If it ends with martabak, it's OK.

Last Friday, January 11, as a favor for a friend of a friend, I went out to visit a pesantren (Muslim boarding school) in Lamongan, which is about two hours outside of Surabaya. While I wasn't especially looking forward to this trip because I knew it would take all day (I was doing two presentations, one for the students and one for the teachers), I figured it would be a good chance to explore a little outside of Surabaya. And in fact, the trip turned out better than I expected.

First of all, I got to try some local specialties: ental (the seed-looking things) and jemblek. The ental apparently comes from a palm, and it is peeled and eaten like a kind of gelatinous, flavorless fruit. I only had one bite. That was enough.

Ental and jemblek

Legen

 Then I got to drink legen, which is apparently made from the juice of the flower (?) of the same type of palm as ental. It was interesting--super sweet, and borderline alcoholic. Apparently if you let it ferment for a few days more, it becomes alcoholic.

Here I am, holding jemblek. As you can see, it's wrapped in palm leaf, which you have to unwrap to eat what's inside. What inside is...a brown, gelatinous, sweet goo. I was able to eat about three healthy bites before putting it down. I watched as local teachers wolfed down the sweet in seconds.

At this point, I'm sorry to say that I am less than impressed by Indonesian desserts. They are generally weirdly sweet, and almost always gelatinous. My favorite dessert so far is brem cake, and even that is made from something fermented. What gives?

Anyway, back to the story at hand. I had some local treats, and then ate lunch, which consisted mainly of seafood, since Lamongan is on the coast.

The black stuff is squid, there's some obvious fish in there (which is apparently a type of fish that's very common in the area), and the yellow stuff is shrimp mixed with coconut milk and...other stuff. It was all quite good! Had some difficulty with the bones of the fish, but I think I managed it alright.

Then, after lunch I got to meet some of the star students. These three girls were apparently the best in English from their class, and they were amazingly cute and sweet. At first they were shy, but after about ten minutes we were talking about music, classes, and marriage traditions. Ha.

Then came the actual presentation itself. Apparently the director of the school decided that I should only speak to the girls, since I'm a girl. Okay. Can't argue with that! Or can I?

Anyway, let me just say, that I have never felt this much like a rock star. I came on stage to this group of approximately 100 girls:

Who literally started screaming and shrieking as soon as they saw me. When I did the presentation, I asked for volunteers (NO ONE wanted to volunteer, argh), but when I walked into the audience to look for someone, they all started reaching out for me to shake their hands. So I started shaking their hands, and they all started screaming again. Whaa?? Is this how Justin Bieber feels at his concerts?

At the end, there was (as always) a question-and-answer period, and one group of girls in the front really wanted me to sing Adele's song "Someone Like You." This song is probably the most popular song in Indonesia right now. And somehow I still haven't learned it! So I kept saying no, sorry, until finally I decided I could attempt the chorus. So yes, I sang a, uh, passable, cover of Adele for this group, not to mention all the other random people who had gathered on the sidelines. Good times. At least it wasn't the Titanic song, I guess.

My last moment as a rock star occurred at the end, when I was almost attacked by girls who wanted to stand next to me for a photo. They were pushing and shoving each other, and I was getting jostled and squeezed, and almost fell over! Man, when the teacher who coordinated this told me that his students would be excited to meet a "Native Speaker," he wasn't kidding. I just hope made enough of an impression on a few of these adorable kids to push them to continue studying English and hopefully travel abroad someday.

On our drive back to Surabaya (a full eight hours after leaving it), we stopped for a quick photo shoot with the Java Sea. I've now been to the Java Sea (and I didn't even know it existed until I went there)!

Post Script: Before they dropped me off at my room, my hosts took me by a martabak stand to buy both one regular martabak (like an omelette--it's like an omelette, with egg and green onions in the middle) AND one sweet martabak (I had one of these in Bandung at the beginning of my stay; it's like a crepe on steroids). All for MEEEEEE.