Today we didn't go to the funeral service. Last night there was a service in the home of Pak Sandroto's family. Hugo went there and squished into the house along with a ton of other people. There were so many people there that they were sitting outside the house along the gong. Of course, as at all events here, they used a microphone with amplifier so everyone could hear. I could hear the singing at our house. This morning they had another small service at the house before the body was picked up by the "mobil jenaza"-literally meaning "corpse car". It's basically a van with lights on top of it. There was to be another service far away from here. Here there are normally three kinds of cemetaries. Those where christians and muslims can bury their dead and then there are separate ones for each religion. It depends on where you live. Because we are in the big city, there are designated spots for christians to bury their dead. The muslims here prefer it if there is no mixing. We did not go to that service as we found out yesterday that one of our teachers was in the hospital with hepatitis A. We rent our motorbike from Pak Okie. So this morning we went to visit him. He's pretty exhausted right now. Here in Indonesia they really look at things differently than we do in North America. There is no antibiotics for Hepatitis A as it is a virus. You just need a lot of rest and fluids and avoid fatty foods. However, Pak Okie has to take two different kinds of "medicine" three times a day. Who knows what they're getting him to take. The ward that he is in looks like something out of a movie set in the 1950's. Nurses wearing white uniforms and the traditional hats. Even the room doors were retro. But it was very clean and quiet there. Of course, here when you visit a sick person you are expected to give an envelope containing money...
After that we travelled around Bandung looking for this big store called ACE. It's an american store that sells almost anything you'd need for your home and a lot of it is imported. We wanted to start checking out the prices of appliances that we'll need to get when we move to Papua. They're a lot cheaper here and there's a lot more selection. Anyways, by lunch time we still hadn't found it. We even asked some people if they knew where it was. I think we asked the three people out of the 6 million living here who don't know where the store is... Anyways, we had lunch and then called a friend who gave us directions. On our journeys this morning we really got to experience the culture and smells here. I wish we had smellmail so I could give you an idea of what it's like. We drove around so much that the tops of Hugo's hands were burnt by the sun. I felt so dirty by the time we got home all I wanted to do was have a shower. There is so much pollution here and more than one time we ended up behind a belching bus, cough, cough... But we finally made it to Ace and I got my bottle of Shout stain remover for $7. Insanely expensive, but the only absolute kind of stain remover you can find anywhere here. So I'll take what I can get.
Tomorrow the plan is to take the two neighbour ladies and their kids to the Jump'n Gym. They've never been so they're pretty excited about it.