Delayed Post: International Food Festival

     With ashageddon a distant memory, it was time to try to schedule the previously mentioned International Food Festival. It was supposed to take place on Sunday, February 16th, but with the ash still lingering over Yogyakarta that was impossible. And so it was moved to March 16th instead.
     The idea is this: each exchange student in Jogja (seven total) along with a German Rotex (previous exchange student who is still active in the program, he now attends university in Jogja) would prepare three dishes that are authentic cuisine from their country of origin. All of this food would then be sold at an event open to the public at R&B Grill, a delicious restaurant and shop owned by a Rotarian and current host-family of Hideto from Japan. Each student was given 500,000 Rp, about $46USD, to do all the necessary shopping, but everything else was left up to the students along with the guidance of an Indonesian Rotex or two. I was working with Relly, the son of my club counselor and Rotex who exchanged to Michigan, USA several years ago.
     Now most people may think making hearty, American shouldn't be too difficult. What with the obesity rate in the States, food obviously isn't in short supply. But, if you think about things a bit more, you realize that very little of thee food we eat was thought up by Americans in America. That brat you eat before every baseball game: German, mom's homemade lasagna: Italian, the fondu you had at the fancy restaurant last week: come on the name is in French! Most of the food we eat in the States is originally from European nations, just like our ethnic identities. I had to ask Indonesians what food they thought of when they thought of America in order to actually get ideas.
     The first, and best, was apple pie. I didn't realize how many people outside of the US really want to try apple pie, but apparently its right around everybody. Pie crust is kind of a pain to make though, so my mom (American mom that is, I asked her for recipes and advice and such) suggested I make apple crisp; all the flavor with half the calories! Just kidding, it probably has double the calories, but it's a lot easier to make. Another truly American invention is Chili. A stew inspired by various European cuisines, it was a common dish of frontiersmen in early American history as it requires few ingredients to be delicious and the only cooking is letting it sit in a pot on medium heat for an hour. Last item, suggested by the wise mas Gabe, a senior Rotex now Rotarian who does much of the event organization alongside various Rotarians, New York bagels. Now technically bagels aren't American, they first appeared in the Middle East amongst Jewish populations, but the recipe was more akin to a flatbread than the modern bagel and as such I will claim it as an American invention. But a bagel alone isn't much of a food item, so why not top it with egg, cheese, and some type of meat to form a breakfast bagel? And to do it all one better, I would make the bagels from scratch, because, I don't know why I thought that was a good idea actually, but homemade is always better right?
     With that all figured out, it was time to get ready a few days before the event. shopping ensued along with my shock at the price of goods common in the US such as beef, kidney beans, apples (which are imported from the US), and cheese. We ended up using a couple bucks of our own money to cover all of the foodstuffs, but we managed to acquire everything needed. The chili was the only food item we cooked that day as the apple crisp would be save for the day before and the bagels would be prepared on site as a "Live Cooking" event.
     Then it came. The ash from the skies. That's right, we had prepared everything including the purchase of fresh produce on 11 February. That means the apples, the chili, everything would have to sit for a month. Obviously that is an issue, and as such I sold off some of my produce to my host mom to cook with in the house and I would buy it all again at a later point, but there was still the chili. After a talk with mas Gabe, I would be given an additional 200,000 Rp to buy what I needed to prepare the chili once more.
     A month passes and it's time to get cooking once more. With one round under our belt, the cooking goes well, including the peeling and coring of two dozen apples by hand (made me really miss that thing-a-majig we have at home that can accomplish all this just with a few cranks). The morning of I woke up at 5am to prepare the bagel dough which needed time to rise.
     At R&B I was greeted by brightly colored food stalls, a huge banner, and people already working hard to prepare food:

Entrance to the festival which was actually held in the parking lot of R&B. 

Actual front of the building but the backside of a handful of food stalls. From left to right they belong to Samantha, Brazil; Angelica, Colombia; and Max, Germany (Rotex).

     Both Relly and I were running a bit behind so we were the last to arrive and the last to choose a booth. Of course this meant getting the one that would be in the sun all day and as such absolutely boiling when the three portable stoves were added to the mix. But we would deal with what we had and began to set everything up. I went inside with the two trays of apple crisp to have it baked in R&B's ovens so it was as fresh as possible despite its preparation the day before.

