Singapore is sooo hot!!!

… No, not in a Paris Hilton kind of way… I don’t think I’ve ever sweat so much in my life. Today was a stormy day around 90 degrees F, but with the humidity it’s almost unbearable.

Billy and I took a siesta today, as the heat got to us, and we had to head back to the hostel to take in some A/C to cool down. I think we slept for a couple of hours.

Now we’re in the common area of the Hive Hostel, drinking a couple of beers before we head over to Arab Street in search of a nice dinner… Hmm… maybe some kebabs?

Tomorrow morning we’ll get up early to head to the Jurong Bird Park, and I’ve got a reservation for their falconer program tomorrow, so I might be able to actually handle some birds of prey. Those of you that know about my bird-watching understand that this will probably the highlight of my trip to Singapore.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have some cool pics to post. )

Singapore

Yesterday (Monday) was a pretty stressful day for me, as it was the first day I had 4 classes scheduled. I took my books home on Friday so I could get a jump start on lesson planning over the weekend. I spent a few hours on Sunday setting up a couple lesson plans, then I received a text message about a workshop I’d need to attend for work on Monday morning. Eek! 4 classes, and a workshop that’d take about 2 hours out of my morning. The only way I managed to survive that was thinking about the fact that I’d be off the rest of the week on a vacation in Singapore. Whew!

So… here I am now in Singapore. Billy and I are staying in a hostel tonight. Friday is a holiday, so a lot of the hotels are booked for the week. It’s a cute place where we’re staying, and has a ‘B&B meets dorm room’ feel about it. There’s free wi-fi, and two HUGE persian cats that roam around the place.

We left Bandung this morning at 10:00, and had a driver take us to the airport in Jakarta. It’s roughly 2 1/2 hours, and it only cost about $25 US for the driver and the nice air-conditioned SUV. Driving from Bandung, there were several points where I was in awe of the surroundings. The emerald green of the tea plantations covering the hillsides, with some kind of trees mixed in that looked like they came out of a Dr Seuss book. There was a place along the way that had a lot of cattle in a huge grassy field, and it made me think of Washington… specifically of the grassy fields in Eastern Washington, and I remembered driving to Spokane for my friend Trista’s college graduation several years ago… The scenery changed again, and there were rice paddies and banana trees between big hills that looked like jungles. Billy pointed out that the rice paddies formed a kind of road through the jungle, as if all the rice paddies were a huge river cutting through the forest. The soil is red in some areas, and there were mounds of paprika-colored earth on some of the hills. It’s kind of shocking to see dirt that color… you just don’t expect it.

We caught a flight out of Jakarta at 3:00, and I think we landed in Singapore just a couple of hours later. I thought it was interesting seeing this on the customs form for Singapore:

We explored Singapore’s Little India tonight, as Billy and I haven’t been able to find any curries in Bandung, and were craving some good Indian food. We got off the subway, and wandered around for a few minutes. A guy on the sidewalk handed us a flyer for an Indian restaurant, and we went for it. The place offered “barefoot dining”, so we had to leave our shoes at the front door. It was a fantastic little restaurant, with short tables, and cushions on the floor. It had air-conditioning, soft lighting, and fun Indian music playing. They told us that the dishes could all be made non-spicy, or up to a 6 for spice. I went for a 2, and Billy went for a 4 on the spicy scale. It was the hottest Indian food I’ve ever had, but after my mouth started to go numb, I was able to enjoy the flavors.

We’ll be in Singapore until Sunday morning, and we’re planning to do a lot of touristy things while we’re here. I’ll post more when I get the time.

Hope everyone’s doing well!

Flowers for Mom

My Mom has asked before for me to post pictures of flowers. Here are some more:

   

Sunset from our balcony

I realized the other day that I hadn’t actually watched a sunset since I’ve been in Bandung.  I usually have classes until 7:30 pm during the week, and the sun sets here around 5:30…  that only leaves a couple of chances each week to watch the sunset…  and our weekends have been packed lately.  I was at home last Saturday, and made it a point to be out on the balcony to watch the sunset…  Unfortunately it was somewhat overcast, and I think someone in the valley was burning their crops, so there was a lot of smoke in the air…  and the sunset wasn’t very spectacular.  Here’s a picture of it anyway.

We’ve got furniture and a fridge!

On Saturday Sisca (the local teacher that led us on the excursion to Northern Bandung) volunteered to help Billy and I get a refrigerator and some furniture.  Our friend Russell was also in the market for the same things, so we all went together.  It’s fantastic having a friend that’s local, and knows how to bargain in the local language.  We got a new Sanyo refrigerator for about $110 US.  It’s not a huge one like everyone has back in Seattle…  it actually reminds me of a fridge my Grandmother used to have…  The kind that just has one big door, and when you open it there’s another small door inside for the freezer.  I think it stands maybe 4 1/2′ high, and it works great!

