Black Sugar

So basically my worst-case scenario has come true. No not the Noah style flooding of my house that many of you noticed me ranting about on Facebook. Surprisingly that is not my worst-case scenario.  However the fact that the teachers are starting to bring food for me at school, is.  Apparently they all think I’m too skinny/ living on the brink of starvation .So now they are bringing food for me to eat. At school. Why is this a problem you may ask? Everyone loves free food! No. Everyone loves free food when you have a choice to eat it or not.  In Indonesia it is rude to turn down any food you are given…it is even ruder not to finish ALL of said food. So when someone plops down a paper bag filled with bright pink rice and a soggy fried egg on my desk, I am forced to eat it as they sit across from me, watching every bite.

Don’t get me wrong; I definitely appreciate the kindness of the gesture. But as many people in my life know, I don’t hide my facial expressions really well.  It’s really my gift and my curse. So when I bite into a green rice jelly treat and find chunks of meat like substance inside…I have a difficult time hiding my gag reflex while fifteen people are staring me down, waiting for my smile of delight. Let me add that I am NOT a picky eater. I was not one of those children who grew up in a home where I got to declare at age three that I would not eat anything orange.  This, of course, has bred a particularly adventurous palette. I mean, I really like Coto (the cow intestine soup that everyone brings all the time), but I really do have to put my foot down at the jellies. And the inappropriate use of mayonnaise as salad dressing. Yes, mayonnaise.

In other news I’m basically running a hostel for the ETA’s of South Sulawesi. While this would usually cramp my hermit-ish style, it’s been nice to have people to trade horror stories with and indulge in really American things like McDonald’s.  It also helps when my cab driver decides to go on a rant about how “black is beautiful” and the fact that I look like “black sugar”. While this would have been decidedly off putting and probably the opening scene to a Kidnapped Abroad episode, having two other buleh cracking up in the back seat really decreased the creepy quotient.

Also I, and many of my fellow ETA’s in South Sulawesi, have been asked to be a part of someone’s royal Bugis wedding in December. Apparently this requires me to wear three different traditional Bugis costumes. So look forward to updates and most likely hysterical pictures in the near future.