Home Again, Home Again

Well. Here I am. Back in Honolulu. It feels odd. Mostly because I have been too tired to do anything. Also, I want to be back in Indonesia. Just how I feel today. Maybe tomorrow will be different?

Hey Japan! How you doin?

So I made it to Tokyo. Rainy, rainy Tokyo. It is a bit of a bummer that it is raining. It cut my day in half but that is ok. I have a lounge with free wifi, thank you United Airlines, and soup to keep me entertained and warm. So how did I get here? It started with a bad salad. I ate a salad for lunch from the hotel on Sunday. I knew better… but it sounded so yummy. It must have been washed with dirty water because I got very ill. Right before I had to fly. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Because I was sick Matt stopped by with a Mizone and Poccari Sweat for me because he rocks. He also let me borrown 50,000 rupiah in case there were extra baggage charges at the airport since I was running low on cash. Thank goodness I did. The exit fee for international travelers has jumped from 100,000 rupiah to 150,000 rupiah. I had put aside 100,000 rupiah a long time ago but didn’t know it had jumped. So thank you Matt! You saved my traveling behind.
Waiting in the Yogyakarta airport was fine. It is a small airport and I only had an hour to wait. It was the Jakarta airport that was kind of a pain. A pain and then ok. The pain was because I had to go get my checked bags from Yogya and then check back in with All Nippon Airlines. First the staff told me 2D, which is actually D2 and was also wrong. THEN the staff told be ANA didn’t operate out of this airport. I MEAN COME ON! Know what airlines fly into your airport. Especially when you work for INFORMATION. Then finally someone pointed me to D1 which is where ANA actually was. Then, the nice part. ANA has a private lounge with quick immigration right before the private lounge. That was perfect. They also had soup and since my stomach was still a bit shaky that was a sight for sore eyes (and a sore stomach!). So I waited in the lounge till boarding time and got on the plane and left Jakarta.
The flight was very nice. I slept! Me! I slept on a plane! Well first I watched Invictus and had a bowl of noodles. Then *drumroll* I slept! I was so surprised when the stewardess woke me up for breakfast. I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep on a plane. Business class is the best. Even better, I woke up close to Japan. I love Japan. Japan just makes me happy. I wish I had more time here and more money. Ha.

Entrance to the shrine

After I got off the plane I went to Naritasan Shinshoji Temple in Tokyo. Immigration wasn’t too bad and it only took me from 7 to about 7:45am to get out of the airport and to Narita station. Then I walked the 15 minutes to Naritasan. It was a nice little walk but man was it humid. I should have known it was going to rain on me by the feeling in the air and the color of the skies but I didn’t want to believe it I guess. The shrine is beautiful. Even when it it dreary and drizzly. There are a few reasons I chose this shrine to visit on my one day in Japan. 1.) It is beautiful 2.) It is close to Narita Aiport and wouldn’t cost that much to go to 3.) the kabuki connections to the temple.
Ichikawa Danjuro, the kabuki actor, prayed for the safety of his child at the temple. After his baby was delivered safely he because a strong believer in the temple and created a strong link between the Danjuro kabuki family and the Naritasan temple. I wanted to buy a bunch of protective Gomafuda, wooden amulets, for people… but I’m out of money. It is the thought that counts right? I am really sad though because it was my goal to buy two long life amulets for my kabuki teachers from this shrine because of its kabuki connections and I couldn’t afford them. It kind of broke my heart. I could afford an amulet for studying. Hopefully I can just get my PhD and that will make them proud and make up for the fact I couldn’t afford two amulets from Naritasan.

My “It is raining and I don’t like it” face

One other thing was a bummer. The rain. The rain was a big bummer. As I’ve mentioned I was low on funds and couldn’t afford an umbrella. I normally wouldn’t mind being caught in the rain. Especially since I was feeling healthy again. However, I had my laptop in my bag and that could not get soaked. So I was forced to hide form the rain and eventually give in and walk back during a dry spot. Which turned out to be a good choice because it poured a bit later. Once I got back to the airport I sat in the United lounge and watched it pour. It was nice to be somewhere dry with warm soup while it came down outside. Now I have only… oh…  6 hours left till I get on a plane. I guess I will entertain myself somehow. Shopping? Hello, Hello Kitty! Here are some photos of my day trip in Japan to entertain you!

