FAQ 1

(FYI you can mouse over photos for my comments on them.)

In this post I will try to answer some specific questions as well and go into some general travel concerns and information that might be helpful or humorous.

Q: What type of activities are you doing there?

A: Laura’s day consists of getting up a 7, heading into the office by 8, working, eating, and heading home at 5pm. My day is a little different. I have been heading into the office with Laura but I am free to do whatever I want. Currently I go to the resource room, which has the best AC in the building, and browse the net, write email and blog. Sometimes I don’t go in with Laura and instead I go for a morning run on the beach. It’s fun catching the locals bathing in the ocean. I assume they are bathing because they are going in with just their shirts on. The crabs run into the water and the locals run out and grab their clothes…

If you can imagine, I tend to have more energy then Laura. Now that she is under a heavy workload, coupled with her first management experience, and quadrupled with language and culture difficulties, she just wants to melt when she gets home. I, on the other hand, have been waiting all day for the fun to begin. You know: an evening jog on the beach, or a game of risk or two! What we have settled on is eating first, then either a walk on the beach, and/or watching some Grey’s Anatomy(we are now into season 2). The copies we have are borrowed from a friend here and the production quality sometimes is humorous. For example the subtitles are always on and they usually come 1 to 2 seconds after the actors speak, like they are typing the words as they hear them. Once they switched to Spanish for a few lines, but luckily we do too. For some reason the voice and video tracks aren’t lined up either, and sometimes the screen looks like they are squishing a wide screen version onto the normal TV size. We also had to go online to get the episode list because they mixed them up. For example on season 1 they put some 5 episodes of season 2 into the package.

Q: How is Laura’s work going?

A: I’ll see if I can get Laura to write a bit on that.

Q: What are the adjustments you guys having to make? (other than being thousands of miles away of course…)

A: I have not as of this point felt very angry or depressed about my situation. Both of those I would just assign to culture shock. I do get frustrated with my slow learning of the language and how I sometimes find myself relearning things I forgot, but I just keep telling myself that repetition is the best practice. I think being with Laura and having her support is very good for my spirits, she has been encouraging on many levels. I have also tried to be proactive in my new environment and I am trying to get out and do/see as much as I can during the day. Just yesterday the power went out right after dusk and so I went up on the balcony and say and watched the neighborhood. Most people seemed not to notice and continued sitting and chatting with their friends or walking to where they were going. I saw a guy using his cell phone to light his path but most did not seem to need any light to navigate. It was a good reminder for me to plan a good emergency strategy if there was an earthquake and the lights went out. I brought a mini maglight which I dug out of my bag. As a reminder to myself I need to change the batteries so its brighter…

Q: Are you running, working out and stuff like that?

A: Working out is hard here, no one works out here because no one is fat or afraid of getting fat. They work their butts off all day and eat very healthy. I have some swelling in my left hand from moving that still has not gone away so that is preventing me from my push ups and pull-ups. Laura has been doing some Yoga but I can’t join her in that due to my hand as well and the calcified hematoma in my groin that prevents certain stretches(TMI?). I run on the beach because it’s the least likely place to get run over by a vehicle or get stared at. Although since we go out all the time walking everywhere they neighbors are starting to get used to us and both greet us and not stair too much.

I did get to play some soccer this last weekend. The first weekend here it had rained real hard and the field was under water, this lately the weather has cooperated. MC has a soccer team and I have used that to start many conversations. For example I took my English Indonesian dictionary out back under the tin roof where all the MC drivers and other male workers sit and smoke while waiting, and I proceeded to look up how to say “pass,” “shoot,” “goal,” and futbol terms like off-sides, corner kick, and header. They get very into trying to help you when you show interest in learning there language which is very helpful. As you can imagine there was a bit of dancing around and playing air futbol to get my points across which they seemed to enjoy. BTW, soccer in the rest of the word is futbol and here it is called mienbola (mine – bola) or bola for short. Of course most of the terms I tried to learn were just Indonesian translations of USA soccer colloquialisms. In the game everyone kept yelling “dua dua” which I found out meant that they wanted a “wall pass” or a “give and go”. If neither of those makes any sense to you, it means you pass your teammate the ball and run around your defender. Then you receive the ball back once you are in the clear. Overall I think I made a good impression at the game and they might invite me back next week. I am going to have to change my game a little since I am used to being very physical out of self preservation with larger players. What was a rib shot before now is a nose breaker. Luckily I only elbowed the guy in the back of the head…

Q: Have met any cool friends?

A: We have been getting together with the other buleys (foreigners = xpats = white people = gringos (somewhat derogatory)) which has been very pleasant. Last Friday night we had a buley dinner orchestrated by Albert who has 20+ years as a head chef. Maybe it is just that I have not had any food I’m used to here but that dinner was the best I have had in a long time. We made potato salad, some cooked greens, a tomato and cucumber salad and the best grilled chicken ever! Before dinner we were treated to some pineapple juice with rum which was a real treat since sharia law prohibits alcohol here. Albert and his wife Paula brought it down with them from Banda Aceh. With dinner we had some lemon grass tea which he made from scratch. Let me tell you! That was some good stuff.

We have also been trying to get out more with the locals but there is a cultural rift there due to the conservative muslim culture here. For example, the locals insist on having two guest houses, one for buleys and one for nationals. From what we can tell it is for the protection of the muslims and the strict rules they have to abide by. Under sharia law a woman and a man can not be in a closed room together unless they are married. They can not hold hands of kiss in public unless they are married. The woman has to have loose bag clothes that cover at least past her elbows and knees and a covering over her hair. As you can imagine it makes our house keeper very uncomfortable when I am home alone when she comes to clean, and so I usually try to be out of the house in the mornings.

So to answer the question: we have gone out with some of the national staff, although they are not from Meulaboh. They are from Java and other parts more liberated. Although I suspect we must be boring because there is still a large language barrier.

Q: What is it like being in the culture with blond hair and blue eyes?

A: Don’t forget my reddish beard and unusually large shoulders either! The beard I shaved off for the first time yesterday and the shoulders definitely were very large in my dream last night… I think that the people are more staring at Laura then they ever do at me. For some reason when I am out by myself I get very sincere head nods and greetings. People don’t seem to stare any more then they did in Central America so I can deal with it. When I am with Laura we tend to get more calls and stairs, like the men want Laura to look their way or something. Two days ago I finally walked on the beach with my shirt off with Laura for two reasons. One it might draw more attention to me and away from her, and two because I really don’t want the worst farmer tan ever after a year of sun with none hitting my chest!