Semarang On Foot

It's lucky, I think, that Semarang has a nice personality, because physically it has little to offer. Most of its architecture follows the always-in-vogue "decrepit modern" style, meaning that Semarang could probably make a fortune by selling itself to moviemakers as "Generic Southeast Asian City #22" and appearing in hundreds of films as Bangkok, Jakarta, Manila, or Hanoi. Although Semarang is the capital of the province of Central Java, it is mainly a commercial and administrative city, and is in no way the capital of Javanese culture. It boasts few real tourist attractions; the Lonely Planet Indonesia devotes two pages to Semarang, in contrast to its 12 pages about Yogyakarta or 10 pages about Solo, a city one-third Semarang's size. (More embarassing still, a good half a page of those two is devoted to detailing how to get to Yogyakarta or Solo from Semarang.) Moreover, the tourist guidebooks published by Semarang's regional government itself fail to elaborate on Lonely Planet's assessment; one pamphlet I saw today listed five tourist attractions, two of which were shopping centers and two of which were government buildings. The final pages of the pamphlet then listed the prices of trains, buses, and airplanes out of the city. (This seems like an admission of defeat to me; perhaps, if the city officials were so inclined, they could change the city motto to "From Here You Can Go Anywhere (In Central Java)!")

Today, though, determined to use my Wednesdays off in a productive manner (I get Wednesday off. Wednesdays. Fridays would be one thing, or maybe Monday, but what on earth can I do with Wednesday off?), I set off to be a tourist in Semarang. Armed with my Lonely Planet knowledge (too lazy to carry such a big book for only two pages, I simply memorized the info), I started walking. I could have accepted any number of a thousand and one offers to ride a becak, but I figured, what else would I do with my time but walk? I had, after all, an entire day to fill, and only about twenty minutes of actual tourist activity with which to fill it. So thus, like a mad dog or Englishman, I spent the hottest hours of the day, from about ten to three, slowly strolling down the city's biggest streets.

I had another reason for walking, of course. I hoped that, if I only moved slowly enough, I would see hidden depths and charms in this place, Yogyakarta's ugly (Chinese) stepsister. I might happen upon a tiny alley filled with cultural wonders, or maybe luck into an old traditional building of some kind, or maybe even find some hidden spot that Lonely Planet missed.

Well, there's luck and then there's luck. In my five hour excursion, I found, as Lonely Planet predicted, mostly shops and government buildings. I saw a few statues; Semarang, like Jakarta, boasts a rockin' collection of Communist era statues to heroes and battles. I stumbled into a public library, where a handsome young librarian in a pseudo-military uniform gave me water to drink and urged me to return again anytime. I wandered through the city's largest traditional market, terrified the whole time, as my host father told me a long story last night about being robbed at knife point there. (I escaped with camera, money, and life intact.) I fended off a thousand shouts of "hello Mister" and "I love you beautiful!" (Interestingly, I get fewer shouts and stares in Semarang than Jakarta. I'm not sure why.) All in all, no hidden gems, but a thoroughly enjoyable, if overheated, sort of day.

If you're good with counting, though, you may have noticed that Semarang has five tourist attractions, and only four are shopping centers or government buildings. The fifth puts those mundane sights to shame. In the colonial era, Semarang was also a provincial capital for the Dutch, who tried hard to build it up to rival Batavia (now Jakarta). Unlike in Jakarta, however, a lot of the old architecture still exists in an area of Semarang still known by the Dutch name, "Oudstad," or "old city." (The Dutch name, though common, is also commonly misspelled; it appears as outstadt, oudstad, outstad, and nearly any other variation you can think of.)

This old city, unlike the rest of Semarang, is really quite beautiful. It is bordered by a canal, slow and dirty, and crossing the bridge over the canal is like entering another world: the streets are wide and still paved with cobbles, the buildings are white and decorated with balconies and arches, and small white lampposts line the roads. The entire area looks, not surprisingly, like a faded tropical ghost of Amsterdam. The traffic slows a little in this neighborhood, so everything's a little quieter, and it's not hard to imagine this area two hundred years ago, with Dutch administrators and their wives riding the becaks, instead of sweating American tourists. I almost felt, passing the area's famous Gereja Blenduk, a Dutch church built in 1753, that I ought to be wearing white linen and carrying a parasol.

I'll save that for next time, I suppose. For now, though, I'm just pleased to know that Semarang can offer at least one decent tourist attraction for all those out there who need a reason to come visit me. (If for some strange reason you need another, I can guarantee that it's easy to find a train, bus, or airplane to Yogyakarta or Solo.)

Master of My (Semantic) Domain

Sample questions I understood at church today:

• Sister Hannah, would you mind sharing us with us your testimony of the importance of genealogical work, especially how it pertains to temple attendance?


• Can you please play the opening song for us? We'd like to sing "Families Can Be Together Forever."


• Who, truly, can doubt the Lord when he says that he will do nothing except he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets?

Sample questions I misunderstood at church today:

• What is your full name?


• How long will you be in Semarang?


