Settled In
Just a couple quick things to start off with:
Apparently there have been volcano rumblings somewhere in Indonesia. They're not around here. I think it's a three-hour plane ride away or something. There have been a few small earthquakes since I've been here, but I didn't feel any until today, and even then, it was less than how much my office shook when a big truck drove by. Also, the volcano that is close to us, Merapi, is spewing ash, but it always does that.
Also: as always, please consider making a contribution to Hands On Disaster Relief. This organization is incredibly efficient at translating donations into tangible impact in this affected community. Plus, it's tax-deductible, and all of the info you need for that is right here.
Photos will take me a while; our internet place is incredibly slow. In the meantime, check out the Hands On flickr site here.
The spacebar still sucks.
Ok, now for fun Staf (mis)adventures!
Monday, August7, 2006 - 9:31 PM
Today I had a light day. I feel kind of bad, since I didn't need to pick up a shovel all day. I have two new projects to work on. The first is that I'll be doing our weekly supply shopping. This is kind of fun, because it's a half day, once a week or so, to get a taxi, go into the city, and pick up our staples. The group is bigger now than it has been before, so it'll take me one or two tries to figure out how much stuff to get, but I'm looking forward to it. (The second project is a school project, but I'll explain that more onThursday, when I actually do it.)
So today, I did a mini-shopping trip, and went with Suparman, the taxi driver we use a lot, and Kevin, another volunteer, to the supermarket, Progo. Between my spotty Bahasa and drawing pictures, I found everything I needed. Next, Kevin and I went to get cellphones. I'm glad that Suparman went with us, as I think I got a decent price for my phone. A note about Suparman - he's this cool Indonesian guy who can speak very good English, and has been working with Marc since Hands On started in this area. We sat down at the cellphone place, and he turns to me and asks, "do you want to bargain? I don't really know how to bargain. Parlez-vous francais?" He then starts rattling off numbers in French to me, and we speak in French for a minute and come out with a price I like. Suparman is awesome.
Sunday, August 6, 2006 - 10:00 PM
Sundays are our day off. I headed out with a group of volunteers to do some sightseeing. First was Borobudur, the famous Buddhist temple. While I am still totally enchanted by this place and its people, the realities of the heavy air pollution, fatigue, and ... my unhappy stomach had set in, and I spent most of my time there propping myself up against the numerous reliefs and stupas. Next was a stop by Merapi, the volcano that we can see from our house, to check out the ash. It's incredibly big and beautiful up close, but scary as well. I think two aid workers died there shortly after the earthquake, from an ash flow. After that, we quickly stopped by a silversmith place, where we saw workers making filigree jewelry. The part that I found the most intersting was the polishing. They use some kind of fruit, shaped like a cherry but a bit wrinklier. Once soaked in water and scrubbed with a brush, it produces a foam, which can be brushed on silver to polish it. Neato burrito. Lastly, we stopped by Prambanan, the Hindu temple. Prambanan sustained quite a hefty amount of damage in the May 27 earthquake, so we were not able to walk completely up to it, as we had at Borobudur.
On Sunday evenings, we have our weekly group dinner out at a restaurant. We went to a place called Pyramid, which is shaped like... a giant pyramid. Two new volunteers joined us during dinner, and three had come earlier in the day, so now we're up to 15 people or so. I gota ride back to the house on the back of Marc's (operations director) motorbike. (So many people ride them here. Traffic is crazy. I'm scurred to ride a bike here.) Anyway, I didn't fall off. So I was excited for that.
Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:00 PM
Tonight, I headed into the city of Yogyakarta with a group of the other volunteers for dinner and a Ramayana ballet performance. The dinner wasn't anything too exciting, and the dance performance (think Javanese/Hindi-type dance, not "ballet" in the French sense) was interesting. But the amusing thing was that a wedding was going on in the same restaurant/venue where we were. We were in an outside ampitheater, while the wedding was taking place in the garden of the restaurant we had dinner in. It was a huge, probably 750+ person affair, which was mix of traditional and modern Yogyakarta/Indonesian customs. At first I felt bad for intruding on their wedding, but people were really friendly, and even invited us to dance and take pictures. It was kind of funny. Apparently the groom used to be in a band, so he had a bunch of friends in bands. They took turns singing cover songs for the couple, and so we were treated to Bryan Adams "Everything I Do," "That Thing You Do" from that movie, some Beatles songs, and even that song by Eddie Vedder that's all blubbery. It was pretty entertaining. These guys were pretty good, withthe rockstar shimmying and funky hair down pat.
Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 1:06 PM
I now have the basic routine down. We get up by 6:30AM, get ready to go (usually this means pulling on yesterday's pre-dusted work clothes), and have breakfast. Then it's off the work site, between 7:30 and 8:00AM.
We load up our Hands On wheelbarrows with all of our gloves, tools, and water, and walk through town to get to our site. Along the way, we say "hello" or "selemat pagi" (good morning) to basically everyone along the side of the road. Sometimes, we don't even see anyone, and we hear a child's "Hallo!" ring out from behind some trees and bamboo, and we'll see a pocket of children waving frantically to us. Responses are me with smiles and giggles. Everyone smiles a lot. :-) Ding!
Once on the site, it's usually some sort of cleanup/rubble removal/deconstruction. Projects are often clearning away rubble, dismantling roofs and salvaging tiles, and pulling down unsound homes. The homes here are built with bricks, mortar, and cement, so it's backbreaking work under the searing sun. The bricks are rather cheap clay, and so in the process of trying to salvage them, a lot of them end up crumbling. Curiously, the mortar is amazingly strong, often outlasting the brick. People use a ton of the stuff here too. So, we hoe and we shovel and we wheelbarrow away until I want to punch myself in the face, but my muscles are so tired that they can't really lift my arms to do so. So I retire to the shade and guzzle water instead.
The people from the neighborhoods where we work often bring us fruit and snacks in the middle of the morning, and again in the afternoon. This may consist of bananas, oranges, watermelon, pineapple, and various fried-snacly-something-or-others. Once, they even brought us longans, which I was all over (I think they can be expensive in the states), but the other volunteers not so much (too much work to peel).
I interrupt this post to announce that I'm hearing Keane's "Is it Any Wonder" on the radio in the internet shack. Second time I've heard it today. Makes me happy. Back to the post.
Yesterday, I also tried my first snakefruit. Which will probably be my last snakefruit. It was really neat to look at, but kind of dry inside and light on flavor.
Anyway, we head back for lunch around 11:00 or 11:30AM, and take a break until 2:00PM. Some people nap, some read, some wander around town. We work in the afternoon from 2:00PM until about 5:00PM. We'll head home, shower, and have dinner all together, then have free time in the evenings. People are usually in bed by 9:00PM. It's a pretty tiring routine.
People here love the camera. Especially the kids. They're all ridiculously photogenic here. With super cute haircuts. One baby girl had her headscarf on in the evening, and she looked like a stuffed animal. I wanted to stuff her in my backpack.
There's a number of 20-something guys here, and they are quite popular with all of the girls and women. Yesterday, Jeremy rounded the bend with a wheelbarrow, having just dumped a load. "I love you!" someone yelled out. "I love you too!" he yelled back, over his shoulder. At the end of the day, we took some photos, and one of the women sidled up next to Jeremy for a picture. She smiled really big, and looked over at her friends. "Wooooooohooooooo!" she whooped. He has also reported getting butt pats.
Friday, August 4, 2006 - 12:55 PM
Midday break. I went for a brief walk around the neighborhood, and stopped by our cornerstore to buy some Milo. These two guys here were talking about it, so I was curious to try it. It tastes chocolate malt-y and creamy to me, but that could just be the UHT milk that we have, which is...full cream.
Also at lunch today, I stopped by a cart selling food on the side of the road. It looked like they had these little fried banana things (not pisang goreng, or what "fried banana" usually is). It's a tasty little bite of banana, wrapped up in generous strip of some egg pastry dough, which is then fried. (People drop food and snacks off at the job sites in the morning and afternoon, and I remembered these as being particularly tasty.) I only wanted five, and tried to ask for as much, but apparently I asked for 5000 rupiah worth, because the guy kept loading them into a bag. After there were about a dozen in there, I got worried. It ended up being about two dozen. That's ok, it's only about 50 cents. And I had a big bag of tastiness to bring back to the house to share.
Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 12:39 PM
My first day of work! No jet lag! Everyone seems to wake up by 6 or 7AM, and we're out on the job site by 7:30AM. I slept pretty well, but I was woken up by the prayer call at 4:30AM, followed by a perpetual rooster, and then a screaming kid. But it's ok. There are also small geckos everywhere; I watched one scurry up a wall into a detached electrical socket. A few minutes later, I noticed another one (surely not the same?) on the wall across the room.
We have a flush toilet and a shower (a cold one, but a shower nonetheless). I feel so spoiled.
