sleeepover!

we're sleeping over at the KL airport tonight but unfortunately they are shutting down at 12:30am and "fogging" for pests. So while we wait for them to close down and relocate us, we paid the equivalent in Indonesia of three meals with drinks or a four/five hour bus ride or twelve pounds of mangoes (you get the idea) for ONE starbucks orange juice in Malaysia. All so we can enjoy the "free" wifi.

So as we're probably not going to find a nice little quiet corner with a mattress to sleep on at the airport - nothing better to do then to blog

Ari did a mini post about kawah ijen, which was beautiful, but the most exciting part was actually the getting there. We hired two motorcycles (with drivers) to take us from our hotel to the base of the volcano - a two hour ride. The first hour went by pretty quickly. Smooth and deserted streets and watching the sunrise over the rice paddy fields was pretty surreal.

By the second hour, the road was very bumpy, you would have thought they planned the road to be covered in potholes. actually, all the potholes had merged and become one giant pothole leading to kawah ijen. So as the motorcycles struggled to climb the steep hill, my motorcycle suddenly died. Turns out, the chain needs to be attached to the motorcycle for it to run. (The chain had broken off and was left lying on the road/pothole)

So the obvious indonesian solution was to get me, ari and ari's driver on one motorcycle. For those of you who know a thing or two about motorcycles the bike was less than 200cc. I think those children Barbie and Hummer vehicles (that run on batteries) have about the same amount of power.

And for Indonesians it's pretty common to have three people on a motorcycle, in fact, it's pretty common to have three people, two chickens in cages and a huge stack of hay, some random building material (most likely a steel pole) and groceries. So one american, one canadian and one indonesian should be no problem!

Aside from dangerous (Ari's feet got caught on the lip of some of the potholes and almost tipped us all over) I can't explain how incredibly funny we must have looked and sounded (my best onomatopoeia of a bike struggling up a mountain in first gear would probably be "nggggggeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh").


But I guess a photo is worth a thousand words. Kids this is only a simulation and please don't try this at home.

(If you zoom in - yes, our driver is wearing flip flops with socks.)

Eventually we discovered that if Ari put his feet on the passenger pedals and I rested my shins on his feet we were able to go more than 30 ft. at a time.

Lastly, imagine ari, me, our driver and the motorcycle flying down the mountain that we had just struggled to climb - avoiding the laughing villagers, the potholes and most importantly the oncoming trucks.

and that my friends is what you call an adrenaline rush.

Pedas

Quick story from the other week.. One the way back from Kawa Ijen, we stopped for food. My eyes were sensitive from excessive sulfur smoke exposure, and the very spicy food we were eating didn't help. Janet, who isn't a huge fan of spicy food, left me the hottest part of her dish to eat. With my eyes already on the brink of tears, all it took was the guy next to me to light up a cigarette to put me over the edge. Tears from hot food and smoke. By the time I wiped them away, I noticed that the entire kitchen staff of 3 had come out to watch me cry. All I could think to say was pedas (spicy). They were undoubtedly thinking that the rumors are true.. white people can't take spicy food.

have you ever

craved a philly cheese steak and taco/burrito with extra guacamole, extra cheese, with chicken pesto linguine (preferably from giacomo's) with a veal parm cutlet on top, maybe some "gravy" to top that off, with some nachos and french fries crammed in there somewhere, a kielbasa with cheese in it, some clam strips and new england clam chowder, a 20 lb turkey, maybe a turducken for good measure, stuffing, turkey based gravy, mashed potatoes, some potato salad and possibly extra mayonnaise for good measure??

...followed by a three tiered cake of gregg's lemon drop, death by chocolate and heath bar crunch with extra whip cream, a few cannolis and erickson's mint yoghurt with caramel sauce...some pumpkin pie and maybe a cherry or two?

these are my notes from almost 30 days of vegetarianism in addition to minimal refined sugar.

i think it's going quite well.