• What month were you born?

No prizes for guessing where I currently get most of my Indonesian language practice.

What the Other Half Thinks

In skimming through one of the English language textbooks at my high school, I found this lovely little piece about American culture, written as an introduction for Indonesian students studying there. Without further ado, "Tips For Newcomers to the U.S.A.":

• Americans are very friendly and helpful.


• They don't make you feel like a foreigner (though you feel!!!)


• It's very easy to adjust with them. But they don't like people getting inquisitive or trying to get too personal in the initial phase of the acquaintance.


• They dress casually and nobody bothers which dress you wear, etc.


• They are fun-loving creatures and enjoy their free time. They look forward to weekends and plan their weekend activities in advance.


• They are frank about their opinions.


• They respect individual views and allow everyone to speak their own ideas on a subject.


• They have a lot of patience. Especially when standing in line or while driving, nobody will try to jump before you in line. Most of them are very disciplined drivers. However this differs from State to State.


• If they happen to come in your way or you happen to come in theirs, you will promptly hear an "Excuse me."


• They need a lot of feedback while talking. You have to acknowledge/nod continuously. Otherwise they feel you are not interested in listening or are confused.


• They gesure a lot and shoot some funny (or so it seems initially) phrases at you. It's a matter of "getting used to it."


• They are very "proud" of their country. For them the universe is the United States. So never ever make fun or speak lightly about them or tell them they do not have any social/cultural background. You will not make more American friends that way.


• Rhode Island is neither a road nor an island.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

Sources of Endless Fascination to L., the Youngest of the Maids

1. How white my skin is.

(Indonesians pay good money for whitening creams and powders and don't seem to understand that I don't like my white skin. Sunburns are clearly so a foreign concept.)

2. How my arms that are braceleted and white and bare are in the lamplight downed with light brown hair.

(Okay, maybe not in so many words, but the intent was there.)

3. How my legs are also covered with the same blondish hair.

(Slightly awkward follow-up question: "Is your hair that same color everywhere?" Um, excuse me? Did you just ask what I think you asked?)

4. How my face turns red at certain questions.

(With questions like "does the carpet match the drapes," I should think it's no surprise that I'm blushing!)

5. How big my feet are.

(As if, in a country where the largest shoes are two sizes too small, I needed reminding!)

6. How new "red freckles" keep appearing on my face--yesterday there was one on the right cheek, and today there's one on the left! Are those mosquito bites, or what?

(Yeah, kid, I'm 22 years old and still fighting pimples. Thanks for bringing that up.)

Hannah the Homewrecker

Everyone here is into text-messaging, since it's cheaper than calling, and so I too, I'm ashamed to admit, have fallen victim to this plague. Convenient as it may be, though, it offers many an opportunity for hilarity and confusion; the most recent came as a result of a text message from a friend from church. It was from an unfamiliar number, but I figured that since he had just gotten his phone repaired, either he had changed his number and was using someone else's. I texted him back just to say goodbye before I left Jakarta and that he should come visit me in Semarang if he ever had the chance. In reply, though, instead of hearing from my friend, I got this:

Sori ry g ad hp d tgal dri:istriny

This is extremely abbreviated Indonesian which, as far as I can tell, says (roughly) "sorry, you have a handphone that was left behind. This is from his wife."

I was confused; my church friend isn't married. I didn't respond for a minute or two, wondering what was going on. By way of explanation, I got this:

Knp g bls smsny tlg g usah sms sua mi sy klu g ad yg perlu tsk utk pengertiany y hannah ok

This, to my guess, means "Why did you respond to my text? Please don't text my husband. If you don't have what you need, ask for understanding, okay, Hannah?"

I was doubly confused now: who was this person? How did they know my name? I responded with a simple, "I'm confused," and a few seconds later received this next text:

Knp bingung g usa buang2 pls sms k hp suamisy ry bkan ljang dia ud menikah tlg jgn ggu r. tga sy okay sudah y

This means, more or less, "Why are you confused? You've already thrown around texts to the handphone of my husband. He's not single! He's already married! Please do not disturb my home! Okay? Enough, yeah?"

Wow. I realized at this point exactly what was going on--my friend must have borrowed someone's phone to text me, and I included my name in my original text, so this clearly wasn't someone I knew. I texted back that I was really sorry and that I must have had the wrong number, but still felt vaguely guilty, since that's exactly what I would have said if I were actually having a text-message affair with her husband. This poor husband is going to have a wife constantly suspicious of any trips to Semarang.

Oh well, though. I just hope that my texting Indonesian was poor enough that she could figure out that it was a genuine mistake.

Things I Never Thought I Would Do, Part 1

Sing "I'm a Little Teapot" to a classroom of 15 year olds.

(To be continued...)

I Know the Church Is True

True, and sometimes funny or strange. A few choice moments from this week's services:

• The Indonesian translation of the "render unto Caesar" passage in the New Testament, as far as I could tell, leaves something to be desired. It says, as far as I could tell, "Give to Caesar the things you should give to Caesar, and give to God the things you should give to God." Um, I'm sorry, Jesus, but that's not exactly helpful. I much prefer the smart-alecky, and yet also insightful, English version.
  
