To Indonesia and Beyond : Christmas Songs (and a flood) in October and Determination

Okay, okay. I know this is the second "late" post, but life happens, right? Maybe sporadic posting is the new thing! Anyway, as you can tell from the title, this post is going to be about a few rather random events. The first is pretty much self explanatory. I made the huge mistake (okay that's an exaggeration) of listening to Christmas music already. Surprisingly it hasn't made me homesick though. When I say "huge mistake" you might be thinking that I'm simply referring to the fact that I started listening to it so early, but that isn't really the problem (I mean, I guess it is a slight issue...). The main "problem" is that I'm currently living in the country with the largest Muslim-majority population in the world, so Christmas isn't exactly the biggest thing here, meaning that it will be almost nothing like what I'm used to. PLUS, it's also worth noting that I am currently residing just below the equator, so it never gets cold like I'm used to. (A huge thank you to whoever decided to place me in Bandung though. I think I would have melted anywhere else!)

And now for the part you've been waiting for...okay maybe not really, but here's the flood explanation. This actually just happened a few days ago. It was gloomy for the two days or so preceding the whole "flood" thing, and so I obviously knew that it was going to rain sooner or later. Well let me tell you something...boy did it rain. (Sorry for the bad grammar. Other than college applications, I haven't really used formal English in a while.) In fact, it rained so hard that at least half of my classroom's floor was covered in water and part of the ceiling fell down. Once that part of the ceiling came down, everyone started excitedly saying "Besok libur?!" So yeah that was interesting. (And no, I didn't have the next day off.)

As for the determination, it all has to do with the language. At this point, I really want to know so much more than I do, but that's nothing some hard work can't fix!The main problem is that I'm not speaking Indonesian enough right now, but I'm determined to fix that. I even talked to some of the other exchange students about using as much Indonesian as possible and telling each other all of the funny stories that result from it. And trust me, there WILL be a lot of entertaining stories! That's just part of the learning process though. I'll keep you updated on how that's turning out! In addition, on Wednesday I decided to try something new while I was at school. The first class I had is one that I don't really ever understand anything in, so I decided to translate a book. After my reading practice, I decided to use sport and history to work on improving my listening skills. From there I had English class, which is pretty much a brain break. I'm hoping that dividing the day up like that will be helpful, but I guess only time will tell!

In other news, I've recently decided that I really miss some of the foods that I'm used to eating, so I made pizza and croissants with my host sister. For anyone who knows me well enough, that probably sounds weird considering the fact that I always complain about pizza, and I'm not a big fan of bread. Nonetheless, it's true. I have pictures to prove it! The oven I used has an actual fire in it, so it was a little different to figure out at first. All I had to do was watch the food and tell one of the helpers when it was done, but somehow I still managed to slightly burn my first batch of croissants...oops!

Here are some random pictures: