Festival in the Foothills of Mount Merapi

At the moment, I live in the general vicinity of several active volcanoes.  The most active of them is Mount Merapi.  Perhaps because I don't believe in fate, or perhaps because I do believe in fate and think that tempting it is just hilarious, I decided it would be fun to accompany my friends Pak Yoko, Pak Puguh, and Pak Habib to Mount Merapi on Monday evening after school...

...and I was totally right.

On the drive up, Pak Yoko told me that he had lived in a village at the base of the mountain until 2010, when he evacuated ahead of a serious eruption and met his wife.  After a winding drive through narrow village roads, we arrived in this village.

Pak Yoko took us on a short hike to the river and the waterfall that supplies his village with food.

The foreground of the scene and its beautiful backdrop provides a silent commentary on the rock and sand mining industries.  I suppose I could provide an unsilent commentary, but I suspect that Pak Yoko could articulate that one better than I can.  It's his home.

There was also a small waterfall.  I thought that even with the manmade works surrounding it, the waterfall scene was entirely attractive.

We stayed in this area a while, exchanging stories.  Pak Puguh, the sports teacher at the school, was seeing how far he could throw rocks to the other side of the river, and I decided I couldn't resist trying.  We kept besting each other, though I won out in the end, in a triumph of sheer unsophisticated bulk over skill and practice.  Suffice it to say that I will not be adapting this particular tale into a children's story to use in my teaching.

They will learn about letting the Wookiee win soon enough.

Eventually, we made our way back to the village, in time to see some of the men performing a traditional dance.

Pictured:  Good dancers, passable fake mustaches

From what I could tell, this dance was less about the aesthetics of the movements and more about using the costumes to play rhythms.  It's possible I'm wrong about this.

With the dance concluded and the stage clear, you can see the traditional musicians as well.

After this dance, there was a long scheduled break before different dancers would perform different dancers in a hall area.  In the meantime, we visited some food vendors, where I tried a traditional junk food (a sort of meatball) and ate some Indonesian peanuts, with which I am already familiar, but which I have yet to describe on this blog.  Indonesians do not eat their peanuts as dry as Americans do.  Indonesian peanuts are not as salty, but they have more flavor.

From the street vendors, we made our way to a couple different houses of village elders.  I learned that these visits are an important part of the festival.  I also learned that the festivals have been happening since the village was founded in 1937, that they feel it is their duty to perform the traditional rites even though the villagers follow Islam, and I learned a couple of words in the Javanese language, which is different from the Indonesian language.  I also tried some Indonesian desserts made from sticky rice.  My first night in Magelang, I tried a soup with sticky rice, which I did not enjoy, but I liked the desserts.

After this, we went to the hall to watch some students perform traditional dances.  First up were four girls.

The hand movements in this dance suggested an Indian influence to me, although I could be wrong about that.

In this photo of the traditional dance, you can see a man wearing an Arsenal jacket in the foreground.  I thought it was an interesting microcosm of what I have seen in Indonesia so far:  a mixing of the old and the new, of Eastern and Western influences.

After the girls danced, four boy students performed a dance based on an Indonesian story of a monkey god who wants to become a human.  I seem to recall having read a story similar to this in a book called American Born Chinese, although in that story, I think it was a monkey king who wanted to be a god.

During this dance, people came up to the area in front of the stage to play some traditional percussion instruments.  You might or might not barely be able to make those people out in the above photo.

In addition to the percussion orchestra, this dance also featured spoken and chanted elements.  There definitely seemed to be more storytelling in this dance than in the previous two, although, as always, I could be wrong about that.

I wouldn't have minded staying to see more dances---the festival lasts until around midnight---but we all had to get up early Tuesday to come to school and teach, so we left after the boys finished their dance.  After that, it was the same drive back, but in the dark now.  It made Pak Habib and Pak Puguh a little nervous.  I guess growing up in Montana desensitized me to steep, narrow, winding roads.  Pak Yoko didn't seem nervous to drive them, which makes sense given that he grew up there.



Next time:  The Little Things

Driving Slow on Sunday Morning

I had a very busy day yesterday.

I started by waking up at 5:30 AM to watch the Bobcats play football at 6.  In hindsight, this may have been a waste of my time and limited bandwidth, as those of you who watched the game are aware.

During the game, my friend Pak Habib came over.  We watched the rest of the game together, and I taught him a little bit about football.  The end of the game was disappointing, but fortunately, the real reason Pak Habib was here was to go swimming.  I figured we would just swim in the hotel pool, but I was wrong.

Instead, Pak Habib took me to a big public pool at the military academy, which meant riding on the back of Pak Habib's motorcycle---these are the preferred mode of transportation here..  Fortunately, Pak Habib is a more cautious driver than many of the other motorcyclists in Indonesia.

