I was tired after the ride, but it was worth it . . .

(Please refer to the last paragraph for the title reference)

First of all, Happy Independence Day, America!

So, I’ve been compiling a list of updates I need to add to my blog, so this will probably be even more random than usual, but oh well.  Also, as I’m sitting here writing my blog, I’m reminded that I really should be working on school preparations, but I’ve really become an expert at procrastinating (I’m convinced that I enjoy cleaning much more when I actually have something important that I should be doing instead, if that makes sense).  Anyways, I definitely need to get back in touch with my crafty, creative side at school, so I can make things for my classroom and decorate some bulletin boards! Oh yeah, and I need to have three weeks of lesson plans done by Thursday…I’m one-third of the way there, almost…

Now, to begin the randomness: Prawn crackers are served with many of the dishes of food here.  Yes, shrimp-flavored crackers, but not like Ritz or anything, they’re much lighter.  Personally, I think they’re disgusting.

Pocari Sweat is one of my new favorite drinks here, besides fresh strawberry juice (I also tried an avocado float, which was interesting, but not in a bad way).  Pocari Sweat is the equivalent of lemon-lime Gatorade, kind of.  It says that it’s an Ion Supply Drink, and I actually bought it thinking that it was just a bottle of flavored water that looked strangely cloudy.  Luckily, it turned out to be a delicious decision. 

Being that my school is based on the Cambridge system (yup, that’s in England), they use terms and words that we, as Americans, aren’t used to.  For example, they spell the word ‘color’ as ‘colour’ and z’s change to s, ‘tire’ is spelled ‘tyre’…I’m not going to be teaching English, so I don’t know a lot of the rules, yet.  Anyway, the best/weirdest part to get used to is everyone calling me “Miss”.  The students will call me Miss Lynsey, but also the other teachers also call me that or they simply shorten it to Miss.  It makes me smile because I feel like some sort of British royalty or something.

Zumba became one of my favorites ways to work out, especially during my last year in college, so I was excited to hear that there is an aerobics/zumba class at my apartment building twice each week.  I’ve walked by a couple of times while this was going on.  Randomly enough, the class takes place in the front lobby of my apartment, which opens up into the front pull-up area of the parking lot.  Not only does everyone coming into the lobby get to watch us awkwardly dance and shake our hips, (okay, I only attempt the latter, but I still do it awkwardly) but all of the security guards and apartment workers just stand there and watch us.  Lastly, the woman who leads the class is super flexible, energetic and fun, and, best of all, she blasts Adele for most of the warm up and cool down of the workout, which she attempts to sing along with.  Moral of that story…I’m going to do it again on Thursday evening!

Our neighbor is signing up for internet in the apartment tomorrow, so hopefully Danna and I will be able to split the cost with him, so that we’ll have reliable internet that we can use to Skype with our families.  It’s rather expensive, but it turns out that it’s with the only company that is allowed to install in our building, so I’m happy we’re splitting the cost three ways. 

This past Sunday, we were taken to a church in the part of Jakarta that’s considered the China Town of the city.  It was a small English service, but we found out after the service that the real service was being held upstairs in the actual sanctuary.  We walked up there to have a look around, and there were around 2,000 people in the Chinese/Bahasa Indonesian service, which was SO MANY people!  Also, this church has something like 36 different branches around Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and they actually want to start a church in Los Angeles.  I’m still looking forward to continuing my church search.  We also went to the Ranch Market, which is like another Whole Foods, and it had a lot more imported food than the other places we’ve shopped.  It was a treat to buy Macaroni and Cheese, but it got expensive quickly, because I wanted to buy the familiar products.  I think I’ll stick with shopping at Hero, a grocery store in one of the malls I live near, so then I won’t have to take a taxi to get there.  We also ate at an amazing restaurant called Ninety-Nine, and we all agreed that we needed to return there later in the school year for drinks, because they have an entire wine room called The Bottle.  Later in the day, we ventured to a massage place called Zen-O.  We all scheduled 90 minute hand and foot massages, which were amazing.  I wasn’t quite sure how they would fill that much time while I just sat in a big recliner with everyone else also sitting around me, but they really focused on each of the hands and feet, as well as the lower legs, and then, at the end, there was some focus on the shoulders and back.  I would say that was well worth the price of less than $10…no, I did not forget any zeros on that number, it only cost ten bucks, even after the tip!

This Bali trip is not as easy to plan as I had hoped.  Last night, Nicole found out that “the boys” (a group of American guys who work at a different school than we do) booked a villa in Bali, and they informed us that there weren’t many left for the taking.  So, Nicole and I made a trip to Burger King in the mall to take advantage of the wi-fi and book a villa for “the girls”.  Thankfully, we got that booked.  Unfortunately, when we attempted to book a flight today, there was a problem with the Air Asia website that wouldn’t allow me to pay with my U.S. credit card.  I called the customer service tonight, and it turns out that they’re having a problem with all accounts from the U.S.  So, I think we will go to their office in Jakarta tomorrow, since it’s located in another mall nearby.  The only problem is that we’re supposed to go out for dinner with the Americans to celebrate our nation’s birth, so we’re trying to work around that.  I think it will all work out fine, and maybe even for the better, since I can use cash to book the flight. 

