Ho, ho, ho! It is three days before Christmas, and I am happy situated in Surabaya, where I have been the past week, enjoying the creature comforts of a pretty darn modern city. I am currently luxuriating on a well-padded leather (or faux leather, but if you can't tell, who cares?) booth at excelso coffee cafe. I am writing on a laptop which belongs to friends, and using wireless internet to check email and finances and catch up on my beloved television series and blog. Tonight, I am taking a midnight flight into Jakarta, where I have a hotel room booked with a friend, and the possibilities of modern shopping and socializing with other native English speakers are making me look forward to my first international Christmas. All in all, I'm feeling pretty darn peppy.

The things on my mind now are related to the things that have been on my mind for the past few months. There are the daily concerns over being responsible for oneself in a foreign country, coupled with the stresses of trying to plan for one's future in a foreign country with limited opportunities and communication options. Then, of course, one must consider the meager trivialities like feeding oneself and clothing oneself in a manner that is both appropriate and hygienic (an interesting challenge travelling in a foreign tropical country that doesn't really have dryers). Despite all of the partial thoughts flying around in my mind, I am still feeling pretty good. The battery on this laptop has another four hours of life, and I could potentially keep buying wifi cards until I need to go home and pack and head to the airport. Surabaya is nice.

This time away from Bukittinggi has been really refreshing. Just NOT being there has given me perspective on how I can handle the mental challenges of going back. It helps that I have access to most of the modern conveniences I've been missing, too, and I was even taken to a western imports grocery store that made me want to take pictures. They sold Velveeta shells and cheese! Of all things! That find right there insured a merry Christmas for me! Plus, they have Starbucks here. And, I don't have to do my own ironing when I'm a guest of a family with a pembantu.

Although I'm seriously missing the Christmas traditions of my family, and, well, of course, being with my family, I'm also starting to think of the things that I want to make traditions for my own future family. Starting with myself, as a single adult female. Just food for thought.

Anyway, hopefully being in modern Indonesia for the next few weeks, I'll get to post again. Now that the midpoint is almost here, I feel like everything else is just downhill. Of course, there's no guarantee it'll still feel downhill when I go back. But having a lot of mini-vacation excursions planned is seriously going to help.

I'm in a holiday mood!

Finally! You know, although I don't get to check my email very often, which really sucks, there is a hidden blessing in that by the time I get to open my email account there is almost always something good waiting there for me. I mean, first it takes more than thirty minutes to get to a decent internet cafe, and then, sometimes it's closed, or has had to be shut down, and sometimes it rains in the afternoon from the time I get out of class and home to the time around four or later, which means it's too late to head out, cause I'd only get like thirty minutes to an hour on the internet (which believe me, is not enough time to get anything done-- it's taken me thirty minutes just to OPEN my email this time, and this blogger page), so I just have to try and wait for tomorrow. I'm not bothered today, however, because it's been over a week since my last check, and when I got to open those wonderful pages, not only did I have email from official peoples, I had email from friends around the world! Also, friends I haven't heard from in quite a long time.

Things are snailing on by, and gratefully, November wasn't good enough to beat me. Actually, a pretty amazing blessing was revealed in November right in time for Thanksgiving, after I decided to follow a call to apply to Seminary. Isn't it amazing? I used to smirk at people who seemed so flighty they couldn't make decisions because they were unsure of what God wanted them to do; but now here I am deciding to do something that MUST seem like just a whim to everyone else, but really feels to me like God's command. I'm sorry for being judgmental.

Anyway, I'm trying to answer all the emails everyone has sent me, but it's taking quite a while for them to all disappear once I press delete and reload the page. It's going to take me awhile-- which is alright by me, because I have dinner plans in the city!

Kind, kind Hannah and Christine told their nice Embassy lady (why don't I have an embassy lady!?) that it's lonely in Bukittinggi, and she told me about this big group of American high school kids who arrived today. I sms'd and got myself a dinner invite (but how I'll get to the restaurant, and how I'll get home, I don't know!) Wow, it's a new... low (no offense little high schoolers) that I'm so excited to spend another hour and a half with sixteen year old kids, after spending six hours with them already today. ::sigh:: In less than a week, I'll be with other ETAs for a reunion in Salatiga! And Christmas isn't long after that... and more travelling. Whew.

