Oh my goodness...

Greetings from the developing world! I have had a very stressful/eventful last week or so, so please do forgive me for not having updated in a more timely fashion.

I suppose I shall go in chronological order of last week’s festivities…

As you may or may not know, Robe & I decided to try to get him a Tourist Visa, as we have been waiting to hear about his Fiancé Visa for over 2 months now and it’s not looking like we’ll be getting word anytime soon. First of all, I did my research to make sure that he was allowed to apply for another Visa while waiting to hear about the Fiancé Visa. Turns out, many people have done this because the F Visa process takes so long. Great! So we then prepared his application (which was very time consuming and quite stressful because record keeping here is like it was in America in, oh, the year 1807). Each applicant must then make an interview appointment at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta, or the U.S. Consulate General in Surabaya. At the conclusion of this interview, the Consulate Officer will either grant you the Visa or deny you the Visa. Okay. Fine. So we made our appointment in Surabaya for Monday, March 10^th, at 7:30am (yuk!).

So knowing we had to travel to Surabaya (about 2 hours from Malang) and knowing that his appointment was at such an ungodly hour, we decided we would go up the night before and stay the night. Robe’s mom thought it was a good idea for us to stay with her sister and her sister’s family, who happen to live in Sby, so that we could save money. The Tourist Visa was already going to cost Robe’s entire monthly salary (about $130). When we arrived at Robe’s Aunt’s house, we found out that she is possibly the worst host in the world. We arrived at 4:00pm, and by the time we went to bed at 10, she hadn’t even offered to feed us dinner or even given us an idea of how to obtain food in the area. She made us sleep on a mattress on the floor in the same room as Robe’s Grandmother (who stays permanently with them), when there was a perfectly good guest room that was not being used. She offered us the mattress, but she neglected to offer pillows. In the morning, it was her servants (not her) that offered us breakfast (which, of course, I could not eat because it was too spicy, so I went hungry until we got back to Malang later that day).

Anyway, that was not the worst part of the night. As I said before, we slept in the same room as Robe’s Grandma. Well, the woman apparently only sleeps a few hours every night, which we did not know. So we tried to go to bed at 10. We had just laid down when she came in the room and started talking on the phone…very loudly. Fantastic. In Indonesian culture, you’re not allowed to ask anything of your elders, so we couldn’t exactly ask her to take her conversation outside so her grandson could get some rest before his very important interview. Heavens no. About 30 minutes later, she finally hung up. Did she go to bed? No. She fiddled around for a few minutes (not quietly or gracefully either. The woman carries around 300 pounds on her 5-foot frame, so she kind of fumbles very loudly everywhere.) After fiddling around, she took something out of a drawer. I didn’t know what it was, but the next minute I heard the very distinctive “Bing!” of a video game and then the very familiar Mario Bros theme song played. For the next 4 ½ hours, this song haunted me & Robe. The woman actually sat there on her bed, playing Mario Bros for almost 5 hours! I guess her arthritis flared up a few times, because every once in a while she would shuffle out to the kitchen to grab some food, bring it back to the room and smack her lips for about 10 minutes. Every time she turned her video game back on, I wanted to cry. She even kept the bedroom light on, so even if I closed my eyes, it still wasn’t dark enough to fall asleep. I begged Robe to say something to her, but he refused, saying it wasn’t his place.

Just so you get the full effect, imagine what was going on. A 74-year-old woman sitting in her little old lady nightgown (that she wears 24/7, I might add) on the edge of her bed at 3:00 in the morning, leaning intently over a tiny little pink Gameboy. That’s what I had to deal with until 4:30am, when she finally decided to turn off the light and try this new-fangled thing called sleep. Unfortunately for us, 4:30 was exactly the time my alarm was going to go off to wake us up and get Robe ready for his interview.

Oh, it was awful. We were so exhausted, and I felt so bad for Robe because he had a long morning ahead of him. We arrived to the Consulate at about 6:30am, but I knew I couldn’t go in with him (only applicants are allowed inside the building), so I just dropped him off and went back to his Aunt’s house. He also wasn’t allowed to bring a cell phone in, so I just had to wait (impatiently and anxiously) at the house until his taxi pulled up. I left him at 6:30am and he didn’t make it back to the house until noon. It was agonizing having to wait with no word…

Well, poor Robe. He had an awful morning. When he got inside the building, he went through security (several times, apparently) and waited until about 8am, when they gave him #20. There were 40 people there, so he was right in the middle. So he sat in a room until 11:20am (sweating profusely despite the AC. When he’s nervous, he sweats like crazy.), at which time they called his number. He went up to the window for his interview (after paying the 1.25 million Rupiah…) and gave the Consulate Officer all of his application materials. She took them, asked him one question and told him he couldn’t apply for another Visa if still waiting to hear about the Fiancé Visa.

