Bandung'in it up

And the first week of sort-of settling into Surabaya is complete! I am now in Bandung for the next week for the in-country Fellow orientation, and to meet the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETAs) whom we'll be collaborating with on projects. Bandung is kind of a tourist destination for Indonesians; the weather is cooler than a majority of Java, and apparently it's a popular place to go outlet shopping (have yet to do that myself).

Anyway, we are staying at a hotel called the Papandayan, and man, it is basically designed to give us worse culture shock when we go back to our sites. Check out the website! Fancy, huh? Here's a pic of me in my room, taken with the grainy Macbook camera:

You can't see that much, but you can see the window on the left, which is actually a window into the bathroom, which has a big bathtub and a "rainfall" shower head. Is that what's it called? You know what I'm talking about, though, right? It's fancy. Did I mention I like this hotel? 

For dinner last night, about nine of the ELFs went to a local-style restaurant walking distance from the hotel. It was amazing. We didn't really know what a lot of it was, so we just ordered two of about 6 things. It was a FEAST! Delicious, and no one got sick (yet). And the bill came out to about 5 dollars a person. 

After dinner, ALL of the Americans (the 20 other Fellows and 50 ETAs) virtually took over a nearby bar which had a pretty good live band, and served these ridiculous 5+ person pitchers for 3 dollars. The scene was a little crazy, but after not seeing any Bules (foreigners) for a week, I honestly felt pretty thankful to meet a lot of cool people and reconnect with others that I'd met at the pre-departure orientation in Washington, D.C. I know I'm gonna have to get used to being kind of isolated when I back to Surabaya, but I'm enjoying the compatriot company while I can. 

I managed to drag myself out of bed at 5:30 this morning to FINALLY get some exercise since coming to Indonesia--I jogged about 20 minutes with some other girls who are training for a triathlon. (Needless to say, they jogged a little farther than me.) It was nice to have the streets sort of to ourselves, despite the ubiquitous roadside bonfires that cause smoke to blow in your face. Then we got back at 6am just in time for the start of breakfast, which was awesome. We could get either American style or Japanese, Chinese, or Indonesian style breakfast. I went for the American, because my hotel in Surabaya only served traditional Indonesian breakfast. I've missed my sugary pancakes, yogurt, chocolate croissants, and fresh fruit for breakfast. (Hey, I was in withdrawal mode, OK?)

Then we had the beginning of our Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language) classes, which seem like they'll be a lot of fun--eleven of us are at level 0, so it's fun to just start with phrases like, "My name is..." Other than that, we've just had meeting after meeting after meeting. It was all pretty long. Except for the part where we got to break off into groups based on region; this was the chance for me to meet the five other people who will be relatively near me (and one Fulbright ETA who will actually be in Surabaya!) and brainstorm collaborations we could do in the next nine months. I'm excited because a couple of the other girls are into art/poetry/literature, so we're thinking of doing an art contest/poetry contest/writing workshop thing, which could be really awesome if it comes to any kind of fruition. But all of us are kind of just waiting right now to see how things go when we really start working at our sites, and see what kind of extra time/resources we'll have. 

Other than that--we had a talent show tonight. The ETAs are almost done, so they put on a bunch of pretty good performances (largely involving re-writing words to pop songs to make them about Indonesia), and the ELFs even put together a last-minute coordinated-dance performance to the music of "Call Me Maybe." In our defense, we didn't know there was gonna be a talent show until the day before. 

And now it's 10pm and I am wiped out. I'm going to bed, and I'm looking forward to sleeping in until 6:30 tomorrow. Selamat malam! (Good night!)

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On an unrelated note: I created a fake Facebook page for Indonesia, because I heard that was recommended due to the large amount of students who want to friend you. Fer realz. After informing my counterpart, Wahju, about my account, she recommended a few friends for me, and before I knew it, I logged in today and had 48 friend requests! After one week here!! I just confirmed them all. I think I recognized about four of them.