What sorts of food can you buy at the Grocery Store?

ALLLLLLLL kinds of stuff!

One of my recent finds and personal faves. Oatmeal! Just like in Canada. Just heat up the water and stir it in. Its a great comfort food!

I also get cereal. But sadly the healthiest breakfast cereal that they have is cornflakes. Every other cereal sort of resembles coco-puffs or sugar-flakes. Also the "Body-Shape" is another find. Its a protein drink and it tastes so good, especially when it is blended with bananas in a blender.


I also got some yummy peanuts. These make a great snack!
Peanuts = Kecang (pronounced kachang)

Sadly, haven't found any soy milk here, but was able to get some High Calcium, Low Fat milk, which I am pretty sure is skim milk. Also there are at least 7 different varieties of bananas here. They taste great chopped up over my breakfast cereal :)


Peanut butter and jam! Makes a great sandwich or accompanyment for my eggs and veggies! Note the Jam - not your average strawberry jam....


Kraft Cheese!?!!??! You bet! Except that it is white and not orange.

Got to get your protein in. I get these eggs from the non-refrigarated section of the grocery store, but I do put them in the fridge when I get home to make sure they stay fresh...

Also was able to find some Tofu! Another great source of protein.

And of course veggies! The veggies here aren't anything special, but they are alright and I am trying to get my 2 servings at least.

Yeah, but What does your House look like?

Here are some picts so those of you who haven't got a grand tour via skype can check out where I am living!

Okay. So this first picture is of the entrance way where we exit and enter the house. Our shoe rack and telephone is on the right. There are a few chairs and a couch here as well so we can relax while we wait for a cab or for the other roommate to be ready for school in the morning.

Same area taken from the vantage point of the grand stair case as I like to call it :)

This is a picture of our dining room area, also taken from the "grand stair case". The entrance way would be to the right of this picture.

This is a picture of the dining room and the door that leads outside to the garden. This would be taken from the front entrance area.



This is the right side of the kitchen as you walk through the door from the dining room.

This is a picture of the left side of the kitchen. There is a gas canaster and something that resembles a Coleman stove. In that it is a gas stove with 2 burners. You can also see through to the"laundry" room.


I have the most awesome laundry room ever. Except for the fact that there are often mosquitoes and the laundry machine needs to be babysat like a needy five year old. Its pretty nice.

Can you beat this view while you are doing your laundry?

I didn't think so....


Anyways, this is the grand old stair case. With chrome banisters and red carpet and everything.

Upstairs we have this sort of landing/hallway thing. Its good for traveling from room to room and its where we keep our fridge.... for some Indonesian reason I am sure.... Anyways this is the view from the top of the stair case. Out the French doors there is a little patio. My room is the 2nd on the left from that and the bathroom is the left from the patio doors.



This is our communal room. Its at the top of the staircase to the right. There is a telephone to make calls and a tv with no cable, antenna or DVD player, a bunch of DVDs and a couple of chairs. This could be a fun room if there was couch, a DVD player, cable and maybe a working fan....
The door leads to the patio...

This is where I enjoy spending a lot of my free time reading and hanging out in the one patio chair... seriously this house could use some more seating!

*For my bedroom please see previous blogs.
**For the bathroom stay tuned....

What are you teaching exactly?

Many of you have probably been wondering to yourself, lying in bed night after night thinking "What exactly is Chelsea teaching...?" Well here is my complete and hopefully final schedule, although it does not include things like Marking the grade 4's journal entries once a week (21 and poorly written :S), editing other teacher's worksheets and quizzes to help them with their grammar, lesson planning and marking my own student's work; which is what any teacher has to do. My classes include so far grade 6 science, social studies, language arts and writing. Grade 4 writing and language arts. Grade7 writing and language arts. Grade 9 science and Grade 10 science. Not too much, lol. Then there are also a few remedials which involves 1-on-1 or 1-on-2 tutoring. I like these sessions the best, the kids are interesting in a smaller group and its nice to be able to go over things that you know is going over their head during class. I am still not sure how I feel about being a teacher... Its great sometimes like during grade 6 science class when the kids are so interested in the subject and I have a lot of the answers, and then its not so great in subjects like grade 7 writing when kids are handing in plagiarized Wikipedia articles as their own writing or I am trying to explain grammar or mechanics of the English language that I don't really understand myself.....

So You Think You Have Seen Polluted Water?

Let me tell you, if you haven't until you have been to Jakarta. Well at least I hadn't until I went to Jakarta this past weekend.

So in typical Indonesian travel style we got to the airport only to find out that our plane tickets were actually for next weekend and not this weekend. Nice. The travel agent had messed up, but luckily the people at the Lion Air ticket office were really helpful and we were able to change our flight to a flight the for a few hours later but the same day. For a price of course (6$ CAD). Oh well. I guess that is life.


