indonesian lessons pay off. favorite things learned:
hui akuarium (shark tank)
dialectical dog barks. "gonggonggong" (if the dog lives within java, with the verb then being "mengonggong") or "gukgukguk" (if the dog lives outside of java, making the verb "mengukguk").















teman - friend














ngobrol-ngobrol - talking (formally)

bercapak-capak - talking (informally)















teman-teman - friends















this photo is from bacon night at wando's bar and grill. every tuesday at 9pm they start serving free bacon. they cook 120 pounds of it. in indonesian 120 pounds is seribus dua puluh pounds. im romanticizing the numbers right now - 1,974 is written:
seteribu sembilan turus tuju puluh empat.
only two characters longer than
one thousand nine hundred seventy four.
i think my teacher tried to teach us the word for 'stupid' the other day. but we couldnt get what she was talking about. but we all talked after class and we're pretty sure she was trying to tell us what the word was for stupid. she kept making "doh!" noises, gesturing to her head, and finally turning the lights on and then off, before giving up and saying in english 'it doesnt really matter".
its all an exercise in interpretation, really. with all instruction on indonesian being spoken IN indonesian, sometimes it gets tough and you grab what you can.













my friend ian gave a lecture thursday on burma. i learned a lot. i think he teaches in hong kong, and while studying burmese here in madison, he lives in the dorm over on johnson with my friend kevin. i had planned to go over there to watch part of the world cup game on saturday morning, but ended up sleeping in lazily instead.












the indonesian word for dorm is "asrama". say it out loud (you could refer to the online indonesian dictionary kamus.net, which lists the pron. as "ah-sah-RAM-ah"). it sounds like how i felt when i found out i had to live in a dorm, which is how i remember it means dorm. but then i found out that the "dorm" i had been assigned to was actually a hotel, as the university i was studying at had run out of dorm space and was forced to put some students up in a hotel on 31st and 7th ave. and i realized that there are some really great dorms out there.












also, we spent 20 minutes learning what to say when your friend accidentally falls down and you're laughing at them. "hasian du lhu", and you have to drag your finger through the air like youre making a question mark. and roll your head a little back and forth, like youre in a sketch on that show "In Living Color". it translates literally to "Poor you". but we havent yet learned how to say "hey, can i help you up?" or "are you ok?" but the phrase for 'take me to the hospital' is
"anda pergi ke saya di rumah sakit."
or something like that.