Yogyakarta Part 4
This weekend we took a little time off of our teaching and workshop schedule to visit Prambanam the largest Hindu temple in central Java. The architecture and size of the stone temple is awe inspiring. Though Indonesia is the world’s largest predominately Muslim country Hinduism and Buddhism are both important influences. A lot of the theater, music and art of southeast asia is based on the Ramayana, the great hindu epic. I read the Ramayana after my APPEX experience in 1996 and it was a complete revelation. A whole lot of art from this part of the world started to make a lot more sense, plus what could possibly be cooler than white monkey warriors?
I’ve been taking in as many performances as our teaching schedule allows. Over the weekend we went to the Sultan’s palace for a dance performance and to the museum for a Wayan Kulit performance. Tonight we went back to Prambanam to watch the Ramayana production that is put on twice a week at the temple grounds. Though it was a show geared toward tourist, with lots of battle scenes and an abbreviated story line we all enjoyed it immensely, mostly because we are tourist. Last night Tony and Arip took me to see Untung Basuki and Sabu, a kind of Javanese 70′s folk rock group. My recent favorite was a Budoya rehearsal we were privileged enough to be invited to. The dance was so refined and the dancers so beautiful that even though it was just a rehearsal I was transported to another time and place.
On Monday we had a lecture demonstration the performing arts high school and have been teaching workshops there in the mornings. Every afternoon I head to Imogiri and my middle school students there continue to make tremendous progress. They are so eager to learn and it’s been a real joy teaching them. There are a couple of kids in my class that were just born to play taiko.
Anyways it’s been an amazing stay thus far and I’m leaving out just to keep this post to a reasonable length… I mean I haven’t even mentioned the crazy shopping or my new favorite drink: Jus Sirsak which recently overtook Soda Gimbira.
Tags: Prambanam
so this Jus Sirsak is juice, yes?
non-alcoholic i’m guessing…. ; )
Heh, I tried to find info on jus sirsak and there’s not much out there. Doing an internet search for Jus Sirsak brings up this blog post as hit number 5. It looks like it’s also called Soursop juice and I found this which looks interesting:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2170714_make-soupsop-juice.html
Shoj, we’ve got to try it when you get home and you can help us refine the recipe!