The pool is located in what is in either a valley or a manmade depression.  There are over 100 steps down to the side of the pool.  He told me that the water in that pool is much better.  I was also much deeper, and there was more room to swim.  Pak Habib is a very good swimmer, because he is also a snorkeler and a SCUBA diver.  I am not a very good swimmer, because I'm an American who always had a strong preference for land-based sports.  Still, it was fun.  Pak Habib said that I'm a good swimmer for someone who is not very good at swimming.  I do not use my legs enough, though.  Probably because they have given me lots of reasons not to trust them in the past.  There was also an artificial fish pond at the pool, with some very large (and very outgoing) fish in it.  Visitors are allowed to feed the fish.

Unlike the public pools I am used to, you do not have to worry about people stealing your things when you're at this pool.  Apparently its location next to the military academy keeps folks in line.  Or maybe Indonesian people just don't steal as much as Americans do.

After swimming, we ate a very early lunch of traditional Indonesian noodles and traditional Indonesian salad with peanut sauce.  This was the first time in my life that I have ever eaten a salad that was spicy.  I enjoyed it, though.  This is far from the first time I have eaten noodles, but I enjoyed those, too.  We also made a quick stop in the area for Pak Habib to buy chips.  These chips were actually made from casava, grown and then fried by local organic farmers, and they are excellent.  They're much more flavorful than the American potato chips I'm used to.

After a quick stop to discard some wet swimming gear, Pak Habib took me on another, even longer excursion hiking to a temple.

As I had previously alluded to, people in Indonesia often go to villages and farmland to go hiking, rather than the backcountry favored by Montanans.  As I understand it, rice farming is extremely labor-intensive, but it's hard to deny that it's a very beautiful way to grow food.

It's very quiet out here, a feature that Pak Habib told me he especially enjoys.  Mostly, I heard flowing water, birds, and the two of us talking.  There was the occasional sound of motorcycles, but there is no place I've been in Indonesia that doesn't have that sound.  At this point, I find it less intrusive, and more of a gentle reminder that I am indeed still in Indonesia.

It was not long before we reached a stone gate

and a stone stairway up to the temple grounds.

The temple itself is actually fairly small, one of thousands that dot the countryside in Indonesia.

It is an ancient Hindu temple.  Pak Habib does not know when it was built.  He told me that he suspects that the government knows but will not tell.  I don't truly have enough experience with the Indonesian government to comment, so I will refrain from comment.  What I do know from experience is that you can go inside the temple.

There's a small room inside for praying, which I did silently.

After I came back out, a rainstorm hit, so we stood under some small awnings nearby, within easy sight of the temple.

Then we hiked back down.

On the way back, we encountered some motorcrossers.  That noise did not strike me as a gentle reminder of my location.  It did look kinda fun, though.  I guess Motorcross in Indonesia is a fair analogy to four-wheelers or snowmobiles in Yellowstone, in that way.

Pak Habib wanted to go home and take a nap, but there was still one more event planned for the day.  That evening, he invited me to go to his friend's art gallery, where an exhibit was opening.  It was photography, in varying degrees of abstraction.  Some of the pieces were visually fascinating, and at times I was pretty sure I could see concepts at work, but I did not really figure out what they were.  I do not understand art.

I did ask the artists a couple questions about the processes of making the pieces.  I understand photography a little more than I understand art, and I figured that asking about how it was made was the best way of showing interest available to me.  This opening also involved a dinner of "Soto," which is traditional Indonesian soup.  This Soto was spicier than the Soto I had on my first night in Indonesia.

Next time:  a traditional Javanese festival.



Some of my readers might recognize the title of this post as a song lyric.  Some of my readers probably have taste, though.

My Very First School Holiday...in Indonesia, Anyway

I intended to add more photos to this blog than I will be able to use.  I didn't take my own camera, because I thought it might be disrespectful to take pictures at Borobudur.  I waited to get the photos from my friend Bu Yenni via e-mail, and they have not arrived.  I guess I'm not sure if she has my e-mail address, which would help.  Perhaps I will add them to my blog if they arrive, or make a second post about Borobudur.  It's certainly worthy of more than one.

My day last Tuesday started before 5 AM.  I had been invited to go jogging with Pak Tanto and the Mandarin teachers at 5, and since I woke up early, I got dressed for jogging.

Definitions of "dressed for jogging" vary by culture.  Also, I'm definitely vain enough to have noticed that having tiny friends makes my biceps look big.

Jogging in Indonesia is somewhat different from jogging in America.  At home, "jogging" is a word for "running slowly," and it is more frequently done either by just stepping out your door and running or by going to someplace very close by to do it.  In Indonesia, the word evidently includes both slow running and rugged walking, which is "hiking" in America, and we drove over half an hour each way to get to the place to do it, which turned out to be a small village in the foothills of one of Central Java's volcanic mountains.  I did not do any running at all on this excursion, although I did jump over a very broad puddle, just to see if I could do it (I could).  The vista was very green, with a single, rounded volcanic mountain in the background.  I thought it was nice.

