So, I'm just going to plunge in the water, here, today I had some serious cultural exchange dialogue goin' on, ya'll; it was so interesting because at the same time I learned about Indonesian values, I also saw my own values more clearly defined. Today I went to SMAN 1 (I attend SMAN 3) for a Debate Competition in English. Since I'm clearly already fluent, I went as support and was a chatty spectator with my friends. The topic of the debate was "Brains vs. Beauty*" (the arguments presented are a whole nother blog post but I'll cover that some later) which somehow led my friends and I to talking about the term "free sex." The term in Indonesian is "seks bebas" which of course literally translated means "free sex" but a more accurate translation is "sex before marriage."
The first time someone asked me if there is "free sex" in America, I had to work hard to stifle my immature internal laughter...it only makes me laugh because the implications are very ironic.. free sex implies that there is sex that must be purchased and my friends were asking me if there was free sex in America, so the misconstrued interpretation of the the question implies that in Indonesia one must always pay for sex while in America its always free. Of course, Indonesia is a very conservative country and extramarital relations and sex before marriage are highly frowned upon, so when juxtaposed with reality, this misconception is a hilariously sloppy abstract painting. It's hard to explain the social expectations and accepted behaviors of a country as intensely diverse as U.S.--only in Indonesia have I come to realize just how diverse the U.S. actually is...and right now I'm measuring this purely on the fact that in the U.S. when I saw someone who was obviously from a different heritage/race/skin color, it was nothing extraordinary because everyone in the U.S. is really a foreigner (except the Native Americans)...me included. But I ended up telling them exactly how I personally perceived the situation (and I tried to explain that it was only my specific perception, filtered through my life experiences and sub culture): there are head-butting opinions about sex before marriage, all the flavors of religion in the U.S. that I can think of discourage if not forbid sex before marriage, teenagers are especially inclined to get caught in the cross fire because they get mixed messages about how much freedom they should be able to have in that aspect of their lives and in the end I think it's mostly just the teenagers decision--though not always an informed one--of how he or she wants to live his or her life.
[As a side note, this is not to say that there's isn't prostitution in Indonesia; in clarifying the implications of the term my friends were using, we had a sorrowful side conversation about young girls--the example they gave was an 11 year old---who sell their bodies to help their families pay the bills...]
This little girl's story led us to talk about yet another pivotal cultural difference. I'm under the impression that in the States, although religion is frequently invoked ("God Bless America"), we value having an education more than we value subscribing to a particular religion. In talking with my friends, they told me that they valued education but that if they had to pick, religion is most important because it gives morality and values peace. I realized that if I had to pick, without hesitation I can say that I believe education is more important than religion. When I think about it, I'm living out that belief right now...because I've traveled as far away from my home as possible to devote a year of my life to educating myself with first-hand experience, and I'm sitting here sweating in front of the computer with painfully slow internet, being devoured by mosquitoes, to share my knowledge and educate you. All this because my life experiences have shown me that religions differ and interpretations of ancient texts can be reinterpreted and misconstrued and cause crusades and endless conflict, but education can show people that in essence all human beings have a common thread; through education we learn that even though people may have different cultures and contexts and languages and hopes and dreams and life goals, all those differences don't make a person bad, just different. It's been my experience that while peace and love are the goals of most religions, real harmony/enlightenment comes from learning to understand one another... that's not to say that religion doesn't catalyze learning sometimes, but religion isn't the necessary component to harmony...
*Pretend that this is a really well written transition*
Randomness about my life:
-Everyday I ride to school on the back of a Scoopy or motorcycle with my cousin (not the young one, now my older cousin lives with us, too because he works at a bank here). I don't wear a helmet and it was really scary at first but now I'm getting used to it and the other day I even texted on my phone while holding on! Maybe that's not a good development according to my parents, and they'll probably freak out when they read this, it's actually just another sign that I'm assimilating well. :)
-I like to eat with my hands, the traditional Indonesian way! I'm still trying to master the art of eating rice with my hands, but I'll get there!!
-There are cats everywhere!
-It's HOTTT!!!!!!!!!
-I like to drink coconut juice right out of the coconut.
-I like when my food is wrapped in banana leaves instead of packaged in plastic
-The power will randomly go out for about a minute, it's no big deal.
-There are little street vendors everywhere and they sell delicious food and drink that they make in their portable mini kitchen
-Everyone stares at me ALL the time, everyone knows my name! When I ride anywhere on a motorcycle/scooter, when people spot my pale skin and bright hair, they yell out "bule!" (foreigner). And then they recite carefully prepared English phrases like "I love you!" "What is your name" "Where are you going" "Hey Barbie!" and my favorite "I like it!" (Like what, I don't even know...lol).
