It’s almost 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon. I am sitting on the rug in my living room using a box as a desk/table for my tablet. The TV is on. There are 4 channels that play music relatively continuously: a K-pop (Korean pop music) channel, an Indonesian channel that is mostly sorrowful love songs, MTV that plays Western music, and (curiously) a channel that is entirely in Hindi and plays lots of danceable music. I’ve opted for the comforts of Western music at this moment.
I just brewed a pot of coffee (actually I just put two packets of instant coffee into a teapot and added hot water… same difference) and popped a couple of aspirin. I had a bit of a headache this morning, but I just found out that my yahoo account has been hacked, which has not helped. When I tried to recover my password, I got the message that is screenshot-ed to the right. But when I call the number they give me I get a message saying that “We have changed the way our customers can contact us. Please visit the help page on yahoo.com for assistance.” But when I go to the help page, I get sent through the same loop where they say I need to call the hotline.
Ugh. I need a backrub.
In other news, I slept through my alarm for perhaps the fifth time since I have been here. I need to either a) not stay up so late and/or b) set more alarms. Ooops! Thanks Caitlin for helping me out… Again.
But even if I had slept in, it wouldn’t have been that big of a deal since there was no class anyway. Of course I am not told this until I get to school, but that’s okay. I was only supposed to have one hour of class anyway, during which we would have done just half of our lesson. So instead I putted around the school and goofed off with Soetry. Ibu Isnaini and I also met to discuss our lesson planning for next week, which was nice. That intervention that we had last week did the trick and communication has been much better since then.
Another positive note is that I am getting to taste home-cooked, veggie-friendly Indonesian food courtesy of my neighbors. I have interacted with most of my neighbors in various capacities, but these particular neighbors live down the hill from me. I met them because they have a laundry business, so I take my government uniforms there to be washed each week. It costs 30,000 rupiah, which equates to about $2 and some odd change. Worth every penny.
Anyway, the first time I went there I was invited to hold their newborn baby while sitting in the front room, which is the area for receiving guests. The second visit I was invited into the kitchen, where I was fed snacks and given tea and we talked for about two hours. Now I am going there to hang out too, with or without laundry. It turns out that the house with the laundry business is one of many in the “compound” — there are maybe five or six houses built around a parking area that are the homes of various family members.
Yesterday afternoon I went to drop off my uniforms and ended up helping make pencil holders out of popsicle sticks. I had to leave before we were finished because Caitlin and I host English club for the neighborhood children on Thursdays, but they invited me back for dinner. Not one to refuse invitations, I happily accepted. Thus, I was able to try homemade gado-gado and strong coffee. There were no fewer than eight plates of food produced for me after the family had already eaten, but I was glad that other people (cousins?) passing through joined in the feast. Then today they dropped off a container of curry/soup made of leaves I saw one of the Ibus carrying yesterday. It is delicious, and veggie-friendly.
While my primary email account may hacked, there are still good things happening here. Still, I am kind of worried since that is the email I use for my bank accounts. Speaking of, I’m going to go change some other passwords now….
Where in the world is Kelly? 