Unit 9!!

Well, here we are, 3 days into Unit 9 and 3.3 weeks away from moving to Papua. It's still rather surreal really...
Yesterday I had the "pleasure" of skipping school as I was sick with the flu. Just a 24 hour thing thankfully so today I was able to attend again (without going to see the doctor too!). I hate wasting skips on being sick...
The focus of Unit 9 is how Indonesians come to their decisions. They really do have a different way of thinking then we do. There are still so many superstitions that are passed on from generation to generation. However, in this age of the world wide web and satelite T.V., many of those superstitions are being left behind. Except for masuk (enter) angin (wind) of course. Today I met up with our neighbours son-in-law and he was wearing, I kid you not, 4 layers on his upper body. A t-shirt, his work shirt (he's a security guard), a thick downy vest, and a leather jacket. He was also wearing a toque on his head. The temperature was well above 20 C. He told me that he wears all that because of the wind... I was feeling claustrophobic just looking at him...
So hopefully by the end of Unit 9, we'll be able to make decisions just like Indonesians... or maybe not...
I'm thinking about writing my final paper for Unit 9 on garbage and how Indonesians treat in in comparison to how we treat it. Not 100% sure yet. They really are funny about garbage though. They never throw anything away that might possibly be used later on or by someone else, even if it is broken. But when they do throw things away, like food wrappers, they just throw it wherever. Even inside their houses sometimes! But then later they will sweep it up. It's the same with the kampung. People are always just dropping their wrappers wherever and then every now and then the R.T., head of the kampung, will organize all the women to clean everything up. And we westerners are thinking, why not just put out garbage cans for people to use? There are no garbage cans in public areas here. Only at malls and even then, not nearly as many as back home. Even in the food court of a mall you will be hard pressed to find a garbage can. Anyways, one day I asked one of the warung (small shop) owners about having a garbage can because he just has a corner in front of his shop that he has dedicated for garbage. He told me that he's tried to do the garbage can thing, but that someone always dumps the garbage out and steals the can! What a place!