Surabaya livin'

We arrived at the airport in Singapore and got in line to check our baggage. When we got to the counter, we realized that Rowan had purchased the tickets for the wrong day, the previous day. We had to purchase another set of tickets, and then our luck with checked baggage ran out. We were hit with an S$100 overage charge.

The flight to Surabaya was quick and uneventful, as was our passage through customs.

We got off the plane and met our driver, Pandi. As he drove us to our house, one of the first things we noticed was how flat the landscape is.

The city itself is very reminiscent of some cities in Central America: the vegetation, the motorbikes, the pollution, the roadside stands.

We arrived at the house. It was not clean, and the water was turned off in two of the bathrooms. (It would take several days to get the water sorted out.)

Here, a lot of people employ maids, mostly because people do not have clothes washers and dryers, and the maids do the laundry by hand. This is cheaper than taking the laundry to a laundry facility, and much easier than doing the washing ourselves.

Our maid seemed to enjoy watching TV much more than cleaning, so we will be getting a new one on Monday.

Our house is not ideal, but we can live here for a year. Here is a video of a standard Indonesian "shower," known as a mandi.

We have running water, so I don't know why they installed the mandi instead of a shower head. Also, we talked to other teachers, and a lot of them climbed right into the basin when they used it for the first time. This is in poor form, but we were able to avoid such mistakes.

Here is the toilet area.

The Indonesians don't believe in using toilet paper (we do, if you were wondering), so they have the option of the high powered hose or the bucket of water for cleaning themselves after using the facilities.

Culturally, this cleaning is done with the left hand, so we need to be careful not to use our left hands for any sort of public interaction here: touching someone on the shoulder, using it to eat, etc.

Our roommates are fantastic.
Sinead is a friend from our course in Barcelona, and Kim has been wonderfully helpful in acclimating us to all situations. Her last name is Peters, so you know she's good people.

This is our kitchen. Our house is reasonably sized, though it is not nearly as nice in person as it looks in this picture.Tonight we are going to a school-sponsored musical event that features RAN (pronounced "Ron"), the Indonesian equivalent of the Backstreet Boys. The party is being held at the mall near our house in a place called the Foreplay Club. Exciting!