MLM

despite what you may have heard - today we learned that "MLM" does not stand for "multi-level marketing" scheme (please see here for details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-level_marketing) but actually is an acronym for "make life meaningful".

and how you may ask?

by becoming a member of the multi-level marketing scheme that encompasses everything but the kitchen sink. (actually if you hand your life savings over, they might include a "free" kitchen sink - assembly and installation not included)

If you're squeamish about women-issues you may want to skip the next paragraph...s.

The product is Winalite Anion Sanitary Napkins. And not only do they make that time of the month a little happier but they are (apparently) FDA approved, prevent and CURE cervical cancer - ALL while improving your quality of life AND making you closer to God (I didn't get to ask if this was while you were selling the product or using it).

And I wish I was kidding.

After doing our "fly by the seat of our (sulfur-smelling) pants" wildlife conservation talk at a school in Malang city, we were invited out for snacks/lunch/time to sell their MLM to us. After meeting a few additional guests (also members of the same MLM) we were immediately swooped away to Eden aka Winalite Anion Sanitary Napkins MLM - land.

Funny enough, they used Helen Keller as an inspirational story in their brochure. Apparently, in America she is a "legend" (I'm not sure if that means she was fictional) and will somehow encourage you to sell more sanitary napkins and persuade you to join their MLM.

For those of you not quite in on the lingo, a sanitary napkin is a "pad" for menstruation - Ari was informed after we had arrived back at PWEC. While sitting their pretending to be interested he had thought to himself "This is stupid, why would I want to sell napkins?" I was wondering "Who would want to buy a pad from Ari?"

Anyway, long story short. The PWEC staff we were with didn't know enough English to save us and we were almost cornered into attending a meeting AND a convention for a bunch of people who sell pads. In turn, we almost became pad-salesmen.

You will be happy to know, we resisted. Ari more adamently, because really, how could a successful MLM only sell napkins?

Incase you didn't know

We're tree huggers.


Shayna, in response to your comments 1) They are art projects, not science projects, but probably appropriate for the same age group! 2) I think people just buy the monkeys and birds as pets. And as a correction to the bird market post, this market doesn't have rampant trade in endangered wildlife. It is monitored by ProFauna, who bribes the police to enforce the law. These monkeys are apparently very common (they are pests for farmers), so people don't care if they are abused.

packer-kramer genes

during a small cultural exchange where we were surfing fb with some of the PWEC staff, they asked to see photos of our family.

while looking at ari's brother's profile they all excitedly agreed he was Chuck Norris.

I strongly believe this is a compliment.

and in a similar light. we went to a junior high school today and ari was transformed into a celebrity. The girls swooned and giggled (over 40 of them) and the boys took their cellphones out to take photos. One 16 year old boy even declared "I love you" in front of the whole class (possibly slightly lost in translation)

regardless, seems like the Packer-Kramers have some good genes!

Mobile library

P-WEC does a mobile library every few weeks where a truck full of books (about animals) and volunteers pulls up to a village of excited children.

Kawa Ijen

We went to an surreal volcano crater lake called Kawa Ijen on Monday. The excursion is worth several posts, but we don't have much time right now. Here are some pictures to tide you over.

Also, you may have heard that a volcano erupted in Central Java yesterday. We're 300 kilometers away and completely safe. A carload of ProFauna employees and local supporters headed down there this morning to rescue the animals which are fleeing the mountain and ending up in towns and villages.

I don't fit

We're currently sitting in an internet cafe in the small city of Bondowoso. The computers are in little cubes, raised slightly above floor level, with some space for crossed legs to go under the little desk. The problem is that I'm not flexible enough to cross my legs, and even if I was, my legs would be too long to fit. D'oh.

Indonesia is cheap

We're breaking bank today on our trip to town.

Two minibus rides (1 hour total) - $0.55 each
Lunch; small portions of beef on rice and fried chicken, with a side of rice - $0.80 each
Ice cream bar - $0.40
Large bottle of water - $0.25
1 kilo of mangos (that's 2.2 pounds) - $0.40

You get the picture..