A couple days ago I realized I had no idea what day it was – not a bad way to live, day by day. If nothing else, it makes the past present and future all blend into one.
We left Jakarta and departed for Jogja (what the locals call Jogjakarta). Jogja is a smaller town by Indonesian standards. The traffic isn’t quite as bad, the buildings more sparse and spread out.
About an hour’s drive away from Jogja is the Borubudur – the world’s largest buddhist temple. Here in this temple is a special Buddha, #8. If you can reach in and touch the Buddha’s heel, whatever you wish is supposed to come true. It’s not an easy reach, but as I’ve noticed, I’m also taller than the average Indonesian, so guess what! I’m going to – oh wait, maybe I’m not supposed to say what I wished. Anyways…it was pretty exciting.
How to Feel Like a Celebrity
BTW – if you’re a foreigner to Indonesia and want to feel like a rock star, go to the Borobudur and don’t hide the fact that you aren’t a local. We were surrounded by school groups, all wanting to practice their english (which happens to already be very good). Students come up to you in groups of three or four, and very politely ask if you speak english followed by another question of whether they can ask you more questions. Say, “yes” and they all open their notebooks as they ask questions and take notes. It usually ends with them asking for you to sign their books with a short note and signature. And then pictures. Picture after picture after picture.
For some reason I look more foreign than my parents, so as I stood under the heat (literally and figuratively), they just smiled and slowly walked away to go sit in the shade. I won’t complain, it did make me feel special 
A Glimpse of the Future?
There is an intriguing spirituality that permeates here in Indonesia – it is a heavily religious and spiritual country, which tends to lead you to look for signs or read into things.
After a couple nights in Jogja, we left for Surabaya, the city where my mom was born. Today we visited an aunt of my mom’s who runs a beadwork business selling artwork made of beads, beans and seeds. The art is quite creative and some pieces very elaborate. I’ll be bringing a few pieces home with me, but leaving quite a few more behind that she had offered. One piece that caught my attention was a scene depicting love. There were what looked like a couple with three kids, another couple to the side, and then one in the centre at an altar. Maybe foreshadowing a future where my sister will have her third child, my brother will be married, leaving me at the altar? LOL, who knows.
Flying solo as the third wheel with my parents, going on a trip to a wedding, meeting family and having many conversations about family, about my sister and her family, my brother and his engagement, my relatives and their families, my cousin being matched up with a family friend – it all leads to a recurring conversation that usually leads the other person to say, “Oh! You’re still single! Maybe we should find you an Indonesian girl!”
It’s really actually not all that bad. But it does tend to make you take more notice of the times when you’re sitting in a hotel restaurant with my parents and an aunt an uncle, sitting at a table for six and seeing an empty seat across the way, or flying on a small plane where seats go two-by-two and I sit next to the stranger beside me (mind you this time I was sitting next to a Vice Dean from Indonesia’s largest university, so the conversation turned out well this time). Small details, but the small things add up.
I can totally relate to the bit about celebrity as it was exactly the same in Japan. One group of students actually got our address as well and sent us some hand drawn postcards and flower seeds later on. It was pretty cool.