So almost 5 hours of waiting for a 2-minute rejection. On not even one minute of sleep. Poor thing. I felt so bad for him, and I kind of felt like it was my fault because I told him it was okay to apply. I don’t understand why, but lots of other people can go on Tourist Visas while waiting for news. I guess Indonesians can’t…but I’m really upset because it was such a waste of time and money for us to go through all of that. I wish they would just put that information somewhere. And why can people from places like Spain and France go on Tourist Visas and Indonesians can’t? I’ll never understand. Part of me thinks that Consulate officer was wrong and we should protest, but you’re not allowed to protest or even ask for further clarification.

What hurt Robe more than anything was that the Consulate officer was really mean and stupid. She told him that she couldn’t understand his English and called for a translator. When he came back to the house he was so distraught about his English, and now he’s nervous to talk to anyone else besides me in English. He thinks that because I’m used to teaching English to foreigners, I can understand what he means but no one else can. I keep trying to reassure him that’s not true, but he’s really self-conscious about his English now…poor thing!

So anyway. I’m pretty much out of options at this point, and I don’t really see how it’s possible for Robe to come home with me… Robe’s dad has a customer at the shop who is married to a Swiss woman, and this guy’s brother is married to an American woman (very international family, it seems!). So Robe called this guy’s brother to get some advice. Here’s what they did. They also applied for the Fiancé Visa, but when it became clear that it was going to take way too long (according to them, European applications are processed quickly but it usually takes about a year for Indonesian applications), they cancelled the FV. They got “married” here (meaning they went to City Hall & had the certificate made), then got him a Tourist Visa, came to the U.S., had the marriage certificate translated & certified at the Indonesian Embassy in DC, then went to “US Immigration” (wherever that is, I’m guessing he meant the Dep’t of Homeland Security or something like that) and applied for a Green Card for him. And that was the end of that story. They got married in 2004 and he’s now an American citizen. Anyway, this guy and his American wife are visiting Malang at the end of March, so we are going to meet with them and see if they can help us at all. This guy has connections at the U.S. Consulate General in Bali, so he said he’d poke around a little bit for us.

Sorry if I’m boring you with all of this Visa talk, but trust me. This is what has been consuming my life for more than two months… And for what? I feel like I’m failing at every chance to get Robe into the U.S. I just wish it weren’t so difficult! If I have to wait a year to get him home, I don’t know what I’ll do…

Okay anyway. Moving on to a completely different topic. We came back to Malang, and the next morning (Tuesday), I was getting ready for school and Robe was bored waiting for me, so he turned on the TV. He started watching celebrity news (the equivalent of the E! Channel). I was minding my own business, drying my hair and all of a sudden I heard Robe yell my name. I jumped, screamed, and ran into the TV room, thinking Robe had hurt himself or something. No, no, nothing like that. He couldn’t even use his words he was so shocked, he just pointed to the TV. I started watching. All I could see was a very famous Indonesian celebrity (a very recognizable face here, maybe the Indo equivalent of Ben Affleck or Keanu Reaves). He was talking to some microphones that had been shoved in his face, saying things like “I’m sorry, that’s my personal life, so I will not comment on that.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but then the screen switched to some photographs of the actor and another young man (a foreigner), posing shirtless and standing very close together in a rather compromising position (Indonesian TV has no boundaries – they show everything including real dead bodies on the news). I gasped and my mouth dropped open. I knew that guy! There he was, Matt, one of my former Polish housemates, plastered all over Indonesian TV barely dressed. Oh my God…

I guess you can imagine what they were asking the celebrity. Are you gay? Is this guy your lover? Things like that. I immediately sent a message to Matt, just in case he didn’t know. I wanted to warn him to stay away from his school. He goes to a private, very conservative Muslim university here in Malang, so they would absolutely stone him if they thought he was gay. (Another Darmasiswa student, my friend Julia, was born in Indonesia but adopted by a German couple when she was a baby. So she looks Javanese, but the only culture she’s ever really known is German. She goes to the same private Muslim university as Matt. At the beginning, local students there thought she was also a local student and they would throw things at her and scream bad things at her because she didn’t cover her head. Yea…thank God my university isn’t like that!) Anyway, so I was just trying to look out for him. I didn’t care what was really going on, I was just concerned about my friend. He replied that he already knew about it, that he was in Jakarta trying to deal with it. He told me that one of the actor’s sisters is married to Matt’s uncle, so actually the actor was kind of like his uncle. Apparently someone is trying to ruin this actor guy, so they broke into his computer and stole all of these pictures and made fake photos and sent them to the media. Oh my goodness…the celebrity circle here is so dark…

So anyway, I have been seeing photos of my friend all over the TV for the past week. Matt’s still in Jakarta. He’s not sure if he’s even going to come back to Malang, and he’s even thinking about going home. I feel so bad for him…I hope everything works out.

Okay well I will leave you all alone now. I’ve taken enough of your time as is. I love you all and I will see you in a few months!