Mendut Monastery

Banthe Pannyavaro

Yesterday was pretty much a typical day at the office for me at Interfidei, which is pretty amazing. Misato and I have been making a movie about one of Interfidei's programs called the SLI. It's an interfaith school for university students in Indonesia. For the movie, we have been traveling around Jogja and interviewing student participants and facilitators of the program from all different religions. It has been an incredible opportunity to discuss religion with a diverse group of people. Our interview yesterday took us an hour outside of Jogja to the Mendut Buddhist Monastery where we interviewed Interfidei board member, Banthe Pannyavaro. He is not only the head of the Mendut Monastery, but also the leader of Tera Vada Buddhism in Indonesia. 

When we arrived at the monastery, I was immediately struck by how peaceful and beautiful it was. The gardens were filled with flowers and trees and as you walk along the paths, you notice the statues and shrines sprinkled throughout the property. Banthe Pannyavaro greeted us with his toothless smile and gave us a tour of the property. We were allowed to watch as the monks-in-training meditated and chanted in the meditation room. The property was completely open to us to roam around and take as many pictures as we wanted. As Banthe Pannyavaro kept repeating, "There is no copyright, only right to copy." 

The entrance to the monastery

Banthe Pannyavaro then sat with us and explained some aspects of Buddhism. He touched on everything I had learned in the classroom: the Noble Eightfold Path, the Four Noble Truths, etc. However, he went far beyond what I could have gotten from a class. He showed us around their modest library, pointing to Buddha statues and explaining where each had come from. Misato and I were then given the chance to interview him for our movie. After he had finished discussing the SLI in Bahasa Indonesia, he began to ramble on in English. What he said is something I'll never forget. He explained that you can be a good person even if you don't have religion in your life. You are a good person if you have good thoughts, and a bad person if you have bad thoughts. However, being a good or bad person is a temporary state and you can always change from one to the other. It is all about the tone of your thoughts and keeping yourself positive. 

After our discussion with Banthe Pannyavaro, we watched as the monks took alms and begged for their food. This noon-time meal would be the last meal of the day for them. The monks do not eat from noon one day until the following morning at seven. People from the town had gathered and made an impressive spread of food for them. The monks lined up single-file with their bowls beneath their robes. One-by-one they took food from the table and headed  downstairs into the basement of a building. Once they had all served themselves, we followed them downstairs and watch their pre-meal ritual. Banthe Pannyavaro lead them in prayer and then they began to chant. It was so beautiful and even made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. After about ten minutes or pre-meal ritual, the monks began to eat in silence and we were ushered out. We were then also given lunch and it was delicious! The funniest part was that they had little boxed of KFC for the monks. Watching them eat that definitely gave us all a laugh.

At the end of our visit Banthe Pannyavaro gave us each a book about the teachings of Buddhism, which I'm looking forward to reading. This has actually been my first direct encounter with Buddhism in Indonesia and it was such an amazing experience!

The monks walking to their meditation session. 

The female nuns walking to the meditation session.

The AUA volunteers in front of a temple given to the monastery by Japan. 

The entrance to the boarding house for the monks. The pose of the Buddha symbolizes cutting suffering with the middle way. 

Banthe Pannyavaro with his bowl for receiving alms.

The monks lined up to get their food. 

Prayer before a meal. These 7 monks are the only full-time residents of the monastery. The rest are just in training here. 

The yellow sandals of the monks left outside the meditation center. Yellow is significant in Buddhism because it is the color of the monk's robes. 

Banthe Pannyavaro showing us some of the holy writings in Buddhism. The writing is on palm leaves and is done by etching with a needle and filling the etching in with soot. As Banthe Pannyavaro reminded us, this is a very old method and now we can download the texts on the internet. 

The type of tree that the Siddhartha was said to have died under. Once he died he became the Buddha. 

One of the Buddha statues in the garden. 

Creepy Crawlers

This small lizard is called a "cicak" pronounced "chi-cha".
It currently lives in my bathroom. 

I've been planning to do a post about all the animals and insects in Jogja for a while, but I was waiting until I had some good stories. Interestingly enough, I had two major incidents in one day.

To give some background, Indonesian houses are much more open than American houses. No one really uses screens on the windows and sometimes people just leave their front door wide open. This means all the bugs and animals are invited to crawl around the house.

