Now for the best moments of my first days here and in chronological order too. So on my fourth day in Indonesia and the third day of actually doing orientation activites the American exchange students got a special treat. We got to go to the American embassy's ambassador's house for dinner. So we put on vaguely fancy clothes (by this time all my clothes were wrinkled or too cough cough short for fanciness so that's why it's vaguely fancy) and took a drive to the very swauve centre of Jakarta. We got there in good time except parking was a drag because the president drove by! Weird but cool the president was so close. There were no cameras allowed in the ambassadors house, but of course it was beautiful. And this was not just a tiny dinner; this was a party with lots of people (I don't remember why) including a few leftover Indonesian exchange students who were going to America the next day. So I spent my time with them. After of course talking to a few official people in charge of student type things. Very nice and interesting. Good job embassy!
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| US YES Abroaders with the ambassador! Ooer |
So back to the exchange students I was talking too. They were supposed to have left days ago but something was holding them up. None of them had families yet so they didn't even know where in the us they would be. Of course they wanted california (what can I say that's how we do). The night was really interesting. We broke the fast of course because it was Ramadan and they had a live prayer/singer there which I'd never seen. The food was really good. Wow it was so long ago I don't even remember what it was but it was good. And after a few pictures (with the ambassador and the exchange students) we left. I wish those fellow exchange students good luck. Maybe we'll meet again at the end of our year. The whole night was a bit surreal. It was in such a metropolitan area of Jakarta that all the lights were on and we would pass parks with trees larger than anything and there were fountains going and I wanted to take pictures of everything. Then Kak Heidy was like Ankhet you live here and I swooned a bit because it was true. I'm the only exchange student in Jakarta Jakarta. I live in this awesome city and sure not every place looks like that but it's still all mine I guess.
After that we were all dead tired and fell asleep in the traffic home. But guess what it was mini Olympic time and everyone had waited for us. At first we were going to refuse and go to sleep but after some peer pressure we agreed to participate. And I'm so glad. It was so fun. We were separated into teams named after food and we were competing in different games.
My team was made of Belgian Simon (there are two), Kak Stoky, Kak ___, and Mana (Japan). We were nasi goreng and our cheer (part of the competition) went nasi goring pasti manag nasi goreng something something yang lion krepang krepang with dance moves. It meant "We are the best, the others are skinny, so they'll lose." You know team stuff. So there were competitions for each of us. Simon won the hold a spoon with a marble in it in your mouth and then hop quickly back race. Mana came in third in the transport beans with chopsticks across the field. (This race was particularly funny because every team made their Japanese student compete.) I had to blindfolded hit a bag full of water with only Bahasa Indonesia directions. I did pretty good but my bag never fully broke. Kak Stoky nearly won the eat krepik with only your mouth competition and Kak ___ was the same with the put a nail into a bottle with only your butt and some squatting skills. Then we crowned all the winners. They made medals out of fruit so everywhere you saw people breaking open the bags and trying new fruits. Then we had 2 huge games of tug of war Indonesian kakak-kakak vs exchange students. First the girls went then the boys and each time the exchange students won. They made the boys go over again because they won so quickly (most of the guys here are remarkably tall, seriously tall). Then prizes for us and fireworks time. Yea they pulled out sparklers and even a big shooty thing. Crazy. Crazy. And pictures too of course. How awesome a day was this.
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