Okay, I'm ending it to focus more on my emails and stuff. LoL, like I can't concentrate on two things at once... I seriously hope I'm not losing my ability to multitask by not having tasks to complete here!

This week was... hum drum. I did a lot of going to school, then coming home and falling asleep until dark. I don't know what it is here, if it's a reflection of my mental state, or if it's the high altitude (can different altitudes make you sleepy?), or what, but I just had no energy. I decided I don't like trying to navigate the angcot system on school days, because there's just not enough time to get there and back and actually do anything of substance-- I end up cutting it too close. If the angcots operated past six, or if there were a back up system like available taxies, it might be different. But I don't like the idea of being stuck in town, and I don't like the idea of having to beg a ride off of someone, so I just as soon wait until my day off before I go off venturing.

I got to actually teach half my classes this week, sans the other teacher. The other half of my classes, again, I didn't even go to because the teacher decided to give an exam and didn't bother informing me until I got to the class. This means it has been a good... five weeks? Since I have been to her classes at all, because last week, she asked me not to come because she was "teaching grammar" (although once that was made common knowledge, the bullshit was revealed and I didn't actually end up going because the school changed the schedule and nobody told me), and this week because of an exam. The three weeks before that were all the Ramadan holiday. Sometimes I feel so much like my time here is wasted, it's just depressing. I think I could have accomplished what I have here so far in one week back home (at the pace I was going last year). Yes, it's that bad.

Part of the problem is that the school is just not a priority. All of the teachers are of course underpaid, and thus teaching here is considered a part time job. Then, I also found out this week that part of the reason this particular teacher seems so absent is because she is taking classes towards a master's degree in Padang. That means that both of the teachers I work with are in programs in another city two hours away, and they are only both at the school on the same day one day per week. Pak Haswin is gone T, W, and F, and Wenny is gone W, Th, and F. They are only both at the school on Monday, when the staff is scrambing trying to put the week together, almost everyone misses their first class due to an overly-long teacher's meeting, and classes start late, anyway.

Besides the school situation, I've really gotten into my Bible this week. It has been my one source of constant comfort and I've really been with God in prayer. I am so grateful that November is flying by. It is perhaps not the best way to deal with being here, but sometimes you just do what you can.

I wish there were other ways to occupy myself here. I have made inquiries about NGOs or any kind of volunteer opportunities, and none exist in Bukittinggi. There are several schools that would enjoy a native English speaker visiting, and I'm on that, but I would like to do something that has nothing to do with education. I would like to do a lot, but just can't.

I've got two more weeks to survive in Bukittinggi before the TEFLIN conference at the beginning of December. Hopefully, the rest of November will just oblige me and be gone, as it has been incredibly difficult being gone from my family on my mom's birthday, my sister and brother in law's first wedding anniversary, and now my first Thanksgiving away. Once December gets here, I can reasonably start planning vacations away and I'm hopeful that is how December and January will go. We'll see. I'm learning to cope, but slowly. It's taking me time, which is all I've got! Haha...

