Rice. And fried everything, including rice. And of course, more rice (AKA “nasi”). I used to think I ate a lot of rice when I went back home to Irving with my parents, but in comparison to this, that was nothing! Here, rice is eaten 3 times a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The Indonesians keep telling me that they don’t feel full unless they eat rice. Luckily, I don’t get rice for breakfast very often anymore (after mentioning several times that I was going to have a nasi belly before I left), but everything is still deep-fried so I’m pretty sure it’s not any better for me. If I don’t gain 50 pounds within the next 2 years it will be a miracle.
In the south we love our sweet tea, but it turns out that I have not actually had real sweet tea until I got to Indonesia. Here the tea consists of equal parts sugar and water—it’s ridiculous—so if I come out of Indonesia without diabetes as well, it will seriously be a miracle!
OK, now that I’ve gotten my principal complaints about Indonesian food out of the way, I must admit that the food is actually really good! First, they eat a lot of fish in their diets, which I love, so it’s nice to have that as a regular part of my meals. Also, there are so many fresh vegetables and fruits available to us. We live in really rural farming communities, so they grow all their vegetables here and have them fresh every day. The fruits, especially, are so good! I can get guava, mango, honeydew melon, papaya, bananas, apples, tangerines, watermelon, and so much more any time. I’ve also found some fruits that aren’t common to the US. First, there is rambutan, a leci-type fruit that is covered by a thick, red, spiky skin that you peel off in order to get to the fruit within. It’s sweet and I really like it. Another is duku, another leci-type fruit that has a brown, fuzzy skin and is very similar to the rambutan in taste. Also, there is a fruit that draws very extreme reactions—you either love it or hate it—the dorian. I have not actually tasted the fruit yet, but I have smelled it many times as we drove past carts that sold them, and that alone drove me away. The dorian has a disgusting, pungent smell that is really unappetizing, but maybe I’ll try it one of these days. Finally, a surprising fruit in Indonesia is the avocado! In the US, we eat the avocado as a vegetable—on salads, with salt and lime juice, in guacamole—but here they eat it as a fruit with sugar…and it’s really good! I have only ever had Haas avocados, but here they grow HUGE avocados the size of footballs!
Fruit juices are widely available here and are, without a doubt, my favorite things here. They are made right when you order them and are extremely cheap—you can get a cold, tall glass of fresh fruit juice for about 60 cents! Whether we’re coming back from a long, difficult day, a good lesson at school, or it’s really hot outside, one of our favorite things to do is go and get a refreshing glass of juice and hang out. My favorite fruit juice is definitely the avocado juice—avocado, brown sugar, and chocolate syrup blended together—it’s absolutely delicious!!
I have eaten many strange things, I think, but Indonesia has definitely broadened my consumptive horizons. I always say that you should try something twice (once just to try something new, and twice because if you didn’t like it the first time it might have just been a fluke and you should give it one more shot before writing it off forever) but there are some things I’ve tried here that I don’t think I will pursue again. The other day my friends and I had a free afternoon, so we went into Batu (a city nearby) to take care of some errands. Every day we have breakfast and dinner at our own homes, and then we make rounds and have lunch together at a different person’s house, so with our free day we decided to go out and get lunch on our own for the first time. Excitedly, we decided to pick items from the menu that we had never tried before. Luckily, all of the items we chose turned out to be delicious! Unluckily, they brought us an extra dish, which consisted of a plate holding, what we guessed was, different body parts of a baby cow. Being from Texas, I have eaten many parts of many cows, but never before have I been presented with a brain, a liver, fried skin, and some unidentified crispy meat. Well, I had never tried brain before, and I rationalized that it’s got to be good otherwise they wouldn’t make it, right? Wrong. It was pretty disgusting, actually. Exactly how you expect a fried brain to taste… a little crispy on the outside and mushy on the inside. I almost threw it up. Then, a couple days later, when we were having lunch at my house, my host mom made a dish with some strange clear-ish “meat” that we couldn’t quite place. It wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t really good either, they texture was off and not really appealing. After eating and cleaning up, my language teacher pointed it out and told me that it was cow tongue. Fabulous, more cow parts.