Apparently there have been volcano rumblings somewhere in Indonesia. They're not around here. I think it's a three-hour plane ride away or something. There have been a few small earthquakes since I've been here, but I didn't feel any until today, and even then, it was less than how much my office shook when a big truck drove by. Also, the volcano that is close to us, Merapi, is spewing ash, but it always does that.
Also: as always, please consider making a contribution to Hands On Disaster Relief. This organization is incredibly efficient at translating donations into tangible impact in this affected community. Plus, it's tax-deductible, and all of the info you need for that is right here.
Photos will take me a while; our internet place is incredibly slow. In the meantime, check out the Hands On flickr site here.
The spacebar still sucks.
Ok, now for fun Staf (mis)adventures!
Monday, August7, 2006 - 9:31 PM
Today I had a light day. I feel kind of bad, since I didn't need to pick up a shovel all day. I have two new projects to work on. The first is that I'll be doing our weekly supply shopping. This is kind of fun, because it's a half day, once a week or so, to get a taxi, go into the city, and pick up our staples. The group is bigger now than it has been before, so it'll take me one or two tries to figure out how much stuff to get, but I'm looking forward to it. (The second project is a school project, but I'll explain that more onThursday, when I actually do it.)
So today, I did a mini-shopping trip, and went with Suparman, the taxi driver we use a lot, and Kevin, another volunteer, to the supermarket, Progo. Between my spotty Bahasa and drawing pictures, I found everything I needed. Next, Kevin and I went to get cellphones. I'm glad that Suparman went with us, as I think I got a decent price for my phone. A note about Suparman - he's this cool Indonesian guy who can speak very good English, and has been working with Marc since Hands On started in this area. We sat down at the cellphone place, and he turns to me and asks, "do you want to bargain? I don't really know how to bargain. Parlez-vous francais?" He then starts rattling off numbers in French to me, and we speak in French for a minute and come out with a price I like. Suparman is awesome.
Sunday, August 6, 2006 - 10:00 PM
Sundays are our day off. I headed out with a group of volunteers to do some sightseeing. First was Borobudur, the famous Buddhist temple. While I am still totally enchanted by this place and its people, the realities of the heavy air pollution, fatigue, and ... my unhappy stomach had set in, and I spent most of my time there propping myself up against the numerous reliefs and stupas. Next was a stop by Merapi, the volcano that we can see from our house, to check out the ash. It's incredibly big and beautiful up close, but scary as well. I think two aid workers died there shortly after the earthquake, from an ash flow. After that, we quickly stopped by a silversmith place, where we saw workers making filigree jewelry. The part that I found the most intersting was the polishing. They use some kind of fruit, shaped like a cherry but a bit wrinklier. Once soaked in water and scrubbed with a brush, it produces a foam, which can be brushed on silver to polish it. Neato burrito. Lastly, we stopped by Prambanan, the Hindu temple. Prambanan sustained quite a hefty amount of damage in the May 27 earthquake, so we were not able to walk completely up to it, as we had at Borobudur.
On Sunday evenings, we have our weekly group dinner out at a restaurant. We went to a place called Pyramid, which is shaped like... a giant pyramid. Two new volunteers joined us during dinner, and three had come earlier in the day, so now we're up to 15 people or so. I gota ride back to the house on the back of Marc's (operations director) motorbike. (So many people ride them here. Traffic is crazy. I'm scurred to ride a bike here.) Anyway, I didn't fall off. So I was excited for that.
Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 11:00 PM
Tonight, I headed into the city of Yogyakarta with a group of the other volunteers for dinner and a Ramayana ballet performance. The dinner wasn't anything too exciting, and the dance performance (think Javanese/Hindi-type dance, not "ballet" in the French sense) was interesting. But the amusing thing was that a wedding was going on in the same restaurant/venue where we were. We were in an outside ampitheater, while the wedding was taking place in the garden of the restaurant we had dinner in. It was a huge, probably 750+ person affair, which was mix of traditional and modern Yogyakarta/Indonesian customs. At first I felt bad for intruding on their wedding, but people were really friendly, and even invited us to dance and take pictures. It was kind of funny. Apparently the groom used to be in a band, so he had a bunch of friends in bands. They took turns singing cover songs for the couple, and so we were treated to Bryan Adams "Everything I Do," "That Thing You Do" from that movie, some Beatles songs, and even that song by Eddie Vedder that's all blubbery. It was pretty entertaining. These guys were pretty good, withthe rockstar shimmying and funky hair down pat.
