Food!

After a request from my sister, I have now started to take photos of everything I eat. This is strange enough for most people, but then I ask what the food is called, and proceed to write down the English and the Indonesian. I'm sure everyone will get used to it, and it's fun explaining that my twin sister is a teacher just like me :-) but after this plus the maths puns on Pi day (among other things) it's obvious some of the kids think I'm a bit strange. Thanks sis! Mission accomplished ;-)

So, here are some of the things I have been eating:

This is my lunch from the school canteen yesterday - they do a cooked lunch for around $2 (Aus) which in my opinion is amazing, but for here is perfectly normal! There is nasi (rice), bawang (onions - cooked until they are soft and sweet), ikan (fish, served with gravy) and pangsit goreng (fried and filled wontons). The pangsit goreng are really yummy - if you want to try them I found this easy recipe: http://asiancook.eu/indonesian/hidangan/554-pangsit-goreng-fried-filled-wonton

Before I went to pilates last night, we had these two: the one on the right is tahu brintik (essentially nuggets of tofu, fried and covered in sweet chilli sauce and some other sauce I couldn't identify!) and the one on the left is bakmie nyemek (the 'mie' means noodles - this was a lot like mie goreng, which I love, but had a runnier sauce, and more of it).

On the weekend I had batagor saus asam manis. Batagor are essentially nuggets of fried tofu, like the brintik above - I have no idea how they are different, but apparently they are. I guess I have very little experience with tofu! The saus asam manis is sweet and sour sauce.

I have no idea what these are called, but they are too cute not to share! A couple of teachers and I went out for dim sum one night after school, and these were our sweets. They look like little alien creatures, and are green because they have pandan in them. Pandan is often described as the asian vanilla, although it is used in both sweet and savoury dishes. Plenty of foods here are coloured with it, and no one cares about the vivid green-ness, unlike some of the teachers at one of my past schools, who weren't sure about the pandan pancakes I made for Independence day ;-)

This is a dessert called mie jelly (literally, jelly noodles!). Like a lot of Indonesian desserts, it has a lot of components - the jelly noodles (which were grape flavoured), fruit (strawberries, dragonfruit and kiwi), shaped jellies (one that looked like an egg and some that looked like turtles or monsters, I couldn't decide which!), and grape syrup on the bottom. It was very sweet, and very unlike the desserts I am used to!

Taman Safari

Ok, so I will get to the title of my post soon, but first I need to crow a little bit about directing my taxi driver home from the supermarket. Every other time the driver has known where to go, but this one didn't, so I gave the directions. I said things like kanan (right) and kiri (left) and terus (continue) and even though we went a longer way because I was following the angkot route that I know, we made it! Hopefully my former year 8 students will agree with me: it pays to know your kanan from your kiri ;-)

On to my main topic - because we have a week off school for the end of term 3, we went on a day trip to Taman Safari, which is a safari park (that's literally what the name means!) in Bogor. All my googling and wikipediaing told me it was halfway between Bandung and Jakarta, although if you put all three into google maps you will see it is closer to Jakarta! After a much longer and bumpier drive than I expected our two vans full of teachers arrived, and parked next to a matching van from one of the other Bina Bangsa campuses in Jakarta. Small world, huh? The first part of the park is a 'safari' where you drive through various enclosures, feeding some of the animals (llamas, camels, zebra, deer, a cranky ostrich, buffalo-type things with REALLY big horns and so on) with carrots that you can buy on the road before you get to the park, whilst taking care not to feed some of the others, like the tigers and lions and bears!

We bought lots of carrots!

 These ones are good to feed, although one of the buffalo nearly dinted our car to get to some more carrots!

And this one is not good to feed!

Once you've seen all the safari animals, there is a theme-park type section with food, rides and more exhibits. I was very disappointed that the komodo dragons were off display because their enclosure was being renovated :-(, but I had already seen some sun bears, so that kind of balanced it out. We also saw a wild west show, which was very violent (considering the audience was full of kids) but had some clever stunts and trained animals. It was a fun day, with heaps to do, but I couldn't help feeling a bit sad for the animals, particularly the ones that were essentially tame and being force fed carrots by silly tourists. I guess in the end, they are well cared for, and the park does a lot to help endangered animals and the environment, so it could be a lot worse. Plus, it was a lot cheaper than going somewhere similar, or a theme park, in Australia, even if you did have to keep putting your hand in your pocket for every little thing!

