Day 14 - 15: Shadow Puppets, debriefs, cooking classes and

Our first full day back included a trip to the Indonesia Bank Museum.  We learned a bit about how monetary policy is was shaped by society and how the policy shaped society.  Overall it was interesting, but dense, and we had a guide so it was a bit hard to process all of the information in a large group at the same time.

From there we learned about shadow puppetry.  This was a fun excursion.  We went to one of the artists studios and then saw a short "show" with the puppets.

Demonstrating how the puppet works and moves.

First they get bull's skin.

Then they add the holes they need and the general shape.

And then they add color and it is ready for show time.

Using the light they can make shadows larger or smaller.  Anyone see a "similar figures" math problem here?

And then we saw the show.

How they play with light is fun.  He mentioned that in the "old days" they would have men on one side of the show and women on the other.  So, you cannot see the colors on this side, but you can see them on the other side.

We ended the day with a debrief of our host experiences which was fascinating - I am still processing some of the themes that came up.  Right now, I am coming to better understand that A) representation in media matters not only for the US but globally as well, and B) when we talk about college and career readiness we are falling short on the "career" portion in many, many ways in the US.

On day 15 we took a cooking class!  I love to cook, so this was right up our alley.  Compared to other cooking classes, this was pretty posh.  We each had a recipe we were in charge of and all of the ingredients were prepped for us ahead of time - we still had some chopping to do, but the measuring and "finding" of ingredients was done.   We also had several chefs around us to make sure we didn't mess things up too bad.

In the end, here was our final product!

I made the symbal (a sauce of sorts) and helped with the presentation of the banana leaves.  We also had shrimp skewers, chicken, a fried tofu dish, and a vegetable dish.

We feasted on our meal and then went shopping! 

We went to Thamrin City which was a giant shopping mall which from a western perceptive, looked like it had been gutted and then a whole bunch of street vendors had set up shop.  It was a maze of Batik vendors.  I purchased some fabric, but even that was daunting as there were so many vendors.  Trying to embrace my inner Marie Kondo, I did not purchase anything else clothing wise.  Given my new job requires a different wardrobe, I figured I wasn't really sure what I would really use in my real life.  Initially, I was planning on buying clothes here for this trip, but we really did not have an opportunity to do that.  In retrospect, I think what I brought was fine.  I even have 2 pairs of pants and 2 shirts that I didn't wear at all here, so I think it is safe to say that I didn't need to buy anything else.

From there we went to a more traditional mall which had lots of cool things but was a bit pricier.  We ended with our final group dinner and then called it a day!