Adventures Begin!

Saya nama Peggy.  Saya tenggal di Indonesia.
My name is Peggy.  I live in Indonesia. 

     I wish that my third sentence could be something like “I can speak Indonesian,” but that statement would be marked as false.  This past weekend was one filled with adventures throughout the local culture.  One morning we went to a local pasar (marketplace) to practice our language skills.  The market was one of the richest places I have ever entered.  The people were absolutely beautiful, dressed in their long garments and head coverings, the tables spilled over with mounds of beautiful produce, and little ladies dressed in bright colors, smiling from ear to ear hacked pieces of meat with butcher knives.  The contrast simply wonderful!  We found beautiful batik fabrics and bartered for the best price.  America needs to adopt bartering because it makes shopping much more fun and challenging. 
    Transportation here is much different than in America.  Most people ride a motor bike everywhere they go-weaving in and around cars, buses, and anything else on the roads, including delman.  We took one of these horse-drawn carriages after leaving the pasar.  The city bus used to get to town can be unpredictable.  Sometimes it is quite empty and gets to town fairly quickly, but I’d say about 80% of the time it is packed full of people and moves at about 2km per hour!  Ha-ha  It’s fun though to be among the people.  My favorite type of transportation involves what I love most… Squishing!  The city of Bandung has a travel system in which small vans called ankots drive a certain route all day long.  Whenever you see one you can just flag it down and hop in.  Don’t worry about seats either…as many people as can fit can be in the van.  Then whenever you want to get out you just yell to the driver to pull over, you pay him, and then you’re on your way.  It’s fabulous!
    The food has been great as well.  The fruits here are amazing.  I ate a fruit last night called the “snake fruit.”  Its peal looks exactly like a brown snake skin.  Mangostien is probably one of my favorites.  There is one dish that I have eaten in which the chicken is cooked so long that the bones become very soft and you eat the whole piece of meat including the bones.  Just a nice crunchy addition!  I also ate goat sate.  Sate is basically anything eaten like a kabob, but yes a little goat is running around in my stomach! Haha There are lots of other things that I have yet to try like cobra or squid but I might pass on the intestines I saw rolling around at the pasar.    
    That’s all for now!  I’ll post pictures soon.
                                                                                                               Mari! (bye)
                                                                                                                -Peggy