Some Ups

There are certainly up and downs, and I’ll be frank about that. Sitting around at school doing absolutely nothing on Tuesdays has gotten old. I bring my labtop and surf the web at a snail’s pace with our wireless internet service. Today I looked over the other ETAs blogs and got inspired to write more, even though I think my mom may be my only reader.

Sometimes I’m really up and sometimes I am quite the opposite. On Sunday, I had a really up day. I was visiting with some other ETAs, and then just one and her Indonesian friend from a small city west of here. He had invited his friends as well and we rode up to Merapi in his car listening to dangdut, Indonesian “country” music all the way. The guys stopped the car at a small moshollah to pray. My fellow ETA and I looked at the green corn fields and watched children play while we waited for the men to finish. Andrew had worn a red shirt and covered it with a jacket to appease me primarilily as the locals say one should not wear red by near Merapi or it might explode.

There was a deep fog as we reached the top of the hill leading to Merapi. The parking attendant handed us surgical masks to wear and we walked up a slope to see the huge rock formations and weird muddy portions and houses, which had been covered in dirt and debree. Everyone in the area had been evacuated except one man, Mbah Marijan, who is the protector of Merapi and was not killed when he stayed behind. We took photos of the eerie scene and I had my friend poke her head out of a hole in a concrete wall. I started feeling bad about somehow making light of a sad situation but then walked around a corner and saw some young Indonesians taking photos of each other in front of dilapidated houses. And all the while, one of our other friends giggled crazily with his friends. I like the way Indonesians deal with tragedy…they balance it out with humor and laughter.

The dark started to decend and we sat at a small warung to drink some tea and eat some tangos, these delicious chocolate wafers. We got back in the car and headed back down the hills to Yogya. Our driver, the giggler, was excellent. He was as aggressive as, in my estimation, he had to be but did not honk excessively, tailgate motorcyclists or pass other cars on blind curves like 90% of other drivers. Needless to say, I was impressed. I was also impressed that he was not stressed out by the driving by the time we reached Yogya again. Every time I get in a car, it reminds me why I don’t want to drive anything here.

We went to a bak pia factory to for my friend to get some oleh-oleh to take back to her co-workers. We got to sample hot bak pia straight from the oven and it convinced me to reconsider my former distaste for it. It was delicious when still fresh.

After that we went to dinner with the guys and their parents at Pizza Hut and I had a strange (and silly) conversation about bak pia pizza with the giggler, whom I sat across from. The guys drove us back and shook our hands while still bumpin’ the dangdut. When we got to my place, my friend and I talked about all the places we would like to travel in the future.