Pictures

told you i'd get these up soon :) its about time, i don't think i've ever uploaded pictures on this have i? enjoy

with friends at school

more friends

uniform!

this is the gado-gado padang

and the van where it was made

with a family friend, my host brother, and his daughter

my host brother, his wife, me, host sister, niece, host sister, family friend

durian! so weird but so good. i love it.

my host sister and some of her friends

i'll get more up as they come. i don't really have much to say...everything's going well still. you know, just school and stuff. not too exciting. today there was a really big rain storm. i was watching tv and then the room light up and there was a bang of seriously the loudest thunder i have ever heard. it scared me. i went to look out the window to see sleeting rain, making everything look smeared and wet. it is so amazing. i love rain. i've actually really started loving all the weather here. sometimes it really is too freaking hot i don't think its healthy but its grown on me. i'm probably going to freeze to death next year haha.
i'll post again when something happens.
cheers

Magic

to say that things have changed a lot since the last time i wrote is an understatement. change happening on a foreign exchange is something that cannot be stopped from happening. the biggest change that's happened to me is that i moved host families. my first family was really nice but we never really clicked, never felt the chemistry that really is needed in a relationship. so here i am. i'm still in jakarta, though now in the south instead of the east. my new family is amazing. everyone is really nice and i like them all so much. they're really pushing me too, we never speak in english. i've been with them for almost a month and i feel like i have improved so much! the other day i answered the home phone and all went well :) i understand a lot more and speaking is getting so much better. the more i remove myself from english and try to make my thoughts in indonesian the easier everything gets. i still haven't dreamed in indonesian, but i hope i will soon. also, my new school is this huge islamic high school in jakarta. its really religious and to me seems strict, but what do i know? anyway, for uniform all girls have to wear jilbab, the headscarf, so your hair is always covered. it is one of the weirdest things i have ever experienced. i'm getting used to it now, but at first it was just uncomfortable and hot. i'm really excited about my school though. getting to see up front what an islamic school is like and trying to follow lessons and just watching the way they do it is so cool and adds such a new range of color to this year. we take a religion class, a class special for reading the qur'an, and arabic. these three are the hardest for me but some of the most interesting.

the other day a bule came to the school. he's been living in indonesia for a while, though he speaks no indonesian, and he comes to my school to give english lessons. the teachers came and got me before he came and one took me out to the road in front of the school and we bought gado-gado padang. padang food has a special reputation for its spiciness. the gado-gado was so good. and the best part about it was that we bought it from a lady who had all the food set up in the back of a van. while i was sitting there eating i just thought about how some things that just don't fly in america are totally normal here and its really amazing. i would never buy food that was made in the back of a van in america. no way. but here, why not? it made me really happy and weirdly excited. just another one of those times when i thank whatever it is that let me get sent to indonesia.

so things are great. im so happy to be here. the time since christmas has flown past, i can hardly believe it. already the halfway mark of this year has been passed. time's just never going to feel normal to me. this sounds lame but lately i've been reading a lot of blogs by exchange students. its really inspiring to me to read about their life and their challenges and seeing how they got through it and made the best of everything they could. it also makes me die of jealousy. i have always wanted to travel, and my list of places i must go to just keeps on growing. i want to do study abroad in college, and at first i had it narrowed down to just a couple countries but now i have no idea. i want to go everywhere. i want to see and experience everything. can this be accomplished in one lifetime? i don't want it to be like touristy, when you're removed from the real life of the country. this year so far has taught me that the only way to really learn about a place is to let go and dive in and remove yourself from your own world with an open mind to see the new.

indonesia is a magical place. everywhere i look i see things that take my breath away, in good ways and bad. the scenery. mosques. the explosion of life in the city. and then there's the child beggars. sick dogs and stray cats. the traffic clogged for miles polluting this beautiful city. i used to see it so separated and think that it was the people's fault. their city is polluted because its too big and there's too many people driving cars. the beggars might be for real or they could be fake, taking everything they earn back to some higher power. its not like that anymore. the flaws are what really makes it and what gives it character. and i love it all. i wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world.

