Another Day in Paradise

Knock knock knock
"Jason?"
Knock knock
"Jason bangun ya?"
     Why oh why was my host brother knocking on my door only four minutes before my alarm would be waking me for school? After convincing myself it was worth losing those four minutes of sleep to see what was going on, I opened my bedroom door to see my host brother watching TV. He turned to me to say that we have a holiday today and that I should get some clothes on. Now I'm still a bit groggy and confused at this point so I'm asking questions which ultimately lead to the answer that it is snowing.
     Now I know it is not snowing, it is in the 80s despite the fact that it is 6am. He tells me to just go look outside and sure enough, it appears to be snowing as you too can see:

     This snow doesn't simply originate from the sky, however, but rather a volcano some 150 miles east of Yogyakarta. Now woken up, donning a mask akin to those worn by doctors and nurses, and mentally preparing myself to step out into what I looked something like a post-apocalyptic action movie, I stepped outside and quite simply enjoyed myself. Playing with ash is rather similar to messing around with extremely fine sand, except for the part where sand rarely rains from the sky at a constant rate over the course of several hours.

This is the grass in a small park in my neighborhood. The ash settles very similarly to powdery snow.

This is a bench in the aforementioned park, you can see that there is a decent amount of ash (roughly a half inch) and this is after nearly five hours of the ash-rain as it started around 1am. I don't know why this picture insists on being sideways, I tried several times to correct the original file as well as on the blog but to no avail.

Obviously I'm just messing around in front of my house, but I did see a couple of people who had to be out walking actually using umbrellas to keep the ash off them and, most importantly, out of their eyes. It is amazing how falling ash seems to act as an eye-seeking missle.

The view from atop my roof out over the nearby city. Visibility was probably down to half-mile, maybe a little less, and everything was just extremely gray. Yes, my host brother and I did climb up to our roof just to look out and about.

     Now this is equal parts awesome and awful for various reasons.

Pros:

• School was cancelled and I think I heard it is also cancelled for tomorrow.
• I have never been anywhere near a volcano that has erupted, so that's cool.
• playing around in ash is a lot more fun than it sounds, I promise.

Cons:

• ash gets everywhere; there is ash on the table, on the floor, on every shelf, and even on my computer as I write this.
• the roads are full of ash which means that you can't go anywhere except by car, something none of my friends who usually take me places have, meaning I'm essentially stranded at home.

     On the upside, this coming weekend all of the Inbounds along with an Inbound from two years ago will be participating in an International Food Festival at a Rotarian owned restaurant. Each of the students will be cooking food from their countries that will be sold to the public. I personally will be representing the US with some hot chili, homemade bagels, and apple crisp. Next week I will report back on how cooking and eating goes. In the meantime, I'll just watch another movie as I avoid breathing in ash.