Visiting friends

It’s been a while since my last blog, largely because my internet was out for a while, along with the power. Now however, things seem to have returned to normal so here’s an update.
The first weekend in May was spent in ParePare. I went to say goodbye to the older couple I had met there, Justin and Diane because they left for a month in Lombok this week. While I was there besides eating lots of Diane’s delicious cooking I met yet another bule; he was from Brisbane. He’s married to a local and bases his international business out of Pare. Talking with/about him, divorces also came up, and I found out that divorces are fairly common here. It seems people can’t say no to organized or pressured marriages, but they can annul them in a few months. That makes sense!
Justin and Diane are always good for some interesting conversations about trying to help in various locations (they’ve been all over including Africa some 30 years ago; now that’s an adventure!). A far amount of our conversations were spent talking about positive and negative aspects of some cultures. On that front I have long been pretty liberal; thinking that cultures are different not better or worse, but as I’ve spent more time here it’s become pretty obvious that there are some cultures which are better than others at accomplishing certain things that we currently value in this world (I had to soften it with that last bit).

The Monday after I returned from Pare there was no class because there was a celebration for the 3rd classes in the middle and high schools finishing. To the boredom of a normal graduation (hot, uncomfortable chairs, long speeches, etc) now add being able to understand about 1/3 of the words, if you really concentrate. It wasn’t horrible, but pretty bad. I played on my cell phone the whole time. After it was over I was of course in a TON of pictures. Then they took down the metal tent in a serious lightning storm; not kidding.

The graduation party also included some celebration for the Prophet’s Birthday. Those Islam-savvy out there will not that was OVER 2 MONTHS AGO! Despite that, this was the second celebration I had been to for the Prophet’s B-day. The first was in a student’s home and Easter had invited me. It was somewhat interesting, but not my favorite thing considering I got to sit and listen to 3 guys read the Koran for an hour while I sweated away. One thing I liked about the celebrations is the banana Christmas Easter Tree! They take a banana tree trunk and jab lots of sticks into it, forming roughly a Christmas tree shape. Each stick is decorated and on the end of it is a hardboiled egg (hence the Easter part of the tree). What I didn’t see coming was at the student’s house when, as soon as the Koran reading was over, everyone (grandma included!) made a mad rush at the tree to pull out a stick and egg!

Then this past weekend I headed to Makassar to celebrate Jimmie’s birthday. We didn’t really do much of anything, but it was good to catch up, and especially get to a gym! I can still hardly move my arms!
The time in Makassar made it very obvious that I know longer need an itinerary to have a very good time, just sitting talking, zoning out, playing on the internet or simply walking around is an activity now…I’ve definitely lost my American ‘everything must be scheduled’ urge; I don’t miss it very much!
We did manage to get motivated enough to see a CLASSY Indo movie and even listened to some music at a concert. Both confirmed that Indo’s are not very good at trying Western media!

So as you can see, not much has been going on here lately, but the time is winding down in a hurry. I will leave the pesantren late night May 28 which means I have 2.5 weeks left!