I heard the raucous bells before I saw the people shaking them, so I admit that my first reaction was vague annoyance. I just wanted to eat my vegan, fake meat in peace. I didn’t want to have to decide whether to play the role of the clueless foreigner, the clued-in foreigner, or the local.
“Teh tawar,” I say, and maybe because it’s not my regular tea order I’ve mangled the pronunciation, because the man at the food cart just looks at me confused.
After dance class last week, my dance teacher had given a speech about how we should behave with this guest teacher. She was a professor from ISI, the arts university in Yogya, and so we had to be respectful. Come on time to class. Don’t talk when she’s talking. There were more instructions, but at least for me, their meaning got lost in too many unfamiliar Indonesian and Javanese words. It didn’t matter. I’d gotten the point.
Wayang Kulit
I’m still no good at counting gamelan music, so I tend to resort to learning dances based on the melody of the song which–as my ballet teacher will tell you–is not the way that you should be doing things.