life is so good right now. i am so happy to just be alive! to be in indonesia. to speak indonesian. it comes naturally now. sometimes i do have to plan out stuff to say but for the most part it just flows. i couldn't write you an essay or anything, but i can read and speak with little difficulty. knowing the language has made things feel even better. no longer being in the dark, understanding for once what all the noise around me actually is. its still hard sometimes and i get unbelievably frustrated with myself for not saying all that i want or for not talking at all sometimes. its getting better though.

sorry this is kind of short. i will post again soon though and try to get pictures. i wanted to this time but the camera's being slow and i don't feel like dealing with it right now.
cheers

Ants in my pants and confused faces

alright so first thing's first, school is exhausting. i like it, the kids are all really nice and most of the teachers are too, but just the strain of sitting there everyday and listening so hard to everything that's said, trying to make some sense of it, it really wears me out sometimes. today was awful because the power shut off halfway through our first class and did not ever come back, so the whole day i was so sweaty and hot. one of my friends let me borrow her fan, for the last half hour of school. oh well. i feel like i'm doing really well in school. i mean aside from the fact that my lowest grade is in english because the teacher grades me harder than everyone else, everything's going well. i'm starting to understand a lot more. my speaking is still painfully limited, but i'm working on it. so where i sit in class is right next to a wall where a constant string of ants is moving, i don't know where they come from and where they end, but they're always there and usually we scoot the desks away from the wall so if we sit back the ants won't crawl on us. a couple days ago my desk was a lot closer to the wall then i realized and my friend olive told me to move, but i didn't want to do i said i'd be ok. oh man i was wrong. that day after i came back from school i had 13 ant bites all over my legs and 5 on my arms. i didn't even notice they were there! ahh i hate ants. it seems like the ants in america are usually tame, and they don't bite unless they feel especially vicious that day, but here they're just malevolent beasts. any time you find an ant on you, chances are its already bitten you at least once, and all its friends are on their way to bite you too.

i'm finally feeling the full swing of life here. for the most part i haven't been missing school for whatever reason and i dunno, just getting used to how it all flows. i still have the social skills of a peanut, but i'm working on that too. two months has really flown by, but at the same time taken so long i can hardly believe it. do i seriously only have 8 months left here?! that can't be! there's so much i still want to do and so much i have to see and learn, can i possibly fit all that into 8 short months? i better be able to.

a couple weeks ago all the YES kids went to yogya for a big YES alumni conference there for 3 days. it was so much fun! me omar and jillian took the train, which was really exciting. in my head i saw it more as the hogwarts express, but in reality it was just a regular old train. it was really fun to catch up and see each other again. there were a lot of sessions in yogya, mostly all for the real YES alumni, so we only had to go to some, giving us lots of free time. one day we went to a big traditional market and it was so cool. its so weird to me that i bought so much stuff and in the end it all cost me about $15. also one night we went and did karaoke, which was hilarious. i took some videos, and if i can figure out how i'll put them on facebook sooner or later.

so now on to the rest of my title. one thing i think all foreign exchange students have in common is the want to find ways out of doing stuff. even if the alternative is just sitting at home all day, nothing beats the satisfaction that you found a way out of doing something maybe you weren't too keen on doing. the biggest thing i find myself doing is pretending like i don't understand what people want. this only happens in school though. a lot of the time my friends will ask me to give my opinion of one of the kids sitting right next to me or a teacher will want me to just write something simple about the topic they teach instead of taking the quiz with all the other kids, and i don't know what to say or just feel too plain lazy to do it, i make my confused face. mostly it consists of me looking like i'm trying to understand what they want and looking back and forth, from person to person or from person to paper, trying to draw some connection between them. or i just furrow my brow and try to look like i'm very deep in thought, and i can't seem to figure out what they want from me. it works like a charm. i fully intend on using it up to the point when its just plain ridiculous that i can't understand what they want. this means i probably only have a month or two left. because if not sooner, i know that by christmas i'm going to know and understand everything. i'm trying to make it sooner though, because nothing frustrates me more than not being able to speak or understand everything. at this point, i understand 50% of what is said. which i think is good progress, i mean i didn't exactly try as hard as i should have to learn bahasa before i got here, so if you think about coming to a place with only the very most basic knowledge, i'm proud of myself. but i know i can try harder, so i'm going to.

