What Happens on the Weekends

I have now adopted a policy where each week I will give an insight into the lighter parts of Indonesian culture, here is the first:

Last week, before one of my lessons, one of my students raised his hand and casually said: “Mr. Jack, I think you are fatter than you were before.” I was thrown off my game and didn’t know how to react. Perhaps the fried food that I was eating had finally caught up with me and I had become not just a bule, but a fat bule as well!

This little girl is incapable of making a normal face when I take a picture of her.

I had heard that this was part of the culture here but this was the first time I encountered it. Especially in light of the fact that I was about to give a lesson on comparatives, I decided to make a joke of it. I told the class never to tell a bule woman that she has gotten fatter but that I didn’t mind.

For the next day or so I found myself being even more superficial than I normally am. I consistently checked out myself in the mirror if only to reassure myself that I was not becoming the Chris Farley of Indonesia. I even asked the teachers at my school, and with one exception, they all agreed with the student that I was becoming quite chunky. They also informed me that the student probably meant it as a compliment. In his eyes, I was becoming happy and comfortable with my surroundings. Being fat is not a bad thing, it is really only a thing.

Having come to terms with this comment a few days ago, I joked about it with an Indonesian friend of mine who is about my age. When I told her – I expected her to laugh. Her response: “I think you are! Look at your arms! Look at your fingers!”

Alas, Indonesia has finally agreed, I am apparently now a fat bule…

Weekend Life in Surabaya

I teach five days a week and spend part of a sixth day on running the English club for the students. Needless to say, I spend a lot a lot of my time at Khadijah. For the other days and the time I’m not working I fill it with a variety of activities. The most prominent time waster is by far watching DVDs. Prices on obviously pirated DVDs here can be as low as 70 cents for a movie, and can provide the entertainment and the comforts of home that I miss so much. In the past two months I’ve watched a stack of DVDs so big I need two hands to hold them. Sometimes though I try to mix up and try new things and to meet new people. Luckily for me, Surabaya is a very well developed city with a large population both of expatriates from all over the world and of English-speaking Indonesians. I have a lot of fun during the week and even more fun during the weekend. My dad asked me a few weeks ago what a typical weekend is like for me and the best way I think I can highlight this is simply to explain what I did the last two weekends.

A month ago:

What seems like yesterday – but was actually almost a month ago – I had a seriously fun trip with four other ETAs to the Island of Madura to see the Bull Racing festival, which Indonesians call the Karapan Sapi. Everyone arrived on Friday night and we had a driver (for only 45 dollars a day) take us Saturday morning to the regional capital of Pamekasan. Madura and Surabaya – despite being connected by a 4km bridge called the Suramadu Bridge are worlds apart.

The Suramadu Bridge: 4 kilometers separate the most developed

and least developed places in East Java

While maybe a third of the women in Surabaya wear headscarves, literally almost every woman on Madura does. We learned quickly that the culture of Madura is simply quite different than that of Surabaya. The first night the five of us went out for dinner and tried to find some kind of beer that we could have. We did not discover until later that the reason it was so difficult to find beer is because Islamic law is actually enforced in the regency of Madura. While alcohol is simply annoyingly expensive in most of Indonesia, in Madura it isn’t even legal. After trying three convenience stores – which sell beer almost everywhere else on Java – three of us eventually returned to the hotel to rest up for the next day. Two of the people I was with continued on after hearing that a man known only as Pak Budi might have some for them to buy. A few hours later they returned with two water bottles filled with beer. This Pak Budi character apparently goes to Surabaya occasionally to buy beer and brings some back with him to Madura. He seemed to be everything one would expect a bootleg beer salesman on an Islamic Island in Indonesia to be. In the photos we saw, the thumb-less Pak Budi was rocking a hilariously undersized tank top and smiling broadly as he poured Bintang into aqua bottles. Needless to say, I think I at least realized after this that we were not in Surabaya anymore.

