Slowly learning

I speak like a fool
and my words dribble
from my sloppy tongue
and my sloppy brain
but they wait as I struggle
patient with pauses
words, words, words
kata, kata, kata
like a fool or a fishmonger
but better, better, better
we share our lives and thoughts
through a dribble
instead of a gush

Buka Puasa (Breaking the fast)

We careened through traffic with the other motorbikes as Indonesian faces blurred past, the faces of street vendors, taxi drivers, shopping strangers. A fair share stared as we passed, an Indonesian Muslim woman driving the bike and a blonde American clinging on behind. Somehow, in this city of millions of people, people who look like me are still an anomaly, a proverbial sore thumb. We pass a stadium, a Zoya proudly displaying hijabs in the window, and McDonalds before the street becomes so packed we're forced to pull to the side and park. We've arrived at a pasar takjil, where hundreds of Muslims buy food to break their fast during Ramadhan. 

Muslims in Malang break the fast around 5:30, when the sun sets, so the market is open between 4 and 6. Because of a rainstorm, we're late, so we hop off our motor, find our friends, and hurry into the jammed street in search of food. Vendors line the streets, peddling fried foods of every kind and other merchandise, from clothes to pets. We stop to take pictures with a snowy owl as we buy juice, fried rice, and whole fried catfish. We walk to a temple to eat, sitting among the formidable black statues, as dusk settles over the city. The vendors light the street with neon, and we break our fast with scalding hot catfish and fried noodles. Nearby, children set off fireworks as the call to prayer peals from the nearby mosque, silencing our conversation. We joke in broken Indonesian and English about our plans for the next day and how Sarahann has broken three pairs of her shoes on Indonesian sidewalks. The streets slowly empty.

These moments can't be captured on camera. No art can express how Danny's eyes shined, how Sarahann laughed, how beautiful my tutor looked, how the palm trees waved and the night enveloped us. I could never reproduce how the catfish melted in our mouths and burnt our fingers as we greedily tore them apart in the dark. I lay at the foot of a giant, my head reclining slightly off its pedestal, and saw clouds, dim the the dark, roll over the temple, over the whole city, and into the night. A million hungry people celebrated with me. We spend most of our days in Malang studying, as we ought, but nights like this help me love this city and these people.

Today I'll try to fast with them.

A Simple Life

This is Pak Laskar. He works at a tea plantation called Wonosari. Each day, he picks kilo after kilo of tea leaves in the sultry Indonesia heat. He doesn't have time for any hobbies. He has seven children. He lives in the same place he was born. He appears older than his age because of years of hard labor.

He calls his life simple, and he is happy.

Coming here has made me appreciate how much of my life is determined by the luck of the draw. What separates me from the man covered in black boils begging on the median? We both have thoughts, feelings, problems, relationships, but even as a poor college student I have wealth beyond his imagination and a promising future. I could have been born in a situation like his. More people are than are born into mine.

For the rest of my life, I must justify my actions to people like him, and like Pak Laskar.


Here's another example. We call one of the tutors here IndoJesus because of his resemblance to Jesus in appearance (long hair, scraggly beard) and attitude. I'll upload a picture as soon as I can politely take one :) He's inseparable from his friends. At Wanosari, they sang and played guitar until long after I'd gone to sleep. The next morning, the met us a 6 to tour the tea factory with smiles and more music. They don't seem to know or care about the possessions they lack. They have no American pretentiousness or self-consciousness.

I don't think I've ever seen a culture so musical. Even the Italians lack the spontaneity of Indonesian music. When we drove back to campus from Wonosari yesterday, my driver sang unabashedly along with the pop songs on the radio. My host family plays music loudly every morning, both gamelan and pop. Tutors sing around our class building. Five times a day, everyday, the call to prayer resonates across every corner of Malang, and I often wake early in the morning to voices singing in praise.

At Wanosari, after dinner, a karaoke band began to play. Karaoke is a big deal here, unlike in the U.S., where it's awkward and done only by very intoxicated people. After several minutes of awkward reactions from students, including me singing L.O.V.E. by Nat King Cole to a room of embarrassed Americans and cheering, enthusiastic Indonesians, we slowly warmed up and joined in the dancing. Ben and Danny sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and hardly knew the melody, but we danced in a circle with our arms draped around each other, swaying and laughing and remembering the people we miss. From that moment on, I understood. Music, for Indonesians, means community support, not performance, and love, not nerves. We danced and sang together for a few hours, until we Americans decided to sleep. Our Indonesian counterparts kept singing long into the night.

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat

Yesterday the first snow of the year came. Wyn was at work, and as I was cleaning the bathroom, I heard something hitting the window. I peered through to see ice pelting the glass, and my heart fell. Snow is not something I look forward to. I really value having warm, dry feet and feeling the sun on my shoulders. However, because it is the month of Thanksgiving, and because I'm attempting to have a good attitude, I'm listing here some of my favorite things about this time of year:

1. Autumn and winter food. Who doesn't love pumpkin, nutmeg, cinnamon, and apple? Winter is the season of hot chocolate, warm bread. pumpkin muffins, and tomato soup. One of my favorites: Delicious vanilla and cinnamon cupcakes.

2. Snuggling under warm blankets with my sweetheart. It's great!

3. Going home for Christmas. My parents are pretty serious about Christmas traditions, and their home is one of the happiest places on earth. Traditions include: Middle Eastern-style Christmas Eve dinner, Doctor Who marathons, and making so many gingerbread cookies we lose motivation to frost them.

4. Shopping for a new winter sweater. I am VERY picky about sweaters, so yearly I brave the weather, go to six or seven different stores, and attempt to find the perfect sweater for the season. Whether it's a rusty red or a warm cream, fall sweaters provide courage and confidence in the face of the evil snow.

5. Spending real time with the people I love most. When school ends, I suddenly realize how little time I've put into the most important relationships I have. I know my mom, dad, siblings, and husband all miss me, but during the semester I seem to mix up my priorities. The holidays are the perfect time to make up for my school induced neglect.

What do you love most about the cold seasons? Help me find some more holiday cheer!

Life

Today, my sweetheart got this for me.

I wanted to see it so badly while it was in theaters, but the closest it came to Logan was Salt Lake, and I was in the middle of getting married, so it didn't happen. Now it is ours, and I cannot wait to watch it.

Roger Ebert, my favorite film critic, had this to say:

"Terrence Malick's "The Tree of Life" is a film of vast ambition and deep humility, attempting no less than to encompass all of existence and view it through the prism of a few infinitesimal lives. The only other film I've seen with this boldness of vision is Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," and it lacked Malick's fierce evocation of human feeling." Link to the full review: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110602/REVIEWS/110609998

This was a surprise from my wonderful husband, who knew how badly I wanted to see it. It came in the mail and he unwrapped it gleefully, so happy to show me. I am so happy to have him     :)