Emma’s Year in Indonesia

Not much has changed regarding my bike situation. My friend Miko, who lives in Yogya but has been out of action since the day that I arrived in Yogya due to a motorbike accident, is going to come over tomorrow to look at my bike and see if he can fix it. If not we’ll try and exchange it for a better one, and if that doesn’t work then he’ll lend me one. Which is great because I’m already sick of walking to uni, mainly because I’m lugging my laptop there and back every day.

I’ve had 3 classes since Monday. I turned up to the Writing class yesterday an hour late because I’d written down the times of the class wrong. It wasn’t very interesting anyway, so it didn’t really matter. Its the only language class I’m doing but I’m not sure if its going to be that good. The format seems to be “here’s a topic, write about it” and then he collects what we’ve written and the end of the class and writes about it. Seeing as there are around 25 (and maybe more) in the class I don’t think I’ll be getting much feedback. But I’ll give it another week and then decide whether to drop it or not. My class yesterday afternoon was good, it was an unstructered ramble about Indonesian political forces but I could understand it and I liked it. So I’m happy with that one, even if there is no syllabus or apparent structure, or indication of when assessments would be.

I had a Javanese language class today which was fun. The Javanese language seems like it will be quite hard to pick up, as he’s teaching us both high Javanese (krama) and low Javanese (ngoko), so it may be a little confusing. The lecturer is quite eccentric, throwing jokes around and asking us strange questions. For example, when he was getting us to introduce ourselves he asked me what I’d eaten today. 

Last night a group of about 8 of us squashed into a minivan that took us to Prambanan to watch a Ramayana Ballet there. The views there were great, especially since we could watch the lunar eclipse against the backdrop of Prambanan all lit up. I’ll put up photos at the end of the week. The ballet was traditional dance and gamelan, telling the full story of the Ramayana. It was quite good, with good costumes etc and a good representation of the Ramayana. The stage was huge, about 20×15m big. Jess and I kept cracking up watching the dances trying to cover 10-15 metres using the traditional dance shuffle (usually the women’s sarongs are too tight to take big steps anyway). So to get into position in time they’d have to do a power shuffle across the stage, often looking like penguins holding a dance pose. All the prices were tourist prices, so we muttered about how expensive everything was and how they were trying to rip us off. For example, the only food you could get there was a buffet that cost Rp60,000. We can buy a similar style buffet lunch at the canteen at uni for Rp3000.

 I was glad I was able to see the lunar eclipse. I had assumed that we wouldn’t be able to see it in Indonesia. It was nice to be able to share in watching something with everyone back home in Australia. It didn’t make me feel so far away.

Yesterday the sky was blue for the first time, because there was a bit of a breeze to blow away the pollution. I discovered that I have a really good view of Merapi from my street. I look straight up to it. It feels like I’m quite close to it, like I’m living on the slopes. I’m not really though, its still about 30km away. But there is a gentle slope up from the uni to my house which can be attributed to the inclination of the volcano, so I think its fair to say that I live on its slopes. I like being able to say I live on the slopes of an active volcano while actually being in no danger from it.

I’m sitting in the internet cafe down the road from my kos with an iced chocolate. They gave me some liquid sugar to add to it… people here have the biggest sweet tooth. Its insane!!

Today has been a loooong day. It started off well enough when I cycled to uni for the first time and it reduced my travel time to 15 mins (as opposed to a half hour walk). However, when I returned to my kos at lunch time to look for my ibu kos (manager) who lives in  a neighbouring kos (but isnever there when the security guard says she’s going to be, so I just have to keep going round until I finally catch her) to ask about getting internet the pedal fell off my bike. Not just the thing you put your foot on, the whole thing that connects that to the bike. I wasn’t riding it at the time, fortunately, and was about a block from home. I was just about to get on it when it came crashing off.  The connection is plastic - no screws involved - so its no wonder that it fell off, serves me right for buying a cheap bike (about $60). So i set off in search of super glue, and after an hour of searching in the midday heat I gave up. My problem is that the shop I bought it from is about an hour’s walk away, and the repair shop about 2 hours. So unless I can find a car I’m pretty stuck. So for now I’ve resigned myself to walking again. Which is a shame because I was really enjoying cycling around, it made life much easier.

This was not good preparation for my first class, as I was exhausted by then. But the class was good, for an Indonesian class. The lecturer spoke clearly, used an overhead and has a syllabus for the subject that we can download off the net. Everyone was really friendly in the class, the people we sat with were eager to introduce themselves and chat. I understood about half of the lecture, meaning that I could just follow what was going on. The overheads helped. Unfortunately it seems common for all of the students to talk through the classes, meaning that it gets hard to listen to and understand the lecture with all the noise. We got a few questions directed at us (there were 3 australians in the class including me), but for some reason we never seemed to understand the questions. The worst part was when the lecturer told us that if we couldn’t understand him to put our hands up. But we couldn’t understand what he was saying and looked blank and confused, and everyone laughed. They were laughing with us not at us though. There seemed to be quite a few funny jokes cracked by the lecturer (we’re pretty sure they weren’t about us) and everyone would erupt in raucous laughter, slapping their legs and shrieking. We just sat there looking blank, it was pretty clear we either didn’t hear them or didn’t get them. But it was a good class. I look forward to my language improving so that I can understand more of what was going on.

