Wednesday, 12July06

Highlights: learning from Eric how to upload videos to the website, cooking class

Just for continuity sake, here was today’s subject in “conversation” class: interviews with a housewife.
Our homework assignment last night was to interview our host mom, and ask at least 8 questions about life as a housewife. Several host family moms are working professionals (like mine), so i talked with Ibu Rochmadi about 3 of the 5 neighbors wives on our street. Ahhh! We live for the sensitive issues in Ibu Daru’s class. Ha ha.

I think attitudes about women working here are progressive… Maybe not quite as liberating for women as life in the states- but maybe something like America’s attitude in the 1970s. More & more women are leaving traditional housewife aspirations to pursue education & careers of their own, but many want to stay at home; and others are forced to by economic necessity. Interesting subject… no right answers.

I think ideas about marriage are different here as well… based on the number of arranged marriages I hear about, and the number of times I’ve heard “well,,, we’ll learn to love each other later. We just need to get married now.” Hmmmm. I won’t ever understand that completely.

So the most exciting thing about today was learning how to upload videos for you guys! Videos get across bits of an experience I just couldn’t do justice to with words or pics alone. It takes a while,, but I think it’s worth it. Hope you enjoy!
I’m going to try to post these in somewhat chronological order… in case you’re wondering