So while we were waiting for our plane to depart Ashleigh bought a copy off Time magazine and we had drinks at Starbucks (see photo). It was pretty much the same as a Starbucks in Canada except there was less on the menu and the food items were a little different. I had a Iced Passion tea and a peanut butter panini. Both were fine.



So by all accounts my students and the teachers at the school Jakarta is supposed to be the worst city in the world for traffic. I have heard stories of people commuting 2 hours each way to work. This is insane. Luckily for us though our cabbies took the expressways and got us to our hotel without any major snarl ups. Which was really good. I hate traffic. Thankfully we didn't get caught in any major jams this weekend!

This was the view from our penthouse suite. Just kidding, we were on the 2nd floor. It looks like they had just finished demolishing a building next door, or maybe this had been a vacant lot for years, who is to say really, but it was an "interesting view" if not an inexspensive one.

The hotel room was nice. Two beds, a TV, flush toilet, shower, air conditioning and a breakfast was included. Pretty good all around. I would give it a 2.5 out of 5 considering bang for the buck. Turns out Ashleigh is willing to spend more money than I on hotels/hostels with 50$ being her upper limit. Mine is more like 15$. This place was 30$/night. All in all it was probably a good decision to stay in a "fancier" place in Jakarta. Just because its a big city. But the area that we were in and that our hotel was located was relatively safe and clean.

Then we went to check out a few sites after checking into our hotel. Our first stop was this giant monument. The guide book describes it as "phalic" and boy, were they right. It sort of resembles what I imagine the Washington Monument would look like. Anyways there was a man offering to take a photo of you touching the top of the monument (as pictured above) promising the photo to be ready in one minute. But we declined and did our own version as pictured above.
It was nice to be in a park again and have some green space to just walk and wander and take in city life while not having to worry about being run over by a car. So we wandered around the part and were harrassed by people saying "Hello Mister" and offering to sell us everything from water and refreshments to strange wind up toys and kites. An eclectic mix to say the least. There must have also been somewhere to rent bikes because I saw several bikes built for two and even a bike legitimately built for three! I miss the photo op for that sadly :(

That evening we went out for some great Indonesian food, I know, who knew they actually make delicious versions of the stuff that I have been ordering from the cafe at lunch! "Yes, finally" I thought to myself, "This must be what everyone is talking about!" Then we went to a place that had the Manchester United game playing. Unfortunately they didn't serve Bitang (the local beer here) so we only stayed for the first half and a juice and a campai (which is another thing I found to be delicious. Its a dough thats been rolled out flat and then they put something in the middle like jam or bananas and cook it on the grill. its goood.) Then we wandered around looking for somewhere to have a drink. We were generally disapointed and just ended up beside the place where we started for "besar" = large Bintangs and a karaoke/performance by a couple of the staff I think. Anyways, after making a few Indonesian friends (one definitely creepy and unwanted who was later seen hanging out with a suspected transvestite) we called it a night and headed back to the hotel for a good nights sleep.

The next morning we headed out for Kota after our complimentary breakfast (which also had some yummy papaya! yay! fresh fruit!) We got dropped off at harbour gate and after we (Ashleigh) got our bearings we headed into the market area. The market area ended up being a rag-tag-labyrinth of houses and shops and dirty dirty smelly stinky volatile water. Which was probably not so much water as human feces, urine, garbage, dead animal etc. Gross. The smell of some off that water was enough to make me want to puke a few times. Seriously you could hide a body in that area and nobody would notice a change in the smell.

But still the area was charming in an interesting sort of realism way. It was just so nuts. Its hard to describe. There were people selling everything from bras to car parts. And kids running around playing. There were people going about their daily business such as doing the laundry or making food. There were people just hanging out. There were angry roosters crowing and chasing chickens around. Seriously I felt like I was in another country more during this part of the trip than I have at any other point in my travels anywhere in my life.

This is a view from the bridge where we had to pay a 1,000 rupiah toll to cross (11 cents). The water here was sick. It was green and smelly and I saw lots of garbage floating in it and a dead fish. If I fell in that I know I would be instantly vomiting and also would probably catch ebola, cholera, dysentery, mono, an ecoli bacteria, hepatitis C (I have vaccines for A and B) and maybe even the common cold.

I appreciate the water quality in my hometown. This was a ditch on the side of an alley. Like I said, more garbage and filth than water.

Another view from the bridge. Looking out towards the harbor of Jakarta. And you though that the inner harbor in Victoria was dirty...

Okay. After our romp through the market and 100 "Hello Misters" and several "Bulay, Bulays!" (white person, white person!) later we ended up at some sort of town square with a statue. It was pretty, pretty hard that is to enjoy the sights as we were almost instantly swarmed by people wanting to take a picture with us like we were Justin Beiber (Ashleigh) and Celine Dion (Me). Seriously, I was just waiting for someone to ask for my autograph. I felt famous. And would never want to be famous because of this kind of attention.

