Home Away from Home

Our little two bedroom home – one house up from the rooster who never learned to crow properly – is starting to feel like home.  I am quite sorry I have not been able to update this blog more quickly.  Since last posting, we moved into a house, started teaching full-time, and ran lots of errands to to fill our house with the essentials.  We finally have a stable internet connection (a result of a successful shopping trip that took an entire afternoon!) and are settling into our schedules more.  Blogging should be easier and more regular in the coming weeks.  Thanks for all your lovely comments on the last post!

Our little blue and yellow house!

View down the path - called a "gang" - toward our house. Our house is the first red-roofed one on the right hand side

So which house did we decide on?  In the last post, I mentioned our quandary over which house to select – the one with large gardens but is far from other teachers, or the one in the same neighborhood as everyone else but not as nice.  In the end, we decided on the smaller one in the good neighborhood.  We took millions of rupiahs out of an ATM, stuffed our backpacks with money, and, feeling a little weird about traveling with millions of rupiahs (although, only the equivalent to around $500 US) boarded a small, quasi-bus/taxi like thing called an angkot where you sit knee to knee and butt cheek to butt cheek with about 15 other people to head over to Dago.

At the top of the main street which all the gangs (paths) turn off from, lives the village gossiper – Ibu Tenni.  Ibu Tenni is a jolly, slightly round, graying women who knows anything and everything about the people living in village.  She has an easy smile and greats everyone who passes with the same warm hello.  Although she doesn’t speak a word of English, and knows we probably speak very little Indonesian, she talks to us in the same manner as any other Indonesians.  I have learned to smile and nod as much as possible, which seems to satisfy her.  Hopefully, I have not accidentally agreed to do some crazy thing….  Anyway, we arrived at Ibu Tenni’s house to find her looking quite worried.  After some quick translating, we learned Ibu Tenni was convinced the house we were going to rent was too small for us.  We tried to tell her that it was going to be just fine, but she was adamant that we should not rent the house.  Then, to our surprise, she pulls out a piece of paper from her pocket with a phone number on it.  She had found us a different house!  I still have no idea where or how she found this, but she went scurrying down a gang, pulling us behind.

On the path toward our house, looking over fieds of rice paddies

Artwork along the walls of the main path

The house she found us is larger, has gorgeous views out much larger windows, and is very near three other teachers.  Structurally, the house was nice, aesthetically, it needed some help.  The walls were painted an ugly green surgeon scrubs color.  There was a massive hole in the ceiling of the bathroom, it smelled musty, and some of the tiles were missing.  Russell – Nathan’s boss who helped with the whole process, encouraged us to see the great potential the place had.  Almost immediately, Ibu Tenni was asking us what color we wanted the walls, what furniture we needed, and what things we wanted fixed.  In a slightly overwhelming ten minutes, we handed over our money, picked a neutral wall color, and asked for the holes to be patched.  A mere two days later, we moved in.

The living room - now a nicer cream/yellow color

Our kitchen - no, those are not our pants hanging in the doorway...

View from the kitchen window

The house is finally feeling like home.  After a week of killing cockroaches, befriending a kitten, getting used to the 5 am dueling rooster wake-up calls, purchasing toothbrush holders, bathroom organizers, and pots and pans – I am enjoying being in our house.  We have started to cook and buy fruit from the market – which is a way for me to really feel at home.  Our goals for the next few week are to purchase a hot water heater, some artwork, and “steal” some plants – everyone has gorgeous potted plants around their houses.  We asked where they purchased the plants and were surprisingly told, people just dig them up.  If you see a plant you want, dig it up, put it in a pot, and there you go – Indonesia is one interesting place.

Nathan and are heading into work pretty soon so I need to take my bucket bath.  More posts to come on teaching, food, and our war against the cockroaches.  Much love to you all!!

We Have Arrived!

After over 30 hours of transit, Nathan and I arrived in Indonesia at 1am local time on Wednesday morning.  The past three days (my goodness, it has only been three days….) have been filled with sunshine, flash rainstorms, peanut sauce, house hunting, cellphone buying, odd sleep schedules, and meeting the new faces we’ll see everyday.  It has definitely been overwhelming at times, but overall, I can see myself being really happy living here.

The ex-pat community is vibrant and welcoming.  Our second night in Bandung found us drinking light beer above a grocery store, playing trivia with a collection of teachers from Indonesia and abroad.  As the ex-pat community is somehow dominated by people from the UK, trivia was known as a “Pub Quiz”, and had us divided into teams to complete for the somewhat unappealing prize of creating the questions for the next month’s Pub Quiz.  The game is divided into four rounds, with one being completely in Indonesian; thus, each team has to have a fluent bahasa speaker.  Although my knowledge of odd names of celebrity children is quite lacking, it was a good way to meet the community.

Saturday was spent walking up and down steep hills sloping into mazes of rice paddies and chickens in search of our new home for the next year.  Most teachers live in a small village community just outside of Bandung called Dago – and yes, it is pronounced in the same manner as the ethnic slur.  Dago is in the hills. It is quieter and the temperatures are a lot cooler.  The streets are small paths that wind between houses and up and down terraces covered in greenery.  I think it is gorgeous.

House shopping is quite different than in the states.  Nathan and I were joined by Nathan’s boss – who is from the UK and is a really fun person – and his girlfriend, who is originally from Indonesia.  The basic means of finding a house is to wander up and down the streets looking to see if any houses are empty.  Once a house was spotted, we would find a person who was outside of their house to ask about the status of the apparently empty house.  That person, in turn, would lead us to another person, who knew another person, who happened to have the key to show us the house – although, they were not the landlord.  They would open the door to let us walk around.  Sometimes we would stop to ask a group of ladies standing in the street if they knew of any available houses.  In typical friendly Sundanese fashion, they would drop whatever they were doing to take us to someone who knew someone who knew of a house down the road.

After much climbing up and down the hills, we found two houses that seemed reasonably nice.  One is a really nice, large house that has huge gardens and an outdoor kitchen, but is in a completely different neighborhood than the other teachers – although, it is not that far, we are worried to be completely on our own in a foreign country.  Additionally, it is located on a large road that may be a little scary to walk along at night.  The other house is located smack in the center of a bunch of houses occupied by other teachers.  We can literally see two houses owned by other teachers from the front steps.  This house is smaller but still plenty big.  It does not have a yard or garden or porch, but has a flat rooftop with a stairway where we can spend time hanging out outside.  The problem with this is how close it is to the neighboring houses.  The surroundings are gorgeous, though, so hopefully that would make up for the lack personal space.  Currently, we’re leaning toward the smaller house near other teachers, but it seems like our preference changes often.  We’ll see what happens…..

We are currently sitting in an open air cafe in a rainstorm, stealing internet from an unsuspecting neighbor.  Hopefully we will have a more stable connection soon so the upcoming posts will include some pictures (including our adventures in Korea during our 10 hour layover which was an interesting time to say the least)!  We’re safe, happy, and healthy.  Much love to you all!

Welcome to my home on the interweb!

Here is the future home of Krista’s Indonesia blog. More real posts to come as we get closer to our January 23rd departure for Bandung, Indonesia.

Tags: welcome