  (Note: my Indonesian is poor. Maybe I just read it wrong.)
  
  
• The Indonesian translation of hymns is also interesting, and all my relatives who have visited can back me up on this. Indonesian words tend to be longer, in terms of syllable count, than English ones. (In fact, it's a feature of many Austronesian languages that native root words are always two syllables.) This poses no problems for ordinary translation, but it certainly does for hymns, where the syllable count actually matters. Essentially, this means that Indonesian hymns say a lot less than their English counterparts. Don't worry: the editing usually happens at the expense of flowery language, not doctrine, but it does make the hymns rather prosaic if back-translated into English. For example, this morning we sang "Put Your Shoulder to the Wheel." The chorus in English, as most of you know, is "Put your shoulder to the wheel/Push along/Do your duty with a heart full of song/We all have work/Let no one shirk/Put your shoulder to the wheel." The equivalent chorus in Indonesian is "Let us all work together, doing tasks with happiness." The translated name of the song is "The World Needs People Who Want to Work," which seems a tad stodgy to me.
  
  (I have not yet, unfortunately, discovered the Indonesian translation of "the world has no need for a drone," but I guess that's irrelevant post-1985.)
  
  
• In my Sunday School lesson in Jakarta a few weeks ago, I looked around the room and noticed this scene:
  
  1. The branch president, former mission president, and second counselor in the branch presidency sitting in the front row and making longwinded comments
  
  2. a gaggle of old women sitting behind me and talking, quite obviously ignoring the lesson
  
  3. the guy next to me doing something on his PDA.
  
  If you needed proof that the Church is fundamentally the same everywhere, there you have it.
  
  
• Not that differences don't exist, of course. A little old lady stood up in Relief Society this morning to bear her testimony. It was mostly pretty standard--"I know the Church is true, I know Jesus lives, I know God lives, I have a testimony of the living prophet today...[long pause]...wait, what's his name again?" A couple of the other old ladies tittered, and someone finally supplied the name. I'm pretty sure that's something that wouldn't happen at BYU.
  
  (I mean, not recognizing pictures of Brigham Young might happen at BYU, sure, but not knowing the name of the prophet? Even I'm not that bad.)

I guess none of this beats backflips in church, or even the sternum story, but hey, I understood them! (That's always a noteworthy vistory, in my mind.)

The Honeymoon Phase

(For all those who don't care what's going on in my life, and only want clever little quips and stories, please skip this entry. I'm about to do an information overload, and, what's worse, it will be information unbound by a formal narrative. I can't promise I'll be clever; all I can guarantee is that it will be verbose.)

I arrived in Semarang from Jakarta two days ago on a tiny little Garuda Indonesia flight. The weight limit, according to my ticket, was 30 kilos for everything, meaning both of my suitcases and my carry-on. My suitcases were roughly 28 k each, and my carry-on was easily another 10. When I checked everything in, the guy at the desk said something about paying an overweight fee, at which point I smiled sweetly, crossed my fingers, and pulled out a letter from the government that the office gave me. Our program director told us to try using it to avoid the fees; she said it may or may not work, but would be worth a shot. I gave the man a slightly nervous spiel (in Indonesian) about how I'm in the country at the special request of the office of the president, and how therefore I'm exempt from such pedestrian requirements as overweight baggage fees. To my great surprise and pleasure, it worked. You'd better believe I'm holding on to that letter, and maybe even making some extra photocopies.

After being picked up at the airport by some of my school's incredibly nice teachers, we went out to eat, where I had my first experience trying to eat rice with my hands. It was messy but strangely satisfying; I worried mostly about an open sore on my thumb, which stung like nobody's business as I ate spicy dishes.

(When it comes to hygeine around here, it's often best to just close your eyes and think of the empire. Rest assured that I did wash my hands.)

Speaking of food, that's an issue here. If I come back next summer weighing twice as much, don't be surprised: everybody wants to feed me, and it's hard to constantly resist. I haven't paid for a single piece of food since I arrived, and at every turn I've been offered sweet syrupy drinks, strangely textured desserts, spring rolls, cap cay, spicy vegetables, sweet vegetables, cantaloupe drinks, fried noodles, fried chicken, spicy fish, sweet fish, salted fish, otak-otak, oranges, apples, mangoes, papaya, snake fruit, jackfruit, keropok, bread with chocolate, pastries, various other unidentified dishes, and, of course, white rice, brown rice, yellow rice, fried rice, and coconut rice. It's all--with the possible exception of cassava--completely and utterly delicious, so how can I refuse?

I'm less likely to even think about refusing other aspects of my school's hospitality. They were supposed to arrange housing for me--housing which I don't even have to pay for--and, I must say, they did a smashing job. They found a teacher at the school who had a spare room and, let me tell you, this woman is loaded. I'm living in a bedroom larger than most of my Provo living rooms, and it comes complete with a king bed and a twin spare, marble floors, an air-conditioning unit, a Western toilet and shower, and a giant wardrobe for storing many more possessions than I actually own. The rest of the house is equally stunning: it's spacious and light, with a charming little porch in front, and another in back which looks into a tropical garden. I intend to eat breakfast there in the morning, listening to the bird calls.