Thank goodness! It took absolutely forever for this page to load, and after twenty-six minutes, I've yet to load any of the THREE options I have for viewing email. ::Sigh:: I guess I got spoiled visiting Semerang where there's a broadband cafe around the corner, or a mall with a decently speedy connection relatively nearby a Dunkin' Doughnuts. Oh well. You know, it's interesting how when I leave Bukittinggi, I really feel like I'm lacking here, I feel like I'm missing out, like my entire situation is just miles and miles away from the standards of others' situations. But then when I get back here, it doesn't seem to be quite that bad. Don't get me wrong, the 6pm curfew still sucks, but despite the mandi and squatty potty, my little place with no television, no radio, and no easy access to warung or restaurants has become very comfortable to me. I've got a decent bed, there's no need for AC (but I have a fan anyway), and pretty much no one bothers me. Sometimes the fact that I could probably die in my room and no one would notice until they could smell it from outside bothers me, but other times, I'm just grateful to be away from everything that makes this place hard to live in. Honestly, this is beginning to sound a bit cowardly, like I like my room because I can hide out there, but that's actually the truth; I like my room because it's my haven. I'm surrounded by the things I own, and I don't have to worry about taking or receiving with my left hand, or any other cultural or religious no-no. Now, when I'm out and about, those are the things that I relish, it's all a part of the experience of living here, and I follow the rules and customs as best I can. But in my home, I'm not taking my cross off the wall because someone else is uncomfortable with it. Because I'm the only one who lives there. And not that many people visit in the first place. And why should I? It's not as if a cross on the wall makes it unacceptable for Muslims to enter. ::Sigh::... I suppose I've subconsciously led into this issue; it must be bothering me more than I thought.
Today, I had a visit from one of the teachers at school. Yesterday, when I woke up, I think I pulled a muscle in my back, or something and so I didn't go to school. But I have one afternoon class today and I was planning on going until this teacher showed up at my house and said that the schedule after Ramadan is different-- not like the Ramadan schedule, but not like before it, either. Apparently, my class started almost an hour earlier than my schedule said, and no one bothered to tell me. So that's two days now without teaching. Oh well, I don't like the teacher I'm supposed to teach with, anyway.
So she shows up and we chat for awhile and then she sees my cross on the wall. I bought it in Jakarta. I wouldn't have brought one with me from the states, because it's not like it's a vital part of my faith. But I liked it in Jakarta, and so I bought it, and to make my home in Bukittinggi more homey and less like I'm living on a mountain surrounded by jungle, I attempted to decorate. And look! I just happened to have bought this cross in Jakarta, and why don't I put it on the wall!? So this teacher starts talking about the last time she visited, when my landlord wandered inside and apparently hid her shock at seeing it on the wall from me but asked the teacher if she knew of a sensitive way to ask me to take it down. And this teacher is nice, she was clearly relaying a message on behalf of my landlord, but still. Why the heck should I? I live there. I'm not going to hide my Bible so it's presence doesn't disturb people who don't even really come into my house in the first place. Why should I take down my cross? If it's really a problem, she should not have volunteered for a Christian to rent from her. Taking down the cross should not have been a big deal to me, but somehow, as it is within my own home, I felt that taking it down would almost be denying my faith. I already don't wear religious jewelry, abstain from attending worship services (not like there are any here), and really basically manage to practice my faith with no one knowing. Taking down a cross I bought in Indonesia anyway off the wall of my home where I live alone is just too far for me, I guess. Such a strange limit.
Anyway, I guess that's all for now. My butt's getting numb from sitting on this stupid plastic stool for so long. I'll write more later.

Whoo hoo! It's a good thing I'm writing this blog right now cause it means 1)I am on the internet! and 2)I can have at least one post for the month of October. How sad is it that I only got to blog ONE time this WHOLE month?!? Very. I know this.

Right now, I am in Semerang. This is in Central Java, and I am here because I am on my Ramadan holiday away from school and my good friend, Hannah Pritchett, also an ETA, lives here. She works at a Christian school and doesn't have this week off for Ramadan holiday. Lucky me, unlucky her :( (Unless she's lucky 'cause I get to visit!)

Let me recap the month. After I returned from my Lombok trip, I spent two and a half weeks just in school. I had classes M-Th for two weeks, and spent one weekend at home and one weekend in Padang. The half week I was unfortunately sick and spent three days in bed. But lucky me cause I got well enough just in time to fly to Jakarta.

I stayed with my family there for a little over a week, studying, sleeping, and putting weight back on (I've lost more than 15 pounds since I moved to Bukittinggi). Then, Sunday evening I stayed the night in this really fancy-shmancy posh hotel so that I would be able to get to the testing center on time and not have any stress before my exam on Monday morning. The cool thing about computerized exams is that they can tell you your score as soon as you're done! I got a comprehensive 1210, 610 on verbal, 600 on quantitative. I was satisfied with this score: I scored in the 66% in quantitative(not good) and in the 92% in verbal(much better). I have to wait for my analytical writing scores to be sent to Houston. American University's average GRE score for admitted students is 1250; 610 verbal (go me!) and 640 quantitative (yikes). Georgetown doesn't give averages per section, their average is 1240. I feel like I at least have a shot at admittance to one of these schools.

After the GRE, I bought a plane ticket to Semerang to come see my friend Hannah. I have only been here since about 1pm, and I also got to see Christine (another ETA), so I am really happy! It is such a difference to have friends and be able to speak English. We also went to a really nice mall (wow! malls!) and had dinner and a really long chat about our living situations, our schools, teaching, the fact that in Indonesia you can marry some of your cousins... Yeah. I know.

