Indonesia: Life In The Islands

Lazy Sunday

Well...kind of. Lazy for my neighbors means up at 7 am instead of 5, so we had plans to go swimming at eight. Fortunately the street noises woke me up at 6:30, so the early alarm wasn't an issue. I went with Made and Miming to Araya, a fitness and pool complex about 10 minutes away from our neighborhood. We had a great time, spent three hours just swimming around and eating fruit. I showed them cannonballs and how to walk on their hands underwater, tricks that were met with wonder and amazement. There was a waterslide too, and I decided to go down on my stomach like Miming. Well, Miming is a 9 year old, 60 pound girl and I unfortunately am not, so I ended up rubbing off the skin on my hip bones with some exposed tubing. Felt great haha. The unimportance of time in Indonesia was demonstrated again today when we were forty-five minutes late for our ride home and no one seemed to care. I think the driver (some relation to the Putu family) was half an hour late himself. The downside to this attitude is that is takes FOREVER to do things, like rent movies. To rent 5 movies this afternoon took almost an hour because everyone just hangs out and chats and doesn't seem to care what time it is. I still need to shed my attachment to correct time and appointments.
One of the other teachers, Ibu Dwi, had told me that she was coming over today to take me back to the tailor's to collect my uniform. I had dropped the material off on Friday night, along with a horrible sketch of what I imagined the uniform should look like. I assumed Ibu meant sometime in the morning or afternoon, but she actually showed up after seven. Before we went to the tailor's we went to Matahari and MATOS to close down her two jewelery kiosks. Her husband, niece, and son were also in the car. When we finally reached the tailor, the two kids were asleep. No problem, we just left them chilling out in the car on the street while we went inside.
Now, I thought the purpose of this uniform was to make me look conservative, or fit it, or something. BUT the way the sketch translated into fabric I don't think that will be happening. The skirt is an A-line cut that is literally painted onto my body. I can barely move my legs enought to walk--and there is also a slit up the back! The top is a little button down jacket with short sleeves that barely covers the beginning of the skirt...but the best part is the GIANT SHOULDER PADS. I demanded they be taken out, but after negotiations and calls to other teachers who spoke some more English than Bu Dwi, I agreed they could remain on a trial basis. So from the bottom down I look like a cheap call girl, and the top up like Paula Abdul from an eighties music video. It really is one of the most absurd outfits I've ever seen...but I kind of love it.
After we left we went to a padang restaurant where they served food from Sumatra. Padang means that you get a bunch of different dishes and choose what you want to eat. Once again the whole time we were inside eating, we left the two sleeping babies in the car by themselves. I don't know how people can keep telling me that Malang is so dangerous when they leave little kids alone by themselves at night. The food was good but of completely indiscernible origin. So Ibu Dwi whipped out her electronic dictionary and translated what I had eaten:
ayam: chicken (that was fine)
some form of beef:I couldn't be sure what part of the body
liver from some animal:I took one bite and almost vomited, so I didn't ask
there was some confusion about a dish, and I heard the word anjing, which means dog--and I was horrfied that I had just potentially eaten a puppy. I almost started to cry and said "saya punya anjing, saya tidak makan anjing" (poorly spoken, means "I have dog, I can't eat dog." I should have said had...R.I.P. Patches Kunkel). The dictionary then showed that I HADN'T eaten dog, only cow legs. I never thought I'd say that eating cow legs was a relief, but...
I tried to be open-minded and try everything...but I did have to draw the line somewhere. You know those posters they show you in D.A.R.E. of the lungs of people who have smoked for years and died of lung cancer? Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what cooked cow lungs look like. I stared at them and even went as far as to poke them with my fork, but nothing less than $20 (maybe $15) was going to get me to eat them.
So it was an adventure. Tomorrow I really start teaching, so I need to prepare a lesson plan for my class from 12-1:30. It's almost September 11 here, so I'm definitely going to discuss that, no matter how touchy a subject it might be. We'll see how it goes!

posted by Caitlin @ 11:01 PM