Today I attended 2 wedding parties. In the first wedding, I know the groom. He worked with me when I was in Indonesia in 2018. He is a good guy.

These are actually parties NOT weddings. A few days before the first party (there are 2) the bride and groom are officially married in the mosque. Jump ahead a few days and the newly married couple have a party at her family house. Jump ahead a week and they have a party at her family house. See below for the adventure today.

First wedding. I know Yoga–the young man you see in the pictures. His wife works in Australia (she is Indonesian), so I am not sure how that it going to work out. At this wedding, I ate a little food. Below are pictures from the first wedding. They really wanted me to sing or dance. Because I really cannot do either, I opted for dancing. If you are interested how that turned out–Dancing at Yoga’s Wedding. Deni sang and I danced. I think I had my photo taken about 100 times.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

The drive to the weddings is long!!! Not in distance (~24 miles), but time. One hour. The potholes are so large you drive in on one side and out the other side. Those were not so bad. What was interesting was crossing the bridge pictured below.

When you get to the bridge, you pay a guy to let you across–he let’s you know when it is safe to cross the one lane bridge. Meaning another random person stops the traffic on the other side—they do not work for the government. I use the term safe loosely. Take a look at the bridge they use while the original bridge is being repaired. We went over it in an SUV. The other two pictures are taxis.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Second wedding. I did know the bride and groom. One of the professors I am working with–his brother in law was getting married. This is the house where I will be staying in a few weeks when I go out to visit the Battra. This time I focused on wedding food. I made video of them Cooking Rice at the Wedding and Palm Oil Trees

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•