After the wedding, I got some sleep before the World Cup final between France & Italy came on at 1am. Oh man! I really thought France was going to take home the cup again after that 1st goal in the 7th minute! The game progressed,,, an intense battle between two countries desperate to win bragging rights for the next 4 years as champions of the world’s most popular sport…
And then something strange happened in the 2nd overtime. Far from the action where most eyes were focused, an Italian player said something nasty, and Zinedin Zidane,,, the French team captain, and hero to many… a man known for his calm, cool demeanor, sportsmanship & fantastic abilities,,, turns around to take the bait- and drills the Italian player square in the chest with a spontaneous head-butt. After some preliminary confusion, he was shown the red card by the ref & ejected from the game.
I read in the news that replays of the moment show the Italian player saying “your mom is a terrorist whore” to Zidane, whose parents are both Algerian immigrants to France. Hmmm- no red card for Italian *sshole provocateurs during the biggest soccer match of the next 4 years? Where’s the fairness in that! I digress,,, grumbling.
Once again, conversation class proved interesting enough to write home about. Today’s topic of discussion: Dissecting “romantics seeking partner” adds in the classifieds.
Well- we learned a lot of good adjectives today: honest (jujur), caring (penyayang), loyal (setia), easy going (supel), religious (taat), employed (karyawan)…
After class on Mondays we meet with our tutors for a few hours. Sinta and I went through a newspaper article,, which took over an hour with all my dictionary referencing. Just when you feel you’re doing well with the language,, getting through daily conversation without too many stumbles- pick up a newspaper and try to get through 3 sentences without an instant dose of humility. Whew!
I tugged on Yaya’s ear for an hour about religion & culturisms, from the perspective of a 20 something, which was fun & interesting.
Two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya met with us to repeat the ‘stay safe, keep out of trouble’ speech.
There are a few other Americans here in town working for an assortment of NGOs,,, doing various things I can only vaguely guess at. 2 of them are former USINDO students actually,, and one of them is David Wolfowitz.
Over dinner, a few of us met him & heard about what he’s up to here in Yogya. He’s working with OxFam, on a project to distribute tarps to the thousands of families who lost their homes. Wrestling through scores of imperfect data, it’s hard to track who needs what, and what has been given / received. It gets overwhelming from an organization standpoint. This is all a welcome distraction from what he was doing before- studying the electricity grids and system in Indonesia as a Master’s research project. For example, every major company has its own power generators on the premises. And they’re mostly designed to run on diesel gas,,, which used to be cheap- until the government stepped down it’s subsidies last year… effectively doubling the price of gas. Hmmm.
Anyways- he’s a real nice guy, and down to earth… which is nice to see from a guy who’s dad is the former ambassador & current World Bank president. “Very good looking” flew out of Stacey’s mouth the next day… I don’t know if she was just thinking out loud maybe… ha ha. I’d say he looks like Eric Bana (from Troy, The Incredible Hulk, and Munich)
And then something strange happened in the 2nd overtime. Far from the action where most eyes were focused, an Italian player said something nasty, and Zinedin Zidane,,, the French team captain, and hero to many… a man known for his calm, cool demeanor, sportsmanship & fantastic abilities,,, turns around to take the bait- and drills the Italian player square in the chest with a spontaneous head-butt. After some preliminary confusion, he was shown the red card by the ref & ejected from the game.
I read in the news that replays of the moment show the Italian player saying “your mom is a terrorist whore” to Zidane, whose parents are both Algerian immigrants to France. Hmmm- no red card for Italian *sshole provocateurs during the biggest soccer match of the next 4 years? Where’s the fairness in that! I digress,,, grumbling.
Once again, conversation class proved interesting enough to write home about. Today’s topic of discussion: Dissecting “romantics seeking partner” adds in the classifieds.
Well- we learned a lot of good adjectives today: honest (jujur), caring (penyayang), loyal (setia), easy going (supel), religious (taat), employed (karyawan)…
After class on Mondays we meet with our tutors for a few hours. Sinta and I went through a newspaper article,, which took over an hour with all my dictionary referencing. Just when you feel you’re doing well with the language,, getting through daily conversation without too many stumbles- pick up a newspaper and try to get through 3 sentences without an instant dose of humility. Whew!
I tugged on Yaya’s ear for an hour about religion & culturisms, from the perspective of a 20 something, which was fun & interesting.
Two officials from the U.S. Consulate in Surabaya met with us to repeat the ‘stay safe, keep out of trouble’ speech.
There are a few other Americans here in town working for an assortment of NGOs,,, doing various things I can only vaguely guess at. 2 of them are former USINDO students actually,, and one of them is David Wolfowitz.
Over dinner, a few of us met him & heard about what he’s up to here in Yogya. He’s working with OxFam, on a project to distribute tarps to the thousands of families who lost their homes. Wrestling through scores of imperfect data, it’s hard to track who needs what, and what has been given / received. It gets overwhelming from an organization standpoint. This is all a welcome distraction from what he was doing before- studying the electricity grids and system in Indonesia as a Master’s research project. For example, every major company has its own power generators on the premises. And they’re mostly designed to run on diesel gas,,, which used to be cheap- until the government stepped down it’s subsidies last year… effectively doubling the price of gas. Hmmm.
Anyways- he’s a real nice guy, and down to earth… which is nice to see from a guy who’s dad is the former ambassador & current World Bank president. “Very good looking” flew out of Stacey’s mouth the next day… I don’t know if she was just thinking out loud maybe… ha ha. I’d say he looks like Eric Bana (from Troy, The Incredible Hulk, and Munich)
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