Me at the Temple

Graves can be beautiful sometimes

Temple Grounds

Beautiful three tiered pagoda

 

 

 

Life of Leisure

Today was lovely. I have a very leisurely day. I slept till 10am. Got out of bed and made some yummy White Koffie. Aka yummy low acid coffee from the Kopi Luwak company. Then I sat. I sat for a whole 3 hours and did nothing. I just watched TV, drank coffee, and enjoyed the day. It was lovely. Then at 1 I went to the spa! Hooray! I got the milk bath treatment which included: body scrub, massage, sauna, body mask, milk bath, and ginger drink to end. It was so nice. I am smooth as a baby’s bottom now. And relaxed as… something that is really relaxed. Clearly I may be too relaxed I can’t think right now. Or it was the green temple. More about that in a bit. The spas was just lovely here at the Yogyakarta Plaza Hotel. The women were all very nice and the treatments were wonderful. As I have mentioned my skin is smooth, smooth, smooth. Also, I had the coolest bath. The bubbles were honestly two feet higher than the bath. It was the most bubbles I have ever seen in my life. There were more bubbles than even a comedy bath on a TV show would have. SO MANY BUBBLES. I loved it. The bath was a bit hot though. I didn’t spend the whole allotted time in the bath because it was so warm. But that is ok. It was enough time to soak off the body mask and relax even more. I sparkled when I got out of that bath. My face was red and red for an hour afterwards though. I was sparkly and red.
After the spa I did something shocking. I relaxed some more. I relaxed until 7pm. Then I had dinner with Matt who got into town today. It was nice to see him since he left culture night early to do a night hike of a mountain. We went for dinner and drinks afterwards. I had a Green Temple. It was a nice vodka-y drink. It was a nice end to a nice day. I’m now happy, full, and relaxed. Hooray!
Tomorrow I leave. I don’t know what my plan is yet for the day but something will happen I’m sure. Even if it is more relaxing since I’m at the end of my money, that is ok too. I get on the plane to Jakarta at about 5:30pm and land at about 7. I leave Jakarta to go to Tokyo at about 9pm. Hopefully the Jakarta layover wont be so bad. It is only 2 hours but I really hated the Jakarta airport so we shall see how it goes. Then I have my 12 hours in Tokyo! Hopefully I can exchange the small amount of American money I put aside and it is enough to visit the Narita Shrine. Also hopefully it doesn’t rain! That would be a huge bummer. All will work out the way it should though.

Here is to some more travel!

Goodbye Salatiga, Goodbye Friends… for now

Lookin’ Javanese

Today I said goodbye to Salatiga. I write this from my hotel room in Yogyakarta. I have such mixed feelings still. Yogya is amazing, fun, and exciting. Salatiga is home. One day, next year, Yogya will be home for me… but I think Salatiga will always have my heart. Salatiga is where Ara is. It is where Daniel is. Where my LTC girls are. Where Dono is. Where I met and got to know Emma, Megan, Matt, and Julia. Where I got sick and healthy and sick again. Where I learned my limits in many respects. Where I finally got to use my Indonesian in a practical sense. It is just home to me in Indonesia and I think it always will be. It has its downsides, of course. Nothing happens after 8pm. There wasn’t a lot of freedom living in a homestay. At least my first homestay. But the weather was temperate and the people were warm. I will miss all of these beautiful people. I will miss being able to use my Indonesian. I will miss so many things.

Rock On.

So how did this goodbye start? Well it started Thursday night with a goodbye dinner for our LTC Friends. We loved them so. So the COTI kids took out the LTC Friends out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. The restaurant we went to the first week for Amazing Race Salatiga. It was kind of a nice closing. Dinner was a lot of fun. We joked, we talked about ghosts, the games we played at LTC as a closing day of “learning” that day, and especially the “flirting” game we played. We were given a random word and had to turn it into a flirt.  Megan had the most hilarious one. Hilarious and creepy. Her word was “cute.” So many ways she could have gone with this but she said her head was a bit fuzzy and this came out: “Emma, are you sure you’re grown up? Because you’re cute as a baby.” I keep telling her it sounded a bit like it came from a dark van with no windows and a ‘free candy’ sign taped to it. Either way it made for a hilarious option for the LTC ghost to yell at scared victims. It made our goodbye dinner even funnier.

The LTC Gang

Then there was Malam Budaya or Culture Night. A fun night where we all get dressed up in traditional clothes, show off what we learned in our culture classes, and get our final transcripts. It was a great night. Now I was in cooking class so the “skills” I showed off were not as impressive as the silat or dance class but I did chop one hell of a tomato. I also got a transcript and a certificate! Yes, that means I passed. I was a bit worried there for a while because my language is still a bit weak. Not nearly at the same level as Emma. Then again, I haven’t lived in Indonesia for two years. Now I have lived here for two months though! And I know I have improved!