The group was also significantly larger than I had expected.  In fact, there is a "jogging club," consisting mostly of middle-aged men and/or married couples of Chinese descent, in Magelang.  They have uniforms and everything.

Jake Taylor would be impressed.

After jogging, we gathered to eat a traditional Indonesian food consisting of meat in broth poured over rice.  It was spicy, but delicious.  There were also traditional Indonesian crackers, which are sweeter than American crackers, and a hot ginger drink that burned my tongue but was also tasty.

It was then time for me to meet a different set of friends to go to Borobudur, the largest Buddhist temple in the world, which, to add to its prominence in the landscape, is built on a hill.  (It was a busy day.)

Before going to Borobudur, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni wanted to stop for something to eat.  Having been led to believe that the climb was going to be exhausting, I did not want to eat right before it--I find this is better for me.  They ended up going to a traditional Indonesian fast-food place.  They said that the food there probably would have been too spicy for me, anyway.  It looked tasty enough, but I had eaten breakfast, and I prefer not to eat within four hours before physical exertion, if I can help it.  This always worked best for me as both a long-distance runner and as a football player.

Once we got to Borobudur, I learned that I was required to wear a traditional sarong to ascend to the temple, and that there was an interpretive film visitors could watch.  On the way to the film, we passed dozens of vendors all selling different things.  One of them spoke particularly good English and was particularly friendly.  His name was Oscar.  He was selling a book about Borobudur, and also postcards.  These were actually both things I was interested in buying, but I did not really want to carry them up to the temple and sweat all over them, so I promised him I would buy them if I saw him on the way down.

The interpretive film itself was quite informative.  I didn't recognize the language it was recorded in, but there were English subtitles.  I learned a lot of details about Borobudur, and there are websites that will enumerate them with more authority than my memories of the film, but a few in particular stuck with me:  that the temple was completed around 1200 years ago, that it was built out of interlocking stones rather than with adhesives, that the Dutch played a great part in both its restoration and further destruction, and that the origin of the name "Borobudur," which is a very ancient name, is unknown.  Scholars have a number of theories.  As the most amateur of amateur linguists, the theory I favor is that it is a compounding of a very similar-sounding word for "great" and the similar-sounding word "Buddha."  The other theories require more convoluted explanations and yield less-satisfying translations, but of course you can find them on the internet as well.  Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni did not sit through the film with me.  I suspect they had seen it before.  Instead, they were trying to find a tour guide who spoke English.

After the film, we walked up to the temple, which turned out not to be very far away or much higher in elevation than the parking lot area.

Pictured:  Not much of a walk, by Montana standards

At the end of the walk, there were a couple of flights of stone stairs, which we walked up, before reaching the stone steps to ascend the actual temple.  The steps were guarded by stone lions carved in a distinctively Chinese style.  They were also flanked by rain spouts in the shape of gargoyles.  If I had any interest in ever owning property, I would want the downspouts on my house to be replicas of those, because they were pretty cool.  Borobudur temple itself has ten levels.

Pictured:  a 10-level temple and a level 0 tourist.

Seven of those levels are more or less square in shape, and their walls are covered in 1460 relief sculptures, direct visual translations from the holy writings of Buddhism.  I walked past almost all of these.  Some were in better condition than others.  Many had been defaced by the Dutch, covered with Ochre so that they would show up better in old-timey photographs.  The Ochre speeds the chemical breakdown of the rock, and any attempt to remove it only compounds the problem.  I found myself very upset with the Dutch when I learned this.  The remaining three levels are circular, and they are the resting place of seventy-two "small" stupas--symbolic burial mounds or cairns, each of which contain a statue of the Buddha.

One of these things is a stupa, and the other just looks stupid.

Nine of these stupas were intentionally destroyed in 1985 by some terrorists-for-hire, as a statement about some political cause or another.  Two sticks of dynamite were placed in a tenth stupa, but they didn't go off.  I found myself angry at political people, and people who are older than me in general.  In the center of the highest level is occupied by a massive stupa, which doesn't appear to have a statute inside of it.  It is said that if you circle this stupa clockwise an odd number of times, you can make a wish.  Walking circles around the
top of this monument calmed my anger.  I wished to learn a lot, to teach a lot, and to write a lot.

I also wish the guide hadn't talked me into posing for this picture.  It feels a little disrespectful in light of my merely rudimentary understanding of the Buddhist concept of the Wheel of Life, and also it's just a really unflattering shot.

After leaving the temple, Oscar was there to greet me.  He sold me a book and a set of postcards*, and Pak Iwan was there to inform me that vendors not in a storefront inflate their asking price and expect to sell for half of that, saving me from overpaying and completely embarrassing myself.

