Things have been shaping up here. I'm starting to get acclimated to the city and enjoy my time here. I just bought a bunch of plane tickets yesterday.. haha. One for the way home! I leave from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (somehow I'll have to get there) and fly to Cairo, Egypt where I have a 2-3 day layover. I then fly from there to Madrid where I have a.. 13 day layover :). Sometime during that time I have to make it to Paris, where I am flying out of to Minneapolis. I'm very excited! Those flights with those layovers actually ended up being cheaper and on the exact days I was hoping, thanks be to God. Although, I wish the one out of Paris were a little earlier, so I could make it to L.A. earlier/on time, but there were not many options for that flight and I booked the Paris-Minneapolis leg a week ago before I knew certain details about my schedule.
No Classes for 20 more days!!...
We had makeshift class this past Friday, Monday and Tuesday, and real classes with the University were supposed to start on Wednesday, Sept. 1st. They hadn't decided classes would start on Sept. 1st until the week before that (which is why I had to rush here early August- in CASE classes were to start then). All of us Darmasiswa students arrived at the classroom at 9am and waited outside until 10am when a man from administration showed up and said that the teacher wasn't coming and that classes will actually start after the holidays now, on September 20th. The biggest holiday break in Indonesia is for Lebaran or Idul Fitri which is September 11th and 12th. The break usually starts a week before that and ends a week after (similar to our Christmas break time of the year). Since we had no warning and it's during the holidays, travel/transportation prices are quite high, but it's the only break and only opportunity to travel throughout the semester, so we all really wanted to go somewhere.
I had many different options of people to travel with and it was very difficult deciding what to do. Yesterday (after most of my friends had already left for their destinations), I decided that I would go with the family from church (Pipit's) to their village. Although I could have travelled SE Asia for 20 full days, I felt strongly that I should accept their offer to go to their village with them over Idul Fitri. We will be there for 5 days - from the 7th to the 12th. I still have time from then until the 20th, so I got tickets yesterday to go to the Philippines and then stop in Singapore on my way home (I told you I bought a lot of tickets yesterday!!). It will be my first time travelling alone, which I'm more excited than nervous about. It will be an adventure :). Right after I booked these tickets I read a chapter in "Good News About Injustice" that was talking about Manila and about the organizations there. I'm definitely going to visit them - IJM and S.T.A.R. (look them up if you don't know them!) - while I'm there, and maybe see if there are any S.T.A.R. meetings I could sit in on. I'm so excited.. I mean sitting in this city for 3.5 weeks now has been really fun and all (hah, I'm partly serious), but I'm definitely ready to see more of the area.
Americans in Bandar Lampung!
You will not believe it - there are some other Americans in this city! My friend Risti, who is an Indonesian law student at UNILA seems to know every international person in the city and told me one day that there is a family from America who lives here. On Monday Risti and I went to their house, hung out for the day with them and had dinner. They are from the South and are Christian. They've lived in Indonesia for 17 years now. Their two sons are in college in the US right now, and their daughter, who is 14, is still at home with them. They started an English program in Bandar Lampung called "Conversation Corner" which University students or professors can come to (Risti is a part of that). They also have set up clean water programs in 4 of the nearby villages. It was really nice to speak English with someone, be in a nice home, and eat a different type of food for a change (we had TACOS!!!). They told me a lot of information about the city that I did not know, which was helpful.
A girl named Valerie, from Kentucky, joined us for dinner. She is about my age and has been living in Bandar Lampung for 1.5 years to work as a teacher for their English program. After dinner, Valerie, Risti, two other girls from Indonesia, and I went to Valerie's house and had a worship/prayer session. When I had met Risti she told me she did worship with some friends every Monday night. It peaked my interest when Risti said this to me the day we met, because she is Muslim. I wondered if she had meant a Christian worship session or not. Then she started singing some songs for me like, "How great is our God" and "Hosanna", which are Christian (!!) but also in English (??). Risti was then in the hospital for 2 weeks (everything went well!), so this is the first time we had gone. When I got there I understood why she knew worship songs in English. We sang a few in Indonesian as well. The two other girls from Indonesia are very strong Christians and really awesome people. I think they and Risti are the 3 best English speakers (from Indonesia) I've met since I've been here.
I had lunch with Risti the day after that at Pizza Hut (haha, American/different food 2 days in a row! woww). It was really good and verrry different from Pizza Hut in the states (its actually way better - way more options, healthier, and a lot cheaper! lol).
A few more interesting things about Indonesia:
- No pandora in indonesia, or anywhere besides the US.. I never knew this!
- There was a 3 inch cockroach in room. I saw another huge spider (worse looking - bright colored stripes). Saw a huge rat in our rumah kos. There are many large crawly things with lots of legs (like a BIG leech-like thing with lots of legs).. I killed one of them that was in my room a few weeks ago. The most surprising thing about all of these bugs/animals is that I'm not too surprised anymore. I don't even tell people about them anymore.. there are like dozens of stories I could tell you, but they don't seem that crazy anymore. I'm still scared of course! but maybe a little less so. I'm really scared for the village though (if these are the bugs here, what will they be like in the village?!??!).
- Someone told me last week that the densest insect population in the world per square mile is in Southern Sumatra. Great.
- The most common stray animals here are goats and cats. That sort of surprised me for some reason. I've learned to herd goats off of the little trails so I can get by when I'm walking to the university! haha.
- Bed sheet sets do not include a top sheet here. Blankets are also not used. I didn't think I'd ever be comfortable sleeping without something over me, but now that it's hot at night, I have no trouble!
- The temperature between the day and night doesn't change that much. It makes me realize how much of Wisconsin's summer heat is caused by the sun.
Btw, did anyone notice that RIGHT after I wrote my last entry saying "I hope no volcanoes explode here", the volcano in N. Sumatra underwent its first eruption? There's no effect of the eruptions down here, but it sounds pretty bad up there. It erupted for the 3rd time yesterday, which was the worst one so far.
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| Aug.21: First time to the Indian Ocean! |
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