress" off of your feet.  I couldn't keep my feet in for more than five seconds at a time-these fish were so much more aggressive than those in the Missisquoi back in Lowell.  My host brother actually started bleeding in several places from the bites.  Later we went swimming (in a fish-free pool) where I taught my little host brother to swim while everyone else in the pool watched.  There was one other bule there.  My host family said "Look, it's your friend." and I glowered at them.  Just because I'm not Indonesian does not mean I'm friends with the retiree german tourist that's checking out all the young Indonesian women.

The rainy season was supposed to start weeks ago, but I've only experienced one hujan (at desa on a hot night.  I asked Ibu if I could go out and "shower in the rain" and she was very polite and concerned about what she thought was me asking to walk around her village naked.  After that was cleared up I was allowed outside fully clothed where I danced in the downpour) rather than the daily torrent that is normal at this time of the year.  Everyone here blames global warming.

The dryness is causing dust to accumulate everywhere.  Apparently this dust contains small worms that landed on my hand and bit me causing a rash.  The rain needs to come soon! 

On Wednesday I missed school to attend an "Election Party" at the US Consulate in Surabaya.  After going through airport-procedure security I was allowed inside the compound.  There I saw the first American flag I've seen in a month-which evoked more feelings than all the American flags I've seen in my life before put together.  It was so strange to be surrounded by fluent English speakers and signs that I could actually 100% understand.  I went from being the tallest back to being the shortest person in every room.  It was great to talk to the other ex-patriots there and cheer when CNN projected Obama's win.  I'm pretty sure all of us were liberals.  We also ate american food, but even the Consulate was unable to find good cheese in Surabaya.  I've been searching for weeks and at the Consulate I asked every other bule I met, but none of us could find any.  But one of my Indonesian friends did find Nutella for me this week, which I bought off of her (because it's ridiculously expensive here) and she has now become my official Nutella-dealer.

Tomorrow, November 10th, is Hari Pahlawan (Heroes' Day) in honor of the Surabayan heroes of Indonesia's National Revolution who fought in the Battle of Surabaya against the British and Dutch troops.  At school today we dressed up in kebaya, army outfits, and doctor's uniforms (and other "heroic garb") and had traditional contests such as nasi tumpeng (rice-cone) making, batik, and a best couple contest.  I wore Ibu's kebaya and spent the entire day working on my batik that I slaved over so long that I never want to see again.

Minggu Keenam

Eid Al-Adha is an important religious holiday for Muslims.  This year it was celebrated on October 25th and 26th.  Devout Muslims across the globe prepare for it by fasting.  Fasting makes a person more empathetic and charitable, and helps teach one to transcend the physical wants and temptations of the body.  I fasted two days with my family (they cannot eat after the first morning prayer-so we all woke up to eat at 3:30 am so we'd have energy for the day, and fasted until the afternoon call to prayer-around 5:00).  I cheated and drank air (water) because I worried it would be unhealthy for me not to.
The main event of Eid Al-Adha is the sacrifice.  The origin of the animal sacrifice is a story recognizable to both Christians and Muslims.  Allah (God) wanted to test the faith of Ibrahim (Abraham) so commanded him to sacrifice his son, Ishmail (Isaac), to prove his true loyalty.  But just as he was about to sacrifice his son Allah provided a ram to sacrifice instead as a reward for Ibrahim's submission and his son's acceptance.  This slaughter day is a continuation of this story, both proving the faith of the followers of Islam and providing donations of meat to up to twenty families per cow.  In Indonesia I only saw sacrificial cows and goats but across the world camels, sheep, and rams are also slaughtered in a halal manner.
Friday morning there was no school (though my school did a slaughter of goats of its own-that I'd seen tied up in the front yard for a week before and the other students said that sometimes they cried, as if they knew their fate) so I dragged myself out of bed to head over to the block gathering place were the sacrifice was taking place.  Four men dragged in a beautiful and reluctant sapi who was then tied and wrestled to the ground by five more men.  Then they cut off the head of the sapi.  And I don't mean they slit its neck, I mean they literally sawed through the bone and blood and tendons until its head rolled away.  Worse than the projectile blood squirting at least five feet from his artery was the post-decapitation twitching, almost as if the cow's body was still trying to run away.  And the absolute worst part was the attention I continued to get even during this "solemn festival" men were asking to take pictures with me.  How was I supposed to smile while an animal's lifeblood was squirting out onto my jeans?  I felt horrible that this magnificent creature's last moments were upstaged by someone who garnered attention only because of her (not very) different skin color.
When I went home I kept washing my hands compulsively and ended up cleaning the entire fish pond because I felt like I needed to help some kind of animal after not raising a hand to protect the cow from slaughter.
The next day my family and I went ke desa (to the village) where I refused to watch a second time.  Instead I went for a run in the sawah (rice paddy) and had my first authentic conversation with an Indonesian stranger in Bahasa Indonesia, explaining who I was, who I was staying with, and that I was not lost, I just "lebih suka alam" (prefer nature).  My Ibu later told me that the orang desa (country people) were much cleaner and more efficient at slaughter and I probably should've watched that sacrifice instead.  One other man in desa doesn't eat meat and couldn't watch as well so after running we went and picked mangos.

The evening of Eid Al-Adha the extended family visited a a teh (tea) plantation that was on the top of a (volcanic?) mountain and had been founded by a reclusive dutch man "lama dahulu" (long ago).  The views were stunning and I swam with the sepupu (cousins-my favorite word-pronounce seh-poo-poo) in a mountain spring-fed swimming pool.  The first naturally safe air that I have encountered in Indonesia.  The whole time I was on the mountain I felt extremely antisocial and angry so I went for a walk in the woods to try to change my mood.  At the time I chalked it up to homesickness or just tiredness.  But later Ibu told me a story from when she was in high school and camped out at that same teh plantation with a group of around fifty students.  Apparently sixteen kids (including herself) were possessed and began to speak in Bahasa Belanda (Dutch) and the village elders had to be summoned to preform an exorcism.  I've concluded that there is either a malevolent spirit or a gas leak on that mountainside.

The next day we visited an old dutch fort named Vanden Bosch that was built inside a hill so it couldn't be seen from all around.  The fort was crumbling and full of vines, trees, ayam-ayam (chickens) and there were even a few families that live in the ruins.  There were no other tourists, but it was obviously a local hangout spot.  I love that Indonesia has so many amazing places and rich history that people can just hangout at these sites without being swarmed by tourists.  I don't view myself as a tourist and feel offended when people call me a pelancong on the street.  I'm not here to take pictures and buy souvenirs.  I'm here to become a legitimate member of budaya Indonesia (Indonesian culture) and sometimes just want to yell this at the people who call me pelancong but know my broken Bahasa Indonesia and still strong accent will kind of defeat the purpose.
Within the ruins we found a well preserved grave in which lies an Indonesian rebel.  He fought the Dutch all his life and apparently every way they tried to kill him failed.  So they buried him alive.

The next trip was to an archeological dig site on the Bengawan Solo River called Trinil, where the "Java Man" (first humanoid to be found outside of Europe) was discovered by a Dutch man.  Bengawan Solo is the longest river on Java and lama dahulu the river served as a waterway between the ancient kingdoms of Java so there is still lots to be found in its banks.  Many people still sneak down to the river to illegally dig.  While I was there I saw an original mammoth's tusk.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful except for a nine hour traffic jam.  That was hell.