Living58: oktober 2012

As live goes on here in Indonesia things seems to become so natural and at the same time there is loads of stuff that is new to me. And yet going to school every day, being a language learner I feel so many times inadequate and not ready.

Knowing that next week I will start unit 9, the very last unit before my official time at school as language learner ends. And realizing that I just feel ready to actually learn the language. I now gained the tools and language to learn the language and with that to understand the culture. You know I guess the process of learning another language besides your mother tongue will continue forever. Which sometimes is really a stretching thought to me and I think: ‘will I ever get it’? Will my Indonesian ever be without grammar mistakes or embarrassing mistakes that makes you wanna sink into the ground, disappear and never ever have to face that person again. You know I guess learning a new language is a very humbling process. And it comes with tears and laughter. And after all you will laugh at your own embarrassing mistakes and realize that it’s actually funny. I consider a good laugh about myself as grown up!

So learning in the higher units at school gives me more insight in the culture helps me to understand more of the way the Indonesians think. And with those insights and tools to deepen my friendships with the locals. I feel so blessed by my school! Seriously! And with that I’m so thankful for my friends here in Indonesia and it’s incredible how deep some of those friendships already are. I know that some of you are reading my blog so “Makasih bangat buat persahabatanmu”!! ;) (thank you so much for your friendship)

So here another story of me, a Dutchy in Indonesia.

The other day I was going up to Majalaya with my friends on the motorbike. This is a 50K drive and it usually takes us 2,5-3hours to get there.

This time I took the five year old of my friends with me on my bike. I have to say that I’m used to drive my motorbike in a lot of situations (dust, rain, land roads, up/down the mountains, nightime & endless traffic jam) and feel pretty comfortable driving around with people at the back in all those circumstances. But driving with one child or more is still a challenge. Especially here a lot of them don’t have a helmed for the kid. I tell ya I’m drivin VERY SLOW.. but goin for 50K with a child was quit challenging. But anyways we made it save and I felt more and more OK with it during the ride.

Ready for a ride!

So as I spent the day with friends I had a new cultural experience. As we arrived I found out that we would eat duck for dinner and that the duck was still walking around the farm that time. My friend told me, that later on, her husband would kill the duck and take care of the process after that (getting rid of the feathers, intestines and stuff). She and my other friend would take care of the seasoning. So as impulsive and thoughtless I can be sometimes, I said with my big mouth, that I wanted to kill the duck. And so it happened..

We caught the duck, grabbed a knive out of the kitchen.

I kinda felt nervous for killing a duck and all these thoughts are spinning trough my head: “O my am I actually, seriously going to do it?”, “O no I’m about to kill a living being”, “what if half way through I faint” or “what if half way in the process I don’t wanna do it anymore”, “maybe after this I’ll never eat meat again”. But yet I grabbed all the bravery I could find and put together.. ready to give it a go.

As my friend was holding the duck I was holding his head .. and men I tell ya I was sweating like a pig..I could feel the heart rate from the duck going up (&mine too). As it knew its end had come. But it was amazingly quiet tho..

So I put the knive on its throath and cut... I will spare you the juicy details, but you can see what happened for yourself at the pix below.