Live outside of the big city

Before writing this message I decided to re-read my previous messages and while doing so I realized actually I still feel the same things I felt when I just arrived in Indonesia. The people here keep on surprising me every day. This weekend I visited a traditional Javanese village and some of my ideas on Indonesian people were definitively confirmed but also some were lessened a little. I already knew that Indonesians are friendly people, but not really social. By that I mean that their definition of social and family lives seems to be very different from the western one. Two other girls from the Netherland joined me to this villages, which was the hometown of my Indonesian friend. We visited several houses and everywhere we were welcomed and got lots of foods and drinks, but never the familiy joined us. They said hello and then left us with the food. We felt a little uncomfortable because we felt like we only ate at their houses, but this was the way they liked it; the more we ate the better. Even for dinner, when we asked the family if they wouldn't join us they told us they had already have dinner. We were so confused. Why not eat alltogether? Indonesians eat fast and without any social character to it. Having multiple courses, having nice and long discussions during dinner, having some drinks afterwards...nothing of this. I my family in the Netherlands we have dinner together because it is the one time of the day we are all together and we like to talk a little bit about our day and to enjoy the food peacefully. So this is something I miss over here. What also surprised me in this village, but in a positive way, was that the people were very nice but didn't stare at us too much or scream at us. Living in a big city I already was feeling like everywhere I would go there would be somebody screaming, but in this village I felt so much better in that respect. Maybe the people outside the big cities are more modest? Well, to round off, it was a very good and definitively interesting experience.