Pretty Ladies

The best part of this evening? Everyone was there. One: All the COTI and PIBBI Singapore kids made it from start to finish. We were all there. Two: All the staff and LTC Friends, homestays, etc. were all there. It was such a nice time to see everyone and say goodbye. It was a bit unreal. It didn’t really hit me, even as I said goodbye, that it was ending. I was just so excited to be dressed up and to see everyone else dressed up. Sadly, it was goodbye though. Which made me very sad. However, there was something that made me very happy? The amount of awesome photos I got from Malam Budaya. We all looked so good. Even if it was goodbye… it sure was a fancy and sexy goodbye. Here are some of the photos from our goodbye.

Dance from Aceh, Indonesia

Mad cooking skills

Silat! YAWR!

The COTI kids and Bu Juliana

Class Arjuna

Me and my travel buddy!

And now? Now I am in one of the coolest hotels I have ever been in, The Yogyakarta Plaza. It is awesome. I’m glad I treated myself to the $60 a night hotel over the $30 a night hotel. Today I checked in, went shopping with Megan, had lunch at a VERY yummy vegetarian restaurant in South Yogya with Gde and Megan, and then went swimming while enjoying our “welcome drink.” After swimming Megan showered and headed off to Jakarta. It was sad to say goodbye to another person but I’m glad she is starting her journey to Jakarta and then to Aceh. I wish her the best with her research. So exciting. Then I showered, watched some TV, and headed out to dinner by myself. It was a nice little dinner. I got pizza because I knew I could save half for lunch tomorrow. And what is the plan for tomorrow? Sleeeeeep. Sleep and then yummy leftovers. Followed by a spa day. Yes that is right. Spa day. I am treating myself to a nice hotel and a spa treatment because it is cheaper here and because I made it through the program. Whoo! Here we go last few days!

Leaving Salatiga

Today is my last full day in Salatiga. It is kind of odd. I have very mixed feelings about it. I’m excited to go and explore Yogyakarta some more. I’m excited to explore Tokyo for a day. I’m excited to not have five hours of language class a day. I am, however, not excited to leave some very awesome people. I will miss the COTI kids and the LTC friends so much. Especially Emma and especially Ara. They really have been there for me these past two months and I’m not sure if I would have lasted with out them. Many thanks to them.
This evening we have culture night. It should be both awkward and awesome. We shall see which one is stronger. I have fancy clothes to wear and hopefully that will make it most awesome. Pictures to come later.

Street Art

I finally took pictures of the street art I adore so much. You should all enjoy it too.

Number 1

Number 2 – My favorite

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

 

 

 

 

Cirebon

The lineage of Siti Jenar

Our trip to Cirebon was interesting. Very interesting. Not good, not bad. Just interesting. First we had our journey on the night train. Holy cow was that train cold! It was the coldest vehicle I have ever been in. And I’ve taken a night train in Russia in February. This train was FREEZING! I couldn’t sleep it was so cold. I was warned it was going to be cold. So I brought a cardigan. Not a parka! Besides the freezing temps and the man sitting near us with the cough from death land, the train was ok. We got into Cirebon at about 4am. Luckily there were a bunch of people out and about preparing to fill up for the day before the sun rose. It made it safe to walk from the station to our hotel. Even though it was incredibly close it would have been a bit sketchy to walk at maybe 1 or 2am. The hotel was fine. Nothing special. It was a place to sleep and it was clean. Really all you need right? Also breakfast was included. Hooray. So only 3 short hours after checking in we got back up and ate breakfast. A nice spread of bubur (rice porridge), nasi goreng (fried rice), fruit, chicken, and other breakfast like items. It was nice. Even better because it came with the room.
After food we hopped onto an angkota and headed off to grave hunt! More research for Emma’s MA thesis. It was interesting. It always is interesting to go grave hunting with Emma. I learn things about how people treat their dead, how they worship specific people, etc. and I even learn a thing or two about conversation and interviewing in Indonesian from Emma. All in all a good time had by all. Except for the trash. The trash made me sad. There were piles and piles of trash surrounding the grave yard. I know it is a cultural thing but to me it just seemed disrespectful. Even more so than the loads of trash in the river that made it smell of rotten eggs. Cirebon was kind of dirty now that I think about it. Definitely more so than Yogyakarta or Salatiga.
After seeing the grave of Siti Jenar we went to another large grave complex, Sunan Gunung Jati. It was interesting because of the multiple layers of influence including Chinese influences, but sadly full of beggars. Which is always an awkward situation. Do you give money and then be swarmed by everyone else? I only had so many small bills on me. Do you give to children and support the industry of creating children beggars because they pull on your heart strings? What would you do? We played it on a case by case basis and did not give money to the 5 or 6 children following us around. It was hard.  On a silver lining note the view from the top of the graveyard was beautiful.

