The rainy season has well and truly arrived. Yesterday there was a huge and destructive storm. It began around 2pm with huge cracks of thunder and lightning, followed by rain so heavy you couldn’t see more than a few meters in to it. It rained solidly for not quite an hour. This may not seem that long, but the volume of water that poured out of the sky was enormous. I had to walk to one of my classes through rivers of water, ankle deep flooded roads and around courtyards that had turned into swimming pools. Most of the time there was no way around the floods – they went from wall to wall. On my way home my feet were slipping around in my (cheap) shoes and they both broke, so I had to walk some of the way barefoot. Needless to say I chose to walk through the mud rather than through the murky pools of water. Besides all the flooding the storm had partially knocked over a huge Yamaha sign on one of the main roads, causing all the traffic to be diverted through the back roads. Most annoyingly however the entire electricity grid around my house was knocked out (again), leaving all my area without power from mid afternoon until nearly 9 that night!
In other news, it was Emma’s 21st last Thursday, so we all went to a Chinese/Japanese/Korean restaurant to celebrate. Emma’s parents were here all last week, so they were there as well, which must have been nice for her. The meal was delicious, but I have to admit my favourite thing was the amazing rich, dense chocolate cake. As much as people in Yogya like sweet things, one thing I don’t think they do particularly well is dessert. Cakes here are normally sponge cakes, which I don’t really like, or made out of tasteless jelly. So this was the first proper cake I’ve had for months and it was brilliant!
On Sunday I went with a few friends to the breakfast markets at uni. I’ve been meaning to go for ages but have never seemed to get around to it. It was brilliant. There were heaps of stores selling little trinkets and clothes, and even more set up with straw mats selling food. The stalls stretched right along 2 of the main roads within the uni and the area was packed with people wandering around, eating and sipping on fresh juices. The choice of places to eat was seemingly endless, but in the end we settled on a busy one (usually a good indication that the food is safe and/or tasty). While we were eating we were approached by more people asking for money than usual. There were the usual suspects – people on their guitars singing with various degrees of skill, women with their children, but there were also some that I hadn’t come across before, like the woman who had a microphone and speaker strapped to her body (so you just couldn’t ignore her) and the group of three transvestites who may or may not have sung. The food was good and I’ll definitely be back the next weekend I’m in Yogya.
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