Anyway, an unusual incident happened to me in Batam. An incident I feel I must talk about. Actually, it was a series of unusual incidents that took place over a few days which led me to an epiphany. Haha, I'm kidding! (I'm Justine!! Just another mentally retarded teenager who rarely thinks about things that matter.) I'm only saying I had an epiphany because that's usually what people say after spending 4 days in a country where poverty is literally in your face, in the form of an unwanted child with rotten teeth or another. Ok, here goes:
After checking into our (Natasha, Charlotte, Heidi and I) hotel room to inspect the TV, hairdryer, and thread count of our sheets, we took a memorable bus ride through the shanty town known as Sekupang (I think) in the (scary) torrential rain. Our tour guide spoke mandarin the entire time, so you can imagine how much Batam history and special insider information I missed out on cause my Chinese stinks.
Being a Geography student (who almost failed Geography), I couldn't look out the window and NOT assess the probability of a slope failure/watch the safety factor diminish to less than 1. Liquefaction was apparent, so was a mudslide. (I may have passed my exam by shear luck, but I'm familiar with the role of water in slope failure.) I think I'm coming across as slightly over dramatic, but one of our wheels did sink into quicksand (or something like it), and we were stuck for 10 minutes or so. I dunno. I was dozing in and out of sleep.
The rain subsided by the time we got to the orphanage. Despite suffering from jet lag (Batam is 1 hour behind Singapore time) my classmates and I mustered all our energy to whitewash the walls of a mosque. (I should've mentioned earlier that the objective of our trip was to help complete an unfinished mosque.) (I was unaware of this until I was told to get off my ass and pick up a paint brush. As usual, last to get the memo/way out of the loop.) (I meant it when I said I was going to Batam to "play with orphans".)
I was homesick and Natasha became fast best friends with the hotel front desk by evening time. (She called them like, 6 times in an hour and a half, to ask for 2 extra towels.) We wanted to watch Moulin Rouge on HBO, instead of meet the class to reflect on everything that had happened in the day. So we did that. (We're totally badass.) Until we were summoned up to Room 205 by our teacher. (We're also totally lame.)
This is a pretty half- baked post trip reflection. But watch this space cause this is only Day 1. Ok, I got to go cause Shaun's home from work. We're meeting even though his "legs are destroyed". (This must be real love.)