As for breakfast, I don't even have to prepare it myself. All my meals are prepared by one of this household's seven servants. (They may have others that I haven't seen; to be honest, I'm not quite sure.) There are at least three maids, constantly hanging around to do my laundry, tidy my books and papers, make my bed, and urge more meals on me. There are two drivers, one for each car, and finally there are at least two extra people, who perform basic services such as opening the gate.

(I'm sure after at least a week all these extraneous presences in the house will grate on me, in particular the fact that I can't come and go on my own without asking someone else to open the door for me, but for now it's still a thrill. Hence, the honeymoon phase.)

Plus, and this is where I really feel blessed, the house is quite near the center of town, which means I can walk to an internet cafe which provides broadband internet for 30 cents an hour, or, if my cravings for Western comforts overcome my reluctance to spend money, to a Dunkin' Donuts or McDonald's. What's more, I'm within walking distance of the Mormon church, so I don't have to worry about transportation on Sundays, even if I do feel a bit like an Orthodox Jew, eschewing all forms of work.

Being near the center of town is also an advantage on Sunday mornings, such as today, because Sunday morning is prime recreation time for this town. When this morning I arrived at church at 8 AM only to find that it actually began at 9, I wandered through the market, and stumbled upon such interesting gems as a street performance of traditional Javanese dance, a man selling fat crickets to be fried and eaten, horse-drawn carriages taking people around the traffic circle, and a pirated DVD stand selling, of all things, a copy of "The Legend of Johnny Lingo."

Semarang, or what I've seen of it so far, is a beautiful town. (I suspect that's probably not true, and instead I'm just wearing "Jakarta goggles," through which nearly every other city looks peaceful, quiet, and clean.) Everyone's dire warnings of the heat here were, as it turns out, perfectly true, and so I'm being careful to keep a water bottle with me at all times. (The maids think it's strange that all I want to drink is water. Mostly I'm trying to avoid being offered more strawberry syrup.) Semarang was a major capital in the Dutch era, and many old Dutch buildings, including a fabulous old church, are still standing. It's also a heavily Chinese city, and its Chinatown is, in addition to being full of good food, thriving. It also features a section of town up on a hill, which offers great views of the city stretching out over its bay. The school where I'll be teaching is a five minute walk from the sea, which sounds a lot more interesting than it actually is. There's no beach to speak of, and the water so close to the city looks, well, less than appealing. On the plus side, it's the Java Sea, which hasn't had any drastic tsunamis so far and, as far as I know, isn't likely to get them. Knock on wood.

(As my dad pointed out, though, the fact that the U.S. Government is worried enough about my security to buy me my own cell phone is not exactly heartening. It's not just tsunamis, of course, but also bird flu, earthquakes, and terrorism. Semarang is, according to a nice FBI agent I talked to a few weeks ago, a "real hotbed of terrorist activity nowadays." At his urging, I'll be keeping a low profile, as far as that's possible for a blond-haired, blue-eyed, 5 foot 9 inch American female in Southeast Asia.)

Let's not end it on that note: Semarang is great so far, and I feel ridiculously lucky to have ended up in my situation. Starting bright and early tomorrow--I have to leave the house by 6.30 at the latest every day--I'll be at my school, first observing and getting fitted for a uniform, and later teaching myself. I can sense a variety of emotions stewing below the surface--anxiety about standing up in front of 15 year olds all day, frustration with not speaking the language and constantly feeling like a retarded child, homesickness for my family and friends and even, occasionally, the mountains--but for the most part all I feel is excited. Wish me luck.

Groundbreaking New Research from the Field

The Top 5 Worst Places to Have a Mosquito Bite

5. The middle of the back. (Itchy and impossible to scratch.)
4. The groin. (Itchy and socially unacceptable to scratch.)
3. The face. (Itchy and disfiguring.)
2. The soles of the foot. (Itchy, with that itch constantly renewed through any contact with shoes or the ground.)
1. Any place where the mosquito can give you Japanese encephalitis, malaria, dengue fever, or yellow fever. (Any place such as, say, Indonesia.)

(You can trust me on this, people: since I currently have a bite in each of these places, I've spent some quality time thinking about the issue. A few more weeks, and I'll start considering myself a real expert in this matter. I wonder if there's any way to go pro with my newfound knowledge.)

Say What?

Lately, I've been trying things in Indonesian. That means attending church, showing up at Young Single Adult activities, and chatting with taxi drivers. My Bahasa Indonesia is passable, meaning that I can (mostly) follow the gist of a conversation if a)it's one-on-one, b) it's face-to-face, and c) the person speaks loudly and slowly. My vocabulary's also pretty limited right now, which means I, and whoever I'm talking to (not to whomever I'm talking, please note) have to do some guessing.