After Borobudur, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni took me to a very cool restaurant, which is built in a marshy area and well-hidden from both the sight and the noise of the road.  I got to try a traditional Indonesian fish and two traditional Indonesian prawns, all of which were delicious.  At the restaurant, I met the skinniest cat I had ever seen.  It had recently had a litter of kittens, and it was still the skinniest kitty I had ever seen.  We let it have what we couldn't finish.**

After that, I went home.  I figured it was plenty for one mid-week holiday.




*Some of the postcards are already set aside for family and such, but the first four people who call, e-mail or facebook me asking for a postcard from Indonesia will receive one, assuming the postal carriers hold up their end.
**I had not until moments ago contemplated whether my soft spot for cats all about wanting to have more tiny friends who will make my muscles look huge...but knowing me, it's possible.

My Very First Day of School...in Indonesia, Anwyay

My very first day of school turned out somewhat disorganizedly.  Pak Tanto told me to be at school at 6:30, but Bu Yenni said 6:45 (I went at 6:30).  Then, once I was there, I couldn't find the people I was told I would meet there, and the people those people told to meet me there couldn't find me.  Also, the Mandarin teachers invited me to share their office downstairs, but I found out a few minutes later that the higher-ups want me to stay in a bigger office with more teachers (including the English teachers) in it.  Much later, I found out that there are some people at the school who want to make one big office for all the teachers, but I haven't seen a room that big in the building.

At some point, I was pulled aside to stand in a line with other teachers and shake the hands of students as they arrived.  Apparently this is done regularly at the beginning of the day.  I was amused by the varying reactions.  I saw excitement, nervousness, shyness, fear, curiosity and surprise.  I also saw students who reacted as though they were just having a bad day, and shaking my hand was insignificant enough that it didn't provoke any reaction beyond that dictated by the student's current temperament.  A good reminder that I am not the center of the universe.

After that, I went to watch the school's weekly flag-raising ceremony.  This was perfectly well-organized outside of my presence, because the words were in Indonesian and I knew not a single one of them.  I felt guilty about being unable to follow along with the speaking and singing.  To be fair, I wouldn't be able to follow along with singing in English, because I cannot sing, and I cannot try to sing without yawning, and yawning at a ceremony to honor the country you're in is a really bad idea.  There were also different stances and saluting in the ceremony, and fortunately, I only got that wrong once (I think).  After the flag ceremony, I introduced myself to the student body.

After the flag ceremony, we resumed disorganization.  I had a class schedule that turned out to be what I'm supposed to do next week, and the coordinator of the English teachers had a different idea for what he wanted me to do this week, but I didn't run into him until I had already done a significant part of the other schedule.  After that, I did what he told me to do.

Over the course of the whole day, I got to meet the preschool students, two kindergarten classes, a third grade class and a fourth grade class.  I did not do a whole lot of teaching.  I'm not sure if I posted this previously or not, but this week is to be orientation only for me.  In the pre-school class, I did get up and do a dance that the whole school is supposed to be practicing.  I was hoping that the students would see that I could do it, and I just got here, so they could try too.  It did not have that effect.  Instead, it provoked every student to either fear or amusement.  I suppose that in Indonesia, 100 kilo man-apes are not supposed to make large, sweeping movements next to tiny children.  Good to know.  I also taught the fourth-graders the meaning of the word "experience," which is evidently not a word that Javanese speakers of English as a second language needed to use before they got a book that required them to teach it.  I'm glad I was there.

Overall, my first day at SBTH was neither extremely exciting nor frightening or disappointing.  Next time:  My very first school holiday (in Indonesia)!

My Next 24 Hours in Magelang

I was told that I would have all day Sunday to rest.  Though this turned out not to be the case (I'll get to that), the information had some bearing on what I decided to do with my Saturday evening.  I figured if I took a long nap in the late afternoon or early evening, I could wake up in time to call my parents after their breakfast, watch the Bobcats thump Northern Colorado via the Big Sky TV website online, and then take another long nap in the morning and be up at a semi-reasonable weekend time to get some writing done.

The first part was the easiest; I did take a nap last evening.  The second part was not much harder.  I did wake up.  I even managed the third part.  My parents and I talked for about 45 minutes, which was good.  They were anxious to hear from me.

The plan started to go off the rails at about part four.  One problem was that the Bobcats were televised on Root Sports in the US.  This is good if you're an MSU alum in Seattle or you know the right sports bar in San Francisco.  It is very bad if you want to watch the Bobcats in Magelang, Indonesia.  The games start late enough that places in Indonesia would be closed even if they could get Root Sports, and they wouldn't have Root Sports in Indonesia even if places were open.  So instead, I followed the game on ESPN's box score and play-by-play.  This was not as much fun as watching the game.  The game was also not as fun as it should have been.  The Bobcats did not play very well, not even well enough to thump Northern Colorado.  Here lies Steps Four and Five of my decidedly non-foolproof plan.

