Homestays

So we've moved into our homestays in Yogyakarta after a week of living in a (very nice) hotel. The transition was interesting enough, especially because mine was not seamless at all...

Since I'm the Student Fellow for the trip, Agustini asked me to go along with her to drop each person off at their homestay so that I could see them all, and that was really cool! The first person was Jake and his host family's house is gigantic, so we now refer to his homestay as Jake's mansion. Seriously, the house is two stories, marble tile, a fish pond, newly renovated bedrooms, exercise machines, a new kitchen...this place was amazing! Then we dropped off Rachel, Nina, Sarah and Stephen, and everybody else was deposited into their respective homestays. Each home had its own unique charm and the people of each homestay were all so kind and welcoming, greeting us always with a big smile and warm expressions.

Our homestays are divided up into two parts of town, one neighborhood holding 10 of us and the other one 5 of us. When I dropped off the last few people in the smaller group, I realized that each homestay in that neighborhood was more of a guest house where multiple students stay at once, they weren't families accepting one student into their home like most of the others in the big neighborhood. In fact Mas Bambang, our guide in Yogya, mentioned to me that one place was straight up a hotel. So I start to get a little antsy wondering what my place will be like, but at least the "hotel" that Avery and Betsy were staying in was SUPER nice; they each had a TV in their room and air condition, free wi-fi and their own bathrooms. I was expecting great things for my place after seeing theirs, but you all know that if I had a nice, simple, happy experience in mine then I wouldn't be writing about it now...

My homestay was the Bates motel. (Psycho anyone?) We pull up in the rain, making it all the more ominous, and I'm not kidding the only person of all the homestays who did not look friendly was behind this gate. She looked rather annoyed that we were there, and as it turns out she wasn't even the owner of the place who Agustini expected to meet there, but a worker there. It was a hotel, there was no doubt in my mind about this, but prof was trying to pull this off as a homestay. I was slightly saddened realizing I wasn't staying in a home with an Indonesian family, but I tried to perk up and not let it get me down, thinking how I'll have privacy and independence instead. Well, the looks of this "homestay" were not very promising to say the least. Karen, the other girl assigned to stay there, and I investigate each of our rooms, and a slow wave of disappointment sets over both of us...There is no air conditioning or television like the other hotel, and it's probably right around 85 degrees at this point in the evening. The bathroom consists of a toilet and a basin filled with dirty water probably still around from the previous tenant's stay. There is no toilet paper or shower, just a small bucket floating in the murky water in the basin that we are to fill with water and dump over ourselves as a bath. I think to myself "at least the bed will be comfortable" but as I sprawl out across the mattress it doesn't support me but recedes into itself like I'm lying on a bed of quicksand. Yiick.

Now I wouldn't have been so judgemental of this place if I hadn't seen all the other wonderful families and awesome digs that my companions had been assigned to live in. But I had, so I was. And to make matters worse, I started hearing odd noises as I was getting ready for bed. I heard a knock at the door, so I shyly utter "Karen?" but noone was there. I hear what sounds like water rushing from the bathroom, but I can't find where the sound is coming from. I start to get thoroughly freaked out and consider asking Karen if we can sleep in the same room when I hear her call to me from her room next door saying that she's locked in her room! She had the keys and everything but once she locked her door from the inside she couldn't get out. We had to call over the lady who let us in just to get her out; this place could definitely have been the scene of a slasher film or twisted horror movie of some sort...Karen slept in my room that night, scaredy cats we were.

Thankfully the next morning Agustini was as appalled as we were by the conditions of our "homestay" and we promptly moved out. (After a breakfast of fried rice and fly-covered fruit that is) Karen got to move into Jake's mansion and I am now living in a family run guest house that has people from all over the world staying there. Every night I have dinner with the occupants of the house, with new people coming in every day. There's an English girl working on her PhD, a Swiss boy, Filippino man, and German girl all studying Indonesian languge, a Japanese woman who works for the UN, a French couple on holiday, and two recent PhD recipients who will become professors in the fall at universities in the US, one American and one from Nepal. Needless to say, I'm endlessly enthralled in conversation with them hearing about their stories and lives. To my amazement English is our common language, they have all learned it through the course of their educations in whatever country they originate from. It's quite wonderful living in that wordly guest house, and I have an Indonesian family to talk to and learn from as well the guests from every end of the earth. So alas the homestay situation ended up just fine after all...