The next day we arrived at around seven o’clock in the morning at the parade grounds to watch the pre-race festivities. All throughout the summer they have bull races for people to watch all across the island of Madura, but this is the Governor’s Cup – the final and biggest bull racing session in all of Madura and the one that draws the big crowds. Our tickets for the festivities cost Rp. 5000 - the equivalent of about 58 cents. It may have been the best 58 cents I ever spent.

The bulls and their jockey being paraded around the stadium.

The first race is at nine o’clock. For a few hours before there are a series of parades around the grounds where the teams will show off their prize bulls around the grounds. A show that is complete with a full band playing traditional Indonesian music and all of the people that are involved in the entire operation from the training period to the actual jockey.

The boys who have the privilege of riding these bulls, as you may be able to tell from the photo above, are no older than 12. They are placed on a plastic sled while the bulls they ride hurl themselves at a speed of at least 40 miles an hour towards the finish line. Imagine letting a twelve year old drive a motorcycle they cannot control except to make it go faster and that’s what these bull races were. Add in some Indonesian cultural performances and mix it with some fantastic tension and the picture becomes complete. While they are usually over after about ten seconds, they are also luckily very well controlled and we didn’t see any of the kids fall off. The races are currently in that limbo stage where they are about to get corporate sponsorship and are making that transition to the commercialized events we are generally used to in the west. At one point, we even got in with they governor and were able to sit with the governor of the Madura regency to watch the bull races. He even asked for a photo with us – I just hope my face doesn’t show up in a visit Madura ad somewhere in the near future. Even if it did though, I think it would be justified, after all I think Madura is a great place to visit if only for the experience of doing so.

Three weekends ago:

Three weekends ago was Halloween. Or at least it would have been if this wasn’t Indonesia. Despite being worlds away from orange and black streamers or the haunted houses of America, I still experienced Halloween. That Friday, after teaching in the morning, and trying to catch up on sleep for the rest of the day, I went out with some Indonesian friends. I met these particular friends through couchsurfing, a global network of people that love to do nothing more than meet other people from far away places. All of them speak English very very well and many have visited countries in the west. They are super fun to hang out with, and I think serve as a more palpable introduction to Indonesians my own age. They have introduced me to true nongkronging (hanging out) and that Friday night we had a great night of laughing and talking until super late.

The following day I went with the same group of couchsurfers to a rujak party. Rujak is essentially a fruit salad covered with a peanut sauce which can take many different tastes depending on which spices are used to make it and which fruit it is paired with. I was introduced there to some fruits, which I have never before even heard of or knew existed, but also some fruits which I had grown familiar with (sour Mangos for example). Rujak varieties can be so different and telling that according to Indonesian legend, when a pregnant woman makes rujak, the flavor of the sauce will tell if her soon to be born baby will be a boy or a girl. After a few hours of midafternoon rujaking, I left with some friends to actually go to a full on Halloween party.

A group of English teachers I know in Surabaya who all teach for private courses (most of whom are actually English and not American) were throwing a Halloween party that was everything I remembered it being. For one night, everything, from the food to the costumes to the people made me believe I was back in America. It was at the same time, reassuring that this group of people existed, and yet also mindblowing, that this group of people existed in a place like Surabaya.

One of the thousands of photos with smiling Indonesians I have been asked to be a part of

Two weekends ago was very similar to three weekends ago, so much so that I even think of it as being exactly like what a normal weekend will become for me.

Last weekend:

Last weekend, I joined with the other two ETA’s from the Surabaya area to visit the city of Malang and my friend Eric who is teaching there. After a super long trip that lasted five hours and should have lasted two (traffic and incompetent drivers make for a nasty combination) I arrived late on Friday night. Malang is great if only because it is not Surabaya. It is a welcome release from the maddening traffic, heat and congestion of my adopted city. Most importantly, because it is in the mountains it is significantly cooler and easier to be outside in. Eric has a sweet house and the four of us Americans spent a really relaxing weekend exploring the city and more importantly enjoying each other’s company. It was the second of what is sure to be many long escapes from Surabaya. I have to admit though, at the end of the weekend I was almost anxious to get back to Surabaya. I have no idea why, I just did.