Some pictures

better late than never. (English)

note

Hello everyone, welcome back to my blog. Firstly I wanted to say sorry that it took so long for me to upload this blog. Second of all, I am trying to do it all in English. The good thing about this is that almost everyone who wants to can read my blog now. The bad thing about it is that I might make some grammar mistakes… English is not my first language of course, so that’s why.

When someone makes a blog he has a few choices. He can describe his experience day by day. So say what he did every day, but I decided to only tell some of the more important/funny/big things of my experience here.

A lot of times when I am somewhere I realize ‘Oh, I should put this in my blog!’ and then I write it in my mobile phone. So my whole phone is now full with memo’s about things for my blog haha. That is also why I have a lot of small things I want to talk about.

Also, I might say things in my blog that sounds like I am complaining, but don’t get me wrong, that is not my point. I love staying in Indonesia, and there are many differences between my country and Indonesia, so I want to tell the differences, and my opinion about them, to all my friends and family (and everyone else who found my blog)

So don’t get me wrong or get offended by anything I type. I am here to learn and teach, those are my main goals. (teaching works both ways, I want to teach Indonesian people things about the western world, and I want to teach the western people about the Indonesian culture.)

One more thing, I try to make this blog as less personal as I can. So you will almost never see me using a name or anything. I try to respect privacy, but sometimes you want to tell a story which involves a person. That’s why I decided to do it like this.

So now, let me tell you more about the country where it is not fine to wear shoes in the house, but where parking a motorcycle in the guestroom is completely normal, and in the lands where they put chocolate in the refrigerator, but where butter doesn’t need to be there for some reason. The place where they eat almost all foods with their hands, but not pizza…

This is my story, about Indonesia.

Written by Merlijn Dieteren.

I will begin with telling you about an important thing in this country, Respect.

Respect

Let me start off with one of the big things I noticed here. People are very respectful to each other, and especially to the elders. That is a difference in my country. It’s not that we don’t have respect, but it’s just different. Like in the Netherlands when I enter my school and I see a teacher, we just say ‘hi’ and sometimes ‘good morning’ but here you have to give them a hand, and then touch their hand with your face (I know it sounds weird when I describe it hehe, so sorry, but you have to see it to really know what I mean). Those things are different here. So in Indonesia they indeed have more respect for others, and especially elders. But what I did notice, is that we, in the Netherlands and I think in more western countries, work more with etiquettes. For instance we always eat with a fork and knife (In Indonesia they have a fork and spoon, but that’s not the point) and I have to use both my fork and my knife. If I would only use my fork my mother would even get mad at me haha. Here in Indonesia people don’t care how you eat… They even eat with their hands. If I would eat with my hands at a restaurant in the Netherlands, everyone would look at me like I killed someone. Also when someone burbs it is just fine here. No one cares. And when someone sneezes no one says anything! Where I am from we say ‘gezondheid’ (which means something like ‘health to you’, English people say ‘Bless you’)

And there are many other examples I could give, but I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. Because I waited so long with writing a blog I will post everything at the same time, so everyone has a lot to read hahaha.

So my conclusion is that Indonesian people work more with Respect, and Dutch (western) people work more with Etiquettes.

I noticed that in Indonesia all the cars have darkened windows, so I was like ‘are the people that scared of thieves ? Are they that distrustful? So I asked, and no it is of course because of the sun! and then I was like ‘oow of course!’ haha. There are so many things you don’t know why they are this way in the first place, but after you ask it you realize why it’s this way.

I also go with the motor a lot of times (don’t worry, I never drive the motor myself. I am not even allowed to by AFS) and at first it was kind of scary. Driving through the traffic of Yogyakarta, but believe me, you get used to it. The first few times I hold on tight with both hands of course, but after some time I started using one hand, and right now I feel fine without holding on at all. It’s like riding a bike haha. No but you will get used to it. You can’t really fall backwards that easily, and you can’t even fall any other way at all.

What I do think is scary, is that you sometimes see whole families on one motor! Sometimes you see 3 people, and I have even seen 4 people on one motorcycle at one!! That’s insane! That’s a whole family of parents and two children on one motor…

Language

As some of you who already knew me back in the Netherlands might recall, I was never really good at learning languages… (Perhaps some of you remember my German and French score… I’m so happy I passed that year anyways). But learning a new language is just something that is not easy for me. Of course, when you are on an exchange year, it is expected of you to learn the new language. (unless that new language is English, then of course it’s not really a ‘new’ language.)