It looked like steps six and seven would put me back on track, as I did both sleep and then wake up in the morning.  I woke up a little bit after eight, which was maybe 20 minutes later than I would have liked, but I just flew two days and halfway around the world, so to get in a twist about twenty minutes on a Sunday would be silly.  However, I should have known that Indonesia did not plan anything for me that would be as regular or routine as writing on Sunday morning.  I do that a lot in the US.

Instead, just after I had finished breakfast, Pak Tanto called my room wondering if I wanted to take breakfast with him.  I had already eaten, so he offered to show me around Magelang some more; Bu Tanto came with us as well.  Some things we saw, like the park, the golf course, and the bank, I had already seen.  Others, including many churches and mosques, I had not seen yet.  Some things, like the military academy, I had seen, but I learned more about.  Others, which I had seen but overlooked, I can now identify (coconut trees, banana trees, mango trees...).  It was a nice drive.  During this drive, Pak Tanto invited me to go jogging with him on Tuesday, when there is no school in Indonesia because of a government holiday.  I have a lot of obvious and well-documented reasons to be nervious about that idea:  my knees, the heat, my utter lack of anything resembling cardiovascular fitness, the unfortunate fact that my middle name is "fatty fat-guts," plus the novel fact that it would be at 5 AM on a holiday.  I said "maybe."  This will probably end up meaning "yes," as it seems like I end up doing everything I say I might agree to do in Indonesia.

Eventually, Pak Tanto stopped at a Buddhist temple.  Pak Tanto and Bu Tanto invited me to go into the temple with them.  They are Buddhist.  It was very beautiful.  There were reliefs of people, landscapes and dragons on both interior and exterior walls, which were painted in vivid colors.  Altars inside were decorated similarly, or in a similar style but with wood, or with designs and dragons made of gold.  I have been to a Buddhist temple before, in Chinatown in New York.  This temple, in what Pak Tanto describes as a "small city" in Central Java, which is one of three provinces on one of seventeen hundred islands in the nation of Indonesia, is the equal of the one in New York City.

Pak Iwan has offered to take me to the biggest Buddhist temple in the world sometime in the coming weeks.  I am even more anxious to see that than I was before.

After the Buddhist temple, Bu Tanto wanted to take me to a place in Indonesia where they serve dessert all day.  I do not know what these are called, nor if they are common.  In any case, they wanted me to try three different kinds of desserts.  One was a banana with chocolate and cheese--having been past several bakery carts in the past 48 hours, I know that this combination of flavors, which would strike most Americans as strange, is pretty popular in Indonesia.  Personally, I enjoy it.  The other two desserts involved shaved ice, flavored water, and toppings.  I liked one very much and thought the other was okay.  During this time, I thought of some additions to a chapter in a novel I'm writing.  I also met one of the students I will be teaching at the school.  It was a successful stop overall.

After dessert, I came back to the hotel to find that there was an Indonesian Muslim wedding party gathering outside.  There were a lot of people dressed in purple robes, both men and women.  A few of the men wore ceremonial swords.  I was still determined to write about the previous day, but I sat at the table near the window, so I could watch them leave.

The wedding party had left, and I had a passable start on my writing, when Pak Tanto called me again; he wanted me to join him for lunch at his restaurant.  When I got there, Bu Tanto wanted me to try on two more batik shirts before eating.  They were not from Matahari, and they are a little thinner, but that makes them more comfortable.  I like the traditional batik patterns.  I think when I come back to the US, I will continue to wear the batik shirts on hot days.

For lunch, we ate fried rice, although it was a slightly different dish than the one I had with Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni for lunch yesterday.  I enjoyed it every bit as much, though.  I am taking a liking to Indonesian fried rice dishes, which seems to please my Indonesian hosts.  At lunch, Pak Tanto told me that there was a music festival taking place just off the hotel grounds, near the school.  He said that the newer bands play earlier, but to go around three in the afternoon to hear better bands.  It sounded like fun, so I agreed.  I also told him that bands go in the same order in the US, because I thought it was an interesting similarity.

Between lunch and the music, I came back to the hotel to finish writing and watch a little soccer.  I realize as I read about my days as I write them that I am quickly becoming a guy who always watches soccer.  I guess it's not that unexpected, though.  In the US, I was a guy who always watched some sci-fi thing or a cop show on Netflix, even while I was doing other things.  Indonesia does not get netflix; it does not seem to have science fiction, and I haven't seen any cop shows.  If it did have those things, I wouldn't understand them.  Soccer is a good replacement habit.  If nothing else, it's very portable.  There's soccer being played somewhere at all hours of the day and night.

Anyway, I finished my writing, and I wrote three poems as well.  I put most of my writing online very shortly before I had said I would go to hear the music.  I rushed to change into one of my new batik shirts to meet Pak Tanto, but when I got to the music festival, it turned out to be heavy-metal music favored by teenagers in t-shirts.  The band playing when I got there was Fist of Wisdom.  They are loud.  They growl their lyrics.  Many of the t-shirts the teenagers were wearing expressed very angry, very political sentiments.  Pak Tanto, of course, was nowhere to be found.  We had miscommunicated.

