Hello!

                I’m sorry for the lack of updates lately.  I had internet access very sporadically in Java, and only once since I’ve been back, so the blog writing suffered a little.  Maaf!  I will try to be more diligent in the future J  Anyhow, since there is quite a bit of ground to cover, I am only going to touch on the highlights of the past couple of weeks. 

                There were a few particularly exciting things that went on in Java since I updated last.  Possibly my favorite part of the whole trip was the Ramayana Ballet.  It was SO cool!  If you hadn’t been introduced to a little bit of Indonesian culture beforehand you may have looked at it and thought, “Hm, this is pretty odd,” but as I mentioned earlier we have been learning a Javanese dance similar to what was presented in the ballet.  Also, gamelan music is pretty weird when you first hear it.  It’s a large collection of metal xylophone-style instruments with wooden flutes and leather drums.  Sometimes they are accompanied by singers, both male and female, the woman usually sounding like those crazy Chinese opera singers (if you’ve ever heard one, you’ll know what I’m talking about.)  The first time I heard gamelan I was not at all a fan (it sounded like a bunch of discordant notes) but now I love it!  Maybe because I’ve learned to dance to it, so that’s all I want to do when I hear it now.  Anyway, it all came together very beautifully.  The dancers were very impressive as well.  It’s not a ballet as you would traditionally think of it.  The dancers have extremely elaborate make-up, hair, and costumes, and move with more precision than anything I can think of.  I have never seen (or danced) anything that makes you so body-conscious.  Everything is precise, down to the angles of their fingers and toes.

                 Just look at that crazy make-up!  Also, it’s important to mention that we saw this at night at the Prambanan temple.  Usually it is done outside under the moon, but it was raining when we arrived so we had to see it inside.

                Another fun thing that we did while in Java was actually done separately for each village.  Last Sunday we woke up early with our host family and walked with almost everyone in the village around Godean (where we were staying.)  We walked through the whole town by houses, through rice paddies, and even past a wedding!  It was awesome.  Next we jazzercised it up with all of the women.  The five mahasiswa were asked to pick the top five people, so we did that and then presented them with mystery prizes in a diplomatic fashion, with the hand shake and everything!  After a short istirihat (break) we returned to judge a cooking contest between the men.  They all did variations of fried rice.  Here is who came in second place (but still my favorite!)

Enak, ya? That title reads "Friday Night"

Later that week we had an interfaith discussion, also one of the highlights of the trip.  There were representatives from Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, and Catholicism.  My friend Carolyn and I were the United States representatives, and it was a lot of fun!  We were told kind of late notice, and had to prepare a power point in about 10 minutes to cover religion in the US (which is a lot!), but I think we did just fine.  It was cool getting connected with all of them, and I think I made some good contacts for my Independent Study Project (ISP) in April, because I’ve just decided that I will do it in Yogyakarta! 

At the end of the week we had a going away party that the families in all of the villages hosting mahasiswa attended.  We also had an a cappella group from the hosting university sing to us.  After that our villages dancing group (Mirah, Aries, Olivia, and me) performed the dance we had been working on, in full garb and makeup! Here is our beautiful dancing group!

The whole party was a lot of fun, but I was very sad to say goodbye to my family.   They were so great, but I was really excited to get back to my family in Bedulu as well.  Since we have been back to Bali we’ve been so busy.  On Monday I started another art project, making wayang kulit puppets.  It is a slow process, but I really like it.  I got to use a lot of tools which made me feel very skillful even though I didn’t know what I was doing.  Today I start another one, which is learning Balinese dance.  I will be so cultured by the time I get back!  Right now I think I am most looking forward to another excursion we are taking on Sunday.  We will be gone for a week traveling around Bali, including Bu Ari’s home village!  The best part about it is that we will have students from two local universities in Denpasar accompanying us for a few days of the trip.  It is going to be very interesting though… Yesterday we took a day trip to Denpasar to meet some of the students, some of whom are boys, and some of those boys are already interests for some of the girls in the program.  We’ve been surrounded by only girls our age for almost the whole trip (except Dede who doesn’t count because he’s our teacher), so it will be interesting to see what happens! 

There is a lot more I could say but I have to go to dance lessons now.  I guess you will just have to talk to me to find out the rest J  Sampai nanti!