While at first I was totally horrified by the presence of bugs everywhere, I've gradually grown more tolerant. At work if there are ants crawling on my laptop, I just brush them aside without a second thought. I've also learned to not squirm at the sight of every lizard, especially because I know they eat mosquitos.

However, as I said, I had two very unfortunate run-ins with critters this weekend. The first was after I came home from shopping at a traditional market. I was showing my friends some of the things I purchased and when opening a purse, a cockroach jumped out and began running around my room. After a few seconds of screaming and putting the bug outside, I tested to see if some of my other gifts had bugs in them. And of course, another bag had another cockroach. Totally disgusting! Cockroaches also like to climb up the shower drains into our bathrooms.

My second incident was much worse and came later that night. At dinner, our friend Bila was telling us about how sometimes lizards fall off of the walls and ceilings onto people. All of us were shocked and grossed out by this. But of course, it happened as soon as we got home. A volunteer, Courtney, opened the door to her room and a lizard landed on her back. She quickly swatted it away and screamed. I was walking in the living room and before I knew it I heard a crunch. The lizard had landed directly underneath my shoe and I killed it without even realizing. The experience was a little bit scarring.

Not a bug, but it's interesting to note that chickens walk through the office fairly regularly. 

A giant wasp in my office 

A cicak eating the rice off of the spoon at work.

Pantai

On Saturday morning the NGO volunteers and my buddy, Bila, rented a car and headed out to the beach. Since none of us have a license here, we rented a car with a driver. The total package with fuel included was only $45 between the 5 of us. Such a steal!

As we headed out of the loud and bustling city, we began climbing up treacherous mountain highways. With very little in the way of guard railings, the 2-hour drive was pretty unnerving at times. Especially because, just like in the city, there are very few traffic laws and people are constantly passing each other. Despite a few screams from the American volunteers, we made it to the beach safely and saw a ton of great scenery along the way! 

The beach was absolutely gorgeous, but our first reaction was: why is everyone wearing clothes? Across the board everyone was wearing their regular clothes. Men were swimming in jeans and a t-shirt, women were in full-length skirts and blouses.  There were even women wearing their hijabs in the water. No one was laying out and tanning and absolutely no one was wearing a bathing suit. 

We immediately bombarded Bila with questions (as we always do). It was just so unbelievable to us that no one was showing any skin. Clearly the expectation of modesty doesn't stop at the beach. Bila also explained that to Indonesians, being tan is ugly. Fair skin is considered beautiful. 

Even though we felt extremely uncomfortable, we shed our modest layers and carried out our day in our one-piece bathing suits. As you can imagine, this invited everyone to stare at us. Not only were we the only foreigners on the entire beach, but we were wearing the least amount of clothing. We've grown accustomed to having our picture taken, since many Indonesians we encounter rarely see white people, but this time it was especially creepy because we were wearing bathing suits. 

Despite the stares and odd beach customs, this was the most beautiful and incredible beach I've ever been to in my life! Called Ngandong beach, there were endless areas to explore. We walked out to beautiful rocks and were able to get up close to a coral reef and see a ton of marine life. The Indian Ocean is very rough, but there was an area shielded by a reef where we could swim and the water was incredible! Much saltier than the Atlantic or Pacific. We even found a gorgeous cave that we climbed through and watched the waves crash on the rocks. One of the most beautiful and serene spots I've ever visited! 

After watching the sunset, we headed back to Jogja via the same treacherous route, but this time in the dark. Once we got to the city Bila took us out for "western food" (aka non-Indonesian food). When we walked in the door, I was instantly shocked by how many westerners there were. There were more white people in that restaurant than I've seen the rest of the trip combined. So I guess we finally saw where all the foreigners hang out and eat, which was actually pretty nice. I didn't even realize how much I had been missing western food. 

I've included a bunch of photos of Ngandong beach below! By the way, the name is impossible to pronounce. I still don't think I can do it. 

Our very modest beach outfits (by American standards) 

A giant sea urchin 

A woman picking up hermit crabs to sell 

Women swimming in their hijabs

The view out of the amazing cave we found! 

Me, Courtney and Bila in the cave

Amazing corals!