knowing that where i come from the seasons are changing and seeing the same sunny sky or rain storm everyday instead of the colorful leaves and the brisk temperature is so strange. its weird to live in a place with no seasons. i mean there is the rainy season and the dry season here, but other than more frequent rainstorms you can't tell the difference between them. i miss seasons. the feeling, the sights, the smell. its something you never think about until its gone. that seems to happen a lot, i suddenly find some small thing that i didn't think twice about in america and here it seems so monumental, so huge i can't believe i ever took it for granted. i'm curious to see what ends up happening during the holiday season here. i know that the us embassy is setting something up for the YES kids for thanksgiving, but other than that the rest seems up to fate. hopefully, if our ramshackle plans work out, the YES kids will be able to hang out on halloween. i wish desperately that we could go trick or treating, but i dunno, kind of seems like that wouldn't fly too well for some reason ;)
until later, cheers

Its been a while..

sorry everyone. there's been some issues with the internet so we haven't been able to use it much this week. i guess actually its only been about a week but it feels like a lot longer for some reason...anyways, a lot has been going on. every night when i write in my journal i'm so surprised at how much i write here as opposed to america. there's just so much more that happens every day, and i really try to remember every detail. i don't want to forget any of this. so lets see, this week...

i was waiting all week for the weekend. finally saturday came! we hung around at the house for a few hours after school. diandra left for a class she takes, so it was just me and dieva at home. then wendy came over though and we broke the fast together. we only ate a little tiny bit though because we were going to go get diandra at a mall and eat pancakes and pasta there. the first thing i saw in the mall was a louis vuitton store. its still so weird for me to see designer stores in an everyday place. so we went to the pancake restaurant, which was like the best place ever. they had like 30 different styles of pancakes and waffles you could order, from bailey's chocolate with ice cream to every fruit imaginable. i got one pancake and one waffle with blueberry sauce and vanilla ice cream. oh my goodness, i was in heaven. everything was so perfect. i gobbled down my food, then had a happy little food baby. we walked around the mall for a few more hours. by the hard rock cafe, there was a live band playing and it smelled like burgers and ketchup and a bakery. i was so...at peace. it just felt so comfortable, and familiar because of the burgers and ketchup, it was really nice. while we were walking around i saw a lady dressed all in black with only a little slit where you could see her eyes. it really shocked me at first, i mean i know this is a muslim country but it was just something i never imagined seeing for some reason..but it was cool. every day i think of all the little things i see and do here that i wouldn't have a shot at ever doing or seeing in utah, and its so cool how much more indonesia has to offer. sorry guys, you just can't cut it. haha ;)

