Sunday, May 25, 2014

Crabs on Crabs on Crabs

My first purchase in Indonesia is a crab that has a hot pink Angry Bird shell. Its name is Pamplemousse. Winona and Sarah also bought crabs, their names are Strawberry and Godzilla, and we pitched in to buy the three of them a mansion. The mansion is legitimately any crabs dream; it has a slide and a swing.

Once the excitement of our first purchase had died down, we returned to the house in time for a meeting with the heads of AUA. In our meeting we discussed our individualized work plans for our summer internship. My main task for the next six weeks is to write a short report about the life of the Shi'a community and the challenges they have faced in Yogyakarta.

The afternoon was filled with fun activities such as visiting the Sultan's Palace, Malioboro street and Bahasa Classes.
The Sultan's Palace was very different from any historic sight that I've seen before since it was not well kept like the palaces in Oman or the beautiful Cathedrals in Europe. It had a raw beauty to it even though it lacked the grandeur of other sites. I find it amazing that the servants of the Sultan serve him voluntarily and expect no salary in return. It really shows true devotion and loyalty. It is also interesting that even though these servants literally place the Sultan on a pedestal, there are some in Yogyakarta who do not like him. Generally the older people like him, whereas the younger people are not a huge fan.

I also had my first Bahasa class today. Bahasa is an easy language to learn because there are no changes in the tense of verbs. The structure of the sentence is also simple. In my opinion, the most important sentence we learned today was asking the driver, "Can you please take me to get a massage".

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