Rainy Season Blues

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that rainy season has officially started. It has rained at least once a day for about the past week and the Weatherchannel.com has a 60% of scattered T-Storms everyday for the rest of the 10-day forecast. I have to admit that a rainy season is much more bearable than a winter season. I do not miss cold weather, bitter wind, and snow or ice. At all. Not that rainy season doesn’t have its negatives, they just aren’t as unbearable to me as the downsides of winter.

Earlier this week I had my first real rainy-season incident. I was at dinner after work with a few friends when a massive storm blew in. One minute is a clear night and the next the rain was falling in a way I can only imagine it did before the Noah’s Ark flood. Lightning that lit the sky as if it were noon, rain that came down in sheets, and instantaneous flooding. We decided to see if it was a short storm and just order a beer to wait it out. As time went on, however, it became clear that we were not waiting out a storm anymore but just allowing the streets to flood.

We leave, walking outside to be drenched in rain and getting on our motorbikes to attempt a very wet ride home. I only know a few roads home as I have only had my bike for about a week at this time. I begin my ride home being pelted with rain, but enjoying it drive. The rain had that sea smell that only storms that come in off the ocean can have; that sweet and salty aroma that made me feel as if I was lying on the beach watching a storm roll in. With Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker playing through one ear-bud of my I-pod I listened to Adams sing about rainy days and broken hearts and drove in what felt like the perfect weather to listen to that album. The intoxication that comes from the freedom of riding a bike combined with the choice of music and ocean-rain made me feel for a moment immortal. That feeling would soon change however.

As I got about a mile from my house I drove onto a street that all of a sudden swallowed my bike in water up to my thighs. I pulled the bike out, let it dry for awhile and hoped to God it would start up again. Luckily it did, and I was off to try and find a new way home. Two hours later I would end up in the same spot, having to push my bike home; but for two hours I drove all over Surabaya. I saw slums, I saw beautiful neighborhoods, and I saw floods. I saw men pushing motorbikes through water so high one could not even see the bike but just the hunched over figure of someone who must be pushing something. The rain quickly turned from sweet and salty in my mind to pounding and intimidating. I drove through areas where the water rushed enough that I was able to feel my bike being pushed in the direction of the flowing water. I saw landmarks that let me know where I was, but in front of all of those landmarks were floodwaters blocking my way home. I was terrified to turn my bike off in case it didn’t restart because I thought it probably in-took a fair amount of water so after an hour when I really had to pee, I had no choice but to pee down my leg as I was driving my bike in a part of town I had never seen before. It didn’t matter, other than the initial warmth it provided, it was just like peeing in the lake. I was so wet that it made no difference.

As I kept driving I became more and more frustrated. The walls of water became just that, walls. Literally stopping all attempts to get where I was going, it was like trying to cross rivers without bridges.

I finally found my way back to where I originally drove my bike into thigh high water and called a friend to see if he knew any dry back roads home. His answer was what I feared most: “I’m at your house right now, you have to push your bike home if you want to make it.” I closed off the clutch to keep water from getting in the bike and started pushing. The water went from thigh high to being above my waist. For over a kilometer it was waist high. I couldn’t get my knees out of the water while pushing my bike. At one point it dropped to about the middle of my shins, but that reprieve was short lived as after a few meters it swallowed my knees and waist again. For over a mile I pushed my bike.

I finally arrived home to see my friends and neighbors shirtless in the streets. I got my bike into the driveway, drained it of water, and opened the best cold beer I have ever drank in my entire life.

I survived being lost in a monsoon. I made it through something I could never have imagine doing. One more day in Indonesia, and one more lesson learned about the ability I have to do things I never though I could. Looking back, I enjoyed that experience because it gave me confidence that I actually do have the strength to push myself through hard times. There is a line from a Bright Eyes song that says “your eyes must do some raining if you’re ever gonna grow,” but maybe all it actually takes to grow is pissing yourself in a monsoon.

A Bit About Indonesia

I don't have much to say here, but CNN has a nice page about Indonesia and its growing economy and also the struggles it faces in trying to take advantage of the rich natural resources and man-power that it has but hasn't quite figured out how to use. Thought some of you might like to know a little more about Indonesia and this site has some great articles on it.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/ilist/indonesia/

Enjoy.

Update on Life in Indonesia

As of today, I have been in Indonesia for 2 months. It’s hard to believe that it has actually been that long! The first month had its ups and downs, as has the second, but this past month has ultimately been amazing. I have had the opportunity to travel a bit to Solo and Jakarta, as well as meet some family that I had never met before in my cousin Kevin who lives in Jakarta. I also started teaching at EF.

I really enjoy the teaching job. I got quite lucky in that I am not teaching many really young kids. Most of my classes are around 10-18 year olds. I really enjoy my classes with the teenagers. The whole process of planning a lesson, and then executing it, is really fun. It makes me feel quite good about myself to plan a lesson and see it play out in the classroom as well, or better, than I had hoped. Even the lessons that fall short of my expectations provide me with a knowledge of things to leave out of future lessons. In just a few short weeks I am starting to get the hang of what works and what doesn’t. Having such helpful coworkers who are more than willing to give me ideas for lessons is nice as well. I feel so welcome in the school and really enjoy everyone that I am working with.

I still have some slip-ups along the way: on Saturday I planned a lesson on the totally wrong subject for a 2 hour class, but was able to think on my feet well enough to conduct a fairly good lesson with no real materials.

