Living the Surabaya Life

5 weeks in and we still like it here. That's good, I guess. There's not much new to report except that we like it here. Work keeps us pretty busy. We don't work until around one in the afternoon, and we usually arrive back home around 9:30, at which time we eat dinner and fall asleep usually. By the time the weekend rolls around we could go travel somewhere. But it's a short weekend and we'd be moving non-stop if we did, and those two days of relaxing are very nice. We did make it to Yogyakarta, however.

Yogya was a fun trip. And we're mostly thankful that we got to go afterall. It was a long weekend so we made sure to book our train tickets well in advance. We didn't book our hotel, though. The week before we started calling hotel after hotel. All of them were fully booked. We called around 30-40 hotels, every number we could find. We found nothing. As a last resort, we signed up for couchsurfing and emailed a couple of people. They both responded that they couldn't host us, but one of them walked around and found us a hotel. It only took her about 15 minutes, too. Wow, we were, and still are, blown away by her kindness.

(A glimpse into rainy season, from our hotel in Yogya.)

We arrived Friday and she met us at the train station and took us to the hotel. Most of the weekend, we walked around the main street with tons of shops and stalls hawking batik. It was insane, and too much for us. Packed streets, becak drivers hassling you, and hustlers trying to rip off the bules (the Indonesian word for gringos). Apart from that street we had a good time. We ate some great food, saw some gamelan music, and went to Borobudur, the ancient (or at least very old - what qualifies as ancient, anways?) Buddhist temple. Borobudur was an experience all in its own. We got there about 5am for the "sunrise" tour to beat the crowd, only to find thousands of other tourists already there to look at one building. It was largely school field trips, which equals large groups of kids following us around and taking pictures of us, saying "Hello misterrrrrrrr, how arrrrrre you?" It was funny at first, but after being gawked at and laughed at for half an hour or so, we'd had enough. Yogya was a fun trip. Frustrating at times, but still fun, and we'll probably make it back there within the year.

One thing that has kept us busy lately is our new motorbikes! We got two dinky, fully automatic bikes, that we probably couldn't get up above 45 mph if we tried. But they sure are fun. We are taking it slowly and trying to practice a lot before we venture out into the crazy Surabayan traffic. I've started riding to work already, but I am super close and I can take back roads through the neighborhood almost the whole way. Sarah's got much farther to go to work, on main roads, too, so we'll get some more practice in before she starts riding to work.

All in all, we're having a great time here in Indonesia. There's not a day that goes by that we don't compare our experience here with that in Mexico, and think about how much better it is here. We have good friends here (and Will just got back, too!), the people are always nice and smiling, and our schools are great.

Hello Surabaya

Selamat malam, everyone! We are here in Surabaya, and we've been here a little over a week now. Hell, we're practically locals by now.

We arrived Saturday the first, after a two day stop in Singapore. We were met at the airport (I'd always wanted to be one of the people who has somebody waiting at the airport with a sign with his name on it - how cool!) and taken to our new home, where we met our new roommate, Alexis. She's from Florida, so it's nice to be with another Southerner. She's great though. We get along great. And after meeting lots of the other teachers we could've been stuck with, we couldn't be happier. She took us along that evening to a party to welcome us and some other newcomers. It was really awesome and made us feel very welcome. However, I could barely keep my eyes open. My body was in complete shock that I was awake. Jet lag ain't no joke, friends.

On Monday we went into school and started our week of orientation. And here I must make and aside...It is so, so great to have a week of orientation. Know how much we got from our crappy school in Mexico? Zero. We were thrown in there the next morning with no clue what to do...OK, I'm back now. We spent the week going to some of the different schools, observing classes, sitting through training sessions, meeting and talking with other teachers, and finally teaching. It's really overwhelming how much EF is trying to help us adjust and make a smooth transition to our new life.

This week starts our first week of teaching. I've still got a super easy schedule this week, with only a couple classes, plus some tutoring sessions. Sarah, on the other hand, has it a little tougher. She's got two every day. But still that's light compared to what we'll both have next week. We're teaching primarily kids and teenagers, which is completely new to me. It's kind of terrifying to get up there in front of a bunch of kids when you don't really know what you're doing. But I'm getting the hang out of it. And, as long as they're not acting up too much, it's pretty fun. I can just have them draw something for twenty minutes while I just walk around and laugh at their drawings. And then...hangman for fifteen minutes! And maybe we'll end the class with charades.

As for Surabaya itself, there's really not much to report yet. We knew coming in that it would be a big, busy, unattractive city. And it pretty much lived up to that. It's a big sprawling city, with crazy traffic. And noone told me they drive on the wrong side of the road and the driver sits on the wrong side of the car! That is really weird. I'll be lucky if I don't get run over trying to cross the street in the first month. Oh, and lanes? They're merely a suggestion. Seriously, it's crazy here. Cars move side to side while motorbikes fly in between all the cars, everyone jockeying for position, and the result is some big, fluid mass that twists and flows like a river.

But it's our big sprawling city with infrastructure problems now. And we like it.

Soon, we'll start some of the real adventures. This weekend we may join Alexis and some others to head out to Yogyakarta. It's one the places we've been reading about for months, with anticipation. There's tons of music and arts there, which I have am excited about. I can't wait to see some gamelan music in person finally! We'll have plenty of pictures to post. I do also have some pictures from Singapore that I will try to post this week. None yet from Surabaya, but I was thinking maybe a pictorial tour of our new home perhaps. Stay tuned!