The sand is so different and entirely made up of coral

Sunset

My Unusual and Unforgettable Fourth of July

So to be honest, I woke up this morning feeling pretty homesick. It's hard for me to be so far from the US on the Fourth of July when I know all my friends and family will be celebrating together. Luckily, my initial bad mood was lifted throughout the day as my fellow AUA volunteers, co-workers, and my buddy were all wishing me a happy Independence Day. Everyone was so genuinely interested in learning more about American customs and traditions on the Fourth.

Then tonight the four American AUA volunteers cooked for our Indonesian friends (the other two volunteers are from Japan and Canada). We tried our best to find American ingredients and make a typical Fourth of July dinner, but once we scanned all the aisles of the grocery store we realized this would be a serious challenge. Not being able to find even the most basic of ingredients made me understand what a truly foreign country this is. Our menu was grilled cheese, salad, Pringles, watermelon, s'mores, and Oreos with peanut butter. But even this simple menu was hard to execute. For example, the marshmallows were cut from a long multi-colored rope, the chocolate was not Hershey's but a 5 cent alternative, and there were no graham crackers so we just used cookies. While eating dinner we listened to an American soundtrack and sang along. Even though it wasn't perfect, dinner was a total success and it was so fun to share American food with our Indonesian friends!

Then we made our own version of a fireworks show with sparklers. Running around in the front yard was a blast! And we even sang the national anthem. Ironically, this may have been my most patriotic Fourth of July to date, despite being halfway across the world.

Happy Independence Day to everyone back home!!

Me and Katarina making the grilled cheeses. It was certainly not easy given the kitchen conditions. There are no pans so our options were a wok or a pot. We chose a pot, which was definitely challenging. Also, the "stove" is actually just a hot plate outside the house in a small room. The heat was unbearable!  

Awe trying his first s'more! He loved it, but he likes everything sweet. 

Despite being skeptical, they all loved s'mores.

Bila and Haura give them two thumbs up.

Lighting sparklers

Group shot outside the house! 

The Food Post

Now I know this has been what my friends and family have been wondering about the most...the food! Most of the time I try foods without even knowing what they are and, for the most part, things are delicious! To me there are just a few general characteristics of Indonesian food in Jogja that are important to know:

1. There is rice at every single meal. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner can all have rice. You can have rice with your noodle soup. Not everyone in Indonesia eats rice, but the island of Java does. Some other islands eat corn or potatoes as their main starch. 
2. Snacks are always served. If you go to visit someone, there is usually a tray of small snacks or an individual snack box waiting for you. Everyone is very generous with food. 
3. Breakfast for Indonesians is the same as dinner to Americans. You can have chicken, rice and broccoli for breakfast and that is totally normal. 
4. On the island of Java, they love their sugar. Sweet things are ten times sweeter here than they are in the U.S. 
5. There is a ton of fried food and it's amazing. 
6. Finally, hot chili sauce is served with almost every meal. It's extremely delicious in small doses. 

Below are some of the food pictures I've taken. Enjoy them and be very jealous! 

This KFC sign shows two things about Indonesian food: they eat dinner for breakfast and there is rice at every meal. In case you can't tell that is fried chicken, rice, and scrambled eggs. 

This is probably my favorite dish so far. It's called "Mie Ayam", or chicken noodles. It has chicken wontons on top as well. This cost me 95 cents.  

Another delicious dish called "Soto". It's rice noodles with vegetables and chicken. 

This is the typical lunch spread at work. From left to right we have Soto, fried tempeh, chili sauce, limes, and papaya. At work we always have tempeh, which is a soy product, and fresh fruit. The lunch is prepared by a cook and everyone sits and eats together.  

This is "krupuk", a type of cracker here. It comes in many flavors including prawn, which I am not a fan of.  On the street you will see vendors with giant trash bags full of krupuk to sell. 

This is our breakfast spread at the AUA house where we also have a cook.  There is rice, fried chicken, egg noodles, vegetables, and sweet tempeh. Nothing like an American breakfast and it's very odd to eat in the morning. 

A beautiful street cart selling fresh fruit with chili sauce on it called "rujak".  Spicy and sweet at the same time! 

Baskets of snake fruit. An example of some of the unusual fruit here. 

This is iced tea with sugar at the bottom. Way too much for me!

An example of the snacks you are presented when you go somewhere for a meeting. 

Delicious fried noodles with chicken.