Among young Indonesians in western clothes, I felt extremely out of place wearing a traditional Indonesian garment that was most obviously not my own tradition.  I had worn it hoping to please Pak Tanto, but the crowd there had no way of knowing what, if anything, I meant by the awkward apparent cultural appropriation.  Some of the people at the concert came up to shake my hand, either because they thought it was cool I was there, or to try to make me a little more comfortable, or to mock me.  I'm not sure.  Many others stared at me openly, with varying expressions.  Curiosity and contempt were present in equal measure.  In hindsight, I do not think it was a safe place for me to go; had I a different disposition and more sense, I probably would have been scared at the time.  I did realize that, regardless of the fact that I have been listening to heavy metal music since a lot of those kids were born, I did not exactly belong there, either.  I stayed to hear Fist of Wisdom, and then I left.  I did some writing, and concluded my second 24 hours in Magelang by sending the first two text messages of my life.

Maybe it's wrong of me, but I'm still glad I went to see the music.  Now I know there is Indonesian metal music.  If I had stayed in, I might never have learned.



My next post will cover my first day of work at SBTH school, so I will end this post with something that happened after my 48th hour in Magelang.  While I was writing this post (and watching soccer), I heard my first Indonesian rain out the window and on the roof.  I have been told that this is the rainy season, so I guess I'm a tiny bit surprised that it took this long.

After I post this, I hope to work on my novel a little bit.  We'll see if I have the energy.

My First 24 Hours in Magelang

I did not land in Magelang.  I landed in Semarang, which is about two and a half hours' driving from Magelang.  This post will chiefly be concerned with the time following that drive, because the time I spent in Semarang was occupied chiefly by bureaucracy (which is one of my weaknesses as both a typist and a human being--it bores me, and I always misspell it "bureaucrazy") and a stop at McDonald's, each of which are more or less the same everywhere.  Indonesian bureaucrats tend to dress more comfortably, bureaucrats in Semarang, near the beach, are more friendly than bureaucrats in Magelang, near the Akadamy Militir (military academy), Indonesian McDonald's serves fried chicken, and none of those things strike me as being remarkably interesting.

I suppose I would feel differently if I were a bureaucrat, if I hated hamburgers, or if I were in charge of hiring a foreign teacher into a school I ran.  It turns out that my employers flew me into Semarang so I could get a work visa from friendlier bureaucrats.  For them, apparently, the drive was easier than dealing with the bureaucrats in Magelang.  I thought the drive was nice enough, though it lent itself better to pictures than words, and my camera was in the trunk.  There were jungles; there were rice fields; there was a volcano; there were ruins of old Dutch fortifications.  I was told that the volcano exploded two years ago, but not to worry.  Pak Iwan, who runs a car company, his wife Bu Yenni, and my friend Maria Teguh, who I met in Bozeman this summer, were reassured when I told them that I live near Yellowstone, so I am used to not worrying about volcanoes.

Once arriving in Magelang, there was not a moment during which I did not feel conspicuous, save for those moments I was sleeping.  To be polite, I did not mention this fact, but it was somewhat tiring.  The first thing we did in Magelang was go shopping for a new shirt, one in a traditional Indonesian style called batik.  The pattern of the shirt is novel and pleasing; the cut is similar to Hawaiian shirts, which I find quite comfortable.  I was amused to learn that I wear a 3L in Indonesia, and that this is the largest size commonly manufactured.  I resolved then what I have considered for some time: that I will only eat two meals here on most days, which will save me some time to keep up with my travel blog while also making progress with my other writings, and will also get me down to an Indonesian size XL, at which I would still be big and strong by the local standards, but no longer fat and unhealthy by my own.

The store we went to was called Matahari, which I'm told means "sun" in Indonesian.  It means something different in the US, especially when placed next to a picture of a beautiful woman (which, in a clothing store, is often).  I figured there was no point in mentioning this.

While in the Indonesian mall, I saw another policeman similar to the beret-wearing cops in the Singapore airport.  He looked me over more than once, which hardly surprised me.  I still weighed 100 kilos, after all, and I was still wearing orange.

After shopping, my hosts checked me into my hotel, where I cut my hair, trimmed myself to small sideburns and a short goatee, and rested a little bit.  I watched some soccer on Al Jazeera sports.  Soccer's not my favorite sport, but I do find it entertaining.  This was Serie A, which is good soccer.  I suspect I'll watch a fair bit more of it than I used to.  They don't really show hockey on Indonesian TV.  Soccer has a similar feel in the back-and-forth play and the suspense added by difficult scoring.

