A Thursday in Bandung...

It’s Friday morning here, so I’ll write about how my Thursday went – maybe not too exciting but definitely different than an average day at home in Houston. I always look forward to Thursdays, as that is my Bible study day. We’re studying “Lord, Calm my Anxious Heart” by Linda Dillow and it is exactly what I need right now. It is helping me to catch myself when I start to focus on my “negatives” instead of my “positives” which is so easy to do here, I might add. The truth is, we all have both negative and positive “lists” of things in our lives and according to the author, our contentment depends on which of our two lists we spend the most time focusing on. Marcia takes it painstakingly slow, making sure the women understand the meanings of any words they might not be familiar with and explaining what each paragraph is saying, since English is the first language of only Marcia, myself and our friend Helen.

roving call to prayer

I’m enjoying getting to know Hella, a new Christian (former Muslim) and several of the other ladies in the group. We meet in the home of Ingrid (of Chinese descent) who is married to an architect and the matriarch of a large family. She was explaining to me yesterday about the “Indonesian way” of how people here never like to say “no” so they will agree to do things with no intention of actually doing them. They always say “besok” (a new vocabulary word this week, which means tomorrow). I guess that’s their way of agreeing to do something but at an unspecified time which usually doesn’t come. We’ve heard this same thing from several others, that Indonesians will say what they think you want to hear, whether or not there is any real intention behind it. Ingrid said she got so tired of inviting people to her home for dinner and them accepting her invitation, then cooking a huge meal for them, and they never showed up. To Americans, this seems extremely rude. To Indonesians, this is just how it is and something you have to get used to. Kind of like our previous driver telling us he knew where something was when he had no idea – his way of “saving face” but we would have MUCH preferred his honesty. Anyway, Ingrid said she finally learned to just invite people out to a restaurant. Then if they don’t show, she hasn't wasted a lot of food and preparation time.


Usually as Marcia is teaching, a nice breeze comes through the room as both sides of the living area are completely open (and yes, cicaks/lizards dart around the walls in the nicer houses too). Yesterday, as Marcia was dismissing us in prayer, the Muslim call to prayer was loud and intrusive (volume depends on proximity to the nearest speaker). As a side note, when I was at the bird market this week, a roving van with a loud speaker on top drove slowly by to remind people that it was time to pray. 

cooking combo

After Bible study Marcia took me to Borma, a store where the locals do most of their shopping. It was a real mix of everything – groceries, hardware, housewares, just about anything you could need and it is all cheap! She took me there so I could purchase an box to cook in. Yes, a box. Many homes (our apartment included) do not have ovens so many of the poorer Indonesians use these aluminum boxes for baking. When not in use, it will sit on top of our toaster oven, which sits on top of the microwave that came with the apartment.  When we bake something, it will sit on top of our 4 burner stove. If we want to know what temperature we’re baking at, we’ll need to go to Ace Hardware and purchase a thermometer to put inside. I plan to give it to Ibu Aisah when we leave in early June. Btw, she teared up this morning when I told her we were going back to the US in June. Though wild horses couldn't keep me from coming home, I felt badly for her because I knew she was thinking that meant 'no more work'.

In addition to the new oven, I also bought some badly needed kitchen stuff. I’ve been hesitant to buy anything but the bare essentials because we obviously won’t be bringing this type of thing back home with us and I didn’t want to spend a lot on fixing up the place. But….that was before I knew about Borma. Besides the poor man’s oven (sorry, but I don’t know what it’s really called), I also bought a baking pan to cook biscuits on (which unfortunately didn’t fit inside the oven), a nonstick loaf pan for making banana bread, a glass (pyrex type) pie plate, a metal mixing bowl, 5 smallish storage containers, 2 large round plastic canisters (for keeping ants out of our flour, sugar, etc), trash bags, vitamin bags, cookies for the cleaning lady, disposable cups, an ice cube tray, and a small tea pitcher that will fit inside our small frig (we finally get to have a glass of ice tea!) My grand total came to 409,600rp – about $48US! Of course I forgot to look for the one thing that Ronnie asked me to get (index cards to make language flash cards) but now that I know about this store, I'm sure I'll go back.


By the time I returned, Ronnie had already run, showered and had his lunch. I tried to memorize a little “days of the week” jingle before our language girls arrived ("Senin, Selasa, Rabu, Kamis, Jumat, Sabtu, Minggu itu nama-nama hari") and Ronnie tried to take a little nap using noise reduction ear phones, while below us the concrete stairs were being hammered into small pieces and hauled away on young boys shoulders, one bucket load at a time.

doesn't "wood fired" just have a better ring to it?

We didn’t have a driver yesterday but had made plans to meet another Fulbrighter for pizza last night. Ronnie had arranged with Rivany (our favorite cab driver) to pick us up after the language lesson. Unfortunately he sms'd (their term for texting) that he wasn’t going to make it. So back to square 1 with getting a cab. After about an hour and a half (and many phone calls later) we finally crawled into the back of a Blue Bird cab. Unfortunately, our driver didn’t know the restaurant and couldn’t speak a word of English, but he was able to get us to a hotel in the general vicinity and then start asking people from there. We finally arrived, late and frazzled but found the restaurant to be empty and very pleasant as we sat on the patio. The restaurant was close to neither of us but had been recommended and we were not disappointed. It’s usually pretty impossible to ask questions about the menu (turns out, there was fresh cucumber on my veggie pizza!) so you usually just take what you get. But while we were looking at the menu, a man came up and started chatting with us in English. Turns out, he was the owner and had lived in New York as a banker before. Raised and educated in Bandung and later sent by an Indonesian bank to work in NYC. We enjoyed visiting with him and he got a big laugh out of my question to him as to whether it would be harder to drive a cab in Bandung or in NYC.

pouring the martabak batter

carry out box

Experience has taught us that cabs are not easy to come by (especially in certain locations or at certain times) so we had our cab driver stay while we had dinner. As we left, the restaurant owner was kind enough to tell him that we wanted to stop at a certain food stall for a martabak manis on our way back to the apartment. I was asking the Fulbrighter if she would like to hang out and do stuff with me (she’s a single woman and new to Bandung). We really don’t have much in common (turns out she's Buddhist) but we both speak English, so that qualifies her for potential friendship.

Wawan checking for tikas

PS No tikas (rats) in the attic today – bagus (good)!!