No matter how good or bad the food is, the biggest problem that all of us face concerning the food is probably the quantity that we are expected to eat. People are constantly trying to shovel food into us. No matter how much we’ve eaten, they never think it’s enough! Even if we have just eaten, and they watched us eat an entire meal, they will come and find us and make us eat more. It’s very impolite to refuse food, but sometimes it is just ridiculous.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
The Group!
When I first received my Peace Corps nomination, I was nominated to be placed in an English teaching program in Sub-Saharan Africa, but a few months ago I was asked to join a group of volunteers to start up the Peace Corps program in Indonesia (there was one group of volunteers in Indonesia in the 1960s, but due to political reasons they were only in the country for 2 years and then the program had to be shut down), which is projected to one day be the country with the largest group of Peace Corps volunteers. That sounded like an exciting opportunity, so I jumped at the chance and headed to San Francisco to meet all the amazing people that would make up “Peace Corps Indonesia 1!”
Link 1
Junerejo: Maggie (Colorado), Scott (Colorado), Luke (Chicago), Colleen (Utah), Andy (Connecticut)
Tlekung: Bart (New York), Diana (Michigan), Samantha (Michigan), Erika (Texas), Noel (Michigan)
Link 2—the people I see almost every day—I love them =)
Pandanrejo: Gio (Minnesota), Angela (Georgia), Andrea (Michigan), Travis (Pennsylvania), & Mike (California)
Giri Purno (my cluster!): me, Sarah (Hawaii), Lauren (Maryland), Truong (New Hampshire), and Matt (Oregon)
I know the groupings were based mainly on language-learning aptitude, but it seems like they grouped me with the people with whom I share the most similarities! All the individuals in my group are so funny, personable, athletic, adventurous, and just so down to earth. I really love them! I get along so well with everyone in my link that I feel this group was tailor-made just for me!
Even though I have only known these people for about a month and a half, it really seems like I’ve known some of them, especially the people in my cluster, for so much longer. I really feel so blessed to have the opportunity to serve alongside this group and I hope to do them justice in how I portray them over the next two years because they really are some of the most genuine, most compassionate, and most incredible people I have ever met!
Link 1
Junerejo: Maggie (Colorado), Scott (Colorado), Luke (Chicago), Colleen (Utah), Andy (Connecticut)
Tlekung: Bart (New York), Diana (Michigan), Samantha (Michigan), Erika (Texas), Noel (Michigan)
Link 2—the people I see almost every day—I love them =)
Pandanrejo: Gio (Minnesota), Angela (Georgia), Andrea (Michigan), Travis (Pennsylvania), & Mike (California)
Giri Purno (my cluster!): me, Sarah (Hawaii), Lauren (Maryland), Truong (New Hampshire), and Matt (Oregon)
I know the groupings were based mainly on language-learning aptitude, but it seems like they grouped me with the people with whom I share the most similarities! All the individuals in my group are so funny, personable, athletic, adventurous, and just so down to earth. I really love them! I get along so well with everyone in my link that I feel this group was tailor-made just for me!
Even though I have only known these people for about a month and a half, it really seems like I’ve known some of them, especially the people in my cluster, for so much longer. I really feel so blessed to have the opportunity to serve alongside this group and I hope to do them justice in how I portray them over the next two years because they really are some of the most genuine, most compassionate, and most incredible people I have ever met!
Monday, April 5, 2010
Selamat Datang!
Hi! Sorry I haven’t been writing regularly, but our internet access has been really limited and even now, I’m borrowing my friend’s laptop in order to get this post developed to upload later. These past 3 weeks have been so busy and hectic and strange that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m not going to be very detailed with the beginning, but here is what has happened since I left the states:
I got to San Francisco, where I stayed one night. We had some pre-staging information and I met the 19 other people that I would be serving with for the next 27 months. Even from the very beginning, we all felt so lucky to be in this particular group that’s starting up the Indonesian Peace Corps program. Not only are we so excited to be doing this, but so is everyone else! A rep from the US Embassy flew down from DC to talk with us, and then we had dinner at the home of the Indonesian Consulate General in San Francisco. They prepared an amazing meal for us and were so gracious—they sat with us and answered our many questions, told us what to expect/what not to expect, and also gave us some useful cultural tips.
