Mid celebration -- Jan 26

I decided to take my usual walk up to Jatiluwih this morning. I didn't want to wear my temple clothes for the third day in a row, and I wanted to figure out my internet access.

Objective one complete. I've been comfy and cook in my t shirt and shorts.

Objective two: status unknown. I get messages from my phone provider saying I have all kinds of credit which should allow me internet access. I check my status report. Dismal standings.

I'm very frustrated.

But I'm probably not as frustrated as a group of four Chinese tourists that appeared in my village. They were lost, and they couldn't figure out how to get help. The security folks at the top of the hill (they've been controlling traffic flow to the temple, a critical requirement given the narrow winding road and the volume of traffic) couldn't figure out what they wanted, so they called my host. He picked me up half way up the hill, and we figured it out.

They wanted to go rafting. That much was obvious from the fact that they each wore a personal floatation device. I also figured out they had been walking for some time. But that's as far as I could take it. By this point, one had figured out he could call the rafting company. He handed his phone over to my host. My host arranged for the company to pick them up in the village. It would take about half an hour. I showed the lone woman the time on my phone, and she told the others. All was fine and good.

There’s nothing like the power of pantomime in international communications. I tried telling my students to use their hands when talking. They didn't believe me, and laughed during the exercises that involved a visitor needing help. I gave them two options: do you want directions? Or  is someone hurt?  A positive response to the latter would then elicit “Please show me.”  Okay, so the laughter was because I was particularly frenzied during these exercises. I felt like I was doing the hand motions to Little Bunny Foo-Foo. “Help me! Help me! Help me!” I said.

Time to bow out. I'm going to see if I can photograph those boar costumes from last night.

UPDATE:  whatever I did worked, and now I have more internet credit than I could imagine. The boar costumes were gone, but most of my students were there, so I got a picture.