I was told that Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni would come get me at the hotel and take me to a dinner party at six o'clock, where I would meet people from the school.  At 6:15, they had still not arrived, so I decided to walk around the hotel grounds a bit, still within sight of my room.  It was at that point that a hotel employee told me that my presence was expected in the hotel dining room.  Soon after that, I learned that my presence was not expected so soon as I had been told.  Other than the employees, I was the only one there.

Eventually, others arrived:  Maria, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni were there.  Pak Tanto, the owner of the hotel, and Bu Tanto, his wife, were among the first to arrive.  Most of the other guests were his family.  He has five children and nine grandchildren, and based on the ages of some of his grandchildren, perhaps great-grandchildren as well.  Pak Tanto does not look like a great-grandfather.  He looks like a man in his late forties or early fifties, and I tell him so after he tells me his age, which is considerably older.  He was about my height, or maybe taller, making him a big man by Indonesian standards. He and I are both a head taller than many of his male employees.  Pak Tanto seems like a very nice man.  He smiled a lot, and he was happy every time I tried some of the food; happier when I liked it.  This was his party, for his family and some family friends.

Pak Tento's grandchildren and Bu Yenni's daughter took turns hurrying me to try the native Indonesian dishes.  They kept interrupting me to tell me to get something new or to finish what I was eating.  They were insistent, but friendly and welcoming.  There were three traditional soups (goat, chicken and sticky rice), a grilled chicken skewer with sauce and vegetables, and a couple of deserts.  All dishes were rice-based or included rice, which is a favorite in Indonesia.  I really enjoyed two of the soups and the chicken.  The deserts were okay, but I pretended to like them more than I did because I might like them better when I'm not stuffed to the gills.  I found the texture and flavor of the sticky rice somewhat unpleasant; everyone said it was okay, because I liked the other dishes.  Many people came by to introduce themselves, including some of the people who run the school.  One of them wanted me to come see the school and meet the teachers at 10 the next morning, so I agreed.

I was tired even before the party started.  I had a good time, but once it ended, I was very tired.  It was not long after getting back to my hotel that I went to sleep.  In that time, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni came by with a few supplies, most notably a big jug of water like you would see in an office comedy or an actual office, depending on what you do in your everyday life.  I figure that this will be a very useful thing to have, if I ever figure out how to use it.

Early the next morning, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni come by again.  They take me out to "American Breakfast" at KFC, which evidently involves pancakes, scrambled eggs, and chicken porridge, depending on your tastes.  I don't even know if American KFC serves breakfast, and I've never heard of chicken porridge, but this is another one of those things I feel there's no reason to mention.  The pancakes are passable, and the scrambled eggs are tasty, so I just tell them that I'm enjoying the food.

After breakfast, we went to both the traditional street market and the supermarket.  At the traditional market, I felt very large again.  The alleys are narrow, and there are tents set up in some places, which are short enough that I have to duck to walk into and out of them, or to stand inside.  People coming the other way had trouble getting past me, because I have broad shoulders and a chest and a big belly.  I'm shaped sort of like a big box, and any way I turn, I take up too much space.  Until I lose some weight, I will have to stick to the supermarkets or to the sellers out on the bigger streets.  I did manage to buy some vegetables, some fruit, and some eggs.  The supermarket was a little easier.  There, I bought some dish soap, some dish sponges, a dish towel, and a pump for my big jug of water.  Then, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni dropped me off at the hotel, where I had just enough time to put my food away in the fridge before I walked over to the school.

I do not mean to brag when I write this; I am merely explaining my experience.  My arrival is big news at SBTH, the school that hired me.  There are classes on Saturday in Indonesia, but at SBTH, they only do extracurricular activities and such on Saturdays.  Still, the school was full of kids and teachers.  All of the teachers and many of the kids knew who I was before I introduced myself, and were very enthusiastic.  Some of the kids were shy, but the teachers all wanted to meet me.  I took a full tour of the school.  This was when I learned that I had been somewhat misinformed as to why I had been hired.  It wasn't to a degree that I felt like I had been lied to, but to a degree that it crystallized my early planning somewhat.  The chief problem with English instruction at SBTH, as the staff sees it, is that the students learn to read and write English, but not to speak it.

This is a thing I believe I know how to remedy.

After the tour, the teachers all got together for a staff meeting.  I was asked to stand in front of a microphone, where I would introduce myself and say hello to all the teachers.  I was asked to go on for longer than I felt was relevant, but apparently I am big news, and people wanted to know about me.  They, in turn, would introduce themselves to me, although they were not asked to go on, and I believe it was discussed at one point that they should hurry the process a little.  Nonetheless, I was able to learn that all of them were friendly, some were shy, and a few had very appealing senses of humor that I hope to hear more of.  I am not wont to use the phrase "good meeting," but I do believe that it applies here.  It was a good meeting.

After the meeting, I went back to the hotel room, changed out of my sweaty clothes, and rested for a while.  I think I might have watched some more soccer.  I know I hooked up the water pump I bought.  The instructions were in Indonesian, but I didn't really have to look at them to figure out how to put it together.  It works like a charm, and now I have a cheap, efficient source of drinkable water!

