Plans? ha...

Its been a long time since that odd Bali post. It feels incomplete. I might try and summarize it.
My bali trip: Rain, Beaches, Coughing, AUSTRALIANS so many, Tannah Lot, some other places, cheap souviner stores and trying to surf with over-priced god awful boards. But I guess that's Kuta for ya. Bali was nice. Probably the weather and my being sick ruined its image of heaven-like qualities. But I'll be back. So much left to explore. So different than Java yet similar.

My more recent endevours. School started again! whoop. That's slightly sarcastic but it was nice becuase I got to see friends again. Physics however will never catch my eye I think.
So far the new year has been good. Though I and some others got off to a slightly bad start. Me and the other Americans plus one Indonesian had been romping around Jakarta till the wee hours of the morning, us being obsessed with seeing the new year sunrise. We did and hung out in Omar's bedroom watching it rise above the rooftops. Of course then we all fell asleep. To make things short, boys n girls should not sleep in the same room, so the host parents were slightly miffed about that. To make things a tad worse we forgot to thank the host parents for hosting us which I was our bad seeing as we kinda left in a rush, eager to get to our own beds. We came back and thanked them. But the whole morning felt like a butchery of the new year. Whatever. that was ages ago. We learned from our blunders.

Now, my more recently.
I've been really enjoying myself. I find myself eating so much and food is so good. I've discovered at least 10 new delishous places to eat and for not much more than a dollar. It's absolutely ridiculous and awesome at the same time. I dont think I will be able to go back to expensive food.
I've also found that people can be very kind and very friendly despite the newness of a friendship. I was in Bandung last weekend with an AFS volunteer (for those who dont know his name its stephan) and after the first day of watching gorgeous countryside from a train, having a taxi driver drop us off now where near our hotel (after overpaying him considerably) tromping around the sketchy alleys and streets surrounding the bandung train station looking for our place to stay, we decided to climb a mountain to see the massive crater at the top. And indeed it is massive (i will post pictures to show). We were a wee bit famished so we got some Mie/Baso in a little shack at the edge of this crater. And as Stephan warned about an hour before, it started dumping, in massive quantities. The outside seating quickly turned into a small lake and everyone joined us in the shack, a couple and a family. One man decided to stay out protected by a umbrella. It was quite the image, the rain pouring down and this old man smoking a fag and sipping his tea, sitting cross-legged on his chair so as not to get his feet wet, seeing as the ground was covered in at least a couple inches of water.
The rain continued for a couple hours and eventually the young couple decided to introduce themselves by buying us a couple glasses of this spicey tea which was nice. It was genuinely cold on the crater top. We chit-chatted for a little while and eventually he offered us a ride back down the mountain after us telling him that we intended to return to Bogor by bus that afternoon. He was like "sure ya, ikut!". we ended up being stuck for two hours in traffic going down from the mountain back to Bandung. and of course they didn't know where the bus station was. Bless em for being kind people but they were from a different city. We spent another three trekking around the city looking for the bus station. We finally got there and we tried to pay him for his genorosity. He wouldn't accept it and even walked us onto the bus making sure we got home safely. And we had just met him that day. me and stephan were fairly amazed.