All the news that isnt news…

So I have been busy with stuff here but its about time I updated our situation. Since I last wrote I have found a soccer team that practices every day at the field closest to MC. After practicing with the team they have invited me to play in a regional tournament. There are 12 teams in the tournament and each team is basically from a different village. As far as I can tell I will be the only Buley there. Agus, a friend of mine from the team, came and picked me up yesterday and we rode his moped to the game. It is not uncommon to see whole families no a moped heading somewhere. I have still to see 5 people on one but 4 is very common. My favorite is the dad driving, mom with baby sitting side saddle while texting on her phone and the 5 year old standing on the floor runners with their hands on the handle bars… and no one with a helmet on…

At the game we parked our moped with the other 100 mopeds and took our parking ticket from the kid. Then Agus handed me a ticket(not sure how much they cost) and we walked to the field. There was a row of people seated most of the the way around the whole field with another 2-3 rows of people standing behind them in parts. I’m not sure how they cut the grass, maybe they grazed their goats there for a few days or maybe they cut it all with a machete but I’m sure it was not cut with a lawn mower. I watched the game and also took the time to try out my new language skills.

We started language lessons last week thursday. We worked through the alphabet, which I need to review before tonights lesson, and then worked on pronouns and possessives. I now know my numbers fairly well as well as the basic greetings. Currently I am working on questions that have who, what, where, when, how in them. Indonesian is forgiving because it does not have any tenses so I can say Saya and based on context it becomes “I am” “I was” “I will be.”

Last week we took a UN flight to Banda Aceh and spent the weekend there. On the weekend we went to lumba lumba via a faery. Lumba Lumba Island is the farthest west point of  Indonesia and has great coral reefs to explore. The boat ride over was rough with 10-15 foot swells. We were in the economy section up in the very front and at least 5 people puked around us… one time the bow got airborne and we dropped maybe 20 feet and then plowed through the next wave. From where I was sitting I saw the solid blue of sea water go by…. crazy times. On the way back we paid the extra dollar to get business class and we sit in the back of the boat up on the top!

We went snorkeling and got stung by some jelly fish. We did see a bunch of cool things swimming around(just use your imagination). The best part of the weekend for me was the food. I am becoming obsessed with food, or more pointedly, good food. All the food in Meulaboh is fried and not that good. This place had the best native food I have had here. We tried the peanut sauce which was nothing like in the US, but still very good. I also had the curry soup with vegetables and what turned out to be half a chicken. The chickens here are regular size since they are humped up on roids so you have to root around more to get at the meat. The next day we got the saucy noodles with fried chicken which turned out to be my favorite.  I am also a fan of the fresh lemonade. They give you the sugar on the side so I can have my tart and Laura can have her diabetes.

The rooms we stayed in were very clean once you set a few ground rules. Like the ubiquitous ant problem, and the need to burn the mosquito repellent stuff that makes your room smell like a hookah parlor. There was no AC but there was a fan above the beds that was strategically placed. Unfortunately they are building more units so we woke up to a skill saw at O’ dark hundred.

I have almost finished Kiln People by David Brin. Sci-fi world where you can make a clay copy of yourself. Thanks for the book rec NukeEm.