Blog lull

I am in a lull now because I am writing my talk for Wednesday morning - I scrapped what I was going to say because of thinking I did during the workshops here, which means I am writing an entirely new paper. This causes swings of desperation from moment to moment as I think of all the food in Salatiga that is going uneaten by me as I sit inside typing frantically, but so it will be. I have had time to pop up at my former pembantu's house (translates directly into "helper," though as Laura always said, she really should have been called a "doer," since she did everything for us). It was hilarious and wonderful - she and her family became very good friends, very quickly, and so it was a joyful reunion, and though I had little time that first evening, I went back last night for dinner, and she cooked the most wonderful meal, like she used to cook for us before. (Readers of this blog might remember my early agonizing about having a maid at all when we moved here - we learned, correctly I think, that we would not have appeared as maverick and independent people who could take care of ourselves - which I am not sure would have been true anyway, immediately upon arrival - but rather that we would have appeared as wealthy people who were too cheap to provide a job or two for the local economy, misers and hoarders.)  That was wonderful. My lessons in Indonesian continued over dinner, and I'll go back at least one more time before I leave.

 There will be more here soon, I hope, but after I write my talk I have to write all the pieces that I am supposed to bring to the three day writing workshop that starts on Thursday, and that I haven't even thought about yet. So expect a delay.