sunday was also amazingly fun. i was having a pretty hard morning but then my friend inez, who is a YES returnee from salt lake last year, and her siblings and host sister rahel, who was my roommate at the LOC, came and rescued me. we drove to the center of jakarta, which i think is one of my favorite parts, its so beautiful. i just feel happy looking at it. we went to this huge mall, the biggest by far that i've ever been to, called grand indonesia. we were going to go see a movie but then didn't because there wasn't time for us to since we were going to break the fast at a restaurant, so we just hung out in the mall all day. it was so fun! it was really great to see inez again, i've missed her a lot. we were walking along in the mall and i was chatting with rahel and then inez called my name. i turned to look at her and saw a small train heading right for me, ready to run me down. no one was harmed, luckily. actually probably all it would have done is knocked me down, it wasn't going fast at all. we went into this really cool store that was choc full of all kinds of traditional indonesian stuff and i wanted to buy the place. i really want to buy one of the traditional puppets, gamelan, because they're so beautiful. anyway, there was a case of way expensive jewelry and me and inez were talking about using our fork bracelets to pry the lid off and swipe them all. pretty much everything we talked about that day ended with me in indonesian jail or on the news the next morning, either as a desperate foreign exchange student living as a hobo in the streets of jakarta or because i broke the law. of course inez, my partner in crime here, would never get caught. isn't weird how my life always seems to point in the direction of me ending up homeless? i wonder if its a sign...so we got a little lost in the mall, which at the time we were saying was going to become my new home. i probably could live there though, no joke. i had my camera and my wallet, and in my wallet is my debit card and all the other important cards i need to have. i could buy clothes and food, and sleep in so many places, the mall is so big i'm sure i could find at least 50 really good hiding spots. in the mall there are little sections that are set up like a certain country. when we got the the japan section, there was a small amusement park that of course we had to go to! we went on a couple rides, which was so great, and then set off to leave to eat dinner. it took us a while though, like i said we got lost a little bit and its such a big mall..we got out though, and drove to an amazing thai restaurant. there was one page of vegetarian stuff, which was cool. i ordered vegetarian pad thai. when the food started to come, i saw that the way everyone else had ordered was what i think of as more traditional indonesian style, where there's a big bowl of rice and several little sides to put over the rice. but i just had a big plate of noodles, all to me. i eat so much here, its gross. i can't help it though, all the food here is so good! there's only been a few things that i've tried so far that i didn't like. it was such a great day, we laughed and talked a lot. i was really sad for it to end. all day there was that sick feeling of knowing that the next day i had to go to school..

so this week..hmm well nothing special really has happened. EXCEPT THAT ON MONDAY I RODE IN A BAJAJ!!!!! my dream come true! bajaj's are these amazing little public transportation vehicles that are a small car with a motor bike engine. they sputter along, easily the loudest thing on the street. i love them. and i got to ride in one! my cousin wendy was with dewi when she picked me up from school, and we were driving along when she pulled over and me and wendy got out and went to a bajaj driver and hopped it. it was so great. bumpy and loud. the inside of a bajaj sounds like an old motorcycle plus an old lawnmower. i got to smell jakarta, which sounds so weird but it was great. the smell of people, fried food, sweet food, fruit, cars, motorcycle exhaust, and the overall smell of the air here was incredible. i love it. on tuesday i had my first balinese dance lesson. the teacher came to my house and helped me put a big piece of batik fabric on like a sarong and then tied a long orange sash around my waist to hold the sarong there and act as a corset. it was the hardest thing i've ever done in my life. the teacher only speaks a tiny bit of english, so the lesson was all bahasa. mostly i watched her like a hawk, trying to exactly imitate the way she held her hands and bent her knees and moved her head and hips. it was exhausting. so different from any way of moving i've ever done before. my neck and legs were so sore the next day. but i couldn't be happier with it. i can't believe that i get to learn such a cool part of the beautiful culture that is indonesia. i'm going to work like i've never worked before to make sure i always do my best in that class. everything is so precise, from the movement of your hands, making sure they are flexed up and your fingers are curved, to moving your head side to side and keeping your eyes open wide and bending your knees so low and walking with your toes flexed up and your hips moving side to side with your butt sticking out. its really hard. but i'm going to learn it if it kills me. after dance i took a shower and we went out to dinner to celebrate diandra's birthday. we went to a really good japanese restaurant, where i ate nasi goreng and a tempura leaf (?). it was a lot of fun. basically i just had school everyday, then came home to rest and watch tv until maghrib, the call to prayer that tells you when to break the fast. on thursday i got a 6 out of 10 on my assignment in english. maybe its just that i know american english and they teach australian/british english in school here, or maybe its that my teacher is just bad at english. i think its a combination of both, because the stuff she marked me down for was not wrong at all. we were writing direct and indirect sentences, for crying out loud. how hard can it be? so i was pretty mad at my teacher for that, but its no big deal. and....that's really it.

i love it here, so very very much. i'm happy for the most part, though there are times when i'm so homesick i could die. but i'm content most of the time. no, more than content, i'm....amazed. i never knew it was possible to feel this way about a place i've only lived in for a month. i'm so happy, but i can't find the words to do it justice.