Team activities for our final week

The internet was broken at our hotel for a few days (so no blogging for me for a while!) so we were off the grid but not by choice.  There is something nice about not connecting, although the internet broke mid-way through a skype conversation with my parents so that was a bit inconvenient.  Our team had a nice few days with some team activities - first a nice dinner at a local restaurant called R&B Grill.  Daniel and a few others had tried this restaurant out a few nights before and highly recommended it, so we we gave it a try.  Like I mentioned earlier, I like rice & noodles (the typical staple diet here in Indonesia) but it's nice sometimes to completely change gears and get something different - in this case a steak that you cook on your very own hot stone.  There were also some live musicians, which was a welcome change from the 300X repeated CD we've been hearing in our hotel lobby and restaurant for the last month.

Steak at R&B Grill

Next up was a team excursion to the zoo.  I am typically not a huge fan of zoos, as I was a bit worried about what type of conditions the animals would be in and I hoped they would be taken care of.   The zoo turned out to be pretty small but nice.  The reptile exhibit was the most impressive, with lots of lizards and snakes that I had never seen before.  A few of us were brave enough to hold a young python, although I chickened out and didn't actually put it around my neck.  It seemed friendly (?) enough and was docile.  In the picture below it appears that I am calm but the zoo attendants were just out of view probably saying soothing things to the snake.

 

A "baby" python

The zoo also had an exhibit of Komodo Dragons. One of my teammates, Shannon, is heading to the island of Komodo with her husband in a few days -for the rest of us though, this is as close as we will ever get to a live one.  They were basking in the sun and one was even drooling from his mouth.  My guess is that we just missed feeding time or he had something on his mind other than me taking a picture!

Komodo Dragons in the background

Komodo dragon salivating at something (me?!?!)

Hungry hippo

After about two hours we were ready to head back to the hotel.  We all have found much notoriety here in Jogja as every day at least 2-3 people ask to have their picture taken with us.  Some even hold their children up near us to get them in the photo.  We are all used to it by now and it is kind of neat being a celebrity of sorts in a foreign land.

While waiting for our driver to pick us up, we sat at the zoo entrance and did some people-watching.   Probably one of the most interesting things here in Jogja is just sitting back watching the locals go about their everyday lives.  You soon realize that what is important in one culture takes on a completely different meaning or level or importance in another.  Sitting in front of the zoo we saw an older woman  riding a bicycle equipped with a drink cart and she soon stopped for a group of locals.  She started serving fruit juice out of old plastic containers (they looked like kerosene containers) into a single glass.  Someone would pay her, she's mix together a concoction of juices in the glass, then when the person was done she would dip the glass into a bucket of water she had hanging from her bike handle, and start all over again with the same glass with another customer.  She seemed quite popular with the locals but I am sure if we ever tried something like that, our foreign-not-yet-iron-clad stomachs would not be too happy.

The fruit juice cart

Speaking of fruit juice, one of the nice surprises here in Jogja has been all of the freshly squeezed juices you can buy.  I have only ordered them from our hotel and restaurants for safety reasons, but there are many food carts around town that squeeze the juices to order.  After a day sweating out in the heat, some nice refreshing juice hits the spot. My favorite juice here is called Sirsak juice - which comes from a white fruit that I had never seen anywhere else in the world.  I tried buying some squeeze-juice boxes of Sirsak juice from the supermarket but the fresh variety is much much better.