New Years Eve

On New Years Eve I went to the town square with three of my friends - Miss Enny, my roommate; Miss Febri, who I teach elementary school with; and Miss Yoni, who also teaches at the high school.

First we got some Bakso (meatball soup) but it was so loud right next to the street. The traffic was insane.




Miss Febri enjoying her jelly ice drink thing.


Then we did some shopping at the night market. Check out this colorful jewelry stand.


Then we went across the street where we found this Gamalan orchestra abandoned and just waiting for us to play with it.




And we took some photos with a lamp that turned out pretty cool. Miss Enny's is definitely the best, I think.


Miss Yoni


Miss Febri


Me


Waiting for the rain to stop with Miss Enny and Febri


Yum


reflections

Christmas photos

Here are some photos from christmas day at the church here in Ponorogo


The children's chorus sang a song for the congregation.


This is Laura, a middle school student at my school. I went to eat some corn in the town square with her and her friends are few weeks ago and it was a lot of fun. They reminded me of my little sister!


This little girl was adorable. For some reason they had her front and center and she had a lot of trouble following the hand motions everyone was doing, but she tried her best!


This is the front of the church with it's Christmas decorations


They had a traditional Javanese dancer come to the service. She danced as a peacock and it was actually pretty beautiful.


The minister. I really couldn't understand the sermon in the least but he didn't seem to read the christmas story or anything related to it which i found strange.

Reog

Here are the photos I promised of Reog, the traditional dance of Ponorogo.


It begins with these guys called Waruk (i'm guessing on the spelling) training with their two older teachers. These guys are like monks/warriors and they fight using the rope belts you can see. Traditionally they stayed away from women and had little boys live with them as their consorts. This is obviously frowned upon today although it apparently still happens in the more remote areas.


These horse girls where traditionally played by the little boys who "entertained" the warok. Today they are played by women who dance around with the horse between their legs. The good ones look like they are really on the back of a horse, never standing still and always bobbing sort of like riders do.




Then these guys come along. There are usually between 2 and 5 of them. They are the assistants to the prince of Ponorogo although I think jesters would be a more apt title. They do a lot of acrobats and they are holding those little masks in their teeth. Fairly impressive when they are doing several back handsprings.




Then the prince comes along. He is on his way to the neighboring city of Kediri to propose to the princess. He is so love sick that he thinks his jesters are the princess and much laughing ensues.


BUT! then this guy comes along. A huge tiger with a peacock sitting on it's head. It's eager to eat everybody. Actually the guy dancing this part is holding the mask in his teeth and it weighs over 100lbs. They practice by lifting tables with their teeth. Sometimes these dancers go into a trance in order to perform.


Next, everybody tries to fight the tigers but fail.


Until the prince pulls out his magic feather duster (actually a whip but it looks pretty wimpy to me) and the tigers suddenly decide to be friends with the prince.


For the closing ceremony of the dance festival, 6 of my friends came to visit - 4 Americans, 1 Canadian and 1 Indonesian. They decided to dress us up like Warok and make us walk in a parade




See that wall of people? that is what it was like for the entire 5km. It was intense and tiring. If i stopped waving the old man walking in front of me would turn around and grab my arm and make me wave.


Before the parade we were bored so we put all our awesome hats on Young, like that book about the guy with all the hats....whats the title?


This is all of us dressed up - Mr Totok (who works at my school and drives me around), Dave (a VIA vol), me , Becca (another VIA vol), Anne (a friend of Becca), Young (a friend of Ben), Ben (VIA vol), Andre (Becca's boyfriend) and my friend Miss Hana in front.


Here are some various pics from the opening and closing ceremonies of the competition.







These are representatives from every dance group that came to the competition. 25 from the ponorogo district and 25 from all over indonesia.






And finally me posing with two female police officers as I prepared to enter the stage area.