Thursday, November 18 After lunch last Friday, Herizal and his wife took me to a friend's daughter's wedding - not the party but the actual, formal wedding.Though most attendees were outside under a canopy or in the next room, I ended up in the main room packed in along with scores of people of all ages sitting on the floor in a layered circle around a rectangular low table where the event took place.Pro-quality video and SLR cameras recorded everything over t...

Saturday November 6, 2010 - back in Palembang after the TEFLIN conference I enjoyed Bandung, for many reasons.I never felt hot, and rarely even warm. I began getting to know most of the other ELFs, and RELO Director George Scholz (finally!).And on the last afternoon I did find what I'd been determined to find on this trip:novels to read ( 13 in fact - most pretty long, and mostly authors new to me, with interesting historical/ geographic settings for the myste...

I'm trying ( unsuccessfully so far ) to recover from two days of intestinal problems and a constant low-grade stomach ache which have made it impossible to sleep well or to muster up any energy or 'focus' for whatever I do.Not sure what actually caused it, but for sure I will be more careful about what I eat from now on - and not go on routinely eating whatever is put in front of me when often it's stuff I don't even like - especially all the squishy, doughy thi...

Sunday night Oct. 17 Today Raidul and Holan organized a motorcycle trip way out into the countryside, 63 km out, to be precise.Five of us went on 3 cycles, Raidul and I riding behind two friends of his ( both English teachers I'd met before ).First we stopped briefly at Raidul's mom's home again for his Sunday visit; most of the same people were there as last time.Then we stopped at a strung-out roadside traditional food market where as soon as people saw...

Thurs. evening Oct 14 Suddenly I am much closer to being able to cook and eat in a more 'normal' way for me, and am feeling more positive about that part of my life here.Yani took me to Palembang Trade Center on his cycle this afternoon, where we went through the two best supermarkets I've seen here (though he thinks Carrefour is better yet ).Diamond has a great fresh seafood section with live crab, big redfish, etc. and more varied spices ( I finally found cinn...