We had a test in every class this morning. Ha ha,, there’s not a lot of time to digest the stuff we learn in class before we turn-around a test on it!
My grammar teacher is really putting the thumb screws on me over all my little mistakes. It’s good.

Friday is the main day of the week for Muslim prayers. Most days, people can be a bit flexible about getting to their prayers (within 45 minutes of the call to prayer, which happens 5 times a day). At noon on Fridays though, it’s a bigger deal & they have to be punctual. (=

All of us + our tutors piled into the bus after that (around 1:15pm) and headed off to Borobudur, an hour drive northwest of here, for an over-night trip.

Borobudur is the worlds largest Buddhist temple. It’s huge. Construction took 75 years, beginning in 778 AD, and used over 1 million volcanic stones from nearby Merapi. Amazing… It’s built on a hill, well- around a hill really, which makes it even more impressive. They used a similar technique as the Egyptians did for the great pyramids; they built a level, then buried it, made another level, then buried it again… for a total of 10 levels to Nirvana. There are over 3,000 stone carvings wrapped around the temple telling stories about King Siddhartha’s life- the first Buddha.

The symbolism is great. Siddhartha is said to have walked on lotus flowers before he ever touched ground on the day he was born, and was reincarnated as a white elephant in his last life. So,,, lotus flowers & elephants are everywhere around Buddhist temples.