I had another committee meeting this afternoon, to help the main committee with the agenda of the conference to make sure that it didn’t get too boring. At the moment I’m one of the MCs for the conference, and I’m also helping to put together a slideshow about ACICIS. The conference is on 12th September. The meetings are every two days at the moment, which is fine seeing as its only a couple of weeks until the conference itself. They want some performances from ACICIS students demonstrating traditional Australian dances haha. At the moment we have a bush dance lined up.

After teary farewells at the airport I headed off on a British Airways flight. As Jess and her dad were on a separate flight to me that left at the same time, we met up at Changi airport in Singapore. It was quite daunting to head through the departure gate on my own but I think it meant I kept it together more, because I only had strangers around me. The flight was good but felt quite long, especially since my entertainment was working properly. The flight was one going to London, so all the meals were geared around that: at 5.30pm they served dinner, then switched the lights off at 6.30pm and switched them back on at 11pm to make us eat another meal. I had this lovely old guy sitting next to me who was heading to London with his brother to look at industrial museums. He was a really nice and open-minded guy. It was good because we were both sitting on our own and could help each other out.

Friday 17th August

We discovered it was the national day in Singapore. This of course didn’t mean that the shops were closed. It was raining for most of today so we just wandered around the mazes of shopping malls. We were staying in a five star hotel, thanks to Jess’s dad, who had got a good deal because he works for Qantas (hence why he was travelling with Jess – so that she could get a cheap flight). We went out for dinner on the river, which was really nice. I battled through a dish with 5 enormous prawns, which I enjoyed thoroughly, especially since I figured it would be the last seafood I would be getting in a while.

Saturday 18th August

We spent the morning walking around the Marina and then headed to the airport to fly to Solo, which is the neighbouring city to Yogyakarta. The flight was uneventful, for once none of the Indonesians on the flight had to be asked to not use their mobiles while in the air. As soon as we’d landed they’d all jumped up to unpack the overhead lockers while the plane was still taxiing. Stepping out of the plane and looking around was really weird. We were in the middle of nowhere, but you could see some dry rice fields and houses scattered around. It was strange because I was looking at my home for the next year. The landscape was so different yet I felt quite content and comfortable with the idea of settling in here. Getting through immigration was quite a saga. Solo isn’t very accustomed to foreigners, so most people were staring at us when we got in the Indonesian citizen queue that we’d been instructed to get into by ACICIS (the organisation looking after us) because of our student visa. People in the queue either tried to get us to stand in the foreigners queue or queued in front of us because they assumed we were in the wrong place. So we wound up at the very back of the queue and were the last ones to get through, I had to keep calling out to the 4 people hovering around our bags wondering who they belonged to that they were ours (the airport was so small that the baggage area was about 5 metres away from immigration). We got through it all eventually then got a taxi to Yogya. Unfortunately, our Solonese taxi driver didn’t know the streets of Yogya so we had to keep stopping to ask for directions. In the evening we wandered around roadside stalls looking for sim cards for our phones then settled into our hotel.

Sunday 19th August

This was the first day of the Orientation program run by ACICIS. It was mainly getting to know each other. We all moved into a guesthouse in UGM (Universitas Gadjah Mada, my new uni) for the five day program. There are around 30 Australian students here for this semester, around about a third will continue on next semester. Most are from Monash, Flinders and ANU. They are all quite nice, for many of them its their first or second time in Indonesia, so many of them feel quite daunted by it all.

Monday 20th August

We mainly had briefings today on health and security. Security-wise, we are pretty safe here, with no real risk from anything in particular (apart from traffic accidents, the roads are pretty wild here, with very few road rules). We’re living in the northern suburbs of Yogya, I suppose its sort of like Hornsby if I was to think of an Australian equivalent. The days are usually around 30 degrees here, which is hot but its so consistent that you don’t really notice it after a while. It’s the dry season here now so its not too humid. Its really quite pleasant. I’m losing weight already because I’ve done so much walking over the past few days. In the evening we met our pendamping (our helpers), who have been allocated to each of us to help us find accommodation and to help us settle in for the first few days. The meeting was quite awkward at first but things loosened up over time. Initially I was a little worried because my pendamping told me that she’d already found kos for me and she already had an acara (program) all planned for me. I didn’t like the sound of the kos (in pogung baru, one of the more sterile areas and with 3 other westerners) and I had my own plan of things in my head. Making elaborate and generous plans for someone and then getting offended if you decline them is quite common for Indonesians - call it a cultural difference.

