Hometown experience, part 1

The night (almost) immediately after I arrived in my hometown I crashed into a bed (right after shower). I had a jet lag as expected, went to bed around 9 PM and woke up around 2 AM. During the day I have often been sleepy.

While awake there was a loud noise at 4 AM. I realized I was in Indonesia, a muslim country where you can find mosques just about anywhere. They put 4 big speakers facing 4 directions to ensure everyone one could hear it and they are very loud especially when a mosque is close to your house. It reminds me to my house before, a mosque was just right across the street from my house, just imagine having the Riverhills church Praise team (with bass, guitar, keyboard, and drum) playing in front of your house 5 times a day and one of them is at 4 until 5 AM every single day.

My uncle got up around 4:30 AM and we went to a school to do exercise. All of the people in the school were over 50, that made me the youngest one. It started with Tai Chi, based from an ancient chinese martial art. It's a slow and smooth motion sort of imitation the flow of air or water. Then they changed the music with higher pace and different moves. They have been doing it for many years and I was pretty impressed with how well they did it. I underestimated them but later after sweating a lot, boy, it's much harder than I thought. After an hour later I went for a walk with uncle to cool of for half an hour then went for breakfast at a restaurant.

After shower I went with bunch of relatives to our ancestors' cemetery. Worshiping ancestor has been an ancient Chinese ritual for thousands of years and integrated into Buddhistm. I was there to observe, flashback to when I was a little kid before I became a Christian.

After visiting cemetery my uncle spent the entire day taking me to countless of relatives, felt like a long day. Pretty much I was asked same questions over and over. Anyway I am back in the culture that revolves around food. All conversations begin with something like "Hi, have you eaten yet ?". One question that every single person ask as far as living in US is something like "so, do you eat bread every day, right ?" Everyone has been trying to feed, asking me out for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The good thing is all of them come with small portion, that's the way it is in Asia, half the size of typically restaurants in US. So here I keep eating out, most dishes cost less than $1.