Sema Sema Semarang: February 2010

I'm back!!!!
Sorry for the break, I've been finishing up the last of my applications for graduate school over the past couple of weeks. Anyway, I have a bunch of new pictures from a weekend trip I took to my principles house five hours east of Semarang in Java.

My principle had wanted me to come visit his his home village for sometime, but each time he asked something or the other came up. Finally he figured out that he had to schedule with me more than a day ahead of time if he wanted me to come. The weekend was a special one. On the first night there was a large celebration at my principle's mother's house to celebrate the birth of his first child. Many old Javanese men showed up in their finest clothing to sit through the 15 minutes of prayer and collect their free bag of food. All of the men wanted their picture taken, and I happily obliged at being the center of banter. After the ceremony was over, the guests (50 people) disappeared almost instantly, no good bye, no handshake, just grab and go. Pretty comical. One old man stayed sitting by himself for a long time after the ceremony and had to be reminded where he was.

On the way home from the ceremony, we stopped by principle's former teacher's house with no notice (It was 11:00 pm), to drink tea and shoot the shit for an hour, before going back to the house. I was excited to go to sleep after all that driving, praying, and "yes, no, america from, handsome, married? Not yet!!, meet my daughter..., facebook" that I face on a daily basis. Although I had a perfectly good air matress to sleep on, I quickly realized that the muggy 85 degree heat, the lack of fan, and the divebombing mosquitos were going to make my night memorably miserable. After several hours of rolling about, swatting, and cursing my self silly, my principle returns back to the house. I tell him how miserable I am, and he quickly supplies me with a fan and mosquito repellent. I wanted to shake him out of anger and kiss him with relief. The rest of the night was solumn.

After a couple hours of sleep, we woke up and drove 2 hours to Guci, a mountain hotspring aka a large filthy swimming pool / Indo tourist destination packed with people that don't know how to swim. As could be expected it was gross and not even remotely fun for me, although my principle and his family thought it was the best thing they'd ever seen. All though I had no reason to want to take pictures of the swimming pool or the pony's hauling small families around the streets, I must admit the mountain scenery around Guci made me regret forgetting to bring my camera.

After some goat on a stick (sate gambing)we returned to the house, I immediately crashed on my mattress. 30 minutes later I was woken up and told that we would be leaving (a day earlier then I was told). I was perfectly fine with this. After a car ride of annoying cell phone recordings, Jason Mraz, and roadside punk sightings I was home.