A swimming habit

After eating so much in Vietnam, it feels like time to shape up. My friend showed me a swimming pool north of my house where you can swim for 12,500 Rp a session ($1.36). There are cheaper pools in Jogja, but this is close to my work and home and doesn’t require navigating too much traffic, so I’m much more likely to go. It’s also not as populated as the others, making me feel like less of a spectacle as a single, swimming, female bule wearing something more revealing than the full-body wetsuits other women wear here. Definitely got a lot of stares in just a one-piece and shorts.

The pool is at a fancy sports/housing complex called Merapi View, so named because on a clear day like today, you have direct sight of its namesake:

Swimming pool today with the active volcano Mount Merapi in upper right, above the clouds.

At the pool today, I kept remembering a particular time swimming in DC when I dislocated my kneecap mid-breast stroke, since even such zero-impact exercise was too much for my soupy patellas. I don’t have the words yet to describe the impact of such chronic physical instability on your life, when you’re only 22 years old and can’t trust your joints to hold you up. Now after recovering from my May 2009 surgery, I never worry about my knees’ stability. That is a personal miracle. I would never have moved here or been able to do all the things I’m doing with the knee I had before.

This brings my Definitely Good Life Decisions total up to two, namely patellar realignment surgery and moving to Indonesia. And if you ever need a good knee surgeon, which I hope you never do, his name is Dr. Jack Andrish at the Cleveland Clinic.

Before: patellar subluxation, sunrise view

After: kneecap in place!

Success!

How many people does it take to get a bule to the Ramayana Ballet?

Question: How many people does it take to get a bule to the Ramayana Ballet?

Answer: Seven.

1. One stranger who picks the walking bule up on the street and drives her to the bus stop on a motorbike, saving the bule a 20 minute walk when she was already late (jam karat), and also invites the bule to visit her NGO sometime, a German development organization not far from where the bule lives. Networking!

2. One stranger on the bus who distracts the bule with an invitation to speak at the senior high school where she is a Sociology teacher, enough that the bule misses the Terminal bus line transfer point. (“So do any of your students speak English?” “……No, not really.” Uh oh.)

3. Another stranger to help the bule navigate a brand-new bus line, resulting in bule missing the chance to grab a ride on a friend’s motorbike, but that’s okay, the new bus “goes straight to Prambanan Temple!”

4-5. Once at “Prambanan,” two British tourists who allow bule to walk along with them on the dark street to the Ramayana Ballet. Bule had assumed that the “Prambanan” bus stop meant really, truly Prambanan, the same way the DC metro stop Chinatown really, truly means Chinatown. Rookie mistake! Luckily the British four-day tourists know their way around Jogja better than the bule.

6-7. Two wonderful French students who invited the bule to the ballet with them in the first place, arranged a ticket sale in advance, and provided good company and a motor ride back home after the public buses stopped running at 10pm.

Key vocab: Bule (“boo-lay”) is the Indonesian word for “albino,” and has come to be an unoffensive word for any white person, or any foreigner I think. e.g.: There were a whole lot of bules at the Ramayana ballet tonight.

Verdict: Beautiful Javanese dancing and gamelan music outdoors at the base of a must-see 7th century Hindu temple, unexpected networking opportunities, Bahasa Indonesia AND French practice, and the chance to make new friends — yes, please!