 Our booth in all its glory. On the far left was the bagel rolling station, the pot just the the right of the excessively pinned jacket was the bagel boiling pot, just beneath Relly's head are the two pans of apple crisp.

Dishing up some apple crisp. On the red cutting board to the left are already baked bagels while the three white rings just in front of me are uncooked and soon to enter the portable, stove-top oven seen on the right, which was interesting to work with as temperature control was near impossible.

     With the chili and apple crisp ready and the bagels being produced slowly but surely, sales began. We started selling around 9am and didn't stop until noon, at which time everything was sold out except a half dozen portions of our chili which was given to whoever wanted it at the point

Excess chili distribution and general post-event relaxation.

     After all was said and done, we sold 1,070,00 Rp worth of food; the highest total out of all of the day's vendors. It wasn't a competition though as this money will actually be pooled together and used to help fund a short excursion of the exchange students in Jogja sometime in the near future, perhaps to the beautiful mountain region of Bromo (wink wink, nudge nudge if you're reading this mas Gabe). It was a successful event and everyone was able to introduce a bit of our original countries to the place we now call our second country.

All of the exchange students, some Rotex, Rotarians, and an outbound (student to exchange next academic year) who all helped at the festival.

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.

Japan Joins the Fun

     About a week ago, a group of Rotaract members from Japan came to visit Yogyakarta for a weekend. To start, for those of you who don't know about Rotaract, it is a division of Rotary from university students and young professionals. Having people usually between the ages of 20-30, the structure and goals are generally the same as Rotary clubs and all have a parent club. There are three Rotaract clubs in Jogja and they hosted the Japanese guests together, taking them to Borobudor and Prambanan Temples and I, along with three other exchange students, got to tag along.

     I couldn't make it to Borobudur in the morning because I have school on Saturdays (real fun, I know), but I met them at Prambanan in the afternoon, which was my first time being there. Needless to say, the temple was spectacular in every way, especially since we were lucky enough to be there during sunset, making for some mediocre pictures due to poor lighting, but some amazing views such as these:

 One of the side towers, I never got a good shot of the whole temple complex but it consists of a large central tower and several smaller ones around it. The central tower is in the foreground.

 Probably my best shot of everything, you can see the large tower on the left with a few of the others on the right.

 With the sun setting, the eastern towers were lit up beautifully.

My camera definitely couldn't do justice to the silhouette of the temple as we were leaving.

     The central tower is surrounded by a fence and you need to get a helmet in order to go in because rocks because loose after the earthquake in 2007(?) and apparently fall off from time to time. Other than that though, the temple is incredibly well preserved. Some of the carvings are replacements but the vast majority are not. The carvings depict the entire Ramayana, which is a Hindu epic poem that explains the duties of relationships and outlines the ideal father, ideal brother, ideal servant, ideal wife, etc. If you don't know a lot about Hindu epics, there are two of them: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. These are as close to holy texts as Hinduism gets, not having a single book like the Bible or the Quar'an, because they were written by Hindu sages sometime in the 5th or 4th century BCE. Its something like 24,000 verses so there was a lot of carving to be done. Here are some of my favorites:

 I am in no way qualified to speak about just what these steles are off, but based off my limited knowledge of the Ramayana and the prominence of this figure, I'm pretty sure this is one of Rama, one of the avatars of the main Hindu god Vishnu

 Again, not a scholar, but this is probably Rama (just left of center) again seated with his wife Sita (just right of center) who will go on to be abducted Ravan, king of Lanka.

 Can't really speak for this one, just looks really amazing.

Extremely unsure about this one as the central figure doesn't resemble other depictions of Rama at the temple. Maybe this is Ravan, but I can't be certain in any way.

     After visiting Prambanan, we had a pretty fancy dinner with all the Japanese Rotaract members, Rotaracters from Jogja, as well as several Rotarians from Jogja. We got to chat with some of the people from Japan and later on in the night, we from Indonesia performed a very popular little dance that I can't recall the name of but think of it as the Gagnam Style of Indonesia, which was followed by a dance from Japan by all of the men from Japan and then another from all of the women. Lesson from that night: Asian people can't really dance, but they definitely try harder than anyone else I know.