Anyway, that's enough of my western middle-class values getting in the way! I'll end with something a lot lighter - here is Ralphie with an elephant :-)

Location, location

It turns out it's harder to take a good picture of my view than I realised, but here's my best attempt:

Bandung is essentially in a valley, surrounded by mountains. In fact, everywhere you look there are more mountains! I am living just on the edge of what is officially called Bandung, in an area called Dago. It's a fair bit higher up than the main part of Bandung. This next picture is taken from the library, which has a lovely view. It's deceptive - this makes it look like it's so far away from everything! The main part of Bandung is behind the hill. You can just see it at the right.

Because Bandung is 768 metres above sea level (thanks Wikipedia!) I'm finding the weather is much nicer than other parts of Indonesia. It's still humid, but nowhere near as hot. In fact, the nights have a quite enjoyable chill to them. At the moment it is rainy season, which means it has rained every single day I have been here. Every day. Now that's consistency! I have tried to ask various people how long the rainy season will last, but I have got such wildly differing answers that I'm just going to wait and see for myself!

Happy Pi Day everyone!

To celebrate pi Day, I shared the following jokes with the students:

1. A mathematician and a baker are having an argument. The mathematician says, "Pi r squared, pi r squared". The baker replies, "No stupid! Pies are round, cakes are square!"

2. What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin pi!

3. What do you get if you take the moon and divide its circumference by its diameter? Pi in the sky!

4. Too much pi increases my diameter!

5. If you have a cylinder with radius 'z' and height 'a', what is the volume of the cylinder?
          Volume = pi times radius squared times height
          Therefore V = pizza!

6. A physicist, a pastor and a mathematician are standing at the top of a skyscraper. Their task is to jump of the skyscraper and land in a small pool at the bottom. The physicist goes first. She calculates wind speed, friction and allows for the effect of gravity, then jumps and lands safely in the pool. The pastor goes next. He meditates, prays, then focuses and jumps, landing safely in the pool. The mathematician goes last. She creates a beautiful function, gets ready, and then jumps straight up. Oops - forgot the negative sign!
(PS - can anyone help me with the physics references, I kind of made them up!)

And, as a fitting and not unexpected result, some of the kids laughed ;-)

A big hello from Bandung!

Slightly surprising fact: I've now been in Bandung a whole month. I know it's a cliche, but the time has gone really fast! So, I thought it was high time I proved I was still alive and kicking, plus shared what this amazing experience is like ;-)

I'll start with my housing. I have one room in a 3 story house, in a housing complex about a bit under 10min drive from school. There is a kitchen upstairs (which is seriously small! SERIOUSLY! There is less than 1/3 square metre of bench space and only one gas burner - I am slowly figuring out what I can cook! One-pot meals, anyone?). In my room I have a fridge, water dispenser (that does both hot and cold water), a microwave, a wardrobe and all the other obvious things. Here's a photo:

I also have a seriously small ensuite bathroom (and I thought the one at our share house at uni was small - Robert you could have done better!!!). It's basic, but it's actually quite nice to just have the things I need and live simply. Although, I am still accumulating cooking implements - there was no can opener or cheese grater - I mean, really? Come on!

My balcony doesn't have a good view, but when I'm hanging out my washing on the top floor (that's when it's not raining - more on that later) the mountains look amazing. I'm waiting for a clear sunny day to get a good photo. Something else that has a great view is the school. It's kind of off on it's own, with no houses right next door, and it's really nice at the start and end of the day to be able to see right across Bandung. Again, I will have to wait for the right day to be able to truly do it justice. It also looks pretty in the rain, but that photo didn't work! Instead I have one of one of the Secondary 2 (Year 8) classroom with a lovely smiling student :-)

Well, that's enough for now - I am getting picked up at the usual time tomorrow (6.30am) even though it's Saturday, because the junior school is having a fun day/open house and I'm going to be a judge for one of the competitions, plus run a game booth. It will be lots of fun, plus as tempting as it is to whinge that I'm not needed until at least 8, I will be able to finish my lesson plans (they have to be submitted at the start of every week, which seems odd in my experience but is actually a great way to stay organised). Then I will be able to go to the supermarket in peace on Sunday, and tell you all about it afterwards. I have now gone by myself twice - experiences which include getting two different angkot on the way home because the first one turned too soon, and having an ability to always end up being out in the rain!!