This whole year seems as if it is going to fly by. In just a few weeks it will be Christmas break and New Years, and before I know it, I will be 3 months into my contract and 1/4 of the way through my 12 month contract! I am very excited to be enjoying the teaching as much as I am. A large reason I came here was to make a decision about wether I wanted to become a teacher or go back to school in order to find out if something else was driving me. I am starting to realize that teaching is probably my calling and it feels nice to have an actual clue about what I want to do with the rest of my life.

As I mentioned above, I went on a few trips in the past month. I really enjoyed the culture that I got to witness in Solo, seeing traditional dance and music in Gamelan and Wayang Orang. Jakarta was amazing as well: what a massive, modern city. It exceeded all of my expectations. My favorite trip so far was a day trip to Singapore in order to get a new Visa while my Work Visa is being processed. Singapore is “a fine city” as they say because it is a wonderful, beautiful place, but also the way they keep it as such is through massive fines for everything. A few hundred for not wearing a seat beat, a few hundred for chewing gum in public, a few hundred more for throwing cigarette butts into places they don’t belong. Because of these strict city-state Big Brother rules however, the city is PRISTINE. Not a single piece of trash anywhere. It would be as if Chicago or New York were maintained like a Botanical Garden. The architecture there was amazing as well. The most modern city I have ever been to, by far. I don’t know that I could live there with the Big Brother type of environment though. Not that America doesn’t seem too far behind adopted that type of system anyway.

Speaking of “Big Brother” I want to talk a bit about the Indonesian lifestyle and attitude on most things. It is quite hard to be here as a Westerner sometimes; our views on everything are SO different. In classes if you have a debate no one will take the view point of what might be seen as not traditional or moral. There is a right and and wrong answer for everything and there is no reason to question why for these people. It can be quite frustrating since as a teacher I want to always get students to ask why, but that is not a culturally acceptable thing here. They have universally accepted ideals such as; Women need to be married before 30 or they are dried out and useless. Money is more important than love. Sex is only for babies. Men have higher importance. In actuality, the Indonesians remind me of pre-Vatican II Catholics.

I did a lesson about the future “will” and “going to” using the idea of a zombie invasion and they had to plan an escape using the future tense. I told the students that you cannot go to the mosque, it won’t be safe and that is not the point of the exercise (other teachers told me they did this exercise and if you don’t say that the students will answer: go the mosque or pray so God will protect me from the zombies). Even with those instructions I still got “I will go to the mosque because it is holy ground and the Zombies cannot enter.” I am not trying to blast deep devotion, but there is a total unwillingness to question anything that they have been told. I see some good qualities in having a bit stronger moral stance in everyday life, but as one of my coworkers said “the reason Batik is the only thing the Indonesians have provided to society is because they refuse to ask the question why.” I hope I am not coming off as if I am judging this society for its strict stance on most everything; I am just trying to give a view on the ideals of Indonesians and the difficulty of trying to understand it that I struggle with everyday. It is very interesting to see, but quite frustrating in the classroom at times. In anthropology we were always told never to make judgements on a culture but to observe and report, and that is what I am attempting to do here. These Indonesians are not universally right or wrong in their lifestyle and ideals, just as the West isn’t universally right or wrong in its own lifestyle as well.

What is interesting is that it seems that this generation is starting to finally begin to question and challenge authority. Indonesia is the third or fourth largest user of facebook in the world and in terms of the percentage of individuals using Twitter based on the numbers of internet users is the highest in the world. And they are using social media to connect, questions political leaders, and rally around others. There was a news story about Indonesians raising TONS of money for a woman that was unjustly accused of libel for writing to the paper about poor healthcare she received. Also when one of their political leaders shook Michelle Obama’s hand even though his religion states he is not to touch women outside of his family there was an outcry about the hypocrisy of political/religious leaders (and even the practice of not touching women outside of the family in general) on Twitter. Its a very interesting place and I am very glad I chose Indonesia to live and work in for this next year. I am learning so much about this culture, Eastern culture in general, and a fair amount about myself as well. I think its very important to be learning about Asia as it very much seems as if Asia is primed to become the new economic center of the world with the problems the West is trying to deal with while having such feeble results.

Anyway, just wanted to give a quick update and let everyone know that I am doing quite well, enjoying myself, and getting everything out of this experience that I hoped I would. I do miss home, and we had a little Thanksgiving dinner over here the other night which (in true Thanksgiving fashion) we all had too much to drink at and a few of us ended up dancing on a bar later that night. It was nice to have a little taste of family Thanksgiving with great friends and good food (even found a Turkey God-knows-where). I also keep forgetting that it is winter back home: I see snow in football game replays here or Facebook pictures of people in jackets and scarves; its really hard to comprehend that its December or that its cold anywhere in the world with this heat. I love it. I now know for sure I can live somewhere without winter for the rest of my life. So enjoy the snow, miserable biting cold, and Black Friday/Christmas-shopping stampedes for the next month; I’ll enjoy my 85 degree days and a trip to the beaches of Bali!

Eid-al-Adha: The Festival of the Sacrifice.

WARNING: This post discusses some pretty graphic details of the sacrifice of goats and cows. Also, even though some of the descriptions may be a bit graphic, I do not mean for it sound as if I am judging this ceremony. Cultural norms shift greatly throughout the world and what I witnessed today was in no way “animal cruelty” in my mind, but a religious experience for the devout followers and a bit of a spectacle for the children (and myself) running around outside the mosque.