-The other day I was waiting outside of my school for my cousin to come pick me up and I was standing in the sun so this vendor lady that I do not know called me by name and showed me a nice seat in the shade. I sat next to some Indonesian school girls who were curious about me and the vendor lady proceeded to tell them my name, my neighborhood, how long I'd been here, how long I'm staying here, what class and grade I'm in, and even my Indonesian name (different from my real name). It freaked me out. Just a bit.
-People like to take pictures with me, make it their profile picture, and then add me on facebook. It's kind of adorbs.
-I'm freakishly tall everywhere I go, pretty much. I tower over my friends at school.
-Almost the second thing people will say when I meet them is how beautiful I am, they say I look like Barbie and they compare their skin to me...to an extent I'm flattered by this but I must admit that I'm also quite disturbed. On TV I always see commercials for skin whitening products, FREAKY! They show the paint strip--like for teeth whitening commercials--and then they show a girls face progressively getting whiter. While it means that everyone loves my pale skin and encourages me to protect it by staying in the shade and wearing sun screen, it also means that the beauty psyche of an entire nation values a standard that is unnaturally attainable...you can't actually change your skin color...and it bothers me that dark skin is considered ugly...all my friends envy my pale, vein-revealing skin...which makes me so upset--society should affirm that they are naturally beautiful! There opinion of themselves is tainted by some stupid beauty standard that is completely flipped in the States. I can't even fully put words to why this bothers me so profoundly. I will work on processing my thoughts and reflecting more.
-So much sugar all the time! And everything is fried! I am so getting fat! The other day my mom pinched me above the collarbone and told me that when I arrived I was really skinny and it was ugly, but now I' fat and sexy! AHAHAHAH, SO FUNNY!
-I'm so white that the other night, when my cousin left his phone playing music all night and woke me up with it so I went in his room to make him turn it off, my other cousin saw me and got the fright of his life because he thought I was a zombie or Indonesian vampire...since I'm so white... HAHAHA
-Even before that, on Leburan break, I was sleeping in the same bed as my sister and had a dream I was swimming. I kicked and talked in my sleep and my sister got scared and went to go sleep with our mom because....I'm so white I looked like a zombie! HAHAH :)
Now, I gotta wrap it up, I'm being eaten alive by mosquitoes and it is SO HOT at the computer desk.
Uh, malas, maybe later I'll talk about the debate :)
Oh, and I'm really happy because maybe in November I will go to Kalimantan! Wahoo!
Oh, and now I'm going to go to a bonfire at my younger sister's school! Yay!
The first time someone asked me if there is "free sex" in America, I had to work hard to stifle my immature internal laughter...it only makes me laugh because the implications are very ironic.. free sex implies that there is sex that must be purchased and my friends were asking me if there was free sex in America, so the misconstrued interpretation of the the question implies that in Indonesia one must always pay for sex while in America its always free. Of course, Indonesia is a very conservative country and extramarital relations and sex before marriage are highly frowned upon, so when juxtaposed with reality, this misconception is a hilariously sloppy abstract painting. It's hard to explain the social expectations and accepted behaviors of a country as intensely diverse as U.S.--only in Indonesia have I come to realize just how diverse the U.S. actually is...and right now I'm measuring this purely on the fact that in the U.S. when I saw someone who was obviously from a different heritage/race/skin color, it was nothing extraordinary because everyone in the U.S. is really a foreigner (except the Native Americans)...me included. But I ended up telling them exactly how I personally perceived the situation (and I tried to explain that it was only my specific perception, filtered through my life experiences and sub culture): there are head-butting opinions about sex before marriage, all the flavors of religion in the U.S. that I can think of discourage if not forbid sex before marriage, teenagers are especially inclined to get caught in the cross fire because they get mixed messages about how much freedom they should be able to have in that aspect of their lives and in the end I think it's mostly just the teenagers decision--though not always an informed one--of how he or she wants to live his or her life.
[As a side note, this is not to say that there's isn't prostitution in Indonesia; in clarifying the implications of the term my friends were using, we had a sorrowful side conversation about young girls--the example they gave was an 11 year old---who sell their bodies to help their families pay the bills...]