Tuesday 21st August

We spent the morning doing a placement test at the INCULS language school. We were allocated into beginner, intermediate and advanced, and from that we choose how many language subjects we want to do and how many immersion (classes with other Indonesian students in Indonesian) we want to do. In the afternoon we set off with our pendamping to go kos hunting. I’d decided that seeing as it was my accomodation we were looking for, I just had to be more forceful and upfront about what I wanted. This worked and we actually started to get along better because we understood each other more. My pendamping took me on her motorbike, which when one on the quiet roads was quite exhilarating, while on the main roads quite terrifying. Whenever we stopped in the middle of the road to wait to do a right hand turn I was praying noone was going to run into the back of us. Kos hunting was quite stressful, because a lot of the kos was already full or really not suitable. I had a particular area that I wanted to visit, Karang Asem Baru, because I’d heard the more expensive kos there were quite nice. But my pendamping seemed to take me anywhere but there, despite my requests. At the end of the day she asked if we could head back to the guesthouse she actually didn’t know where Karang Asem Baru was. Despite my overwhelming desire to tear my hair out I agreed, and back at the guesthouse actually found another pendamping who could take me to the area. So at 5.40pm I found a kos. Its one of the more expensive ones but its quiet and quite big and has a tv (which I don’t watch), hot water (that doesn’t work, apparently I have to find someone to connect the gas bottle up for Rp60,000 but haven’t bothered yet), a fridge (yes it already has some chocolate in it) and airconditioning (which is normally on 27-28 degrees because I’m finding anything less than that too cold!).

Wednesday 22nd August

We went to one of the two huge new shopping malls in Yogya, Ambarrukmo. Its enormous and very very western. It also has a shop called Carrefour in it (there was one of these in Singapore) which is a one stop shop for everything. Its kind of like Big W. It also has a supermarket downstairs. In the afternoon I headed back to the guesthouse for talks on Malang, which is where I’ll be heading next semester.

Thursday 23rd August

This morning I enrolled in my subjects. I’m doing 4 immersion subjects, 3 of them politics and international relations related, Javanese language and one of the advanced INCULS classes on writing (always my biggest weakness in Indonesian). Its only 8 hours face to face, spread out over 4 days, but this seems to be a full load here. And apparently quite often the lecturers decide to not turn up but don’t tell anyone. So I think uni here will be quite different, and far more laid back. In the afternoon I moved into my kos. It was so good to finally unpack and settle into my own space. I didn’t get to spend long in my room though, as I went back up to UGM to go along to an SRC meeting with some of the others to help one of their committees organise an international symposium on Australian and Indonesian relations. It was a really interesting experience to go to a committee meeting here, we all sat on the floor for starters. This committee meets every day to organise the event. We don’t have to go every day though.

Friday 24th August

My first night in my kos featured a couple of idiotic moments. Firstly, I had set my alarm for 7am, forgetting that my phone was still on Australian time. So when I was woken up it was actually 4am. Then, I’d attempted to fix my aircon during the night and managed to set it to 30 degrees. So I was dying when I woke up. Today was an exhausting day, as it featured shopping for things for my kos and then trying to find a bicycle. I reckon I spent 5-6 hours walking that day, so I was pretty stuffed by the end of it. Finding a bike was the hardest part, I’d been given vague directions from my pendamping, but wound up spending 2 hours walking up and down one of the main streets. The worst moment was when we stopped to ask a security guard for directions. He told us there were heaps of bikes for sale on the second level of the department store behind us. We were so relieved and thanked him profusely. However when we got to the second level they told us they didn’t sell bikes there, and we realised we’d been tricked. It was incredibly frustrating and all I could think was “you bastard”. Because we’re white we stand out a lot, and have to be careful not to carry too much money on us because people assume we’re rich. We also get tricked and conned a lot by people who think we’re tourists, or simply that we’re young white girls who can be taken advantage of.

In the evening all the ACICIS students went out to one of the good resteraunts to have dinner because it was a couple of people’s birthdays. Afterwards we went to a bar in one of the more touristy areas (Bintang in Jl Sosrowijayan) to listen to the 14 son of one of the students perform his songs. Afterwards there was a great cover band. It was good to listen to music and relax after quite a tiring week.

Saturday 25th August

I didn’t do much today, mainly tried to take it easy. In the morning I went up to the ACICIS house with my bike to see if they could help me make some adjustments. They could do a bit but Phil (the resident director of ACICIS) recommended I take it to a bike shop to get serviced. Unfortunatly the bike shop is around 20 mins away by car and its too dangerous to ride there. I spent around half an hour trying to find a taxi who would take me and my bike but had no luck so gave up on the idea. I went to the bike shop anyway to buy a helmet. Its on Jl Malioboro, the main street. I don’t like Malioboro very much because there’s heaps of people who hassle you because they think you’re a tourist and that they can con you into going to batik shops etc. I had around 3 of them laugh and say “nice glasses” to me, referring to the sunglasses a few days ago. I feel very self-conscious about my sunglasses now!

I’ve decided my kos is a ghost kos, as I never see anyone around, which makes it hard to make local friends.