We also ended up finding some furniture that we really liked.  It’s handmade in Indonesia, and for the entire 4-piece set we paid about $250 US.  Here’s a pic of our new living room set:

With each passing day, it feels more like home…

Smells of Bandung…

“The first condition of understanding a foreign country is to smell it.”

— T.S. Eliot

Everywhere you go there’s some kind of fragrance…

Garbage rotting in the sun

Waffle cones at the Baskin Robbins 31 flavors (though they only have 16 flavors here)

Nasty stagnant water in the ditches around town

The smell of freshly-made crepes that hits you as you come up an escalator in a Bandung mall

 Freshly-brewed coffee at one of the local Starbucks

The fresh air after the thunderous storms

A teenaged boy’s strong cologne on a mini-bus on my way to school

The smell of peanut sauce, chicken sate,  and fried rice at outdoor cafes

The smell of clove cigarettes and beer at our local bar, Erla’s Mexican Cafe..  mingling with the smell of “mexican” food (using the term very loosely)

Daytrip to Northern Bandung

On May 17th we had the day off. One of the local Indonesian teachers (named Sisca) setup a daytrip for some of us new teachers. Sisca had a whole itinerary printed up, and the day started at 7:30 am, and went until 8:00 pm. Her parents have a personal driver, and we were able to have him drive us around for the whole day. We each paid about $10 to cover gas and admission to parks. Here’s the rough itinerary:

Meet at school at 7:30 am….. Soooo early…. yawn…

Drive up to Lembang to grab something for lunch – we went to a chinese-indonesian restaurant and ordered some fried rice to go. While we were waiting for the order, Sisca bought some fermented cassava root and sticky rice cakes for us to try. Yummy!

Head to Tangkuban Perahu Crater – This is an active volcano in North Bandung that has a lot of hot springs that bubble and send steam up through many vents. There’s one spring that’s really, really hot, and you can buy eggs to boil in the spring. The air is very sulfurous, which makes you kinda think… hmm… are these eggs okay, or have they gone bad? It’s hard to know… But no one got sick, so I guess they were fine.

Here are some photos from the crater:

Here’s the list of people in the group photo: Me, Billy, Sisca (in the front), Russell (from England), Andrew (back row, from Canada), and Daniel (front, from Australia)

Picnic lunch – We ate our fried rice along the side of the road in a stall that is normally used for selling pineapples, or other fresh produce. Here’s a picture of the pineapple stall that was across the street from us.

Tour of tea factory – We toured a factory that makes Walini brand black tea. We saw the whole process, starting with bushels of fresh tea leaves, and ending with a nice cup of tea in their tasting room. It was a holiday when we were there, so the workers had the day off, but came in just for us to give us the tour. So many people in Indonesia are so incredibly kind, and all the men at the factory shook our hands and were great! Billy and I ended up buying tea at the factory… we split a 1.2 kilo box of it with another teacher. It might just last us the entire contract!

Visit Ciater Hot Springs – After all the hiking around at the Tangkuban Perahu crater earlier in the day, and going non-stop from 7:30 am, we got to relax in a nice resort. They have great pools fed by hot springs, and we got there just as dusk was approaching, so we were able to sit in the hot water, without the sun beating down on us. Unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures here, but it was lovely, and very relaxing. The water was 40 degrees C, which I guess is around 100 degrees F… Not something you’d really want to lie around in under the mid-day sun. The only thing missing was a nice cold beer to enjoy in the pool… Being a mostly muslim country makes it tough to get a drink in most places… sigh… but the iced tea was nice.

Syttende Mai (17th of May)

The 17th of May was a national holiday in Indonesia. I was surprised to have Syttende Mai off work, and thought it was nice of the Indonesian government to celebrate Norwegian Constitution Day… of course they said that wasn’t why we had the day off… They said it was something about the Ascension of Christ… Ok… I didn’t doing anything particularly Norwegian, but I did get to have a day off, and told my friends at work about the big parade that was going on in my old neighborhood in Seattle. Yay!

It’s not just a vacation…

We moved into our house on Monday.  It’s now white throughout with white tiles.  It looks like a different house than the one we looked at a couple weeks ago.  Unfortunately I didn’t get any photos before the owners painted it.  I’ve only taken a few pics of it since we moved in.  Here’s the view from our balcony.

Hooray! It’s Friday!

I’ve been fighting a cold the last few days, but I think I’m starting to feel better… and just in time for the weekend.

Billy put a deposit down on the “rainbow house” today, and we should be able to move in Monday morning. Yay!

Happy Friday everybody!