Woke up at 6 today, theres no sleeping in here! The whole neighbourhood was up, moving about and making noise so i thought i may as well get up and get into it :S there was a rock band practising at 730 this morning, crazy, i think it must have been in the guys kos across the street, tsk tsk!
Last night there was a bit of a pesta happening, a party at the Germans house. What a beautiful place! If i was looking for a house to live in rather than just a bedroom, it would be wonderful. Pretty big, with this stage/platform raised bit in the middle of the lounge, perfect for lying round or having parties... Met a few new people, people are just so friendly! Ive now got a contact for Solo, which is sort of Jogja’s sister city a couple of hours away, so when i want to visit, i can get the inside info... also met a girl about to open her own pizza place and got an invite to the opening, met a guy whose working for AusAid in Jogja, they have projects ongoing from the earthquake until 2009 so he said we could go and help out if we get some free time... I just cant do parties very often! Too tired, i don’t know how people here do it, they get up at like five and are still going late... must be a nap i think :)

Ive been involved in the planning of an International Symposium planned for a couple of weeks time at UGM... it was funny, as soon as we enrolled at UGM and INCULS, the student council came and gave us a bit of a speech about the symposium (still not sure what it is lol, like a conference i think) and asked if anyone wanted to help out... so a few people volunteered and i thought it would be like handing out programs or seating people, something cruisy, but no! In seemingly typical Indo fashion, they had their base idea sorted and how they wanted it run but very little organisation for the practical things! So we came on and were told there was no advertising, speakers, funding, and schedule organised! Weve had meetings every second afternoon and im getting a bit tired of it lol, who knew it would be such a big commitment... Imagine if we hadn’t come on to help the student council, crazy. Ive been involved in writing the youth declaration, the symposium is on the development of spiritualism between the youth of Australia and Indonesia, and its so iffy... none of the aussies really know what spiritualism is cos were so drastically different to here in relation to religion and the role it plays. Its not specifically about religion tho, a greater sort of understanding and underlying connection... oh who knows! Lots of big words and dancing around ideas!

Yesterday morning we had the opening ceremony for INCULS, not too sure why cos classes started last Monday but they love their ceremonies so we celebrated lol... they had a couple of speakers and a wonderful group of singers who sung songs from papua (photo). One of the speakers was a police commissioner talking about our safety in jogja, stuff which acicis had basically already told us. But he also said when talking about driving licences, if you don’t have one and you get caught, just speak English cos the policeman will be too scared to speak English and let you go! Lol its so... cruisy. The dean of the faculty of arts also gave a little speech, mostly about homesickness and culture in Jogja, also very funny. He was saying if you want American food, go to maccas or kfc, but unfortunately they don’t have Australian food, like fish and chips, but theyve got fish and theyve got chips, so you can just buy some of each and create your own!