Day One of Training

So today was the first day of training before we leave for our pre-training villages.. it was a pretty fun day.. learned  quite a bit of stuff..

First i was woken up at 4:15 by the call to prayer that is i guess kind of sung throughout the city.. i thought it was something being piped into our room and then slowly i remembered that i was in a muslim country and this is what they do in the mornings.. i had gone to bed without my ear plugs so i had to fish around trying not to wake my roommate in order to find them.. what a morning..

To start off, we went over safety and we did some forms and got some money.. I AM A MILLIONAIRE! I wish that was cooler but most people have millions of rupiah.. the exchange rate is about 1 US dollar to about 8,650 rupiah.. it seems like it wont be easy to go through that much money but right now we have to save all the money we got until like mid May.. a good dish at a restaurant could cost anywhere between like 10,000 to 16,000 rupiah.. already you are spending quite a bit even though thats only like a dollar fifty/ two dollars in US currency.. until we actually get to the site we are only getting about 2 dollars a day in ‘pay’. hopefully i wont need it and i can save it for something special or whatever..

um next we moved onto bathrooms and yeahhhh.. nottt funn.. so in indonesia using your left hand for anything is pretty much taboo.. and ill tell you why in a second..but it obviously has something to do with the bathroom.. for those who dont know indonesia uses squat style toilets.. or more commonly known among the volunteers and many others as squatty potties.. woooo.. we were told that until we get the hang of it we should just take our pants off it would be easier.. this leads into the left hand issue.. in indonesia they dont use toilet paper but they use their left hand and a water scoop.. yeahhh.. this is going to be fun.. so what you do is you splash yourself with some water from the bin by the toilet and then wipe with your left hand and repeat until you left hand comes back clear.. obviously this will be shorter or longer due to whatever it is you were doing in the bathroom.. when your done you wash both of your hands with soap and then go about your business..  but the good thing is there is toilet paper that they sell in the market stores so i guess ill maybe use some to start out with? but i guess i should try to be indonesian and uh.. go with the flow as it were..

after that or a little before the potty discussion i found out where i will be staying the next 10 weeks.. I will be staying in a small village outside of Malang.. Im pretty excited but i havent been able to find my village on a map.. but ive looked up pictures of Malang and it looks so pretty.. the mountains and scenery i think it will make everything worth while.

After all the excitement and lunch we went back to the doctor to get some shots.. i ended up getting three and hopefully will not have to get many more in the weeks to come.. The doctor was very nice and he did this weird massaging thing by kinda pinching my arm while giving me the shot and i didnt feel it quite as much.. of course he warned me about which shots would hurt so i had a little mental preparation right before he jabbed me.. the worst was the hep a vaccine.. right before, he tells me it has some acid in it so it will burn a little.. and he wasnt lying.. but after about five minutes my arm stopped hurting.. then about 15 minutes later i could feel the pain in both my arms.. its gone away for the most part in my right arm but in my left, where i got the rabies vaccine, its very very sore.. kinda like when you get a tetnus shot..

so after all the paperwork and lectures were done we went into this other conference room and played a game where we had to stand up if ..... applied to you.. of course nothing applied to me expect the first question about being a volunteer.. it was pretty interesting though.. got to learn some stuff about people that i didnt know yet.. then we learned a traditional indonesian line dance.. first i am not a dancer, at least not when it comes to dance moves that you have to follow.. it was funny watching people slowly get up and try the dance.. some people caught on really quickly while others haha.. we all had a good laugh..i think it was the perfect thing to end the day with..

so to wrap it all up, after dinner we went out to see this statue.. it has a crocodile and a shark fighting/biting each other and the name Surabaya comes for sura-shark/fish baya-crocodile.. i dont know too much of the history or why they choose those animals to be their symbols but it was a pretty neat statue..

well i really need to go to bed.. i think i only got like 5 hours of sleep and it wasnt the best..

love you all :)

(pictures aren't uploading so i will try later)