     The next day, Sunday, we met them for lunch, snagged a bunch of pictures (none of which I actually have because my camera was dead from the day before, plenty are on Facebook though if you check out "Pictures of Jason" which are ones that I'm tagged in), then saw them off at the airport. From there, we exchange students took a bus into the city since it only costs 3,000Rp (about 30 cents) as opposed to a taxi which is 100,000Rp (about $10). It took roughly forever because there were so many people at the bus stop by the airport and the bus system just isn't very good. And then of course once we arrived in Malioboro, it began to rain.

     A few weeks ago marked the start of the rainy season here in Indonesia. It includes more clouds, slightly lower temperatures, a reduction in dust due to the rain, and daily torrential downpours. At least once a day - sometimes twice, sometimes four times - the skies become dark, a very slight drizzle commences which can last for ten minutes or for thirty seconds, then the sky unleash absolute furry. There is no in between, it is either barely noticeable or you feel like a flood is about to take place.

     As I write, it is downpouring, and has been for around and hour now. Sometimes the rain lasts for ten minutes, sometimes it will start at 6pm and still be raining as you go to sleep at 10pm. As far as I can tell, there is no rhyme or reason to this weather other than the inevitability that it will rain at some point today, so I suppose in some ways I never left Wisconsin.

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.

Bule on a Bicycle

     Starting this past week I have begun biking about the city of Yogyakarta and it has been wonderful. I bike the 4 or so kilometers to and from school everyday, which is pretty darn short, but usually takes about twenty minutes because: a) it's always hot so nobody rides a bike very fast except at night otherwise you will sweat profusely, and b) the traffic here is crazy which makes going anywhere a bit difficult.

     Speaking of traffic, I'd like to attempt to make you understand what I mean when I say "traffic here is crazy". First off, lanes are suggestions. Actually, lanes aren't even suggestions, they are just lines painted on the ground for the amusement of the government. Anybody can drive anywhere at any time. This includes using turn lanes to go straight, not having turn lanes to pull u-turns causing traffic to back up, and the "bike lane" existing simply as another car lane. Additionally, the motor (a term used for pretty much any two-wheeled vehicle with a motor, be it true motorcycle, scooter, moped, etc) to car ratio is about 5 to 1. Even fewer rules apply for motor and they freely whiz about, weaving between cars and slower motor drivers. Right of way as we know it does not exist. Pretty much whoever is going fastest and is most aggressive gets the go ahead. This is particularly true when pulling out onto roads, pulling u-turns, and backing out of parking. You just slowly creep forward until you block the entire lane forcing any oncoming traffic to stop, allowing you a chance to get out.

     Parking is another fun aspect of life her. There are rarely parking lots and the streets are by no means wide enough for a parking lane. Usually in front of all shops there is just a slab of cement that you pull into or sort of parallel park in so that at least you aren't in the middle of the road. Because the cost of labor is so cheap here, pretty much every place, be it a restaurant or a perfume shop, has a parking attendant. These guys helps you park as close together as possible and then yell at oncoming traffic, sometimes they even have whistles, to get them to stop and let you out. They also collect the 2000rp it costs to park a car or 1000rp it costs to park motor anywhere in the city. The price is standard for every parking space except at special events. By the way, 2000rp is only about 20 cents.

     Getting back to riding bicycles, I have also ridden down to Molioboro, which is the main shopping and tourist visiting street here in Jogja, which is only 15 minutes or so away. The best, however, is the Jogja Last Friday Ride. For the last Friday of every month, teenagers from all over the city gather at the stadium near the center of the city and go for an hour long bike ride. I'm talking hundreds of people with all different types of bikes, including these crazy 6ft tall bikes that everyone here seems to own, riding in a mob that occupies half the street they're on. This last Friday, a couple of my friends from school took Samantha from Brazil, Romane from Belgium, and I along for the Jalafara (Jogja Last Friday Ride). Sadly I did not snap any pictures because I forgot my camera, but I plan on going again next month so I'll try to remember then.

     As for the term "bule" which is something along the lines of the Spanish term "gringo" but a bit more endearing. It's used specifically for white foreigners I believe, but I'm actually not positive on that one. Sometimes when I'm with my family or friends, I can tell when a stranger is asking about me because they will usually refer to me as bule. I can't understand what they are saying about me, but at least I know it's about me.

     That's all for now, I'm just about to leave to visit Kraton, the Sultan of Jogja's palace, so expect a post about that soon-ish. Cheers.