Trivialities

In light of all the recent bad, no good, frustrating news (Boston, Texas, and the complete failure to pass decent gun control laws--ARGHHHH) I will now avoid a discussion of those topics, and write a post on something completely trivial. Not that my usual posts are much more substantial. But this post will be about what is in my fridge.

I know you've been dying to know what's in there. Especially considering how renowned my skills are as a cook. The time has come.

Voila!

As you can see, I don't have a full size fridge in my room. It gets full pretty quickly. This is what it looks like immediately after a grocery trip. 

• Yogurt, an open package of cookies, and some chocolate wrapped in a plastic bag on the top shelf
• Steamed veggies, apples, and bread on the second shelf (apples cost about $1 a piece here, by the way)
• Curry mix, a candy cane (leftover from when the parents came at Christmas), apple pear, water, and pasta. Yes, I keep a lot of random stuff in the fridge, because the ants tend to eat everything, including uncooked pasta. 

The door of the fridge. 

• A jar of Indonesia-brand Nutella rip-off on the top shelf. 
• A bottle of Ken's salad dressing, literally purchased my first week in Indonesia, when I had a craving to make my own salad. I should probably throw that bottle out. And then jelly dessert. I LOVE all the aloe/coconut/agar-agar jelly desserts they have in this country. 
• On the bottom shelf, a can of root beer (for emergencies), milk, pasta sauce, jam, and peanut butter. 

The "pantry." Also known as the plastic shelf unit I bought for $4 at Hypermart. 

• I have a plastic bag full of pasta mixes (Those mixes are my savior!! I thought I couldn't go any longer on just tomato pasta sauce and rice with veggies) in a variety of flavors--cheese, mushroom, chives--but really, they all just taste the same. I love them. And spicy seaweed imported from Malaysia. You know how much it costs to get that packet of 10 sheets of seaweed? $6!! That's a lot of dough. 
• On the second shelf, you can see tea, my two Indonesian sauces (hot sauce and sweet soy sauce), and two cans of Heinz baked beans. Because you never know. 
• On the bottom shelf, tupperware, unopened pasta, and corn. And my trusty (and gross-looking) rice cooker in front! I use that thing literally every day. Unless I end up eating out for dinner, which usually happens about once or twice a week. 

What, you want to see MORE of my room? Well, I don't have any more food to show you. But I can show you my desk! 

Nothing especially special. I generally don't have internet in my room (only when the wifi is being used by people upstairs usually between 8-4 on weekdays, which is when I'm usually out of my room), so I generally just use my desk for eating and watching movies. I have a half-drunk bottle of red wine (birthday gift from my boss! Wine is like gold here.), big empty bottles for drinking water, pictures of friends, and Ari when he came to visit. 

On the vanity-thing next to my desk, I have amassed a collection of random stuff. Mainly, three pictures of my friends in bathing suits. (Gasp! Couldn't show pictures of bathing suits to my students! One of the cultural differences I didn't think about when choosing which pictures to bring from home.) And two pictures of Ari, followed by a card from Ari. And an origami fox sent from Michelle. 

You might be thinking, "Where are you pictures of your parents? And the rest of your family and friends?! What kind of person are you?" Well, those pictures are actually up on the wall in my "office," where I can show them off to my coworkers and students, and look at them every day. So it's not quite as disgraceful as you think. 

Amusing Moment of the Day

I went to the local coffee shop, Coffee Toffee, to get internet today. I went to the cashier to order a drink, the following exchange occurred:

Me: Minta Iced Chocolate. (I'd like the iced chocolate drink.)
Cashier guy: Alhumdulillah. Bisa bahasa Indonesa. (Praise god. You speak Indonesian.)

Pretty funny. I'm glad my extremely rudimentary Indonesian was enough to impress this guy.

"Working" in Lombok

Don't tell my boss*, but I got to spend four days in Mataram, Lombok (the island just east of Bali, and a burgeoning tourist destination) just to present for 10 minutes. Literally, I presented on "Poetry in the Classroom" for 10 minutes. Oh, and I answered two questions about it afterwards. And took about 10 photos.

So let me back up a bit. Christen, the ELF who lives in Mataram, was asked to get some other Fellows to attend her school's Materials and Curriculum Development Conference on April 5 and 6. Seven of us in total volunteered to present. (No need to ask twice! Lombok is gorgeous!): Christen, Autumn, Bryan,  Iris, Michael, Lori, and me. Autumn and I arrived on the same flight out of Surabaya and immediately jumped into the hotel pool once we checked in. YES.

The night before the conference, all of the presenters were invited to dinner with Christen and the coordinators/professors from her school, IKIP Mataram. We got to try some of the local specialties (whose names I unfortunately have forgotten).

Me, Iris, and Autumn all ordered dragonfruit juice. It looks cooler than it tastes. 

Bryan and Dian (representative from the Embassy) across the table. 

The next day, we headed to the swanky hotel for the start of the conference. The opening speeches and opening ceremony (where traditional drummers came out and performed for about 15 minutes) took about 2 hours total. This was not including the keynote speakers. Yikes.

Opening ceremony drummers/percussionists. (Notice the gong in the background. Did you know the word "gong" comes from Indonesian?)

Autumn and I presented on the second day. 

On the second day of the conference finished at 1pm, and the rector of Christen's school was kind enough to hire us a private car and driver to take us wherever wanted to go on the island. Score! So we booked it out the conference as fast as we could, ran back to the hotel and changed into our swimsuits, and headed down to Kuta, Lombok (you may remember Ari and I visited there for a day when he came in February). Perhaps the funniest part of the afternoon was the fact that Christen's friend, Diyah, brought us lunch to eat in the car on the drive. And what was the lunch? Pizza Hut and McDonald's, of course, because that's what Americans eat! So we all got a Coke, a burger, fries, and a slice of vegetable pizza for the drive. Honestly, it was pretty great, despite how ill we felt immediately afterwards.

Iris and Autumn are pretty excited about the wealth of junk food in our car. 

We lucked out in Kuta by getting pretty gorgeous weather again. We did have to share the water with some (naked) local kids, but other than that, it was a very pleasant afternoon. 

Autumn, Christen (on top), Iris (on bottom), me

Posing like naturals. 

Aaaahhhhhh so pretty. 

Me, Autumn and Iris trying to enjoy ourselves while three boys yelled "Help! Help!" and pretended to drown next to us. The water was about three feet deep. We weren't worried. 

We went back at about 6pm to the beach closer to Mataram, called Senggigi. Christen took us to her favorite restaurant, called Square, I think (It's hip to be Square?), where they had THE BEST PUMPKIN TORTELLINI I'VE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. Either that, or my craving for decent Italian food skewed my judgement a little. But I think it's the former. 

The life-altering tortellini.

Autumn, Iris, and Bryan at dinner. 

After walking around town a little bit (and getting the world's tiniest margarita--seriously, I think I got 3 sips out of it), we headed back the hotel, where people had to fly out early the next morning. Except me; I hung out by the pool for a few more hours with Christen before heading back to Surabaya at 4pm. 

In the end, doing any kind of presentation (be it 10 minutes long, or eesh, a whole 45 minutes) is worth it, if I get to hang out with these awesome people. It doesn't even have to be at an awesome location. Although the gorgeous beach doesn't hurt.

*Just kidding, my boss is totally cool with it.