Before long, Pak Iwan and Bu Yenni came by again and asked me to go to lunch with them.  I had some traditional Indonesian fried rice, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  After lunch, I went back to the apartment to rest, drink a ton of water, and take a nap.  Thus ended my first 24 hours in my new hometown.

SIN (Singapore Changi Airport)

Singapore Changi airport is widely considered the best airport in the world. I got to spend eight hours there, and while I haven't spent eight hours in every airport on the planet, there's a lot to like about this one.

Pictured: a very real sign in the Singapore airport.  Slightly less whimsical: armed guards.  But we'll get to that.

For starters, Singapore had all the basic needs covered well. The seating was comfortable by airport standards, and very clean. The staff at the desks were helpful, even the ones who worked for other airlines. There was food available (for purchase, of course) twenty-four hours a day. And bathrooms? Wow. Typically, airport bathrooms come in two varieties. There are the ones people don't mind using, and the ones they really wish they didn't have to use. Singapore's were much closer to the first category than the second, but they really belong in a third category for bathrooms I wish I could use

all the time. They were very clean, aesthetically pleasing, and very functional. The stalls had plenty of room in which to manuver baggage, and they even had little shelves on which to set passports and boarding passes, or whatever it is you need to get out of your hands in an airport. I know that for me, it's always something.

Beyond that, the thing I liked about Singapore Changi was the fact that I spent eight hours there, but I didn't sleep and I wasn't bored.

After I got my connecting flight semi-figured out and had something to eat,

If you pay with a 20 at a McDonald's in Singapore, this is what you'll get back in change.

This was the first place I visited:

Yes, this is a garden.

The plants are real, and very well maintained (or whatever the equivalent of maintaining is that people do with plants).

If it looks like the path through the garden is sparkling,

That's because there are a bunch of tiny little lights in it,

And if it looks like Singapore has a pond in its airport,

That's because Singapore has a pond in its airport.

If it weren't for my carry-on luggage, I would have forgotten that I was in an airport at all.

There was also some very interesting shopping at the Singapore airport. Most of the stores were not open at one in the morning when I got there. Almost all of them were open by 8:30 AM when I went to my gate. Here, for instance, is the most interesting candy store I've ever seen in my life:

The Singapore airport, or at least Terminal 2 where I spent most of the night, seemed to have a thing for candy.

There were two other similar (though smaller and less visually interesting) 24-hour candy stores in the terminal. I also saw this:

But that couldn't be a real place, right?

Actually, Wrong

In US airports, they have stands and kiosks. In Singapore, they have giant open-air M&M stores. With statues in them.

Or does she prefer stewardess? I asked, but she didn't say anything.

What I learned today: The blue M&M is Homer Simpson, and the green M&M is a flight attendant.

There was also this,

Which seemed a little incongruous. Teddy Ballgame, the Babe, and Doug Flutie? Then again, Babe Ruth is extremely popular in Japan. Maybe Singapore has an additional affinity for amazingly skilled pure hitters and...obscure, moderately-skilled quarterbacks?

Eventually, I left Singapore via SilkAir, which was worthy of mention in its own right. Any airline that serves a full meal on a two-hour 9:30 AM flight is alright by me. This airline served its meal on acual dishes with real flatware. They also had the cutest and best-smelling flight attendants I've ever seen in one place, which I'm sure I'm a terrible person for noticing. Their nametags identified them as "stewardess" rather than flight attendant, which leads me to believe that I was supposed to be a bad person and notice.

"Quaint!"

It's worth noting that as a team, most of SilkAir's talent is at the chef and flight attendant positions. The pilots didn't impress me. They say you can tell a good pilot from a bad pilot by the takeoff and landing. These pilots didn't impress me.

"Not a happy landing."

There was one thing about the Singapore airport that was only amusing in hindsight. To put a name to it, I was confronted by a paramilitary police force. It happened like this:

There were a bunch of people hanging out on the 3rd floor of the airport, I assume waiting for morning flights, when two uniformed officers walked up to me. They were skinny little things, and they only carried skinny little clubs. I heard them speak a bunch of different languages over the course of the incident, so I assume they were hired for those skills rather than for their prowess in dangerous situations. Behind them, though, were two short, squatty type guys with berets, bulletproof vests, and very big guns. Soon, a third arrived. They looked built for trouble, and they definitely knew how to set up a perimeter. As a group, they approached me first. I flatter myself to think that they were a well-trained force trained to neutralize the biggest threat first, but in reality a 100 kilo American wearing shorts and a bright orange shirt at 1AM just looks jarringly out of place. Anyway, the two skinny little uniforms asked me some questions and moved on. Eventually, they ended up taking a couple of other people away.

Fortunately, I remained (and remain) free to live (and travel) another day, which I will post about as soon as I have something written.