A penny for your poetry

Bowel movements have become more polite thankfully, frontloaded in the morning, so that's good news!

I wrote this down earlier - the English major in me is rearing her poetic head:

on this strange shore
where the man-goat wakes after the cock crows and the men sing their holy books at an unholy hour,
I'm still getting used to buttoning the buttons backwards
and learning how to survive on rice.
The mountains shoot straight up like ant mounds,
From somewhere in the clouds the waterfalls fall quickly then slowly,
taking five or so ages to reach our earth.
Bamboo as thick as young oaks crowd out sanctuaries overrun by ants and mosquitoes.

The journey is always up everywhere you go
and the exhaust of motorbikes hangs like mist above the rice fields.
As often as you can, you must clean yourself
because the ibus are going to ask you
before you can even step over the threshold.
The mandi water flows past the bamboos blooming with plastic bags that cling to the upper branches where the river last flooded.

It flows from here to the sea and beyond.

Here a day, there a day:
time looses its way.
We think of ourselves as brave explorers
of an un-cracked world
but those already here are just as surprised by the flatness of the world.

Pics from Saturday market visit.

No idea...

Penjual weighing our dragon fruit.

Rice, rice and more rice

In two weeks I've:

- mastered the Indonesian toilet aka the mandi aka the squatty potty due to various digestive challenges 

- reverted back to 1st grade when you are told what to do with every minute of every day

- come to see chocolate in a whole new light 

- bonded with 64 strangers in a way that only people sharing the experience of moving to a foreign land can bond

- started to miss the little things but nothing very meaningful yet because I haven't fully acknowledged that I have indeed joined the Peace Corps halfway around the world 

- adopted a new sleep schedule (8:30 pm - 4 am) that is strictly enforced by the call to prayer and roosters

- had many wifi withdrawals

- come to appreciate both Indonesian and Peace Corps humor A LOT 

- felt really tall 

- seen a lot of pretty mountains

Generally, the day to day schedule is pretty tiring and at this point I would kill for a book or movie that has nothing to do with TEFL or Indonesia. I guess I should have prepared a little more on that front... But the constant stimuli of this new life, while overwhelming, is also exhilerating. 

Weird large fruit houses at this carnival in Batu that I visited with another volunteer's family.

Thinking too long about the US and my Athens loved ones throws me into a loop so I try to avoid thinking about it while Im still adjusting. 

I admire how the eastern toilet has eliminated toilet paper from the process but I and a lot of other volunteers have made "mandi kits" so as to keep dry and clean. 

Note: sit-down toilets are few and far between

Our group!

One of 204848393 mosques I walk by on my way to our afternoon informational sessions with currently-serving volunteers

14 people on the angkok today and counting. Angkok is Indonesian for very small bus.

Surabaya

Internet's pretty spotty and I'm crossing my fingers that my browser doesn't freeze up again on me as it did the other night when I was trying to write a post.

Training is thus far both challenging and easy. It's challenging because we're going all day (starting around 3:30 am with the call to prayer, which I'm convinced is right outside my window) and at night we study and try to go to bed early. I've noticed that everyone's starting to relax a bit and focus on life outside of this Country Resort Hotel we've been put up in. At least relax enough to feel excited about meeting host families and learning about our site placement. This all happens Saturday.

After a morning of language classes with Pak Toto, my group, group B, WENT OUT OF THE HOTEL on a field trip to the Peace Corps office in Surabaya. We rode in these little red ankok (sp?) buses with low ceilings and rather tight  quarters. Each of the three small buses had one visiting PCV in it along with 6-7 of us trainees. Our PCV, Matt, said that we should appreciate the space while we had it because usually these buses held 18+ people....yeah. I actually can't imagine that.

First impressions of Surabaya based on our 15 minute drive:
- bustling
- lots of motorcycle drivers who all looked like they were going to crash whenever they stopped or switched lanes (this is why we will be kicked out of the PC if we so much as sit on the back of a motorcycle)
- the fast food joints looked like the cleanest part of the city

It was very useful to venture out into the greater city because I feel like my insulated bubble started to pop a little and I got more of a feel for what I signed up for. The office was very nice. Director Sheila Crowly was there and we met all the staff. We were given a tour of the office (in particular the mini infirmary upstairs with all of the medical supplies that they will be shipping to us), weighed and then listened to a lecture on malaria and dengue. Not stuff to be taken lightly. They are staggering our medical interviews throughout this week and I have not yet had mine. After the lecture I am pretty paranoid about mosquitoes. I know for dengue it's only the female tiger-looking ones with white stripes on their legs that carry the parasite but I'm planning on avoiding as many interactions with mosquitoes as much as possible. For dengue, of course, prevention is the only cure. We have the mosquito repellent and have been promised netting for our beds. For malaria I have to choose between two pills: mefloquine and doxycycline. Everyone's been comparing the side effects - for mefloquine it's more vivid dreams, insomnia and a bit of the nausea works. For doxycycline you take it weekly (as opposed to daily), but can have all sorts of gastrointestinal issues (including chemical burns in your stomach - which two volunteers already said they had experience with). As of now, I think I'd rather deal with psychological side effects over physical. We also talked about roaches in our session today. I'm a masochist for bringing it up.

Insect and health concerns aside, the experience is starting to feel more real and I'm beginning to think about meeting my host family, school co-workers and ideas for secondary projects (besides teaching - typically community outreach of some kind.) Right now I think a book club sounds like a neat idea. On the ride back from the PC office, another volunteer and I were wistfully talking about how good it would be to have some environmental health experts in our group because water quality is definitely a concern of ours.

Selamat sore! (good night!)

Time warp

My first thought upon arriving in San Francisco was "I packed too much." This was while trying to haul my two suitcases up some escalators and through the BART, walking two blocks to the wrong Marriot hotel and, ultimately, because I was late, taking a taxi to the right hotel where staging was to take place.

Staging was a painless affair: we signed in, split into two groups in two adjoining rooms and discussed our hopes, fears and dreams concerning the Peace Corps. As in summer camp, we did some role-playing activities, drew pictures of mosquitoes, volcanoes and lots of smiling stick figures in front of a rectangle which was supposed to symbolize our new home/community and held hands in a big circle at the end. I particularly appreciated discussing our reasons for joining the Peace Corps and what we hoped to accomplish by the end. Spot on.

Dinner then sleep for me, although some people stayed up all night cutting each others' hair and walking to the wharf in preparation for our 12 hour flight across the Pacific.

SO, here's the breakdown of how our travels went/are going (it's 3 am local time at the Singapore airport, where I am sitting, looking out over a koi fish pond. It's like a city in here. They claim to have the only indoor airport pool in the world):

1 pm Saturday - left San Fran for  Narita, Japan
1 hour layover in Narita airport before boarding plane to Singapore (9 hours)
Almost 1 am Monday - arrived in Singapore
TO COME: 4:30 pm today we will board the plane for Surabaya, Indonesia.

If you're wondering where Sunday went, so are we.

Most people passed out in the sweet hotel rooms INSIDE THE AIRPORT that PC booked for us. I spent several hours getting lost in the ghost airport and eating whatever not-so-good food was available at this hour of the morning.

Halfway through our cross-over to Japan I opened my shade to see what looked like snow and ice covering the ground as far as my bird's eye could see. I'm not sure that it was snow and not cloud, but it's still terrifying and amazing to think that this HUGE piece of machinery is taking us across half the earth.

One more thought: during the flight, I watched a TED talk titled "Where is Home?" The presenter, Pico Iyer, said a few very relevant things that I scribbled down in my journal. He said, "it is only by stepping out of your life into the world that you can see what you most deeply care about."

He got into movement vs. stillness and described a time when he drove to this remote area away from his home to get away from work and whatnot but then ended up writing and writing upon his arrival until four hours had gone by and he noticed that it was night time. He went out and looked at the stars and heard total quite (not in a literal sense.) Of this experience he said "movement is only as good as the stillness you bring to it."

Although an advocate of traveling to make home more meaningful, he also said, "home is not where you are born but the place where you become yourself."

Feelings before leaving

Credit to Emily Silva for thinking of the word that comes closest to describing my feelings in the week before departure. In my own words, I feel estranged from my home before I've left it. It's not so much distress as it is suddenly seeing the ordinary objects in my home life as strange and different, as if in anticipation of the move.