Tuesday, July 5
We arrived home around 10 on Monday night completely exhausted from our big trip to Lake Toba. Everyone fell asleep on the way home except for Nancy and the Dean. Thank goodness Nancy stayed up to talk to him. We were planning on a bit of a slow morning Tuesday with the main adventure being figuring out how the washing machine works. It is located in a building between our home and that of Putra’s, the handyman/janitor for the school. Thank goodness Nancy had just figured out her new electronic washing machine at home, so she was able to sort through the options on this Samsung contraption with just one question: what is the “Fuzzy” setting? She went ahead and selected it, and our clothes survived so maybe it just means clothes may of cotton that are not smooth.
After a bit of rice and eggs for breakfast Jacob and I went in search of the internet hotspot. We settled down on the front porch of the building that houses the hotspot. We connected and were in the process of sending out several messages when a teacher from the seminary program came out, introduced himself, and after a brief conversation invited us to sit on the nice furniture inside the office, which was slightly air conditioned (down to probably 82 degrees). Score! This was a nice treat and we will be back there often.
While we were out, Nancy received a message from Berta that she was sending a student over to take her to Berta’s class. So Nancy went off in a hurry, hair half wet, laundry set out to dry in various parts of the house. Jacob and I returned after about an hour to find the house locked and Nancy nowhere in sight. But on this campus that is not a problem. We walked around in search of her, just a little to show our concern, but since we didn’t know for sure she was in Berta’s class (and we didn’t want to be there necessarily) we stopped in next door to our home at the canteen.
There are several canteens on campus serving food and drink to students. This one consists of a long low building, with a little wooden shack next to it (it happened to be belching out smoke at that point) and then next to that is a duck pen housing about ten ducks. We walked in an low and behold there were Siska and Fine and Duma, three of the girls who visited us earlier. It turns out that Siska and Fine live in the house attached to the canteen, on the side opposite the wooden shack.
Jacob grabbed a water and I sampled a Fanta, strawberry flavor. My Fanta was good and not quite as sweet as the tea and coffee here. We enjoyed an Indonesian teen drama (extremely dramatic!) which was showing on a small TV. The show was pretty funny in the way they portrayed a very tense confrontation between a group of teens. Soon it was time to go and Siska told us that we didn’t have to pay, that it was her treat. We insisted on paying, since I didn’t understand at that point that Siska’s family actually ran the canteen. I didn’t want them having to pay for our drinks out of their own money.
We caught up with Nancy and went to visit the English Language Learning Lab on campus. This is a rather strange room as it is set up as a computer lab, including big CRT monitors on tables, big power transformers on the floor in front of each station, and a raised platform running down the center aisle, I’m sure for cabling. The front teaching area had great technology, connected to an LCD projector. But when we asked the students what learning programs that accessed on the computers, they didn’t understand our question. Later when the teacher arrived (he was delayed at a faculty meeting) he said the computers didn’t work. It looked like someone went to great expense to outfit the lab six or seven years ago, and now nothing. I will investigate.
We spent about an hour with the students, who were in their first semester of learning English. There were two boys who were fairly proficient in that they could express themselves in English, and ask and answer questions. The rest of the class seemed hesitant to utter much of anything in English, even though we were quite gentle and non-threatening.
From there we went home with Nancy, regrouped for a few minutes, and then headed back to the canteen. During our visit we learned that they serve fried chicken and Jacob and I were bound and determined to have some. We walked over, said hello to Siska, and grabbed a table in the small seating area of the canteen. I imagine the capacity is probably 25 people. Siska told us it would be just a minute, and then came over with Fine and invited us to eat in their house. We were ushered into the gathering room of their home, which included what I guess is a small organ (it was covered and we could see the foot pedals poking out) and a DVD player. I assume they might have a TV that is usually in the room.
Fine worked hard to spread out a special mat for us to sit on (on the floor). I thought that if they only knew about my legs and Nancy’s knees they wouldn’t have made such an invitation. But we went with it and tried to make ourselves comfortable on the floor. Soon enough they arrived with rice, fried chicken, eggplant and something that looked like boiled celery for Nancy. The fried chicken was excellent. Joining us in addition to Siska and Fine were Leonee, their little sister, Duma, Lolo (Siska’s friend) and Yanche. It was a great group and even though nobody else was eating, we gobbled down the fried chicken as if we were really famished. I guess we were sort of famished. I explained to Siska that we had a 2 o’clock appointment and needed to pay our bill, and she explained that we were guests in their home and would not pay. It was so sweet of them to welcome us into their home and treat us like such special guests.
We were a bit late for our 2 pm event, which we were told was a meeting with the local Sunday School teachers. Almost nobody was there at 2 pm, and this was our first experience (outside of the airport pickup) and the very relaxed approach to time around here.
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