The Indonesian Way

The college course that I took in order to try to learn the language is called The Indonesian Way.  Since I started living here, I have gained an appreciation for what that means.  When living in a foreign country, is very important to accept the way things are in that culture and not compare or complain.  It is how things are done here:  different, without judging better or worse.

Elder Porter decided that the lock to the gate at the church was not secure, and determined to buy a new lock.  About 7 keys would be needed for all the branch leaders.  It only came with three keys, so we went to get new ones made.  Not to a shop, where someone uses a machine, but to this stand out in the hot sun, where a true artist made the keys using calipers and a metal file.  The keys didn't look exactly like the originals, but they worked because he knew exactly what he was doing, for 72 cents a key.





We love these green beans.  They are tasty and have lots of fiber.  And look how long they are!  They were folded in half for packaging at the store.  We see people carrying bunches of them on the back of a motorcycle, straight out and covering the back of the seat.  It is actually easier to trim them than smaller beans.  We never quite know our schedule and when we will be able to eat, so I cook up a bunch of veggies and then we reheat as needed.

We  needed to buy pencils for our advanced English class and discovered that pencils here do not generally come with erasers.  People here use a separate eraser like this package.  And the erasers are all oblong like this one; we haven't seen any of those erasers that fit on top of a pencil.  At various stores, we inquired about pencils with erasers and got a lot of stares.

However, we opened a package of made-in-China pencils, and they had erasers as if they were made for a North American market.  They weren't labelled as having erasers, and we can't remember where we bought them!



We were walking through a neighborhood, a "gang" that was too narrow to reach by car, and saw this.  Whereas USAmercans might have a doghouse or rabbit cage, they had built a great little covered shelter for their pet monkey.








This is the master bathroom. The green thing on the floor to the left of the sink is a squeegee to clean the floor after showering, since there is no door or shower curtain.  The grey tube under the sink leads from the washing machine in the kitchen, draining the used water into the shower.  There are water bottles on the shelf above the sink because of course we don't drink water from the sink.  We have a large clean water dispenser in the kitchen.  We shower off every night, and since I exercise in the morning I shower again after that.  There is a nice swimming pool right outside the exercise room in our building, and I want to start swimming at the end of my morning exercise, which would also save on laundry, but my 1-piece "mom" swimsuit is too immodest for the social norms here.  The Muslim women wear a full long-sleeved wet suit with a head covering, but even the other women wear a suit that includes shorts.