Imagine this: for the same price of 5,000 rupiah, you can forgo the convenience of a small water bottle and install a five-gallon water dispenser inside your home. Now that's a good deal!
The best meal I had this week was a lake fish from Tuk Tuk, which is a city on Lake Toba. It was a boiled carp that was soaked in the notoriously addicting Batak spices, which include ginger, tumeric, pepper, shallots, garlic and salts. It was accompanied by fluffly rice or nasi, soaked in Batak curry. As for drinks, I had coffee, or kopi, prepared with coffee beans grown right on the island. Delightful!
This week, I overheard plenty of K-pop when local students returned back from the holidays. Maybe I'll try learning the language sometime soon!
I really enjoyed returning to Bukkittinggi to enjoy New Years Eve at the carnival at the City's Square. It was so surprising to see the similarities and differnces of carnival attractions from home and here in my host city. While the same old roller coasters and swings were there, it is only here that I can buy fried bananas or pisang goreng, while watching people try to score points in a mini game.
This week, I read about the legend of a mermaid. It was written for young Indonesian children, so it was a useful read for any developing Bahasa Indonesian language speaker.
