Food

When I'm not at the computer I think of all sorts of things to blog, but now that I'm here, I can't remember what they were! =\
...

The food is really good.  Once somebody has said grace, we turn our plates over and start filling them (the food is put out on the tables – the rice is in 10L chilly-bin containers - plus one or two dishes of veges), then wait until everybody has their food.  At night, before grace, somebody reads a Scripture passage and shares some thoughts from it, sometimes with one of the westerners reading the English translation, then after we have our food, they make announcements (in Indonesian), but eventually they finish with “Selamat makan,” which means much the same as “bon appétit” and is the signal to start eating.   It doesn’t matter that the food is cold, because in this climate cold food is better than hot food.

Wednesdays and Saturdays are chicken night.  Tonight (Monday) we had fish.  A whole fish, including head and tail, but minus eyes and innards - about 6 inches long.  Now that I'm working I'm hungrier, so I eat the Indonesian breakfast of hot rice and whatever else they put with it; this morning was noodles with a green vegetable and a little scrambled egg.  It was very tasty.  Sometimes we have papaya, sometimes finger bananas.  At lunch today we had steamed cake/bread instead of fruit, which is heavy, nice, and rather indescribable.  Last night we had potato chips, which are rare.

Usually the vegetable dish the Indonesians eat is slightly different from what we foreigners get, and the rice is the only food item that goes out on their tables.  The rest is taken around and dished out to them by the cooks, because most of the diners are children.

The children who have moved into the Asramas (children's houses) eat in their Asrama with their house parents.  The Indonesian paid labourers feed themselves in their accommodation.  Everybody else, including all the missionaries who have their own houses, eat at the Training Centre.