Today was Eid-al-Adha. Eid-al-Adha is the Festival of the Sacrifice for Muslims. It celebrates the story of Abraham and Isaac (Ibrahim and Ishmail) and Abraham’s obedience to God through his willingness to sacrifice his son, and also God’s giving of the ram to be sacrificed in the place of Isaac.

I headed toward the mosque nearest my house a little before 5:30am, following the procession of men and women towards the Mosque. As I approached the main street I found that the street had been closed off and a make shift prayer area had been built. I was a bit nervous heading to this festival by myself not knowing if I would be accepted or wanted there, so I asked a man walking near me if a “bule” (foreigner) can come. He said of course and asked me to come sit next to him, so i followed him and I took a piece of newspaper they were handing out as makeshift prayer-mats and took a seat about 4 rows from the front. The prayer session in the street lasted probably an hour and a half as it was composed of prayer and a sermon. I tried to go through the appropriate motions along with everyone else, but I naturally felt quite out of place until I looked around and not a single person was staring at me, or giving me a dirty look as if I was unwanted. If anyone did make eye-contact it was followed by a big smile and mouthing “hello.”

I was so struck by the welcome that I received at the first part of this festival. I can only imagine try to describe it by putting the shoe on the other foot: it would be as if a Muslim man in a prayer robe, mosque cap, beard, and carrying a prayer mat walked into Christmas Mass, looking totally lost but just there to experience and gain appreciationg for something he is unfamiliar with. Except I have a hard time imagining a Muslim man walking into Christmas Mass with America’s general sentiment toward Islam right now being treated with the respect and welcome that I was today.

After the prayer service, everyone got up and began a mass exodus down the next side street, I followed not entirely sure if everyone was going home or if this was leading to the sacrifices. I saw a small mosque off of a side street and walked up to it hoping to ask if the ceremony was over or if more was to come. The man I began trying to talk to in broken Indonesian was pointing at the goats and asking if I was here to be a part of Eid-al-Adha today, I told him yes and he asked if I wanted to eat. He led me upstairs where his family and friends had quite a spread of fish, rice, and what I assume was chicken. They kept piling food on my plate asking if I liked it and if I wanted more. I was STUFFED by the time I walked back down for the sacrifice to begin. The sacrifice took place in an open area behind the mosque and between a few houses. It was not at a large butcher shop as I understand some of these to take place. A hole was dug and the first sacrifice occurred. The goat was laid down with his throat over the hole and in halal style they slit his throat. The goats were hard to watch be slain because of the screams that they made. It reminded me very much of Clarice’s statement about hearing the lambs crying in the film Silence of the Lambs. The yell from a goat in distress is strikingly human and that human-like scream right before death was very disturbing for me.

Next, the Sapi (Cow) was slaughtered. The cow was tied up around the body and pulled down by about 5 or 6 people who then hog-tied its feet together. Once his feet were tied, the cow was dragged over to the hole dug for the blood and turned to be facing the correct direction. While the sound was the hardest part about watching the goat sacrifice, the amount of blood and the visuals were the hardest part of watching the cow sacrifice. The cow’s throat was slit and blood SPAT everywhere. It spurted almost like in a bad Steven Segal film. But maybe even worse than the blood was the visibility of throat muscle or esophagus or whatever it is that you breath from: the muscle was opening and closing pushing out what air was left in the cow and trying desperately to breath more in but all it could accomplish was to spray the blood that was running into and over the opening. Also, as it came closer to death some greenish liquid that I can only imagine to be stomach acids/bile started to pour out as well. All of this was very graphic, especially for me: I vomited after watching the live birth video in health class, after watching a live birth video of a cow in a science class, and stuck my lab partner trying to hold down and cut upon a pig fetus in highschool because I threw up again and almost fainted; I don’t do blood, its not my thing. So this was quite hard to watch and I was honestly pleased with myself for not having to run into the street to throw up into the roadside ditches.

After the slaughter, the animals were hung upside down, skinned, and beheaded (the animals head cannot be removed until it is fully dead) and divided into three sections for family, friends, and the poor.

I bring up the gruesome details of the story to make a point of not sugar coating everything. It can be so easy when witnessing such a foreign celebration to just go on about how eye-opening and life-changing it was while shedding only positive light on the experience. And while this certainly was eye-opening, there were parts of it that were hard to be a part of, and I think that made me realize how large some of the differences between cultures or religions can actually be. But in witnessing these difference in celebration, worship, or even sacrifice it became a bit more clear to me that all of these differences should be seen only as differences in the details. Faith is Faith, and these people certainly had a lot of it. While Islam and Christianity may be incredibly different in their practices, they are still both a way of relating to a higher power and hopefully of gaining a message of acceptance and love. And there were certainly similarities to be seen as well: the men and women at prayer this morning were as devout as someone at Easter mass. The sacrifice seemed to have a meaning that strangely mirrored the Eucharist. But despite any differences between myself and the Muslims I spent my morning with, they welcomed me with open arms. They embodied the good nature of people that religion, ALL RELIGION, should aim to nurture. They did not try to “convert” me, but merely asked if I had questions about what was happening or its meaning to them. It makes it hard to look back the “ground zero” mosque or Murfreesboro mosque controversies and see how narrow minded this American Islamophobia is. If people would open their eyes and try to experience other faiths and accept their differences rather than blindly judge them we might not be in the situation we are currently in.

Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire

So tomorrow marks three weeks here. After my first 3 days here I’m a bit surprised I made it this far, and kinda impressed with myself as well. Baby steps I guess. Week 1 and 2 were really great. I started to get into a rhythm and met some new people, I felt like I was accomplishing things. This week has been a bit tougher. I started my student-teaching sessions (more on that later) and those are nice. But they are part of the reason for things getting harder as well. The first two weeks I had class all day followed by about 2 hours at the internet cafe, dinner, and bed. Not a terribly large amount of free time. Now with the student-teaching I am usually busy from 8am to 10 or 11am. I go to the internet cafe and do my lesson plans, but I’m done around 2 or 3. Lots of free time with not a lot of fillers. Free time is a killer here. I don’t really know my way around, nor do I know how to drive a motor-bike, so my options are pretty limited. Also not a lot of people to interact with during that time. Because of all this I have gotten a little down recently. I’m very much ready to finish this course, get a job, and move into a teacher’s house with a few other people. I know that things will pick back up once I have full days of classes to teach and people to spend my evenings with, so I’m trying to keep my head up during this.

Part of this feeling came from a simple facebook post as well. So thank you Matt Giffhorn for referencing Mrs Doubtfire. The mere mentioning of that movie made me more sentimental/home-sick than anything else here. For those of you who don’t know this little fun fact, my roommate Matt and I watched Mrs. Doubtfire AT LEAST once a month. I could do a one-man Broadway adaptation of that film. But anyway, I started to see some similarities to my own situation and that of Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire. Robin Williams is forced to realize that his life is not where he wanted. He never grew up and it caught up to him in the form of a divorce. As for myself, I hadn’t grown up enough to accept what post-collegiate life had in store and it was catching up to me in the form of a fair amount of self-loathing (forgive my self-indulgent pity-party right there). He deals with this by dressing as a woman to see his kids, and ends up doing all of the adult things he never wanted to be a part of (cooking, cleaning, homework with the kids, etc) and grows up because of it. Its a mid-life-crisis “coming of age” story, I suppose. I am dealing with it by putting myself in an equally challenging situation, except instead of living life as an elderly woman, I decided to go live life as a teacher on the other side of the world. This comparison is a bit of a stretch, I realize, but there is one line in the movie that really kinda stuck out to me in relation to this situation: When Robin William’s wife begins hinting at a divorce she says “We can’t just take a vacation, our problems will be waiting for us when we return” and he responds “Well we can move when we get back, maybe they won’t find us there”. You can’t actually run away from problems. I left some in the states and ran head first into some of the same ones I left as well as some new ones. And the only thing I can do is face them and try to grow from it. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up living in San Francisco hosting a children’s show in drag after this as well.

[Side note]: Mrs Doubtfire always reminded me of Grandma, I mean I always thought that Mrs Doubtfire looked a lot like Grandma in that movie as well as his inappropriate elderly humor that she shares as well. To those of you in Dallas who may read this, please don’t tell her that).

I guess what I am trying to say is that I do already feel like I’m growing from my short experience so far, and I am looking forward to more of it. The hard times and the good ones. I have already been forced to do some things that I feel uncomfortable doing, or that I know are going to be hard. Just doing these student-practice teaching exercises is a small example. They are hard. I am scared I’ll fail in front of the class each day. Its the kind of fear-of-failure thing I would have given into in the very recent past. In the past I probably would have taken the “when life gives you lemons, just say the fuck the lemons and bail” mentality and not actually gotten anywhere. Here I am forced to do these little things that I feel are starting to add up. I just feel more confident and ready to take on whatever is next both here in Indonesia and whatever is going to come after this as well. But as they say in rehab, its one day at a time, so I’m done with the over-arching positive thoughts on the future; back to the present.

Anyway, some good news, I have had a few interviews that went well. I think I will be offered a job at EF Surabaya hopefully by the time I finish my course a week from tomorrow. Also an International School in Solo is very interested in my services as well, but I am not sure how I feel about that one. I’ve also had a few other interviews with schools in Bogor and Cirebron (I think thats where it is anyways) that went well. Its looking very good on the job front.

But anyway, to the Student-Teaching. Its pretty interesting. Preparing to teach and actually doing it are two incredibly different things. I feel I am doing a good job though, and my instructor seems to always have good things to say after my lessons. My first class was 2nd graders (about 7 or 8 years old). There are only two words to describe children of that age: Noise and Chaos. Now, as much as I may try to make it seem that I revel in those two things (and after a few drinks, maybe I actually do) they actually drive me up a wall. The kids are all good, they are just loud. And one instant of free-time or the smallest thing that is remotely humorous to them sends them into fits that I can only imagine adults can only find by stacking speed and Crystal-Meth. I know that I’ll be teaching all age ranges once I get a job, so I am working on how to deal with handling the lessons for small children. A few pre-class Xanax was my first idea, but I feel that may actually be a bit counter-productive.

