The last week has been a snaz one; full of fun and a few classes. Tuesday (13th September) I had my first class of Bahasa Indonesia untuk Riset (Indonesian for Research) and discovered that the what-we-already-thought-was-long-20-page report would actually be upwards of 30 pages. I later checked out some previous ones and most of them were more like forty! As long as I pick an interesting topic all will be ok though. But that is easier said than done, as we all know that decision-making is not one of my strengths.
Another decision I need to make soon is which subjects to keep and which ones to drop. This was made harder by one of my classes, Pemuliaan Pohon Terapan (Applied Tree Propagation) not meeting my expectations at all. I thought it may entail how to grow trees to revegetate forests. It was the opposite. Pretty much I will be learning how to grow trees with the least amount of effort to get the most amount of money. During the class I thought this was a bad thing, but I have thought it might be interesting to see from an Indonesian perspective. That is if I don’t have a heart attack halfway through a lecture.
In the evening we went to salsa and learnt even more moves. It’s getting harder, but lots of fun! It’s also good being the girl, as the guy just leads you around and you just go with the flow and do lots of twirling. On the way home Nick and I got some bungkus ronde (take-away ronde). Ronde is a super yum ginger drink (I usually hate ginger, but this is really yum) with pink jellies, croutons, peanuts and the most amazing, melt in your mouth, peanut ball things. Although maybe bungkus wasn’t the best idea, as eating all that from a plastic bag is hard. Even with a spoon. But if you ever come to Indonesia, eat/drink ronde!
With not much besides a day off and futsal on Wednesday, the slightly more packed Thursday was very welcome. I had Sejarah Australia dan Pasifik (Australian and Pacific History) in the morning. Probably odd coming to Indonesia to do Australian history, but I just thought it would be interesting to see it from an Indonesian perspective. Apparently later in the semester we will watch “Gallipoli” (the really long film with Mel Gibson in it) in our one and a half hour class. That could be interesting…
After classes I met up with Shelly and a few of from ACICIS went to Raminton House to celebrate Shelly’s birthday. It was quite nice, as this time I didn’t have bubur ayam (chicken rice porridge, which comes in a massive serving there). In the evening, Tim, Red and I went to a cultural performance at Sanata Dharma University (Tim’s uni). It was awesome as! There were several dances from across Indonesia, including Java, Sumatera, Kalimantan, Lombok and Bali. There was also a performance by the third best choir in Yogya. They were quite impressive, and they even had a bit of dance to go along with their amazing voices.
On Friday, Nick and I had Linguistik Historis Komparatif (which we had both chosen independently) with just four other Indonesian students and the lecturer. It was an amazing class! The lecturer was excellent! However, due to such a low enrolment she thought it may have to be cancelled, which was really disappointing as it was such an interesting subject. Although, today at uni we saw a girl from the class who said that it would still happen, which is excellent. Later in the afternoon I was supposed to have Kehutanan Sosial (Social Forestry), however it was kosong (literally empty, but in this case it means the lecturer just didn’t feel like turning up, so the class is cancelled). Apparently this is a common occurrence, but until then, not one of my classes had been kosong.
I thought I was going to have to rush after Kehutanan Sosial, but as it was kosong I was able to just take my time. After class I met with a lot of other ACICIS students and Aldo (who has been doing an internship with ACICIS) and some of Aldo’s friends nearby the campus. As part of his internship, Aldo had organised for us to spend the afternoon at a local orphanage. He did an excellent job of organising it and we all had an amazing time. There were about twenty girls between the ages of about 11-16 who we got to know by doing the chicken dance, making animal noises to find groups and them teaching us how to make plaited bracelets. For beginners, like me, it’s hard to make the bracelet by yourself; you kind of need more than two hands. So I was helped by a lovely year 8 girl and just chatted a bit. Afterwards the girls performed a couple of songs for us. Their singing was wonderful and I’m not afraid to admit that I was tearing up quite a bit.
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| At the orphanage |
Later that night the awkward turtle gank went to the alun-alun again, to show everyone how awesome that place is. This time we rented a larger vehicle with a seat on the roof. However it was a tad scary up there when everyone’s steering skills maybe left a bit to be desired. Below is I will attempt again later to upload a video of travelling around the alun-alun, in which you can hear me have couple of panic attacks about the driving skills of a certain Red. But it was all ok in the end; we just missed the people, bikes and footpaths (which are much higher in Indonesia than Australia).
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| One of the many pedal-powered, brightly-lit vehicles at the alun-alun. |
So going to the alun-alun goes hand in hand with a late (or early, whichever term you prefer) return home. Which then translates to a late get up/lazy day. Hence my Staurday was kind of uneventful, aside from futsal in the evening and the purchase of some snaz as, real-fake converse for Rp85.000 each pair! (Which is about $9)
I think this enough for now, I’ll get on to the next several days later. Hope you’re going well :)
Salam hangat,
Katrina