Then we travelled for 3 days. It was miserable because I HATE flying, but it was interesting how well we all worked together in that situation. From San Francisco we flew to Tokyo, Japan, then to Bangkok, Thailand (which has the nicest airport hotel I’ve ever seen!), and finally to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Jakarta was such an interesting experience. When we got there, we found out that the reason we were even in Jakarta was because President Obama was scheduled to come to Indonesia and we were to be available in case he had some time on his schedule! You can not imagine our excitement! It turns out that the health care bill needed his full attention and the trip was cancelled, but we ended up staying in Jakarta until Tuesday and just started our training there. Jakarta is a great city, so alive, big, and so different from anything we were expecting from our “Peace Corps experience.”
After our brief stay in paradise, on Tuesday, March 23rd, we left the big city and finally made our way to our real destination—the host sites for our training period—Malang. Malang is the big city near the 4 little villages where we actually live. The group of 20 was split into 4 groups of 5 and each group was distributed to one of the four villages (also called “clusters”): Giri Purno, Pandanrejo, Tlekong, and Junrejo. I live in Giri Purno. Two Clusters make a “link” and the other cluster in our link is Pandanrejo. The people in Giri Purno and Pandanrejo are the ones I see almost everyday.
Ok now you are caught up on absolutely nothing interesting =) I will work on getting the more juicy stuff up soon! I plan on getting a laptop soon, so it should be a lot easier to update this blog in the coming weeks!
Oh! By the way, the language I’m learning is called Bahasa Indonesia, which means “Language of Indonesia” in case any of you were wondering!
Coming soon: My fellow volunteers, my host family, food, drinks, language, transportation, sports, culture, and whatever else comes up!
Sampai Jumpa! (See you later!)
--Nisha
I got to San Francisco, where I stayed one night. We had some pre-staging information and I met the 19 other people that I would be serving with for the next 27 months. Even from the very beginning, we all felt so lucky to be in this particular group that’s starting up the Indonesian Peace Corps program. Not only are we so excited to be doing this, but so is everyone else! A rep from the US Embassy flew down from DC to talk with us, and then we had dinner at the home of the Indonesian Consulate General in San Francisco. They prepared an amazing meal for us and were so gracious—they sat with us and answered our many questions, told us what to expect/what not to expect, and also gave us some useful cultural tips.
Then we travelled for 3 days. It was miserable because I HATE flying, but it was interesting how well we all worked together in that situation. From San Francisco we flew to Tokyo, Japan, then to Bangkok, Thailand (which has the nicest airport hotel I’ve ever seen!), and finally to Jakarta, Indonesia.
Jakarta was such an interesting experience. When we got there, we found out that the reason we were even in Jakarta was because President Obama was scheduled to come to Indonesia and we were to be available in case he had some time on his schedule! You can not imagine our excitement! It turns out that the health care bill needed his full attention and the trip was cancelled, but we ended up staying in Jakarta until Tuesday and just started our training there. Jakarta is a great city, so alive, big, and so different from anything we were expecting from our “Peace Corps experience.”
After our brief stay in paradise, on Tuesday, March 23rd, we left the big city and finally made our way to our real destination—the host sites for our training period—Malang. Malang is the big city near the 4 little villages where we actually live. The group of 20 was split into 4 groups of 5 and each group was distributed to one of the four villages (also called “clusters”): Giri Purno, Pandanrejo, Tlekong, and Junrejo. I live in Giri Purno. Two Clusters make a “link” and the other cluster in our link is Pandanrejo. The people in Giri Purno and Pandanrejo are the ones I see almost everyday.
Ok now you are caught up on absolutely nothing interesting =) I will work on getting the more juicy stuff up soon! I plan on getting a laptop soon, so it should be a lot easier to update this blog in the coming weeks!
Oh! By the way, the language I’m learning is called Bahasa Indonesia, which means “Language of Indonesia” in case any of you were wondering!
Coming soon: My fellow volunteers, my host family, food, drinks, language, transportation, sports, culture, and whatever else comes up!
Sampai Jumpa! (See you later!)
--Nisha
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