Selamat Tahun Baru!

As I write this post, I am sittiing in my room with the air conditioner on and trying to imagine feeling cold like all of you in the U.S. must be feeling right now. I've heard there has been a lot of snow recently! It's hard for me to imagine. Part of me misses snow, but part of me is happy not to be freezing every time I walk outside. The above picture is of me and Ayu when we stopped at the beach on the way home from our Christmas trip to Bandung.
The title of this post is "Happy New Year!" I can't believe that 2010 is already at its end! Tonight I am planning on just celebrating here with my housemates. We bought ingredients to make tacos and s'mores!
I hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas! I spent mine taking a trip to bandung (another city on Java) with some of the Indonesian teachers from West. It was a lot of fun, although we spent 18+ hours in the car each way! Traffic here is crazy! Along the way, I learned that almost every city in Indonesia is famous for a certain type of food. One city is even famous for growing red onions! In Bandung we tried Batagor (bakso tahu goreng). It is made of meat and tofu fried together. Actually, it was pretty good, at least using the spicy sauce that came along with it.
(Yes, I am learning to eat more spicy foods here!)
Some of the other trip highlights were visiting a volcano, eating a Christmas dinner made by an American chef (including stuffing and mashed potatos!), shopping at the outlets, and singing happy birthday to my mom on skype with my friends in Bahasa Indonesia. When we visited the volcano/forrest, we had to pay an entry fee. The lady selling the tickets looked at me and said in Bahasa "Dari mana ini?" - basically, where is this from? So since I am from America I had to pay 5 dollars instead of 1.70 like everyone else. Oh well!
Oh, one more thing. Because I spent so much time with other Indonesians, I was able to learn more about their language. I asked them about the words to one of my favorite songs. I was trying to literally translate it and it meant "You throw water into my eyes." I was so confused until they told me that that phrase is an expression that means, "You made me cry." haha Who would have guessed?!