Tomorrow Hannah doesn't have to teach, so I am glad! We can go somewhere and I can see Semerang. I don't have to travel alone! Yay! This is really cool, too, because we are hoping on/planning on traveling through parts of South East Asia when our grants expire in May. Current countries on our list include: Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and India (where her family lives). I can't wait!

Well. I hope I get to write more than once in the next month. Don't have any traveling planned (although that certainly doesn't mean I won't travel!), so hopefully that means I'll have more time to make it to an internet cafe. Jedi, sampai jumpa! (So, until we meet again!)

I am still sick. My computer is broken, I found a seven-inch-long gecko in the toilet at my hotel, and lately I've begun to question why on earth I ever wanted to come here at all. That sounds really bad, but I have my moments, that's for sure. It's been awhile since I've updated, and that has been mostly about my computer being incapacitated and less about no internet access. Since I moved out of the house in Bentang and into the hotel on Jalan Soekarno Hatta, I haven't ventured out anywhere. I had begun to feel comfortable in China Town, knew where the internet cafe (that would charge me more than double for being a foreigner) was and had just found the grocery store. I have only eaten when someone came and got me to eat, and have spent basically the rest of this week trying to sleep. Yes, it's been like that. As the cherry on the kue, I can't seem to load any of my emails at this cafe. ::sigh::

Okay, enough wallowing. Time to look on the bright side. Tomorrow I move into my new house (which is like a pavilion, I think, a guest house on someone else's land), and the teachers at my school have been exceptionally kind. I have seen some beautiful sights here in Bukittinggi, and am reminded daily of why I came here (but sometimes the reminders just pale in the face of other inconveniences). Today, for instance, I got to talk to some really cool people (in English! Yay!), and someone told me about my name. He thought I was an Indonesian based just on my name: Amelia, a common Indonesian name, and Din, the Arabic word for religion. Who'd have thunk it?

Anyway, I think it is time to wrap it up. I'm currently in love with the fictional relationship between Leah Price, a Georgia preacher's daughter, and Anatole Ngemba, the Congolese schoolteacher in Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible. I hope I finish the novel tonight (and more than that, I hope that my books arrive here sometime soon, the loneliness is only assuaged by the comfort of a fiction novel.

Will write again soon and upload all my previous entries, too, as soon as the compy's fixed.

Today is our last day of classes, here at AMINEF, our last day of ETA Orientation before we depart to our various sites across Indonesia. I am really excited about what is coming, yet I am a little sad to say goodbye to the native English speakers who have been my companions for the past month.

I leave on Friday morning, and together, Ethan and I will fly to Padang. There, we will part ways; Ethan will be taken to his beach-front abode, and I will take another form of transport 60km inland and upward to the cozy hilltown of Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. I have seen a few pictures of the housing that awaits me there; it is quaint, but nice. I am told that I am a five-minute walk from the trademark monument Jam Gadang-- the giant clock tower that characterizes the city. I have a bank of windows that face the street, a private access (or accomodations are being made, so I hear), a western toilet, and a shower! These last two are especially nice surprises; I did not expect these up until Nelly told me that my housing would have them. Rizma also told me that the landlord is purchasing a new bed for me, and that, although I have no kitchen, I will have a miniature refrigerator and a sink separate from the bathroom. It isn't my own house or apartment as I'd hoped (I will be living on the second floor of a banker's house), but it is more than I asked for.

My time here in Jakarta has been well-spent. I can feel the changes in my perception shifting as I learn and accept more about my ethnic identity. I realized the other day, for instance, that I did not come here to be an Indonesian, nor did I come here to pretend that I am a bule, but I came here to realize that am a both and Indonesian and a white person. I must be able to embrace both sides of my ethnic heritage, or the conflict within me will never resolve itself. That seems overly dramatic, and the 'battle' imagery was uncalled for, but sometimes I do feel like a woman torn. I feel sometimes that this is the real reason I have come here, without knowing it.

Bukittinggi is close to Padang, but it is even closer to Pariaman, where my Daddy was born and raised. I think that there is much to be learned, especially so close to the source. I have already gone visiting my father's older sister, Zuraida and her family, and Edi and his family, and my father's oldest brother, Basarudin and his family. I still have two aunts (with extensive families), and a grandmother left to visit in Pariaman. I feel like a youth on a quest to find peace with her cultural identity-- doesn't that sound like a byline for a dramatic movie?