I am doing my best to learn Bahasa Indonesia, but I am having some difficulties with it. Relatively speaking Indonesian is not the hardest language I know. (I’m looking at you, French) but still it takes time. Unfortunately, there are people who expect you to be able to fluently speak the new language within a month. That’s almost impossible. At least for me. I have been here for around 5 months, and I still don’t fully control the language. I am better at Indonesian than I was at French or German, but still it’s not even close to my English and Dutch skills.

What I thought was really interesting about this whole experience is that sometimes your lack of language skills leads to funny situations. My host family doesn’t really speak English (Only my host brother but he is very busy with school, which I can totally understand).
One time they asked me how my mother was doing, because we just skyped, and I wanted to tell them she had a headache. Which in Indonesian is ‘Dia Pusing’ if I’m not mistaken. However, I accidently said ‘Dia kucing’ which means ‘she is a cat’… so my host family did not understand what I was talking about, and I can’t really blame them haha. Also one time I wanted to buy bread, however I didn’t want white bread. So I asked for brown bread. The word for brown in Indonesian is ‘Coklat’, which is the same word for ‘chocolate’. So she brought chocolate bread with her. Which of course is not really a big problem, but I wanted to be healthier and eating chocolate bread is not really supportive then….

Talking about foods, I get the feeling sometimes that people in Indonesia tend to eat more then I’m was used to back in the Netherlands. But it could also be because I’m a foreigner and people just want to feed me well.

So one day, I ate instant spaghetti at home, but it was literally the worst spaghetti I have ever had in my life…. Don’t ever buy instant spaghetti… it tasted like plastic etc. However, my host mother made it for me, so I did not want to disappoint her and finished the whole meal. When I was done, she asked me if I liked it. I did not want to sound impolite, but I wanted her to make that stuff again for me even less, so I kindly said to her ‘well it’s not my favourite food… but it was fine’ in my best Indonesian. She understood that I did not like the spaghetti and said something like ‘don’t worry, I’ll make you a new better plate’ and she literally wanted to make a second plate of spaghetti for me! I like to eat just like every other human, but eating two big plates of spaghetti in a row is a bit too much for me.

Differences in the city

What I noticed, is that cities in the Netherlands and Indonesia are very different. (of course, what would you expect). Here they have a lot of restaurants and places to drink like cafés etc. I really like this. Here it is very cheap to just buy some food or even a real meal. For 1 euro you can literally have a meal. And if you pay around 3 euros you can really eat and drink like a king! (1 euro is almost similar to 1 dollar (unfortunately), for my American and non-European friends). I am placed in Yogyakarta, which is even cheaper than other cities around Indonesia. Indonesians sometimes go to Yogyakarta because it’s so cheap. I love it haha. It is really normal here to hang out with friends, get some food, and just go to the city or to the mall. In the Netherlands we all go to the house of a friend. Or your house. I can’t even remember me going to a real restaurant with friends to hang out. It’s waaay to expansive. (I am from a small, but great, city, so that might also be the reason.)

Also what I found is that there are a lot of military bases located here. I have never even seen the Dutch military.. apart from liberation day then. But here sometimes you see military people casually walking through the city. I was surprised by this. Also people told me that the military is still a big thing here. When I told them that in the Netherlands the military is certainly not that big anymore, people started asking me ‘then what would you do if a country attacked you?’ and I never really thought of an answer, I just don’t really think it’s possible anymore in Europe for a country to attack the Netherland, and only the Netherlands.. I think that if a country would invade my country, all of Europe and possibly America would side with us. So War is kind of not really something I expect in the Netherlands. They also asked me what my country would do if a tsunami, earthquake, volcanic eruption or any other natural disaster occurred. And I simply answered them that any of those disasters are not really possible in the Netherlands. (apart from minor earthquakes in Groningen then because we dig for gas). Speaking about disasters in the Netherlands, I did have to explain a lot about how we deal with rivers and water in the Netherlands, because that is probably one of the only natural things we really fear where I live. Luckily with Geography we talk in colour and smell (yaay I love Dutch sayings which make no sence when translated to English, explain in colour and smell, geur en kleur, means like thoroughly explained.) about rivers. So I could explain a few things about how we are able to stop the water from flooding literally everything in the Netherlands.