So the other night I was trying to explain my view on Indonesian desserts to Brother Sam, one of my favorite Church members here. Indonesian food is fantastic, but I am always disappointed with the post-meal offerings; they're not chocolate, they're not very sweet, and they're always vaguely mushy or slimy. I was trying to tell Brother Sam about this, but I didn't know the word "texture." The discussion that followed went something like this:

Hannah: I like the taste of Indonesian desserts, but I don't like the....(pauses to ponder)
Brother Sam: The...?
Hannah: ...the "texture"? Do you know the word "texture"?
Brother Sam: "Texture"?
Hannah: Okay, how to explain...um, like, if I touch something, it feels...(demonstrates touching)
Brother Sam: You stroke your food?
Hannah: No, no, like, for anything. Everything has a "texture." Like, if I touch this desk, it feels...(pats the desk for a minute, then realizes she doesn't know the word for "smooth." Or "rough." Or any texture-related words. Sighs in despair.)
Brother Sam: (stares blankly)
Hannah: (thinking of things with interesting textures) Okay, I'll try again. It's the feeling of something. Like a snake...or like fur...or like oil.
Brother Sam: You think Indonesian desserts taste like snakes?
Hannah: (Searches for a way to explain "mushy." Decides it isn't worth it.)
Brother Sam: (Pulls out an electronic dictionary, looks up "mushy.") Oh, "like pudding"!
Hannah: Yes, like pudding! (Thinks, "I can't believe I just went through all that for the translation "like pudding." Screw circumlocution; I'm buying an electronic dictionary.")

Things Remembered, Things Forgotten

Selamat all times of day from the wilds of Indonesia. To get things started right, I think we need a list, perhaps of things I had remembered and things I had forgotten.

1. That the water is not potable
a. because the canals are so clogged with trash they can barely move
b. and because the water from the tap is vaguely greenish. (Don't take baths.)

2. The thick, almost overly sweet-smelling air of the tropics
a. with an acrid overlay of pure pollution
b. and sometimes the stench of rotting garbage.

3. The call of the mosques echoing through the (relatively) cool twilight
a. and the constant roar of motorcyles, buses, cars, trucks, and bajaj
b. and never forget the tinny Indopop blaring from every radio.

4. That Indonesians are kind, gentle, polite, and friendly
a. and will always smile in exchange for a smile
b. and will never, ever, ever leave a person alone.

5. That crossing the street is like a giant and deadly game of Frogger
a. but it's not as scary as, say, Cairo
b. and sometimes, if you're lucky, a friendly member of the Indonesian Special Forces will step in the road and stop three lanes of traffic for your crossing.

I'll be in culture shock mode in a month or two, I'm sure, but for now I'm still in the honeymoon phase. Jakarta is overcrowded, dirty, smelly, and noisy, but every so often in the midst of the hubbub I am struck, in the spirit of Proust's madeleines, by a tiny thing--a word, a smile, a smell, an "Allahu Akbar" over the loudspeaker--that reminds me of my years here and makes me think: this is coming home.

May all my homecomings be this way!

iFAQ

And now, by special request, a blog post in which I answer some of the questions that have been submitted as comments, and maybe even a few more. Ta-da! A veritable "infrequently asked questions" page. This one goes out to you, bawb.

1. Uh, did he propose?

No, Anonymous, no gossip fodder here. And were there gossip fodder, trust me, I would tell you myself. If, that is, I knew who you are.

The panic was about my imminent departure for Indonesia, land of volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, and human-to-human transmitted Avian Flu. Eight days now!

2. Is your mom available?

No. She's still happily married to my father, who is even crazier than she is. You should see him lose his swimsuit while tubing. It's a skill.

3. You see what kind of friends you have?

Yes. Oh, I'm sorry--did you want me to describe the kinds of friends I have?

4. Can you please describe what kinds of friends you have?

All kinds: crazy, smart, crazy smart, pretty, funny, pretty funny...you get the picture.

5. How do you say "thank you" or such good words in Indian?

See Board Question 21859.

6. So, which of the books did you enjoy most?

Either Speak, Memory, because I love Nabokov, or Adverbs, because Daniel Handler is seriously funny, and also maturing nicely as a serious author.

7. Why isn't your blog purple?

Because, I, um, couldn't figure out how to make it so. Can you help me?

8. Did you say "Massachusetts?"

Funny you should ask! Yes. Yes, I did.

9. What is your favorite English bound morpheme?

Oh, this one's easy: meta-. Phrases like "global metalect" give me positive chills of pretensiousness.

10. Why do fools fall in love?

Forty-two.

Panic.

The title says it all, actually: full-fledged, deer-in-the-headlights, agoraphobic-at-a-World-Cup-game panic. Yikes.

Your Mom. No, Wait, Mine.

