I'm currently lacking the creativity to make a funny title

     Two weeks ago, November 15th, was the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha (pronounced "eed all-odd-hey") which translates to "Festival of the Sacrifice". It is a celebration of Abraham's faith and willingness to sacrifice his own son by God's command which wasn't carried through (also by God's command, God wasn't actually trying to get Abraham to kill his son it was a test of faith) and a goat and cow were sacrificed instead. All over the world, Muslims everywhere sacrifice cows and goats in a traditional fashion. They animals are then butchered and half of the meat is to be given to the poor while the other half is to be prepared for a feast with family and friends. Not everyone buys an animal to be sacrificed, but it is common for a group of individuals to pool their money and then share the meat afterwards.

     I went to a rather large Mosque near Kraton with another exchange student, Samantha, and a couple of my friends from school to see the sacrifices. We showed up a bit late so all of the goats were already finished but there were still about ten of the twelve cows remaining. The sacrifices went something like this: the cow had some ropes wrapped around it while it was still standing, most were decently calm but a few seemed to know what was up and were pacing and mooing like crazy; the cows were then toppled over and hog tied so that their movement was almost completely restricted except for their heads; after about five to ten minutes of tightening ropes and assuring that the eight or so men had a handle on the cow, a shallow wooden box about three feet by a foot and a half was placed under the cow's neck to collect the blood and the cow's throat was slit.

     The amount of blood contained in a cow is, needless to say, a lot. even after the cow was dead, usually a minute or two, and the involuntary muscle spasms ended, about five minutes after cutting, the blood would still be flowing for a total of eight minutes or so. After the blood finished draining and the men moved on to another cow, a new group of men would come and behead the cow, skin it, and butcher it in large pieces to be taken over to the women working to more appropriately butcher the meat to be divided amongst those who bought the animal. We stuck around to watch about three of the sacrifices before the smell of blood became a bit too oppressive.

    I have a lot of pictures and a couple videos of the actual sacrificing itself but I don't want to put them up because they are pretty graphic to say the least. If you are curious and want to see pictures and/or video, shoot me a message on facebook and I'll share that with you.

     That same week, I finally changed classes. I had spent my first month and and half with an animation class and now I'm with a textile class. It's been pretty great to learn about the batik making process which isn't so much a difficult process as it is one that is extremely tedious and requires a steady hand (which I really don't have). I'll get some pictures up once I have some finished pieces; I'm still working on my first article, a foot and a half square bandana.

     The most interesting part of my new class, however, isn't the Praktek (that's what all of the shop or trades classes are referred to as) but rather the Theory classes (all of the academic classes). I'm in class three, which is the 12th grade but the third of three in high school, and was in class three also in animation. But the math I was learning in my animation class was integral calculus while my textile class appears to be only on algebra. The English in my textile class appears to be further along than animation which has lead me to believe that curriculum is either flexible, determined entirely by the teacher, or simply nonexistant, all of which are equally possible.

     Last, starting last Friday until Monday was the Inbound Orientation for District 3410. There, 33 exchange students from 16 different countries met and had some pretty sweet excursions. The Jogja students flew into Jakarta where we met the three students from Bandar Lampung and we began the bus ride to Bandung picking up groups of students along the way. When we were all on the bus, we passed around a mic and introduced ourselves in Indonesian. Of course, everybody was still carrying on conversations during this process because we were all so excited, so when I announced "Nama saya Jason dari Amerika", someone misheard me and replied "wait what? Your name is Jesus?". I was referred to as Jesus for the rest of the weekend, including many puns about my father, jokes about walking on water (we stayed at a camp with natural hot springs), and I was even doing a team blessing before paintball.

     Our first stop in Bandung was Trans Studio, the second largest indoor theme park in the world. To get an idea, there was an entire water raft ride contained entirely inside. They also had a parade right before we left, complete with a few different Indonesian cartoon characters, a Poseiden looking man, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Sparrow-esque pirate and crew, and scores more people dressed in various western themes. Sadly I don't have pictures myself but our chaperones took a ton so hopefully I snag theirs off facebook soon.

     After that we headed to the camp which actually was a camp, more or less. We stayed in tents (which we think were left over from tsunami relief years ago because they had the Islamic crescent and star beside a red cross leading us to believe they were donated by an Islamic humanitarian group) but they were on platforms which included a patio area and each tent had its own shower and western toilet. There was a lack of hot water, which was sort of terrible because we were up in the mountains south of Bandung and it would get as cold as 15 Celsius, or the extremely chilly 60 Fahrenheit; but after being used to 30 Celsius every day, 15 is quite a shock.

     The first day, we visited a tea plantation which was humongous and absolutely stunning. We could see for miles in every direction where more and more mountains and foothills were lying, and everywhere was lush and green. The air was the cleanest I have yet tasted in Indonesia and that was a beautiful relief from the constant smell of city here in Yogyakarta. When we were taking group pictures, Marin from New Hampshire and I spotted a worker and we snapped some pictures and watched as he harvested the tea leaves with nothing more than some garden shears and a big bag on his back.

