Bikes, bola and babies

Woah… Long time no update! Heaps has been happening.. Well.. It feels like it anyway. So there’s gonna be about five different posts.. Haha.. I just finished lunch and it started pouring with rain… but luckily I brought my laptop, and now I have something to do! :P

Ok… so however long ago it was, we got an email from Phil saying that a bunch of expats from Jakarta were coming to Jogja to play a game of AFL and show the locals about an Australian sport… I didn’t plan on going, but after asking Ijo if he could help me to go searching for a motorbike and he wanted to meet at Lapangan Pancasila (where the game was)… I kinda had to go. It wasn’t so bad, I ended up just watching and taking photos. Although I’m an Aussie, I’m not a big fan of AFL… there were a few Indo kids who rocked up, except hearing “football” they thought they were turning up to a soccer match and were a little surprised to find people playing with an odd shaped ball.

Anyway, after the football match, Ijo told me that he actually had a few other plans, which was a little strange, cause I thought he must have been free.. But anyway, after the game, we went back to the acicis house and phil wanted us to do some shopping for him before the expats came back to his place. Its fun hanging out with Ijo anyway, so I didn’t mind at all. Ok… so the shopping was done.. Now he was free… for a while.. Haha.. He took me to a 2nd hand bike shop, there was an ok bike there, 2 years old, only done 5000km, but it was still 11.8 million rupiah… brand new that model is only 13.3 million… so it was then that I was pretty much set on buying new. Ijo took it for a test drive and we said we’d think about it and come back later. Ijo said he had to take some people somewhere, and so we were off again, when we got there I saw that it was a bunch of other ACICIS students. He said they were going to an orphanage to celebrate a little girls 5th birthday! So, of course, I went along too! 

We arrived at the orphanage, and as soon as we walked through to the play area, a little boy came up to me and started hugging my legs. I looked down at him, he was only just taller than my knees, and he reached up to me. He was so cute! I picked him up and he just started hugging me.. Then I realized why he wanted me to pick him up. Because I’m much taller than him, after I picked him up he could reach the tree in the middle of the play area, and could play with the leafs. I don’t know why, but all of the kids there seemed to love playing with leafs. They were all so young, I think the oldest was probably 6 or 7, but the majority were probably 4 and under. We spent so long there, just playing and spending time with the kids, all of whom loved to “main foto” … and if you let them at your camera, I hope you didn’t want it back, haha… it was kinda funny tho.. I found out about the trip to the orphanage at the last min, so I had nothing to do with it, but the others had organised a cake and some presents for the girl (I’ve forgotten her name… I tend to do that a lot with indonesian names :S ) she seemed so happy, so did all of the kids.. I had mixed feelings there tho, I was happy to be spending time with these kids, and it was great to see them all so happy, but at the same time, it was so sad to think they they had lost their parents or been abandoned.. I can’t describe it, being really happy, but so sad at the same time… it was still a really good experience, and one I definitely want to have again.