In Which We Travel the City Alone

Because Joanna had to go and teach at her school today, Caroline, Abbie, and I got the chance to travel in Medan all by ourselves.  Did I mention that our Indonesian is minimal at best, and we often panic and start throwing out the few Spanish words that we know in hopes that simply because it was accessed in our brains under the "Foreign Words" folder, somehow, they will understand us.

Our first adventure was to tell the Taxi driver (whom Joanna so kindly called for us while at school) where we were going.  This involved handing him a piece of paper with the address for the money changer's office and saying the one phrase I had been practice all morning: "Saya mau ke sini" -- meaning "I want to go here."  He then asked us something very quickly, which we all shrugged to.  He laughed, realizing that that one phrase was the extent of our language learning for the day, and started practicing his English with us.  Super fun!

Joanna had told us "when you leave the money changers, walk against the flow of traffic a few blocks, and there is a huge mall...you can't miss it."  Always being the kind of people who try to do what people say we cannot...we missed it.  Badly.  Half a mile later, and one solid head-bang into a low-hanging metal box of some kind later (this city was clearly built for shorter people), we turn around, convinced that we had missed it.

Be backtrack and see the mall.  I'm not sure how we missed it before, because as we walked in, we discovered that it was six stories high.  And there were signs.  For things like KFC and Starbucks.

We ordered food all by ourselves...though I will admit, there was a moderate level of pointing at the menu involved.  Paying for the meal was troublesome, because the exchange rate is 10,000 Rupiah (Indonesian currency) to 1 USD.  If you didn't quite catch that...10,000 to 1.  This makes understanding their currency extraordinarily difficult, because there are so many zeros on everything, at first glance, you don't know if you are holding a dime's worth of money, or ten dollars worth of money.  So we sat there, counting zeros, doing math in our heads, trying to figure out if they wanted 130,000 Rupiah (13 dollars) or 13,000 (1 dollar and thirty cents).  Even now, as I look at this, I'm not sure how much we gave them.

After this, we got in another taxi (this driver had no desire to practice his English) and went to Joanna's school, where we watched her mold the young minds of the future of South-East Asia.  I kept thinking that these kids were going to get up on their chairs and say "Oh Captain, My Captain."  She is a brilliantly fantastic teacher!  It was great getting to see the master at work :)

Below are some pictures, as well as a full description of how one is meant to take a mandi (it's not a shower, it's not a bath...it's a mandi).

A rather unflattering picture of me trying something I did know what was, and in fact, still do not know.

This is the unknown substance.  Wrapped in leaves.  

Taking a mandi here is no small matter.  The big tank on the left is called a Bak, and it is always full of water.  The scooper that you see sitting on the edge, is your main source of moisture and cleanliness.  You get undressed, grab the scooper, and dump the cold water on yourself.  Although this might sound frightening to some of you, it’s important to remember that humidity is always at 100%, and the heat is so sweltering, it makes your skin feel like it constantly has honey on it, and it makes you want to always go to sleep.  These burst of cold water are heavenly!  There is a drain in the floor, so the entire bathroom has just becomes your shower.  An clever conservation of space and water, if you ask me.   

As a final way to end our day, we got caught in the rain and got soaked!  Made it home, dried off, and watched Doctor Who while eating watermelon.  Not a bad way to end a day.