I have one more thing I have to do before I leave AMINEF, and then I am heading back to the hotel to start re-packing trunks that are sure NOT to hold all of my things. Not only that, but there is a 30kilo weight limit on my baggage to Padang-- which I have exceeded by more than double. Nelly says to convince the ticketer that I am a volunteer, a student, here to help the Indonesian government through teaching, and to show a copy of my Presidential stay permit. We'll see how well that goes!

Even though I 'blogged' earlier, it is now evening, and I have time to write again. I am fulfilling my promise to be more consistent. I realized today how dependent upon technology I've become. This weekend felt like I was waiting to just to use the internet at AMINEF, and right now, I can't wait until I get to class tomorrow so that I can upload this blog. In addition to that, my expensive laptop computer, even more expensive digital camera, and i-Pod mp3 player have all accompanied me to Indonesia to assistant teach 10th grade English-- in a classroom that almost certainly doesn't have air conditioning or flush toilets. When did this dependence form? And how can I even think of wanting to join the Peace Corps after this Fulbright with such an addiction to technology?
It is amazing, however, the things that technology can do. I have not felt homesick even once yet, because I have been constantly connected to home. Through emails, facebook, cell phone text messages, I have had conversations with people I love and even seen their lovely faces. I am grateful that I have even limited access to this in Jakarta, and I fear the adjustment that awaits me in less technology-riddles Bukittinggi.
I want to talk now about a different kind of adjustment; an adjustment to the new type of high-speed learning which I am being subjected to in my classes. I feared my ability to learn quickly would be problematic before I left the states, and it turns out that if not entirely true, the fear is debilitating my learning process. Today, for example, I felt like I had missed a week of classes because I barely understood anything that was said in Indonesian. It's about time that I didn't get by on my genes and unequal classmates. In this world full of scholars, it seems I will have to work, finally. It seems that on-the-spot just will not work here; and well and good because it is not just my education that will be at stake this year.

This weekend was nice and refreshing. I attempted to sleep in on Saturday morning, but only lasted until 7:45. I went back to sleep, but it was a real effort to stay abed. I ended up lazing around all day, cleaning at times, reorganizing my computer files and cleaning up my messes. I was truly satisfied after I got my things in order. I've taken to grifting the teeny jelly jars at breakfast, which are good for two purposes. 1) Eating jelly or honey later with bread in my room, and 2) I enjoy reusing the little glass jars. Around the hotel pool grow these beautiful tropical flowers, from which the buds regularly fall off. At night, I like to go around and collect them, but they last longer in my room in water. I've already monopolized all of the drinking glasses intended for the minibar drinks, so the jelly jars are just perfect. The lids are the perfect size to hold a tea-lite candle, too, and as I've taken the ceramic candle holder that is standard in my room, it's a good thing. (PS I think the cleaning lady finally doesn't hate me; today, she replaced the exhausted tea-lite with TWO new ones).
Anyway, I better go. Lunch ended a while ago, and it's just no good to blog while Ibu Luci is trying to talk.

It is lunch time. I've got about fifteen minutes to write this post. I have been so neglectful in keeping this blog up to date! BUT I am super overjoyed that I can now use the wireless at AMINEF. I was online earlier today on AIM with Melis, and it was good to hear from someone at "home," even if he's not even in Texas. Now, Melanie is online, and it is super good to hear from her, too. She and Court were definitely a part of my daily life this summer, and I am going through a sort of withdrawal. I miss our times at Starbucks.
I am slowly acclimating to life in Jakarta. Slowly. Everything is so busy here, so dirty, and so hectic. There is always a chance to buy-- buy, buy, buy, on every corner. It makes for a consumer-driven life that leaves me with a bad taste-- and odour-- in my mouth and on my clothes. And they say that America is consumer-driven.
I have decided that I need a better way to budget my stipend. Although at first glance, it seems small, in Indonesia it should be more than sufficient. I have to account for bills and carpayments back home, however, so mine is cut in half. Yesterday I spent Rp. 650,000 (Approximately $70 USD) on three handcrafted wayang (Javanese shadow puppets made of buffalo skin), and although I don't regret the purchase, I do realize that I need to be more careful. I cannot spend everyday as though it was a holiday.