View of Cirebon

After Sunan Gunung Jati, we went to one of the best places ever invited in Indonesia. J.Co. The Indonesian starbucks. Why is it the best? It always seems to pop up right when I NEED a coffee. Emma and I stopped here for much needed caffeine and we got huge bottles of water from a store nearby. It was glorious. We drank coffee, relaxed on a very hot day, and made plans to batik shop! Which we did. We got in a becak and drove off to a street with a couple batik stores.

Megamendung Pattern from Cirebon

We really wanted something with the cirebon pattern, the megamendung pattern. I got a nice shirt in red and a scarf in green and gold. I am head over heels in love with the scarf. I may not even wear it. I may hang it on my wall as art. It is green. Like my jingju doll and my fan from Japan. I could great an Asian wall of green. And gold actually… all three have gold too. I’ve really started to like gold here. Go figure.
After shopping we decided to drop stuff off at the hotel and head out for dinner. Since we accidentally skipped lunch. Oh well, we had a donut right? We asked the guy at the front desk for a recommendation and he came through. We had Nasi Lengko and it was so super yummy. It has cucumbers, tofu, tempeh, rice, and peanuty sambal. So darn good. I should have had two. I did not, however, because we had a night fair to get to! That’s right. We went to a night fair at a mosque after dinner. Boy were we looked at strange, but more on that later. The night fair also had a book fair where Emma went crazy! She got ten more books. Ten! Adding to her mass amounts of bookness on this trip. Which I totally understand because if they had a wayang or even an arts book fair I would have gone crazy too. We then walked around and looked at the rest of the goods and the snacks that were available for everyone breaking their fast. We got two sesame balls. Then our tired buts headed back to the hotel. We had been up for a very long time.
The next day we planned on going to the keraton. I say planned because we got there and it was closed. Oops. It said on the front door that the museum was open on Sundays at 8am and it was 9am. However, sometimes things just don’t go as planned. So we went and found a very beautiful Buddhist temple. The men we met in the temple were very nice too. They gave us a tour, talked to us about their religion, and showed us a lot of the temple. It was a beautiful place filled with kind people. We also tried to get a fortune but apparently Buddha didn’t believe us and neither Emma or I got a fortune. Oops.

Inside the temple

Following the temple we went back to the hotel to back up. Our train home left the station at 12:20pm and we wanted to make sure we made it. We did by the way. We took it to Semarang and then hoped in a travel back to Salatiga. This train was much better temperature wise… but NOT better people wise. I would take a death cough over the parents we sat in front of on this trip. The parents (two moms) would rather sleep on the train than watch their kids. They ran wild the whole time including PUTTING PLASTIC BAGS OVER THEIR HEADS. I tried to take it off the kid once and the mom saw and thought I wanted the damn bag. No, I don’t want the bag I want to not watch your child die. “Oh I’ll take care” said the mom. Ya right, you’ll sleep and then smack your kid when they touch you. Jerk. Bad Parenting 101 on that trip. I will be a better parent times 100,000,000. Holy crap. That was a hard feeling to shake once we got off the train. So what did we do? Went to Frame coffee shop to drink coffee and shake some bad parenting anger off us. We also had to finish our final papers because they were due at 9am the next day. Mine is finsihed. Not perfect… but done.
Oh! Also, about the people looking at us strangely. We did see other white people in Cirebon but not that many. By the way people looked at us in this city you’d think we were purple. Wow, did they stare. Also, yell out. HEY MISTER. We got that a lot. It was just very odd how much people would stare in Cirebon. It was more noticeable than anywhere else. Very odd. Very odd indeed.
That is about it for Cirebon. I leave Indonesia very soon. Monday to be exact. I can’t wait for the program to be over at this point. Five hours of language study a day is A LOT of language study. However, I am not ready to leave Indonesia. There is still so much more I want and need to do. Can I have a grant now so I can come back ASAP? K thanks.

Batik Batik Batik

Friday we got to make…guess… batik! It was so much fun. I’ve always wanted to try it. I wanted to take it every week as my culture class but apparently there wasn’t enough of an interest and it wasn’t chosen as one of the three classes. Poo. Oh well. I have made it now. It is a fun process. First it starts with your fabric. We had penciled in patterns on ours.

Matt’s pattern and my pattern.

Then we take the hot wax and scoop it up in a little tool. I didn’t get a great picture of the tool but it works like a pen, kind of. Something I should have asked, or maybe they said and I just didn’t hear or understand, was about wax thickness. It is supposed to be very thick. Mine was not. So my wax didn’t soak all the way through on some parts of my pattern. The result of that you will see later. Here is some wax and my drawing with wax.