This little girl's story led us to talk about yet another pivotal cultural difference. I'm under the impression that in the States, although religion is frequently invoked ("God Bless America"), we value having an education more than we value subscribing to a particular religion. In talking with my friends, they told me that they valued education but that if they had to pick, religion is most important because it gives morality and values peace. I realized that if I had to pick, without hesitation I can say that I believe education is more important than religion. When I think about it, I'm living out that belief right now...because I've traveled as far away from my home as possible to devote a year of my life to educating myself with first-hand experience, and I'm sitting here sweating in front of the computer with painfully slow internet, being devoured by mosquitoes, to share my knowledge and educate you. All this because my life experiences have shown me that religions differ and interpretations of ancient texts can be reinterpreted and misconstrued and cause crusades and endless conflict, but education can show people that in essence all human beings have a common thread; through education we learn that even though people may have different cultures and contexts and languages and hopes and dreams and life goals, all those differences don't make a person bad, just different. It's been my experience that while peace and love are the goals of most religions, real harmony/enlightenment comes from learning to understand one another... that's not to say that religion doesn't catalyze learning sometimes, but religion isn't the necessary component to harmony...
*Pretend that this is a really well written transition*
Randomness about my life:
-Everyday I ride to school on the back of a Scoopy or motorcycle with my cousin (not the young one, now my older cousin lives with us, too because he works at a bank here). I don't wear a helmet and it was really scary at first but now I'm getting used to it and the other day I even texted on my phone while holding on! Maybe that's not a good development according to my parents, and they'll probably freak out when they read this, it's actually just another sign that I'm assimilating well. :)
-I like to eat with my hands, the traditional Indonesian way! I'm still trying to master the art of eating rice with my hands, but I'll get there!!
-There are cats everywhere!
-It's HOTTT!!!!!!!!!
-I like to drink coconut juice right out of the coconut.
-I like when my food is wrapped in banana leaves instead of packaged in plastic
-The power will randomly go out for about a minute, it's no big deal.
-There are little street vendors everywhere and they sell delicious food and drink that they make in their portable mini kitchen
-Everyone stares at me ALL the time, everyone knows my name! When I ride anywhere on a motorcycle/scooter, when people spot my pale skin and bright hair, they yell out "bule!" (foreigner). And then they recite carefully prepared English phrases like "I love you!" "What is your name" "Where are you going" "Hey Barbie!" and my favorite "I like it!" (Like what, I don't even know...lol).
-The other day I was waiting outside of my school for my cousin to come pick me up and I was standing in the sun so this vendor lady that I do not know called me by name and showed me a nice seat in the shade. I sat next to some Indonesian school girls who were curious about me and the vendor lady proceeded to tell them my name, my neighborhood, how long I'd been here, how long I'm staying here, what class and grade I'm in, and even my Indonesian name (different from my real name). It freaked me out. Just a bit.
-People like to take pictures with me, make it their profile picture, and then add me on facebook. It's kind of adorbs.
-I'm freakishly tall everywhere I go, pretty much. I tower over my friends at school.
-Almost the second thing people will say when I meet them is how beautiful I am, they say I look like Barbie and they compare their skin to me...to an extent I'm flattered by this but I must admit that I'm also quite disturbed. On TV I always see commercials for skin whitening products, FREAKY! They show the paint strip--like for teeth whitening commercials--and then they show a girls face progressively getting whiter. While it means that everyone loves my pale skin and encourages me to protect it by staying in the shade and wearing sun screen, it also means that the beauty psyche of an entire nation values a standard that is unnaturally attainable...you can't actually change your skin color...and it bothers me that dark skin is considered ugly...all my friends envy my pale, vein-revealing skin...which makes me so upset--society should affirm that they are naturally beautiful! There opinion of themselves is tainted by some stupid beauty standard that is completely flipped in the States. I can't even fully put words to why this bothers me so profoundly. I will work on processing my thoughts and reflecting more.
-So much sugar all the time! And everything is fried! I am so getting fat! The other day my mom pinched me above the collarbone and told me that when I arrived I was really skinny and it was ugly, but now I' fat and sexy! AHAHAHAH, SO FUNNY!
-I'm so white that the other night, when my cousin left his phone playing music all night and woke me up with it so I went in his room to make him turn it off, my other cousin saw me and got the fright of his life because he thought I was a zombie or Indonesian vampire...since I'm so white... HAHAHA
-Even before that, on Leburan break, I was sleeping in the same bed as my sister and had a dream I was swimming. I kicked and talked in my sleep and my sister got scared and went to go sleep with our mom because....I'm so white I looked like a zombie! HAHAH :)
Now, I gotta wrap it up, I'm being eaten alive by mosquitoes and it is SO HOT at the computer desk.
Uh, malas, maybe later I'll talk about the debate :)
Oh, and I'm really happy because maybe in November I will go to Kalimantan! Wahoo!
Oh, and now I'm going to go to a bonfire at my younger sister's school! Yay!
You had the free sex talk too!! Indonesians (and their foreign exchange students) unite! Semangat!
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