A man who wanted a couple of shots with us. They were all really friendly and genuinely interested but I wonder if it is some sort of game with them...

These guys were Betawi (Aboriginal group of the area) and they were dancing. They actually came over, stopping their dancing to check out the white girls. I feel like people come here for the entertainment and the street shopping etc. but also to spot a real live white person who is just checking out the place...

They wanted to get a picture with Asheligh!

Here is a random fruit/food stall selling a random assortment of things you might like.

We had been looking for a Chinese temple after going to the square but were unsucessful in our attempt. After several blocks of an unsoclicited self guided tour and asking a hotel in the area for directions we stumbled upon a construction site where the place should have been after asking the security there it turns out the place was under construction. Thanks lonely planet! You are published this year! So we headed back to the same restaurant we went to the night before and had some yummy food. Also I discovered Avacado juice. OMG. Its like guacamole in a cup. A whole cup of avacado (alpukat) blended with deliciousness. Pretty sure tony would not approve, and it got to be a bit much by the bottom third of the glass, but it is something I will order in the future!

We lounged for a bit and had some more campai and strawberry juice (basically a smoothie made with ice and strawberries) and killed some time before we had to be at the airport. When we got to the airport our cabbie dropped us off at the wrong terminal. I didn't trust him and his long fingernails from the get go. But a nice airport staff pointed us in the direction of the yellow shuttle that would take us to the next terminal. When we finally got there we found out our plane was delayed by 2 hours due to poor weather in Surabaya. Nice. So we had a crappy airport dinner and watched some Arsenal soccer while we waited.

We got back late but safe. It was a good trip all in all and I can't believe how much you can actually get done in a weekend!

Where Did You Go On Your First Weekend Out of the City?

To Bromo!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Bromo

Bromo is a four hour drive (because of the crazy roads and traffic) out of Surabaya. My roommate (Ashleigh) met a girl at the health club in January. This girl works in a nearby town teaching English at an English Language Centre. Anyways, this girl has a roommate who has been working in Indonesia for 2 years and 3 months. So this guys is pretty versed in the ins and outs of Indonesian culture in this area of the country. Anyways, so this guy was renting a van to go to Bromo this weekend and needed to fill some spaces. So we filled them.....

On Saturday we took a cab to the next town over where these people live. After a confusing directions and a phone call between our cabbie and the driver who was going to drive us to the volcano we made it to meet up with the girl (Olga).

After waiting around for everyone to get their shit together, which wasn't together when we arrived all bright eyed and bushy tailed, I knew it was going to be one of those trips. The strange kind that you go on with the people in your University's outdoor club. Anyways, about an hour and a half after we arrived at the house and some issues surrounding the actual number of seats in the rental we were on our way.

The drive was pretty interesting. Got to see a lot of people and little towns along the way. We arrived at Bromo around 6pm in the evening (four hours in the car). The road up to Bromo from the "main road" was unbelieveable. I have never seen any road like it. It was nuts, a lot of it was steeper than that little section on Oxford st. that is really steep just before the graveyard. And it was windy and not that well maintained, as the ash that falls from the sky was all over it. But the driver took it slow and we were safe.

We had dinner at the Lava Lodge restaurant after checking in and I finally got to try some satay! Sadly to say, I make satay better. Dissapointing, not that it was bad, just that I can do it better than the people at the Lava Lodge. Anyways, then we hung out and drank some Bintang (Indonesia's beer... its okay, nothing special) in the little cabin/suite that was assigned to the five of us. Went to bed around 12.30 or so and had to get up at 4am! Good sleep though.

We got up at 4am because we were going to see the sun rise over the volcanoes. We hired a Landrover to drive us to the beginning of the trail to the look out point. I was a bit disapointed because I would have just as happily walked from the lodge to the lookout point, and would certainly have done this if I had been accompanied by a certain Scottish boyfriend. Anyways, the altitude was about 2550 m so I was feeling it on the steep hike from the truck to the lookout point.




At the bottom of the lookout point you could "buy a horse", but they were more like Ponies and I would have felt bad for the pony that had to carry my large white person up that hill. And plus I have two legs....




So the sunrise was neat. I haven't seen any sunrises here yet largely because the sunrises about an hour before I like to. So at 5.15 the sun was coming up and I was standing on the edge of a crater watching ash spew from the active volcano, Bromo. It was awesome. Totally forgot all of my stress and worries for at least the hour we were standing up there admiring the view. It was great!


Then it was time to head back. We had a nap at Lava Lodge before our 8am breakfast and watched the volcano from the lookout at the lodge which was pretty impressive! And then we had the long car ride back and the taxi back to our house!

Video of volcano erupting!


View of the volcano from out lodge after the mist lifted. The crater is huge and flat and full of ash. We were being pelted with ash as we stood there taking pictures of the volcano. The little white specks are trucks and the far building in the distance is a temple.