My other classes have been 4th or 5th graders. Those kids are much better. Once kids hit about 10 they seem to calm down quite a bit. They still get riled up pretty easily, but its easier to bring them back under control. I like working with kids that age. I knew all this going into it though. Working at camp this summer I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 weeks that we had older than about 4th or 5th grade, and was in shambles after 5 days with the third graders. Like I said, I learned all of this at camp this summer; I know what each of these age ranges is going to be life. Once they are a bit older they understand the concept of self control a little better. And once they are older they can carry on conversations that don’t involve dinosaurs, their pets, and how much they FUCKING LOVE CANDY! I understand why so many people do drugs once they get older. You develop a tolerance to sugar. Thats it; a tolerance to Sugar. That is the first drug we get. These kids absolutely tweak out over a snickers. They are high out of their minds bouncing off the walls, and eventually the come-down arrives. You watch them start to drag, looking out the window at the kids in the hallways eating their sugar-filled snacks. Probably thinking, “man, look at that candy. I wonder if he’s holding. Maybe I can trade him my lunch for one bite. I don’t need my backpack, maybe he will take that for an air-head or a lolli-pop.” Its clearly a slippery slope from sugar to heroin.

I don’t want all of this sound as negative as it probably does. I really do enjoy teaching. I have a lot of fun at the front of that classroom. It feels pretty natural up there actually. Also, I am very much content to be teaching some little kid classes as well. I will learn a lot from it, I just also know that when I take a teaching job back in the states it will be in a middle school or high school. I can handle the awkwardness of middle school kids. I think I’m still as awkward as a 14 year old boy half the time anyway.

Anyway, thats all I’ve got for now. Not a whole lot of new things in life here. I wish I had some wild stories to regale you with, but its a pretty slow lifestyle out here. I should have some more stories in the next few weeks once I get a job and get settled, but until then I’ll continue to try and make some mundane details of my life here and the occasional self-indulgent positive or negative thoughts into reading material that some of you may (hopefully) find entertaining.

Not too much new news. But no news is good news, right?

So I am starting to get used to the food here. I liked it immediately, but I am now starting to find some dishes that I really like and starting to grasp some of the eating etiquette that surrounds the food here. Everything is fried in some fashion. I will probably be the only person to move to a third world country and NOT loose weight. Now that I have found some dishes I know and like, my adventurousness in trying new things has subsided a bit. I also have a few restaurants that I am starting to become something of a regular at. Nasi Goreng and Mie Ayam are my two favorite things here. They are pretty simple, Nasi Goreng is basically friend rice with some sort of meats or sea food in it. Mie Ayam is noodles with chicken. The other day I was at Achung (I believe its called) right up the street from my apartment and got a little adventurous. I asked the man what he suggested and the next thing I know there is a plate of rice and a bowl of soup-like consistency next to me. This soup had more seafood in it than the damn Atlantic Ocean. I recognized some of the basics: shrimp, octopus, etc, but the rest of the seafoods were a total mystery. Something that looked very fatty and dark, something that had the texture/consistency of edible foam (the material, not whats on top of a cappuchino), and little fried things that looked like chicken nuggets but on the inside had the consistency of either really soft fish or a stiffer cheese: I’m not sure which it was). Now, from my almost Doctoral level of knowledge of East Asian fishing practices from my never-ending viewings of the Whale Wars series and The Cove (a terrifying doc about dolphin meat consumption and the terribly inhumane ways these animals are caught and killed in Japan), I must make the conclusion that I ate some combination of Shamu, Flipper, and Jaws that afternoon.

Sorry Captain Paul Watkins and the rest of the Whale Wars crew, but apparently The Bob Barker and The Steve Irwin need to step up their anti-whaling piracy tactics.

Anyway, even the mystery foods I eat are made palatable by this magical sauce that they put on everything after already having cooked it in said sauce. It is like a very thick, darker, sweeter Soy Sauce, and it is AMAZING. I cover everything in this sauce. They also have jars of chili sauce for everything, or if you get it to go they put the chili sauce in little baggies for you. This stuff is hot as all get-out, but really really good as well.

Another food I really like here is the Sate (or Satay). Its basically the same as back home: chicken, duck, beef, or dove (although I havn’t seen any dove, so I assume the Dove Sate is actually whatever birds they caught in their backyard...maybe Mockingbird or Cardinal Sate) on a stick, basted in that soy-type sauce I mentioned earlier and then cooked over charcoal. They then pour some chili sauce, more of the soy-type sauce, and peanut sauce in a newspaper page and wrap your chicken up in it. Its really great stuff, but the other day my teacher was saying that there is a rumor going around that one of the warungs is using some human meat/fat with the chicken to give it more flavor. Apparently this place has pieces of fat, almost like bacon (which it couldn’t be because of the Muslim aversion to pork) between the pieces of chicken. When he asked one of his Indonesian neighbors about it, he very non-chalantly said it was probably human. As disgusted as I was by this, the next day all I could think of was sate and walked to the nearest stand to buy some for lunch. How screwed up is that thought process?

After all of this wild, spicy food I still haven’t really gotten the “traveler’s diarrhea” I was warned about. By the way, “traveler’s diarrhea” is probably my favorite disease name. It is so straight forward, no complicated medical names; just a simple cause (traveling) and effect (diarrhea). Simplicity of cause and effect in disease naming really should the way most other diseases are named. I feel it has the potential to really scare more people away from things like STD. Imagine is the cause and effect naming method were applied to Syphilis or Herpes: Sex Sores. Sounds a hell of a lot more scary than Syphilis. I think Trojan should have a new add campaign based on that type of naming.

About the closest I have come to Travelers Diarrhea happened the day after going out and drinking beers all night, but I’m convinced that was more beer-shits than anything else.