Those who know me, but not my mom, in real life probably have a very skewed picture on what it means to be Petra's Mother. They've probably heard detailed stories about her sex life like "how she celebrated graduation from BYU ¹," "why Mormon men get addicted to pornography ²," and "my grandmother's sex advice³." If they've heard other stories, they probably have formed a mental image of my mother as a sex-crazed, Valium-abusing, ditzy redhead oozing excess maternal energy towards not only her small, white, yappy, fluffy dog but also towards all the stray animals in Delhi, from dogs to donkeys.

They'd be wrong in this vision, of course. Her appearances in my personal narrative repetoire aside, my mother is actually brilliant and capable--enough, in fact, to earn one BA, one MA, and one Ph.D. and then, on top of all that, to face returning to school at 40 to earn yet another BA.

That's not funny, though, so I hide the stories about, you know, the time she earned a Ph.D. despite having two kids and tell the stories about, say, the time she multiplied 5 by 6 and got 80.

In any case, the border between these two sides of her character seems to grow thinner and thinner as I age, and this thin line of transition constantly startles me. Once, in a high school seminary class, we watched a video about evil, or sin, or pride, or extra piercings, or, I don't know, one of those other things we should avoid. The video featured a man lecturing sternly about how rock music is of the devil--specifically, he claimed that Mick Jagger was the devil incarnate. He had all sorts of evidence: he hired Hell's Angels (coincidence? I think not!), claimed the devil inspired their music (it's true!) and even openly sympathized with the devil (you can look it up!).

This might have affected teenagers in 1968, but for a much more jaded 2001 crowd, it was laughable. I regaled all my non-Mormon friends at school that day with that paticular piece of seminary craziness, and when I got home I was eager to share the laughs with my mom. I told her all about the video, playing up this man's complete craziness--honestly, where do people get such strange ideas?

"That is silly," she said, chuckling. "Mick Jagger as the devil? I've never heard anything so ridiculous in my whole life." She stopped laughing suddenly and looked directly at me. "Clearly, it's Keith Richards."

Here's to my mom, a character I don't even have to exaggerate.



¹Sex in the SWKT bathroom.
²Their wives aren't adventurous enough in bed. "Dress up! Take pictures!"
³Practice the butterfly stroke.

How I Spend My Time

What I read in the course of 13 days of vacation:

Adverbs, Daniel Handler
You Remind Me of Me, Dan Chaon
Word Freak, Stefan Fatsis
The Truth, Terry Pratchett
A Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky
Pompeii, Richard Harris
The Grass Harp, Truman Capote
The Best American Essays (College Edition), ed. Robert Atwan
The Broker, John Grisham
44 Scotland St., Alexander McCall Smith
Letters to a Young Mathematician, Ian Stewart
Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Rhinoceros and other plays, Eugene Ionesco
Why Girls Can't Throw, Mitchell Symons
A House in Sicily, Daphne Phelps
Oscar and Lucinda, Peter Carey

What else did I do? I played countless games of capitalism, poker, solitaire, sudoku, and the perfect card game. Spare time? Yeah, I've got that.

(Oh, right, and I toured Italy.)

What if it's me?

I made a comment at Institute last night.

I'll pause while you all reel from shock. Yes, I know this presupposes that I went to Institute. Yes, I know this is out of character, but my roommate wanted to go, and I wanted to spend time with her, so there we are. (It's out of character for my roommate, too, but you'll have to ask her about that, not me.)

Usually, though, I've stayed firmly in character by letting my mind wander during our undeservedly-praised lessons. (Everyone seems to think the teacher is "just wonderful!" I wonder, would they admit it if she weren't? How much can a recommendation from the stake institute leader be trusted?) During our first institute class, my roommate (who has no online moniker) leaned over to me roughly five minutes into the lesson and said, "Tell me your entire romantic history." With that, neither of us listened to the teacher again. (It was no big loss. She was talking about how hard Isaiah is, an attitude I detest.)

During our second class, my roommate whispered with Kaneeneenie, who--also out of character!--had decided to join us for the night. Left in the lurch, I spent the class period formulating a simple alphabetic substitution code based on the International Phonetic Alphabet. (It's not too bad, I think--there's a few little twists that make it difficult to deciper, yet still easy to encode.)

Last night was the third class. I spent most of the period working on my honors thesis--a task I'm diligently avoiding right now, with only 14 hours left in which I could possibly work on it--but managed to zone into the lesson for just long enough to start experiencing some inner Sturm und Drang at the divisive, judgmental, utterly stupid "us vs. them" mentality that seemed to be general all over the class. (Name that allusion, Tolkien Boy!)

So I made my comment. I meant to stir up a bit of trouble, but the teacher misinterpreted what I was saying into a much milder point, and, alas, no brouhaha ensued.

I'm following in a grand family tradition of riling up church lessons, though, and now I can get to my actual point, my favorite of many family stories which feature my dad in one of his favorite roles, "Sunday School Provocateur."

This was in the Boston area, roughly 20 years ago. (I give you a place and time because if you ever run in to anyone who was there, they'll remember this.) The topic in Sunday School that day was the Antichrist, and the discussion, as such discussions often do, had degenerated into speculation about who the Antichrist might be--Hitler, the Pope, the Secretary General of the U.N., insert your least favorite public figure here--and my dad got frustrated and raised his hand.