I don’t remember if I mentioned spending too much money to wash my clothes the first time around, but I took my second round of washing to a local laundry shop outside of my apartment building.  Unlike the laundry in my building, which charges per item, this place charged me per kilogram.  I had about 1.5 kilograms of laundry, which cost 9,000 Rupiah, which is roughly $1.00.  I was very happy with that price, so hopefully I’m satisfied with the quality of my clothes once I get them back.  It takes three days for the washing, unless I want to pay double to get them by the next day, which wouldn’t be much anyway, if I needed it.

Last, but certainly not least, is the adventure after which I named this post, which happened last weekend on my way back from the school’s teacher conference in Puncak (pronounced Poon-cha, because the letter ‘c’ is read as ‘ch’ and the ‘k’ at the end of a word isn’t said—there’s your Bahasa Indonesian lesson for the day).  We left Jakart at 5:30 a.m. on Friday morning to start our 2-ish hour journey to Puncak for our conference, which was only scheduled to last until noon-ish on Saturday.  We made fairly good time on our way up to Puncak, which is located in the mountains, or at least that’s what they kept telling us.  It was very picturesque scenery with hillsides of tea plantations as we neared our destination.  The conference seemed to be kind of a waste of our time, as the new teachers had just spent seven days doing much of the same thing.  It did give us a chance to meet the other teachers at our school, though, which was great.  By Friday night, after a few sessions and dinner, it was apparent that there was a stomach illness or food poisoning going around.  There were a ton of sick teachers, expats and locals alike, so the school staff was passing around medicine and Pocari Sweat like it was candy.  Fortunately for me, I did not get sick.  The suspected culprit was the previous night’s seafood buffet dinner, which, ironically, was a treat from the school for all of the new teachers after our last day of orientation.   Side note to our being sick: Indonesians don’t shy away from discussing bodily functions, especially when inquiring about you being sick. They give specifics and actually we prayed at our assembly for the “sick teachers who have diarrhea.”  The Americans found that particularly strange, but I also found it entertaining.  Thanks to Veronica and the Polinske family for exposing me to the bathroom talk for the past two years, because now I’m not nearly as uncomfortable when someone tells me too much information, i.e. “Did you feel sick? Because I have diarrhea from last night’s dinner.” J  

Anywho, by Saturday morning, most of the teachers had recovered, for the most part, so all they looked forward to was the journey back to Jakarta on the bus.  Little did we realize, the 2.5-hour journey to Puncak would be easily doubled on our way back because of a traffic jam.  Some of the school officials had warned us of this possibility, but we assumed that they would attempt to work our schedule around the closing of the road, so that we could make it back at a decent time…nope, that’s not how it worked out!  We had a box lunch after our session on Saturday morning, and then we boarded the buses.  We proceeded to sit on the bus for an hour, in the parking lot of the hotel.  It didn’t make any sense to us, but we could do nothing but eat our lunches and wait.  We finally left the hotel a little before 2 in the afternoon, but about 30 minutes into the drive, we hit horrible traffic and stopped alongside the road.  This little stop turned into a five-hour ordeal, no joke.  I remember seeing all of the roadside stands and shops on our way up the mountain, and I had wondered how they ever got any business if there was just traffic zooming past, well my question was answered.  Once the bus stopped, we were informed that they close one side of the mountain road so that two lanes can be open coming up, and it had been known to be closed for up to six hours in the past.  Here’s a rundown of how I spent my time on the side of the road: We stopped at the nearest shop and ate grilled sweet corn; drank Pocari Sweat, ate ice cream flavored Oreos, which tasted actually very much like an orange dream sickle filling; explored the real Indonesian bathroom, which did not have any sort of toilet, just a porcelain hole in the ground where you pour water in to flush after you’re done.  That may not make sense, but I’m sure I’ll have a picture of it at some point; and Nicole and I had a ‘photo shoot’ with some local, older women at one of the shops where I stopped to buy a Sprite.  They asked us, in English, if we wanted to sit and chat, so we obliged.  After asking where we were from, what we were doing in Indonesia, and how we liked it so far, they took some pictures with us (their idea, not ours).  When we left, they asked if we were Christian, and then told us that Jesus loves us, and God Bless.  It was quite interesting and random, but it made the time go by more quickly and it’s a funny story, not to mention a funny picture.   All in all, I wasn’t angry about getting stuck in the closed road for a few hours because I looked at it as a chance to get a taste of the “real” Indonesia, since we’ve been stuck in the “bubble” we live in by the mall.  I didn’t think about all of the items I wasn’t getting finished on my to do list, and I just tried to remind the annoyed people with us to relax because there wasn’t anything we were going to do but enjoy exploring!