I’d really like to have a post that doesn’t involve bathroom humor, but apparently that level of maturity has somehow managed to evade me all of these years; sorry Mom, I’m sure it has nothing to do with your parenting style. Probably the results of having a beer-man for a father more than anything and spending my formative years in an all-male school. So thank Scott Turner, Mr. D, and Mr Gioia for stunting the maturity of your son at 13.

On a more serious note: I am starting to get a few job offers. None from Bali yet, in fact all of the schools I’ve sent applications to are currently filled until around January at the earliest. I have interest from two schools here in Surabaya, one in Solo, and one in Bogor. Solo is a smaller town, about half a million, but an artistic and cultural hub in Java. Bogor is more of a suburb of Jakarta, but about an hour outside the city. And Surabaya is Surabaya. I am starting to like Surabaya a lot more each and every day though. There are actually some really nice parts of the city, some greener areas, etc. And there are more expats here than anywhere but Jakarta (everyone seems to hate Jakarta; they say it is TOO big and full of awful New York-esque traffic. I have no desire to sit in 3 hours of traffic on a motorbike on the way to work each morning). The school in Solo is a private language school but only has about 7 expat teachers and from what I have gathered they are all significantly older than me. The school in Bogor is an EF (English First) school, but again, I don’t know that I really wanna do Jakarta. The two schools in Surabaya are an EF School and the school where I am currently taking my classes. I am kind of torn between the two right now, the EF School won’t pay nearly as well as the other, but I will be with more expats and possibly even in a shared house with other expats. That sounds really great right about now. But anyway, as of now I am pretty content (and borderline excited) to stay in Surabaya and trying to decide between more money or a bit more societal comfort and easier social-life immersion. No matter where I go, I still won’t have hot water for my showers in the morning. My teacher said he has been here for 4 years and that no, I will never get used to that. The cold showers are pretty rough each morning. They aren’t so bad if you take one in the afternoon after walking home from school when its hot as hell out, but waking up knowing how cold the shower will be makes it a struggle to actually take one. I’m looking forward to a vaca in Bali or in a hotel somewhere that offers hot water. All I want for christmas this year is a hot shower.

First Update from Surabaya (its a long one).

For those of you looking for some quick reading, this might not be the entry for you. This entry is gonna be quite long as it contains bits and pieces from the first week here...and quite a lot has happened in one week.

I should preface this by saying if any of you find bathroom-humor offensive or sophomoric, I suggest you skip this first part of the entry because it is almost entirely about my first bathroom experience here.

Well I’m about 4 hours into my trip as of right now, but I have only been in my apartment for about 45mins. You know the saying “truth is stranger than fiction,” well I have a strong feeling most of my trip is going to be much stranger than any fiction I could possibly come up with. I’m just not this creative. First off I would like to tell you about my room. About half the size of a dorm room: this I am okay with, in fact I expected something about this size. However, much to my shock and amazement I walk in to see that the bed has a pink Cinderella mattress cover (no sheets, but it does include a matching Disney Princess pillow. I shit you not, I will be sleeping on top of a beautiful 2-Dimensional Disney Princess for the next month, using my towel as a blanket. Hopefully the sheets dont already have crabs, cause I think getting an STD from a Disney Princess might ruin my childhood opinions about Mr Walt Disney and his now possibly slutty princesses. All of this is acceptable though. I know that I’m not staying in a 5 start resort or anything. That part of the room is fine with me. The bathroom however is a different story. Adryan, my “guide” from the school drops me off in my room and before I can get a look around to ask a few questions he is gone. So I turn from the bathroom, with more questions than a first grader attempting to learn calculus, to see that no one is there to answer them. What kind of questions, you may ask. Well, you really must see this toilet to grasp (and I will post pictures as soon as I get some and find an internet cafe). First off, there is no seat on the toilet; not just the top seat that covers the whole thing, but no seat to sit on, just the bowl. Second, there is no flushing mechanism anywhere to be seen. Third, there is a bucket right next to the toilet. A fucking bucket! Like a bed-pan type of bucket with a smaller bucket inside of it. So at this point my worries about wiping with my hand become miniscule to the fear that I’m gonna have to shit into a bucket and then do God knows what with it. I can only assume that the non flushing toilet is for number ones, and the bucket is for number twos. But I know to never assume because it can make an ass out of you and me, and this time I would have been an ass with a bucket full of his own shit in his room. I would have felt better knowing there was a designated area out back to dig a hole in and do my business there.

But anyway, feeling quite stressed I decide to walk across the street from my apartment to the mini mart that Adryan showed me for a much needed cigarette to calm myself (I’ll get to these cigarettes in a minute). Thank God Adryan is in there doing the same thing, so I throw all inhibitions to the wind and ask him in line at the mini mart if he can come back and explain my bathroom to me. Upon his arrival he informs me that I can, in fact, shit in the toilet, and the bucket is to fill with water and then pour on top of my feces. This water and any floaters/sinkers in it will be pulled down by wonderful Gravity!

You cannot imagine the amount of relief I felt upon finding this out. Certainly the biggest bathroom related weight to have ever been lifted off my shoulders.

So after Adryan left again, this time having answered my queries, I went outside to smoke the Marlboro Menthol Black cigarettes they gave me. Let me say two things about these cigarettes: first, they must be called Blacks because your lungs turn that color after one drag. Second, I think by menthol they meant anti-freeze or maybe even freon. It was like someone had placed an air conditioner in my throat. I like menthols when I decide to smoke, but these were something entirely different. Blowing Mr. Freeze from Batman would have less of a cooling effect.

