The Lime Light. And Jamu juice.

Pointing, heckling, adamant staring, frightened or laughing children- all these reactions comprise my new model life. Anywhere we-the foreigners or buleh- go we get all the attention, positive and negative. Yesterday, someone took our picture. We're just strange, that's all there is to it. Emma and I took a walk around and wondered what it'll be like to be back home, average and normal again.

But it's not just our strange colors and sizes, people here are aware of what's going on, or at least the transportation workers certainly are. It takes little more than a flick of the wrist, or even a couple fingers down at your side to pull over a taxi and even the buses. These small and wonderfully cheap public transportation buses pull over wherever you are to pick you up. There are generally two people working at a time- the driver and the money collector/passenger spotter. This guy will get the bus to stop in addition to stopping traffic for you to climb in, if necessary. Pretty amazing, you can also get off wherever you feel like along the route. That's some incredible public transportation.

I never did go on that bike ride - I got sorta sick for the first time, nothing so bad, but enough that I didn't want to be biking. However, Sunday night, we drank Jamu. We took a twenty minute drive to find an 88 year old woman who makes this coveted beverage. Every night at 9 o'clock she sets up in front of a garage: she sits on a bench and in front of her are large bowls of brownish and gray pastes, a bowl of eggs in a variety of colors, a large mixing bowl, a bowl of limes, and two bowls of water with drinking bowls in them. You tell her son what your problems or desires are and he translates into Javanese for her. She then, usually silently, assembles the remedy. A handful here and there, maybe some raw egg, some leaf steeped water, mashes it together, drains it, and there you are. Immediately after drinking it, she hands you a chaser of coconut milk and juice, and there are candies on the table. I got studying/memory Jamu, another person got health Jamu, someone else got Women's Jamu and confidence Jamu. My teachers the next day were impressed and surprised that we'd done this, and one recommended other types of Jamu. All in all, a very interesting experiencing, that I'm hoping to do again soon.

sorry this post is so late in going up, I wrote it awhile ago but was sidetracked in posting!