The New Neighbors...

Today we were invited to a cultural performance exchange put on by the University for a group of visiting Koreans. Most of the visitors were here for a week-long program, culminating in several dance and musical performances. There were also a couple traditional Acehnese dances with musical accompaniment- this was the first time I’d gotten to see these things in person and they were wonderful. There was one particularly amazing performance, though, by a Tae-kwon do champion. He performed what I had only before seen in movies. He broke tiles with his hand, kicked cups full of candy off the heads of his students, and leaped over several students to kick something or other perched high atop another head. All this to cheers of admiration by the audience of foreigners and Indonesians alike. This is our new neighbor (well, relatively close by) who moved here a week ago with his wife, two sons, and daughter. It was a pretty amazing introduction to this new family. Hopefully, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them in the future – not just in sparring attire.
Incidentally, Sarah, Jesse and I were also introduced during speeches as the three visiting Americans who are also participating in cultural exchange. This speech was given by the assistant Rector of the University who has been a huge help recently in aiding us to find what we’ve been looking for at UnSyiah (which for me has been a recent connection to the arts department). His speech highlighted the importance of such exchanges and how we as a community should work to make these things more widely accessible (he lamented the fact that this particular performance was held in a tiny auditorium and little publicized). Hopefully, more will happen in the future. It was nice to hear a University spokesperson support, essentially, our purpose here as Shansi fellows when often that particular purpose is lost in a realm of unsolicited classes for which we are not always the most qualified.
As for the Acehnese performances, they were pretty amazing. I’ve just started learning how to play the Surunikali which is somewhere between an oboe and a clarinet. I’ve had one class so far (and will have my second today) where we spent nearly three hours working on circular breathing (where you play continuously, breathing in through your nose while breathing out through your mouth into the instrument). Today I got to see my teacher perform with three drum players as accompaniment for a women’s dance performance. And, sure enough, he played continuously the entire performance. The dancers looked like painted versions of the women I see everyday. There is a history behind all of the current Acehnese culture and these performances are the evidence. I hope to find out more about this past very soon.