Tsunamis in Middle Earth
Posted by marshall Mon, 11 Apr 2005 04:51:10 GMT
Last night we hooked the PowerBook up to the TV and watched the Fellowship of the Ring DVD, which I brought with me (Extended Edition, of course). Neither Patar nor Reza had seen any of the Lord of the Rings movies before. Patar speaks English fairly well, but Reza speaks only a little, so I wonder how much he understood from the visuals, occasional familiar words, and the explanations from Patar every so often.
One thing that I hadn't thought of before we started was the scenes in Lord of the Rings that depict the power of water: namely, the flooding of the river in Fellowship and the flooding of Isengard in The Two Towers. As soon as the rush of waves came, Reza and Patar said, "Tsunami!" That they could relate to. It's strange to think that what we regard as one of the more spectacular "fantasy" scenes in the movie is a real memory for the people here. I don't think it acted as a reminder for them so much as something they recognized, though.
For dinner last night we had martabak and martabak. That is, we had some martabak telor, which is a kind of omelette with red onions, celery, chilis, etc., and we had martabak padang, which is a sort of dessert pancake with coconut, chocolate, and rice. As we've come to expect with the local food, both were very good, although it took me a while to figure out that martabak was used to refer to two very different dishes.
