A good weekend nonetheless

So I was intending to have this posting be all these great stories about hikes and exploring I had done in Tana Toraja this past weekend, but yet again Indonesia reminded me that plans are only here to trick you. I did get to Toraja, and I did have a good time and saw some very stunning scenery, but hiking was pretty much out of the question, and I spent more time in the hotel room than anywhere else. I ended up getting another (or maybe a continuance of the previous?) bout of food poisoning that I started to feel on the bus ride over Thursday night/ Friday morning. The bus plan was a bit of an adventure, but I eventually caught up with Jimmy at about 2am in Rappang so that we were on the same bus. Next was a very winding 4.5hr bus ride to Ranetapo where we were met by Ricky and Kelly from Majene who had decided to come at the last minute and hired a car to drive them over.
Eventually we got checked into a cool place that was actually a couple of cottages designed like the traditional house of Toraja: tongkonan. I’ll just refer you to Wikipedia or Lonely Planet for more info on the Torajan tradition regarding funerals, but suffice to say that it’s very interesting if slightly audacious for Westerners who are used to fairly private, reserved funerals. Some highlights though: the rock carvings, the impressive tongkonan houses, and the love of buffalo (up to $10,000 for a very fine white buffalo, yes American dollars) and sacrificing of those beloved buffalo. We saw all of those things plus some very impressive scenery that afternoon as we used to the car to drive us up into the mountains. We had intended to do some hiking, but we were all pretty out of it. On the way down we actually ran into a funeral procession that was going down the only road down the mountain, eventually we were strongly encouraged by the members of the procession to get out and watch (they apparently enjoy sharing the funeral). That was pretty interesting, though by that point I was feeling pretty sick (so I was stuck on a mountain with one long, winding, bumpy road off; I thought that was about as bad as it could get, I was later proved to be wrong), and thus when we got back I just had to lay down near the bathroom for a while. Unfortunately things only got worse, and I ended up taking some medicine and buying a bus ticket back to Rappang, but thought better of it and instead bought myself a separate room and spent the night (good choice, as I looked near death all night).
Friday night Alexa and Sarah got in from Gorantalo, and then to everyone’s surprise Anna and Erica showed up Saturday morning from Manado. So when you throw in Ab, who is positioned in Rantepao, there were 9 of us there, all of the SulSel ETAs (minus Jenny). Just catching up with everyone was probably the highlight of the trip for me. I hadn’t seen any other bules since orientation (a month), and it was so nice just to hang out with people and hear about everyone’s situations. It’s really amazing how different all of our settings are. Between the housing/eating/commute, setting (city, remote, etc as well as demographics), class sizes, teaching responsibilities, teacher interactions, and student abilities, we’re all in drastically different places. I’m pretty happy with my situation now, the down sides seem to be that I’m very remote and my students are not as advanced as some, but in just about every other field I’m happy relative to everyone else’s stories. (read below for a few thoughts I wrote a while back).
Just to wrap it up, Saturday we got to see Ab’s school (wow, nice!), and do some hiking nearby, including to an area that apparently was where Torajan’s opposed the Dutch at some point (according to Ab’s students, whose English was very good). That was about it for my sightseeing unfortunately however, as the stomach proved to be way too iffy (I won’t gross you out more than to say there were some very gross moments, and the lack of running water for Sunday morning was definitely not a good thing).
All right I’ll call that good, though I could keep going.
Here’s a link to some of the pics from the weekend:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2076187&id=15804233&l=bf2173648b

And my random, positive thoughts from earlier; these were sort of a reaction to the depressed mood I had been in following the first round of food poisoning (speaking of which, yes I’m tending to get myself checked out by a doctor).
I’m living in SUCH an amazing situation, and an experience that is simply one of a kind. This is a place and a setting that is out of this world! I find myself sometimes humming “Somewhere over the Rainbow” and that’s pretty ironic, because this place is certainly not Kansas! And while there are certainly some challenges, I’m really pretty damn happy (these last couple days have had lots of good things happen), and this is something that I truly will never forget, and no one else will ever experience. Because of that, I am extremely grateful for this opportunity, but also enthralled.