"This is all well and good," he said, "but I think the real question is this: what if it's me?"

Now, he had a valid doctrinal point here: the word, after all, can be applied to anyone who fights against Christ. We are all in danger of becoming an antichrist, and so we must all constantly watch ourselves, our thoughts, and our words to prevent it.

My dad had been in this ward for a while, though, and had a reputation. The way my mom tells the story, about half the people in the room pondered the actual doctrinal implications, while the other half, she could tell, were thinking, "Yeah! What if it is him?"

So I leave you to ponder that question: what if my father is the Antichrist?

I Am Petra's Upset Stomach

I spent this weekend sick as a dog. Well, maybe that's an exaggeration: "sick as a relatively healthy dog" might be a better way of putting it.

In any case, those who are squeamish about stomach ailments may want to stop reading this post sometime about now. In fact, you may want to stop reading my blog for good, since I anticipate many more stomach-centered posts come the end of the summer, when I go to Indonesia.

Stomach ailments have been par for the course for me my entire life. "Par for the course" means, roughly, once a week. I've always been convinced that I picked up a nasty little parasite of some kind in Indonesia, and that, in addition to the hereditary gift of carrying stress in my stomach, has left me with perpetual stomach-related episodes. I can tell any number of amusing and completely disgusting stories: throwing up on the platform at a train station in Cairo, sneaking up and down the aisles of an airplane late at night to collect extra barf bags, spending forty-five minutes in the bathroom at the Taj Mahal, each and every time I've eaten Indian or Thai food--at this point, nearly anything can trigger a story beginning, "so this one time, I was really sick..."

(My mom has a story that can destroy all comers, though--an incident that literally knocked her socks off. And trust me when I tell you that I know the difference between "literally" and "figuratively.")

In any case, this weekend's episode--Season 21, Episode 138, "Petra vs. Pasta"--was worse than expected, and I decided to take action, in the form of a little detective work. Narrowing down the list of ingredients in the pasta, curry, and taco salad that have most recently emptied my intenstines, I have reached this conclusion: it's a food allergy.

So I'll open it up for a vote. Get your mouse-clicking fingers ready, kids: am I allergic to onions, or am I allergic to garlic?

Thoughts, Alone On Campus At Midnight

Never adopt the old-lady habit of turning your headlights on at daylight. You will forget them when you turn off the car, guaranteed. Also, Petra, you are stupid.

Why was it necessary to drive to campus, anyway? Doesn’t the idea of walking sound so much more appealing?

Thank heaven for cell phones.

Hi there, Tolkien Boy. Hi there, Optimistic. Hi there, Roommate’s Boyfriend. Hi there, Roommate’s Fiance. Hi there, Friend From Old Ward. Does no one have jumper cables?

What could the University Police possibly be doing right now that they can't help me?

Never be caught anywhere without a book. Drat.

Why, oh why, won’t the internet work? Oh, please, technological powers that be, smile upon me!

iFilm is one cool program.

Actually, Macs are just cool in general. I’m a fan.

Desert climates get rather chilly in the evening. I should have brought a sweater.

Be polite to the police, even when they make you wait for forty-five minutes in the middle of the night. All can be forgiven, as long as they come bearing jumper cables and a working car as a peace offering.

Mister Cream

So, while I was in Egypt last year my roommates and I walked to school every day through downtown Alexandria. On our way, we passed a park, where every morning without fail the Egyptian gardener greeted us.

Greetings are a big deal in Egypt. The standard morning greeting in Egypt is "sabah ilxiir," or "good morning." It is then standard for the other person to respond with "sabah innur," or "morning of light." The two participants then, if time and mood oblige, engage in a friendly battle of greetings. The aim is to think up good things--jasmine flowers, the sun, cream; anything pretty and, preferably, white will do--and wish the other person a morning full of them.

This old man tried to do this with us every single morning we passed, and most mornings we failed miserably. Our vocabulary just wasn't that good, after all, and we couldn't get much further than "light" or, at best, "jasmine." He would typically chuckle at our ineptitude and wave us on our merry way.

One morning, though, I bested him, completely unexpectedly.

"Good morning," he called.

"Morning of light!" I responded.

"Morning of roses!"

"Morning of jasmine!"

"Morning of cream!" He was grinning, sure that this would be his triumph. He was almost right: I was at a loss for words, but, determined to say something, I said the first freely-associated phrase I could think of:

"Morning of Mister Cream!" I countered. For those who don't speak Arabic, "Mister Cream," or "sa'eed ishta," is the slangy Egyptian colloquial Arabic word for "hippopotamus." (The Modern Standard Arabic term, as one would expect, translates literally to "river horse.")

Yes, that's right: I wished him a morning full of happy hippos, and he reacted just like you might think: his mouth hung open in pure confusion for a few minutes, and then started to laugh. And laugh. And laugh. He nearly sprayed himself with the hose he was holding, and then he actually had to sit down, he was laughing so hard.