Bathrom Humor is now done with, for those of you with weak stomachs, pick up reading here.

Wow, 2 days in Indonesia and I’ve already swung from any emotion available to its polar opposite with stops at all the emotions in between. I know that I came into this with an idealistic vision of the place and job, just as I do everything else. My greatest weakness is probably my idealism (but I hope that is a greater strength than weakness, but so far I haven’t found the drive/perseverance to make it so). Surabaya is a strange city. It is certainly a city in which Western consumerism has taken hold and attempts to flourish, but the socioeconomic means of its citizens hasn’t entirely allowed it to. The rich and poor dynamic is amazing. I drove past Mansions that out sized (and out classed) any hollywood star home. But 90% of this city seems incredibly poor. The kind of poor that is hidden in section 8 housing and tent cities back in the States. America does a wonderful job of hiding its poor. Here it is everywhere. I was informed today that 60% of the economy here is tobacco. I certainly believe it after seeing everyone and their mother smoking cigarettes. Also, the man who owns Djarum, makers of the wonderfully delicious clove cigarettes, is from Surabaya and owns what is probably the most beautiful home I have ever seen. The other 40% of the economy must be food. There are family owned food stands that are put up each morning and taken down each evening stretching the sides of every road in the city. I ate at one today and the food was wonderful, but these stalls are on the sides of the road next to ditches where the excess food and wash water is thrown (and I certainly hope the wash water is not the same as the ditch water). There is garbage everywhere, some of these piles being burnt this afternoon. The city doesn’t smell bad, it looks like it would smell bad, but it really does not. It looked like what I imagine most of India to look, and very much like what parts of Slum Dog Millionaire looked like (yes, I realize how American my views are of India to be by basing it on a movie, but thats all I have for perspective.)

In all honesty, I don’t particularly find this city appealing. There is no park. It is all garbage and construction and road side stands and ditches. Literally. Oh, and some malls that are pretty nice because that is weekend entertainment, going to the mall. I’m not 14; I’m over the mall. I understand that I am doing this to get a job and my weekend activities should not by my first priority, but I really don’t think I like this city. THEY DON’T HAVE A PARK! I’m not looking for night life. I’m over nightlife. But if I’m going to live on an island with perfect weather, I want to be able to enjoy the outdoors. Maybe go for a swim too on my saturdays. I want some natural beauty. I feel like the poverty of this city would slowly suffocate me. I know that sounds horribly elitist, but I don’t mean the poor people, but the dilapidation that is a result of this poverty. Also, there is no communication with the outside world for a city the size of Chicago population-wise. I have emailed my parents once and I hope they got it just to know I am alive.

I want to be in Bali is what I think I’m saying. It would certainly be easier. More English speakers, more connection to the outside world because it is a tourist destination, and natural beauty. Even if I were inland a bit and not in the touristy area, I would be a taxi ride away from a cold beer and a beach.

Things Are Looking Up.

I am recovering slowly but surely from yesterday and friday’s troubles. I am trying to talk to people more. It is helping. I am upset still about the lack of communication, my dad had to call the school to find out that I am alive. I guess that means all is well with them. I met “Dan” a 37 year old man who is from Jakarta and whose twins are 2 or 3 years old and wife are still there. He splits time working between Surabaya and Jakarta. I also met other women in my building, both of whom are very attractive. One is probably a little too old for me. Also, the woman who owns the building introduced me to her two daughters. I was invited to a trip to the mountains with them next week. Meeting cousins in Bali or day tripping with two beautiful girls? For some reason I feel the answer to that question may be pretty easy to figure out. It was actually a funny scene meeting these girls. Their mother and the two maids here (who may or may not be family) were standing behind the girls as they gave me a gift and chatted. It was like a first date, or first school dance, with anxious parents and some giggling between the two girls. I felt all giddy like a school girl as well. Its funny how the further away from “society” I get, the more similarities I see in everyone’s shared experience that is Life.

The more people I meet, the more welcome I feel and more comfortable. I will for sure finish the month long class and hope to find a job in Bali, but if not, I hope the one offered to me earlier is still available. I was just overwhelmed as I think anyone without ties to their comforts of home would be while some 10,000 miles away. I still really really need to find a consistent source of communication though. But I feel really really upbeat about this trip for the first time since landing. God is speaking to me I believe. Ask and you shall receive. Well, I have done nothing but ask of Him recently, in fact it has been quite incessant actually, but he has done nothing but respond. Little smiles, signs, and miracles. Including the miracle I saw today: my apartment’s name is Miracle Hotel. I know some people dismiss all things as coincidence, but I follow in Einstein’ sentiment that either everything is a miracle or nothing is. Life is better when it is full of miracles whether they come as “coincidence” or something larger. The breads here are awesome by the way. The Dutch really left some solid bakers here.

“We Want to be Whiter”

Some interesting notes. At lunch the other day Adryan asked why Americans want to get tan, because in Indonesia everyone tries to get whiter. I found this to be a funny little comment and thought no more of it than to tell him that tan is attractive in the states. Well, today while watching copious amounts of Indonesian T.V. (most of which was the Inbox Awards, something I can only describe as a more wholesome and simple MTV Awards) I noticed that there were tons of lotion commercials that advertised whitening skin. They were just like our self-tanner or any other lotion product commercials, but with the “whitening chart” used in toothpaste commercials applied to skin! These are not bleaches or anything, just lotions, but I found it funny that Adryan REALLY meant that they want to get whiter. Perhaps Michael Jackson is a status symbol here, who knows.

