Saturdays with Anak-Anak Jalanan

A very common sight to see here are children standing at street corners and traffic lights, begging for money. These kids are called "anak-anak jalanan" or street kids and it's a whole subculture here. Although some of them don't have families, most of them still have families and still live at home. Their parents and the kids realize they can make an income doing this and so often times they stop going to school in elementary school and continue begging for money.
The good thing is, there's becoming more awareness and people who are advocating for these children within Indonesia. People who are helping kids realize their potential and stay in school. On Saturdays, I have been going to an after-school program for street kids, helping them with homework, teaching English, and making up other lessons for them. The couple who oversee this center are Indonesians who live in that kampung and run it out of a house that they rent. These kids come everyday after school from 3-5PM to do their schoolwork.
I have loved going there on Saturday, helping out and spending time with the kids. On a given day, there's anywhere from 20-40 kids, ranging from 1st grade up to Middle School, who all cram in to a one-room home. It's amazing to see their eagerness to learn! Even when they're done with homework, they ask for me to make more problems for them to solve or for lessons in English so they can learn more.
Below are some pictures that I have taken with my phone over the past couple weeks. Sorry for the poor quality!

Sometimes it's complete chaos, but here they're working so diligently!! :)

A group of girls that I work with a lot while I'm there.

There are interruptions sometimes...like when it downpours and the alley floods! They all broke out and played in the rain.

New Food Friday...A Ginger Theme

Even after living here for over a year, there are still so many foods I haven't tried yet and my friend Nining likes thinking of new things for me to try(sometimes I think she wants to find something I don't like...which is rare haha). Now that she knows I really like ginger, she's been making me try any food with ginger in it :)
The other day she took me to a place that sells "tahwa," and by "place" I mean a cart on the side of the road :) Tahwa is this hot, sweet soup with a really strong ginger taste. And then tofu is layered on top. The taste was pretty good, but consistency of tofu kind of weirds me out sometimes...

The second thing she made me try was a lot better. It's called "ronde" and is considered a drink, even though it's served in a bowl.

It's served with peanuts sprinkled on top and the round things are balls made of rice flour with their local sugar(kind of like brown sugar) inside. It looks weird, but it was soooooo good! I think it's my new favorite thing to have, especially on a rainy night.

I Love It!

First off, I'm sorry that I've been really slacking with posting lately. Things have been pretty crazy over the past couple months and I have let blogging kind of fall by the wayside. Getting started again, I thought it'd be a good idea to start with a "Love It!" post...something I love about Indonesia. There are so many unique things about Indonesia, but one of them is the unique infrastructure(how nerdy and lame do I sound?), from neighborhoods to farming land, roads/paths, bridges, etc.
Cities are very densely populated, but instead of them being built up in highrises, they are more widespread. Cities are full of "kampungs", a type of neighborhood, are clusters of houses, wall to wall, sometimes on streets that aren't wide enough for cars to pass through. They weave and wind like a maze...it is so easy to get turned around and lost in some of them. It amazes me how these kampungs were built!

This is view from the outside of a kampung...a lot of times they're built on levels or tiers, especially if it's near a river so they houses lead down to the river.

Java's soil is so rich and so fertile for farming. The area of Java that I live in is surrounded by volcanoes, making the soil even more fertile. As the people live and farm in such mountainous areas, they plant of the sides of the mountains. It's one of the coolest things I have ever seen! One of my friends, Nana, is from a village near Mt. Bromo. Her dad is a farmer and their house is literally on the side of a mountain and his farm is on the slope. Can't be afraid of heights if you're a farmer here!

One of the neighborhoods that I frequently run in is called Puncak Tidar. It's a really nice neighborhood at the top of a hill(Puncak means "summit" in Indonesian). At the very end of the neighborhood is a big surrounding wall.

In the wall is a random door that looks like it leads to nowhere, but it goes to a village area behind it.

A path on the other side of the door that goes to the kampung.

The door reminds me of a secret passage! Each morning, a lot of workers from the village come through the door on their motorbikes to get to the city.

This bridge is one my recent finds. My friend, Faith, saw it once and wanted to drive back to take pictures. So, I tagged along. It's a bridge that connects the road to rice padi fields. But in the middle of the bridge is a door that is open during the day for workers to come in and out, but closed at night.

This guy had no problem posing for the picture...I'm sure his friend carrying the big load appreciated that :)

These are just a few pictures that I happened to have. I know they're not the best quality(most of them are taken with my phone), but it gives you an idea! Indonesia is in itself such a unique place and I'm finding more and more things that add to that as I live here.