Hot Wax. Just ask Megan’s finger how hot it is…

Artist at Work

So after we drew all of or waxy patterns on with scoulding hot wax we got to paint. The wax, of course, dries immediately. So we got to paint right away. The wax prevents each color from spreading out of it’s own area. Unless of course you don’t make the wax thick enough. This is where I ran into some bleeding problems. Oh well. It was my first attempt.

Finished with the wax portion.

Painting… and paint bleeding.

When we finished painting the fabric was left out to dry. Then washed in cold water. Then left to dry a little bit again. Then, and most importantly, it was washed in hot water. Boiling water. This was to remove all the wax from the batik. It worked. It also made some yummy batik soup. Then we left it out to dry all the way as we made our way to our next destination.

Finished products. Mine is the orange one.

Our next destination was the enting-enting factory. Or in English the yummy peanut candy factory. This factory has free samples. Yes. Then we got to smash things. YES. So the way they  make this candy is by starting with a big ol’ pot of caramel. Then they mix in a big ol’ bag of peanuts. They then take it out of the pot and let it cool. After that they break of chucks and beat the living shit out of it.

Matt beating the bajeezus out of some peanuts

It was nice to get some stress out on some peanuts. When I did it they told me I could be a worker there. I said thank you but I then thought I’ll stick with the PhD track for now. After the smashing we also got to see how the candy was rolled and then wrapped. Megan, Matt, and Emma also tried their hands as wrapping. I did not. I was busy with the free samples. Megan and Emma did well. Matt did… something. Nah, it was good.
After the enting-enting place, we went to a family house of a reog dancer. It was interesting, however… I didn’t hear much. Why? Because the most adorable child in the world was there. His name is Rama and he is freaking adorable. Which him dancing around and giving high fives it was terribly hard to listen. Even though I was very interested. Oh well. Adorable Children- 1, Listening- 0.

More on my trip with Emma to Cirebon later.

Dress Up Day

Me in a traditional Sulawesi outfit with Krista

So as part of our culture week at COTI we had a day where students from different ethnic groups (of Indonesia of course) came and gave descriptions of their culture to us and then we turned around and gave presentations to everyone else. I was sent off to a room with two groups (one for me and one for Julia even though Julia was sick) one from Ambon and one from Sulawesi. I remember the most from Sulawesi because that is the one I chose to give my presentation on. Why? It had the prettiest outfit, duh. This outfit consists of a kain, the skirt, and a baju bodo, the shirt. No h. Bodoh means stupid and this outfit is beautiful, not stupid. Notice there are also accessories and they are gold and made of tin. There were also wrist cuffs but my American wrists wouldn’t fit in them. That is saying something people, I have small wrists by American standards, I have to order bracelets special. Also notice you can see my black tank top through this shirt. Traditionally, pre-Islam, this shirt was worn with nothing underneath. Which, due to the heat in Sulawesi makes sense. However, according to Islam is makes very little sense. On this day I was very thankful for Islam.  Emma also wore an outfit from Sulawesi and the others had beautiful outfits from Bali. It was very fun. There were also snacks. Snacks are good, well most of them were. The Balinese snacks were very yummy. One of the snacks from Ambon I did not quite like. Here are some more photos from the event:

Bu Juliana, Sulawesi, Bali, Bali, Sulawesi, Ambon x2

The whole group

Then, that same day the Balinese boys, seen above, from James’ homestay threw him a going away party! It included PORK! Oh holy, non-Islamic Pork! This day I was also thankful for not-Islam. Being in a large Christian community in Indonesia means I can still eat pork. The boys made spicy pork sate and it was delicious. We sat outside, made sate, sang Indonesian songs, and had a lovely time from about 7-10. Then I went home because I was tired. I’m old and tired in Indonesia, OK?

PORK

 

MORE PORK

 

 

New

Some new things I have done this week and weekend:

• Drank Coffee Luwak
• Went to Borobodur
• Was the moderator for a speaker in Indonesian
• Led a discussion group in Indonesian
• Went to Karaoke in Indonesia (Yes I sang Total Eclipse of the Heart)
• Rode side-saddle on a moped (I was in a dress, couldn’t ride the normal way)
• Tried snacks from Ambon
• Wore clothing from Sulawesi
• Watched ‘3 Idiots’ a very funny Bollywood film
• Booked a ticket to Cirebon!

Fun stories to come after this weekend. Today was the official last day of class and we played dress up. Pictures to come. Then tomorrow we go to a batik factory and see a reog performance (I hope). Then at 9pm we leave for Semarang to take a night train to Cirebon! There shall be stories. 🙂