New friends, new food and new beginnings.

Today began with a knock at my door from my teman kos, or my next door neighbour in my boarding house. The girl next door, Tita and her little sister had invited me to go to their church which I had forgotten started at 7am on Sunday morning, luckily they had knocked on my door at 6:10am. So a quick shower and off I was on the back of Tita's motorbike to a church service. The night before I had gone drinking with the boys from my Indonesian class in Sydney but luckily I left before my night turned into watching them vomit about the streets and club, in might I add, the most holy month in the Muslim calendar.

So Catholic Church is nothing like it's counterpart back home, or maybe it was because I couldn't understand everything properly o the fact that there was so much singing that it was enough to keep me entertained? The church they took me to was St. Yohanes and it was about 10minutes by bike from our boarding house. There were over 100 people there that morning and the interesting thing was, there was no point of evangelism but just a group of people coming to worship every Sunday. Also had some gorgeous kids doing what I can only describe as a Catholic/Indonesian rendition of Glee Club. Very harmonious! Tita and her sister than took me to a local warung, an eatery of sorts, which was nice to just chat with them and laugh at how silly my Indonesian pronunciation can get at times!

From there, I headed off to Ele's garage sale or cuci gudang! From there I was able to buy some very cute vintage clothing, perfect for wearing at uni and A MILLION COATHANGERS... well, atleast less than a dollar's worth :D A new addition to my lemari or cupboard!

After the garage sale, I went to check out my friend's Gen and Liss's apartment by foot and got treated to swimming in a pool - with no one else but us! They have a very schmick apartment! Later on after swimming, we decided to go for a walk in search of vegetable based food followed by having a delicious drink at one of my new favourite café's in Yogya - Coklat! Nothing like chocolate and free wi-fi!

I met up with some other Australian students and chocolate, which I might add was delicious just incase you didn't realise my sentiment on the matter. Just to top off the day, Steph, Alex and I went stationary shopping at Grammedia! It's pretty much stationary and book heaven! They then invited me to dinner at a friend of a friend's restaurant north of Yogya so all five of us girls, at this point we have picked up Yasmin and Sophie and made way, very illegally, to a Sundanese (West Javanese) restaurant. I wish I had taken a picture of the food because as you can guess - it was so DELICIOUS!! Very traditional and excellent balance of fresh produce! Turns out Steph's friends is also a potential tutor of us in Bahasa Indonesia too!

After a long taxi ride home, after dropping us all at our various kos's and a good chat with the taxi driver, I finally made it home to see that my other neighbours were home! I made some new teman kos (boarding house friends) by the name of Uthie and Novi. Of course, no friend is officially made until you have exchanged phone numbers and FACEBOOK! It was also a great chance to get to know some of the other girls I live with and to no surprise, they too were either Dentists or GP's. I suddenly feel really silly saying that I'm only here to study the language in the social sciences faculty since they are clearly so clever but they are also super friendly. Novi particularly likes pulling my leg or cracking jokes. Somehow I think I'll have quite a few reasons to like my kos other than the fact it is bright yellow but rather, it is also home to some great girls!

Well, I best be off to study/sleep because tomorrow I have a placement test for our Indonesian classes. After the exam, all us Anak ACICIS, are going to head off to see our other ILTI friends, at their opening Ceremony at Sinata Dharma University. I hope to then go bicycle shopping as although walking is fun and exercise, I am itching to ride a bicycle around here after seeing so many old school bicycles!

I know I need to try and upload photos, so I will promise you some photos of my boarding house, some friends and anything interesting in my travels. Tomorrow I think it is camera day :)

xx