By the way, I noticed how often Dutch people like to use sayings, like I just did. Sayings, or Spreekwoorden in Dutch, are really often used in the Netherlands, and when I was together with a Belgium, Dutch and an American friend, we found out how often Dutch people actually use saying. English people do it a lot less. It was hilarious when we started translating some sayings, like ‘oh now comes the monkey out of the sleeve!’. You could see that the American girl was a bit confused.

One last thing what I thought was amazing, was when my school had its birthday (yes we celebrate the birthday of the school here) everyone was wearing traditional clothes. That’s cool, but not really strange, however what I did notice is that some people went one step further and even took a Kriss (typical Indonesian sword/dagger) with them to school! As some of you know I like traditional weaponry, but I did not expect it to be take-your-swords-to-school-day. I loved this day. We also made some traditional rice cakes (people did not really like it when I called it that, but it’s basically a big cake made out of rice, with food on it. I really liked it! (In Nederland ga ik straks ook lekkere rijsttaarten maken)

That being said, let’s move on with the next thing, that is a really important and big difference. Time.

Time

I hear you thinking, and no I’m not talking about the Time zone, as you can all Google the time zone here is +7. The Netherlands is +1 so here it is 6 hours later.

What I actually wanted to talk about is how people see the time. In my country, being in time is important. And I am pretty sure that’s everywhere in Europe. Especially in the North. Every day I cycled to school with my friends, and if I were 5 minutes late without sending a text they would just cycle away. If someone would pick me up somewhere, and is 10 minutes late, I would not be happy, and a bit grumpy. This is normal in the Netherlands. This I NOT normal here. And once again, I am not saying this to offend someone, but this is just in my experience, but here it is normal to be late… I have let myself been told that it is especially like this in the strong Javanese culture. (Of course Jakarta is different, it’s the capital). I always have a hard time with this, and I am not the only one. Almost all the exchange students I’ve talked with have problems with this, because when someone says ‘I will pick you up at 2’ and at 4 they send you a text ‘I’m on the way’ well… it gets frustrating. Many times I’ve had to wait for people, and I’m not the only one. One time I was at school, waiting to be picked up, after 50 minutes someone came to pick me up, but of course I was a bit grumpy, can you blame me? Try waiting 50 minutes when you want to go home after a busy school day, without anyone replying to your texts. But when I was home people did not really understood why I was  a bit grumpy. So I kind of explained. Later someone in my class explained to me that when someone picks you up, and is helping YOU, you are expected to just wait and not complain, because you are being helped. I explained her that that is different than in my country. If I would pick someone up, but let them wait 50 minutes, he/she will be furious. I honestly believe friendships can be broken by making people wait too long in The Netherlands.

And when you are late, you send a text saying how long it is still going to take. Like ‘I’m there in 10 minutes’ for example. Here they just send ‘I’m otw’ (on the way). Which could mean anything. Are you… 5 minutes away? 10? 30? 1 hour? You just don’t know. However now I figured out that ‘on the way’ basically means ‘I am preparing and will almost leave’….

Even the bus does not have a schedule here… which means the bus is never late, nor is it early, it arrives precisely when it means to… just like a wizard, provided we trust Gandalf. (sorry I’m a geek remember hehe)
That the bus doesn’t have times is really convenient for the bus, less so for the people who want to USE the bus… people go really early to the bus so they will be in time for school. Like REALLY early..

I remember when I was in high school, when we had to wait 10 minutes we are like ‘why is the bus so late.. I want to go home..’.

Cultural differences.

Here I never use a bus. I rather go by Ojek. This is someone on a motor cycle, who if you give him a call, will pick you up and bring you anywhere you want. For a bit more than a euro. Which is great!

Once again I am very sorry for my late upload, but I hope these 3.006 words exactly will at least make up for it a little.

Thank you all for reading this! And I will try to upload more and earlier. Otherwise I have to type my next upload in the Airplane back to the Netherlands. Which is something I don’t want.

I see you all in my next upload!