     We also delivered our speeches as we sipped tea from the plantation here. Everyone had to deliver a speech, some told of their experiences so far, others something that has really surprised them, myself and some of the Jogja students talked about culture shock at the advice of Mas Gabe, a Rotarian and Rotex who is more or less in charge of the YEP program for all of Jogja. We are all at different levels of Indonesian, but everyone was definitely able to introduce themselves and get a few points across, so we are all on our way at least. They gave out awards for the top six speeches and three of the awards went to Jogja students: myself in fourth, Samantha in third, and Romane in second. Joao from Brazil who is living in Jakarta won overall. We like to credit our success to our week-long city orientation which helped us to both learn Indonesian and be comfortable and confident with each other and Indonesia as a whole.

     We also had a small group of professional actors and dancers come in and worked with us to right a very simple script which we then performed based off four traditional stories from different locations in Indonesia. Our lead, Kyla, won the award for best actress so we were all pretty proud of what we were able to slap together in only a couple hours.

     There were tons of more events that were great just to get to relax and enjoy each other, but being able to chat about our experiences so far and our lives back in our home countries was by far the best part of the whole camp. Over three nights, I slept a total of seven hours, and it was totally worth it. Now that we have all connected, I don't think it will be long before many of us will be trying to visit new places in Indonesia to check out all of the great things people had to say about their cities.

     I'm sorry I can't post any pictures right now, every time I try blogger crashes on me so I'll have to make a second post when the servers calm down. Stay tuned!

Selamat Ulang Tahun Yogyakarta!

     Yesterday, September 6th, was the city of Yogyakarta's birthday. How the people of Yogyakarta decided that this day is the official day of it's founding and just what constitutes that founding 276 years ago despite there being people here for centuries I never really found out. But nonetheless, September 6th is the day, and with it comes a few things.

     That night, Malioboro was closed to traffic and all street vendors (not food vendors, just the people selling knock-off goods and various cheap wares) leaving the places more open and subsequently filled with people. There were also a couple of stages set up however I only saw one band performing on one stage. I don't actually know why there were three except that one of them was used by XL, a wireless provider, and there a bunch of schools did this dance contest of sorts, mine included.

     First, every school was dressed how they saw fit. SMK 1 wore their gym class uniforms with crazy straw hats for example. My school made masks out of boxes that we painted, and then a bunch of people painted themselves white, pretty much just because they could. We looked a little something like this:

This is Gambit (not his real name but I honestly only know his nickname) who is probably the most ridiculous kid in my class.

SMK 1 standing beside us in their garb.

My class gathering in a circle for out chant.

     Once your school was up, you had to do your chant. I'm still not really sure why but everybody was pretty pumped up so there was a whole lot of energy which made it pretty cool.After that, you all faced the stage and performed maybe 40 seconds of this dance that we learned at school earlier in the week. After every school had gone through, each school went a second time, but instead of doing the dance we had all learned, each school performed their own variation of it. I, unfortunately, had missed this little lesson, so I learned the dance about five minutes before doing it. Needless to say, things went mediocre for me. In the end, I don't know who won because I couldn't understand anything the MCs were saying, but I'm about 99% sure it wasn't us.

     After the contest, I had to go get a shirt for the next day (will explain this in a moment) on the South end of Malioboro and then forced myself, along with some friends and other exchange students, through an exceedingly thick crowd to get my bike to finally get home. We finished dancing at about 8:30 and I wasn't leaving Malioboro until 9:35, so the crowds were pretty thick. Despite the crowds, though, we still managed to take a picture with the becok and horse carriage drivers:

     The next day at school, everyone wore various traditional clothes (that's where the shirt I needed to borrow comes in). My particular class wore the clothing of traditional Javanese farmers, so nothing too fancy:

Getting dressed at one of my classmate's homes who lives close to school.

     Other classes were dressed differently, most wore more wealthy clothing and they showed off a few different styles. What is most interesting, however, is that almost all traditional clothing from the area (and I think Indonesia at large, but I can't say for certain) mixes very old local styles with Dutch clothing. Typically, men would wear a 19th century Dutch military-style jacket and a jerek, or traditional Javanese skirt for men. Women would also wear a jerek (although it may have a different name for girls even though it seems the same) and then have a pretty ornate blouse of some kind. This half and half combination is found pretty much everywhere, especially among members of the royal family of Yogyakarta. That's right, Special Province Yogyakarta is still ruled by a sultan as its governor. How sweet is that? Here are a couple examples of fancier clothing traditional to Jogja:

     We didn't actually have any school that day, we just came all dressed up, walked about, hung out for a bit, then went to a classmate's house to eat. Nothing is more Indonesian feeling than eating a chicken and a huge pile of rice with your hands, on the floor, with about 30 people.