I won that one for sure. Every morning thereafter, he watched for my approach with a twinkle in his eye, and skipped through all the standard ceremony to greet me with a cheery, "Morning of the hippopotamus!"

Miss Pronunciation

So. It's time to confess a rather embarrassing linguistic habit. (Other than, of course, my habit of starting nearly all my sentences with "so.") For the necessary background, let me state this: I'm usually quite good with language. I'm a marvelous English speaker, actually--what a good vocabulary! Without a strong accent! And so fluent! It's almost like I've been speaking it all my life or something.

The problem, though, is that I learn nearly all my new words from books. I read quite a bit, and often encounter words in print that I've never heard before. This leads, of course, to me knowing a giant corpus of erudite and impressive words...without the faintest idea how to pronounce them. What with the vagaries of English spelling and all, I sometimes--frequently--miss the mark.

This tends to fluster even the strongest of my friends; expecting my facility with language to carry over into the basics of English pronunciation, they goggle in shock and, sometimes, slight panic when I flub even a syllable. This habit noticeably bothered Optimistic while we were playing Trivial Pursuit the other night. Although at first he gently corrected me, after 5 or 6 such errors I could see him getting frustrated: "Did you just say a-MIC-a-ble? Everyone knows it's A-mic-a-ble! What's the matter with you?"

So, in honor of Optimistic's recent frustration, I present to you the Top 5 Petra Pronunciation Errors.

(One small warning: despite my linguistics undergrad, I'm almost as bad with phonetic transcription as with pronunciation. Sorry if you can't read it, and sorry if you think it's wrong. They're all based on the OED's system, though, not always the IPA, so if you try to argue with me, I'll just tell you that I do, in fact, pronounce it like the BBC.)

5. /lvsks/ Yes, that's right: "lascivious" pronounced like "viscous" with a "la" on the front. I misread it once when I was a kid and it stuck. This one's pretty normal, actually, in that there's a genuine reason for it. I was shocked, at 17, to learn the actual pronunciation, although I admit that, while there's a certain charm to my own--I always imagined a slow-moving, gelatinous sort of lust--the correct pronunciation matches the word's meaning much better.

4. /'kæpri/ Like the pants, or the sunny juice drink. I put the em'phasis on the wrong sy'llable. I'm not sure where I picked this up--but now I stick to it with my habitual tenacity. Every time I compliment someone's pedal pushers, or offer them a delicious CapriSonne, I make sure to emphasize that first syllable, awkward as can be. It gets a few raised eyebrows, sure, but it also lends me a certain distinguished air, or so I tell myself. Since I also claim that I picked up this pronunciation in Indonesia, my strange pronunciation has a faint aura of the exotic about it.

(I also, if you hadn't noticed, insist on spelling the drink name CapriSonne. I first encountered CapriSonnes in Jakarta, where they were all imported from Germany, or made in Indonesia by a German company, or something. That too will never change; don't bother trying to persuade me otherwise.)

3. /k'rktr/ Again, the emphasis in the wrong place. I made fun a friend once during my freshman year for her strange Utah accent, which caused her to say that word differently from me. She dragged me to an online dictionary to prove to me that her way was, in fact, correct. Abashed and slightly confused, I called my parents, guessing that maybe they were to blame.

"Dad, how do you say the word that describes those really exaggerated drawings of people?"

"/'kærktr/, of course." Hm. Not him.

I asked my mom next. She took a minute to think, and then said, satisfied with herself for passing whatever strange test this was, "/k'rktr/. Definitely."

So, that's it, you see. This be the verse: I blame my mother for all my articulatory failings.

2. Let's start this one off with another confession: I heard of David Bowie for the first time when I was 15. Yes, yes, I have my head in the sand. Now, of course, my first encounter with his name was in print. One day in my junior year of high school, I let slip some comment about Mr. Bowie to a friend, who has still not stopped laughing at this incident. I pronounced his name /'buwi/, like to rhyme with "kablooey" or "hooey." In my defense, this is the way "Bowie Knife" is often pronounced, at least in Bob Dylan's song "I Shall Be Free No. 10." If you can't trust Bob Dylan, who can you trust?

Apparently, though, this didn't matter to my friend. I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has mentioned "Ziggy Stardust" to her and been slightly taken aback when she bursts into a fit of the giggles.

1. Finally, the number one mispronunciation of my whole entire life. When I was a kid, I had a box of crayons with a bunch of fancy colors--cerulean, periwinkle, cerise, and other such--and one of the crayon names, a dark pink, really stymied me. One fateful evening, while my parents were having a dinner party with some friends from church, I lost that crayon and wandered all over the house looking for it, including into the dining room, where our guests sat chatting.

"Mom," I whined, "have you seen my fuchsia crayon?"

Except I didn't say it /'fju/. My preferred pronunciation at the time was something more like /'fk/, rhyming nicely with "ducksha" or "lucksha," which was probably--judging by the stifled gasps I got--not a good way to say it. I learned the right way to say that color fast.

Thank you, Crayola.