Saturday, August 5, 2006 - 1:06 PM
I now have the basic routine down. We get up by 6:30AM, get ready to go (usually this means pulling on yesterday's pre-dusted work clothes), and have breakfast. Then it's off the work site, between 7:30 and 8:00AM.
We load up our Hands On wheelbarrows with all of our gloves, tools, and water, and walk through town to get to our site. Along the way, we say "hello" or "selemat pagi" (good morning) to basically everyone along the side of the road. Sometimes, we don't even see anyone, and we hear a child's "Hallo!" ring out from behind some trees and bamboo, and we'll see a pocket of children waving frantically to us. Responses are me with smiles and giggles. Everyone smiles a lot. :-) Ding!
Once on the site, it's usually some sort of cleanup/rubble removal/deconstruction. Projects are often clearning away rubble, dismantling roofs and salvaging tiles, and pulling down unsound homes. The homes here are built with bricks, mortar, and cement, so it's backbreaking work under the searing sun. The bricks are rather cheap clay, and so in the process of trying to salvage them, a lot of them end up crumbling. Curiously, the mortar is amazingly strong, often outlasting the brick. People use a ton of the stuff here too. So, we hoe and we shovel and we wheelbarrow away until I want to punch myself in the face, but my muscles are so tired that they can't really lift my arms to do so. So I retire to the shade and guzzle water instead.
The people from the neighborhoods where we work often bring us fruit and snacks in the middle of the morning, and again in the afternoon. This may consist of bananas, oranges, watermelon, pineapple, and various fried-snacly-something-or-others. Once, they even brought us longans, which I was all over (I think they can be expensive in the states), but the other volunteers not so much (too much work to peel).
I interrupt this post to announce that I'm hearing Keane's "Is it Any Wonder" on the radio in the internet shack. Second time I've heard it today. Makes me happy. Back to the post.
Yesterday, I also tried my first snakefruit. Which will probably be my last snakefruit. It was really neat to look at, but kind of dry inside and light on flavor.
Anyway, we head back for lunch around 11:00 or 11:30AM, and take a break until 2:00PM. Some people nap, some read, some wander around town. We work in the afternoon from 2:00PM until about 5:00PM. We'll head home, shower, and have dinner all together, then have free time in the evenings. People are usually in bed by 9:00PM. It's a pretty tiring routine.
People here love the camera. Especially the kids. They're all ridiculously photogenic here. With super cute haircuts. One baby girl had her headscarf on in the evening, and she looked like a stuffed animal. I wanted to stuff her in my backpack.
There's a number of 20-something guys here, and they are quite popular with all of the girls and women. Yesterday, Jeremy rounded the bend with a wheelbarrow, having just dumped a load. "I love you!" someone yelled out. "I love you too!" he yelled back, over his shoulder. At the end of the day, we took some photos, and one of the women sidled up next to Jeremy for a picture. She smiled really big, and looked over at her friends. "Wooooooohooooooo!" she whooped. He has also reported getting butt pats.
Friday, August 4, 2006 - 12:55 PM
Midday break. I went for a brief walk around the neighborhood, and stopped by our cornerstore to buy some Milo. These two guys here were talking about it, so I was curious to try it. It tastes chocolate malt-y and creamy to me, but that could just be the UHT milk that we have, which is...full cream.
Also at lunch today, I stopped by a cart selling food on the side of the road. It looked like they had these little fried banana things (not pisang goreng, or what "fried banana" usually is). It's a tasty little bite of banana, wrapped up in generous strip of some egg pastry dough, which is then fried. (People drop food and snacks off at the job sites in the morning and afternoon, and I remembered these as being particularly tasty.) I only wanted five, and tried to ask for as much, but apparently I asked for 5000 rupiah worth, because the guy kept loading them into a bag. After there were about a dozen in there, I got worried. It ended up being about two dozen. That's ok, it's only about 50 cents. And I had a big bag of tastiness to bring back to the house to share.
Thursday, August 3, 2006 - 12:39 PM
My first day of work! No jet lag! Everyone seems to wake up by 6 or 7AM, and we're out on the job site by 7:30AM. I slept pretty well, but I was woken up by the prayer call at 4:30AM, followed by a perpetual rooster, and then a screaming kid. But it's ok. There are also small geckos everywhere; I watched one scurry up a wall into a detached electrical socket. A few minutes later, I noticed another one (surely not the same?) on the wall across the room.
We have a flush toilet and a shower (a cold one, but a shower nonetheless). I feel so spoiled.
posted by Stefanie at 6:32 AM
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