“Welcome To The Third World”

“Welcome to the Third World.” Those were the words Adryan said to me today after finally getting in touch with my family. My dad called the school multiple times today (and perhaps yesterday as well) trying to get in touch with me after my one email when I landed was clearly not sufficient. Which it most certainly was not. As I wrote earlier, I have had a lot of communication problems. “What we have here is a failure to communicate” could easily have been the theme of my first almost week here in Indonesia. Wifi (or internet at all) is hard to come by, and even harder is International phone service. Due to Adryan’s being out of town this weekend and my phone not working I was unable to communicate with ANYONE at all, Indonesian or American. This clearly caused some issues, especially back home. Finally getting in touch with Home was good though. I feel much better about the whole situation here. And for any of you readers that may have casually worried about me....Thank you, and yes I am safe.

I feel a lot more confident in my situation here. I still don’t really want to work in Surabaya, even my teacher for TEFL said that it is a boring city. It really does seem to be so. I hope I can get a job in Bali. For any readers out there, please pray for me to get a position in Bali. Man, just having communication with the outside world makes this whole experience that much easier. I cannot imagine the difficulties of someone like Rudyard Kipling being away from his family splitting time in India and England and having to write letters back in the days of yore. Even now the postal system here is supposed to be incredibly slow.

Class is really great. It is kind of nice being one of only two students because things are easier. Although, I wish I had some other classmates to befriend. Everyone I have met in my building is very nice though.

I feel like my Indonesian is coming along pretty well for only having been studying it for such a short time. Its really my only time consumer, so hopefully I’ll pick it up quite quickly. Adyran complemented me today on multiple occasions asking if this really was my first time in Indonesia. Also, fun little fact: this is gonna be hard to break this habit: looking into someone’s eyes while talking to them is very impolite here. Too bad “making eye contact” was so drilled into my head.

The other man in my class, an older guy from Bali, is an artist. he showed me some of his works on his phone today. Super cool stuff. Very traditional Balinese stuff. He is very funny. He talked about teaching in an all girls school where “the girls all sat like men.” He also talked about his drug and alcohol use, the first of either of these things I have heard in Surabaya, a majority Muslim city. Very funny man though. I guess that is all I really have for today.

The who, what, when, where and why of this trip.

So I suppose there are two questions one might have that I should answer before I begin actually blogging. First is the title. Well, I have recently learned that in Indonesia the use of toilet paper is highly frowned upon, so the left hand has one purpose: I’ll spare you the “shitty” details, but lets just say that if I were the type of person to name body parts, my left hand would be going by Charmin. Needless to say, I have packed more little Kleenex packets than clothing for this trip.

The second is why I am traveling 10,000 miles away to hopefully teach English as a Second Language. Answering that question may be tougher than learning to wipe one’s ass with a bare hand. I am terrified that any explanation I give may come off as pretentious, or that this is the result of some pathetic counter-culture inspired “quarter life crisis” (I shudder even writing that phrase). And in fact, it may be both of those, but I certainly hope that isn’t the case.

In reality I would say that there are two main reasons for this trip: the fear I will have to overcome by being so far away and being ultimately, terrifyingly alone, and also the ability to have a job. I don’t mean having a job in the way that every recent college graduate wants a job right now so that they can move out of their parents’ house again, but in having and holding a meaningful position for more than 4 months. I tend to have trouble staying very committed to things; unless that thing were Fantasy Football in which case I am very committed.

In the spirit of (almost) full disclosure, I will try to be very open and honest with both myself and anyone who decides to follow this. This openness is a bit easier knowing that my followers will probably number less than the number of fingers I have. But here goes nothing: After graduation I was very nervous about what came next. I was mostly burnt out on Art History and going to Graduate School seemed like a nightmare. The only thing worse I could think of was working a 9-5, so I delivered Pizzas and watched a lot of TiVo-ed television while I planned on what would come next. In moments of both total (and hazy) clarity, I realized that I needed to really challenge myself.

I have never fully completed anything I began unless it was a Power Hour or a Batman movie-marathon, and I quickly lost interest in many of my undertakings because they never really stimulated me (or I'm just inherently lazy, but lets go with the first option). Art History had stimulated me, but I needed a break. Travel had stimulated me, I realized, looking back on my travels through Europe. Education and working with kids had stimulated me. So it became quite clear that teaching abroad was probably a good way to totally immerse myself in the most challenging thing I could do, while still having a chance to stay committed and excited about it. That is pretty much the long and short of it. I want to scare the pants off of myself and see what I am actually made of. My favorite quotation is Hunter S. Thompson saying that one should “Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.” While Hunter S. Thompson traveled across America with a trunkful of hallucinogens, I will fly across the world with one zanax and enough Pepto Bismol to calm the stomach problems of a Clydesdale. My goal is not HST’s drug-induced road to self-discovery through self-destruction, but a road to self-discovery through facing fear and embracing a totally different culture. Hence, I begin my travels to the end of the world and to the depths of my confidence and personal resolve.

So off I go to face some big fears that include but are not limited to: isolation, failure, and wiping my ass with my bare hand.