All the way from Kansas to plant corn in Indonesia...

Now I’ve started language school, and I’ve been going there for the past week. I tested into an intermediate language level, so I’m in a class by myself- which has its advantages and disadvantages. I really like that it’s more like a tutoring session, and that everything goes specifically at my pace. But it also means that every day in class, I have to be thinking and ready to answer questions the entire time, which is really tiring! Luckily I have really awesome teachers that do a great job. They say they are crazy about karaoke, so we’re going to ask them if we can all go together sometime. That would be really fun…

Here’s a picture (I’ll have to get a better one though…)of 3 of the teachers at the language school:

We have class Monday thru Friday, and on Saturdays we have excursions with the teachers from the language school. This Saturday, we went to Desa Wisata Tanjung. This is basically a traditional Javanese village that has opened itself to tourism so that people can come and experience what Javanese village life is like. We had the pleasure of planting corn during our visit! All I could think was how funny it was to be planting corn in Indonesia, when I could be doing it in Kansas. But I think it probably works differently here. First, we had to plow the field- using a cow- to prepare the soil. Then, we had to flatten out the dirt in the field (there’s probably a technical term for that, but I have no idea what it is). After that, we made holes and planted corn! We had a guide that took us to the field and brought us tea and snacks while we were hard at work. There was also a farmer there who taught us how to do everything, which he made look really easy. Also, this is a barefoot activity- interesting, huh?

Plowing doesn’t come too naturally for me

Here’s the real farmer, flattening out the dirt in the field and making it look easy (we had to try it too!)

It was really interesting to see village life, and how different these people only 30 minutes outside the city are living. All of the crops growing in the area made for a picturesque scene. We also got to see a lot of animals on the farm there, including cows, goats, ducks, and chickens.
A picture of a chili crop in the fields:

Children in the village playing in cement tubes:

While seeing village life was great, on Sunday we (I + the other volunteers) actually headed into the center of the city to walk around, explore, and just take the day one step at a time.
We all took a lot of pictures of graffiti, which is all over Yogya. It seems like a lot of it was actually commissioned by the city to add to the city’s artistic charm.

While we were taking pictures, I practiced my Indonesian and made friends with these people, who run a food stall on a side street in Yogya. The woman who’s standing saw that we were taking pictures and jokingly said we should take a picture of her (though I did it anyway, haha). The older woman said she thought I was a French person, so that made my day.



Ramadan starts really soon- on Wednesday! So when we were in town today, we ran into some sort of feast going on to celebrate before Ramadan starts. We talked to some of the people there and found out more about it, and stopped by for a little bit to taste some of the traditional food and see the feast happening. Unfortunately we had just eaten lunch, so we didn’t want to stay too long because we knew a ridiculous amount of food would be forced upon us (and we would have no choice but to accept). That’s just the Indonesian way.
Sorry for the bad quality photo- but I figured that something is better than nothing:



So I’ve been terrible and don’t have a picture of my host family yet. But I’m working on it…

Also, the latest book I’m (RE)reading: A Tale of Two Cities (by Charles Dickens)
I’ve always said it’s one of my favorite books, but haven’t read it since high school. Now I’m rediscovering why I fell in love with it in the first place.