After pancakes for breakfast again, the three of us set off to meet our counterparts. Mullins and I were to go down to the closest village, Gamboh, to meet the village head (as is customary when new people are to stay in a village), and Will to nearby Tambak Sari for a meeting.

Mullins and I were accompanied by Sis and Udin, who showed us lots of things on the way down the hill to Gamboh, such as the inter-cropping of cassava, maize and peanuts underneath the tree canopy, which are grown for use as firewood and building materials.

On the way to the village head's house, we stopped off at the elementary school, where we met the headmaster and a class of 6-7 year olds who were learning English. They greeted us excitedly with the only English phrase that they could remember: good morning.

We wandered through the village, stopping to see the community futsal pitch, which some men were using as a workshop for making a house wall out of bamboo. We arrived at the head of the village's house and were greeted by his wife and daughter, who plied us with homemade snacks and sweet coffee (which I didn't drink, after I had explained in broken Bahasa that it gives me a headache and sickness).

The village head arrived fresh from his land plot a few minutes later, and we were introduced by Sis, who explained our respective 'studies'. On Sis's advice, we are not referring to our work as 'research' as it carries certain connotations in this area, and is also quite a threatening term. We sat with the head, his wife, daughter and 8 year-old granddaughter for a couple of hours, answering and asking questions. The head and his family couldn't believe that Mullins and I have travelled here without our parents! I asked them how old they thought I was; the head guessed correctly but his daughter guessed 17. She was engaged by the time she was in Grade 4 (9-10).

After being practically forced to eat cakes (some more had been sent for from the bakery) for two hours, we left to go and look at the homestay in which we'll be living for a fortnight as of Monday. It is basic, especially in comparison with the luxurious accommodation at Kaliandra, but Sis told us that it is the best one for us because it has plug sockets! After this, we walked back up the road to Kaliandra, which is about a half hour slog up gradients that you wouldn't imagine the passing motorbikes could even handle.

The afternoon we spent with Janet, the contact through whom we acquired this placement. She showed us around the villa that has been built by Kaliandra's founder and main benefactor, and also the former owner of ICI Paints and numerous other corporations. The house is incredible; it felt like walking around a National Trust property. This will be the location for the forthcoming wedding, of the founder's neice, which is being planned by '"he most famous wedding planner in the States", Preston Bailey (never heard of him, neither has Mullins, but amusingly Will thinks he has!). After the 'tour' the grey clouds unleashed an almighty rainstorm; Kaliandra staff went off through the rain to bring umbrellas for the 3 of us to walk back to our bungalow under. A small example of the way in which we are being treated here.

The late afternoon/ evening was spent typing field diaries (we have all decided that there is far too much to write about to even think about doing any research!), and then we had dinner with Janet and discussed ethics and all that jazz for a good while whilst finishing off the remains of the American-diner style food we were served tonight: spaghetti bolognase with cheese, chips and fried chicken (plus a plate of Indonesian veg.!).

Sunday is usually a day off for most of the ComDev team at Kaliandra, but this morning Sis had come in to work for a couple of reasons, one of which was to introduce me to Hayu, who is from a town north of Surabaya and is using Gamboh village as the location for her nutritional and ethnobotanical study of wild food plants. She has set up her own organisation and is working with funding from UNDP, FAO and IUCN. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about my 'study' (I have already decided to change some methods and objectives before even collecting any data), her experiences of doing dissertation research in the area and how our two studies link. Really interesting morning!

Tomorrow morning (Monday) we leave for the homestay; we're all going to be staying in the same house in Gamboh (about half an hour down the volcano side from Kaliandra), and it seems that the particular homestay has been chosen on account of it having plug sockets! I think we'll be there for 2 weeks, and then move on to the next village, Tambak Sari.