(I got a new app that allows me to put text on photos.)

(Happy New Year's Eve!)

Belated holiday lights

We drove around Hastings Ranch with the family on Leah's last night in the States.

We're all sad to see her go!

I got an iPhone

As an early Christmas present. Now I can blog remotely!

Last night, I went to see A Christmas Carol at A Noise Within, with my sis (back from Paris for a week!) and my cousin, and of course the family. 

Beginning the end-of-year reflections

Goodreads just notified me that I read 24 books in 2013.

I'm pretty proud of that. Two books a month? Granted, I was in Indonesia (land of virtually no exercise or leaving the house after 6 pm) for six months of that time. But still, not bad. Now if I can just finish Cloud Atlas before 2014 to make it an even 25....

Infinite Jest

Today I finished the longest book I've ever read: Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

I felt like I should write at least something about it in a blog post, considering that I spent about two-and-a-half months reading it exclusively, which, now that I think about it, is really not that long in the grand scheme of things. But book worked itself into both my conscious and subconscious thoughts in that period of time, and it's hard to let go of the story, especially considering how frustratingly and abruptly the story ends. Ari read the book before me, and really loved it, which I think was part of my motivation for picking it up in the first place. However, he also prepared me for the disappointment of getting through all 1,000+ pages and feeling like there could have been at least another 1,000 or so more. (Not that I WANT to read anymore! I'm perfectly happy to be done with it!)

I've now spent the last two hours researching different analyses and interpretations of the story, and it's just making me even more frustrated. I'm glad I was able to get insight into the strange, amazing, and extremely twisted mind of a writer like David Foster Wallace. However, now that I have finished his "masterwork", I think I can safely say that I don't need to read any more of his fiction.

And that concludes my rather incoherent rambling on this topic.

Oh look, another blog post!

And so soon after the last one! I'm sure you're all thrilled.

Well, I just had a couple more pictures from the past couple days that I couldn't wait to show you.

First of all, this is how I spent Halloween night:

I wore my Sriracha costume to Michelle's apartment (who lives where Ari used to live, just 2 blocks away), and we watched bad TV (well, a bad movie: The Campaign) and drank wine and ate cupcakes and candy. It was quite pleasant.

Then on Friday night we had Michelle and my old friend Kaylan and her husband Jerrod over for dinner. Our first event at our new apartment! Ari cooked dinner, we played Cranium (boys against girls, and girls WON!) and I think everyone had a good time. 

On Saturday I went jogging in the park and couldn't resist taking a few more fall photos, because the sun was finally out, and there are still some beautiful colors to be seen:

I saw ponies too! 

Today (Sunday), Ari and I had some time to spare, so we walked to the Prospect Park Zoo, which is just about 15 minutes' walk from our apartment, and only costs $8. It was a bit chilly outside (55 degrees or so), but we had a really nice time. The highlights were the red pandas (ring-tailed pandas? lesser pandas?) and the sea lions. I've been on a photography roll since Halloween, so I took a couple pictures. 

The red pandas were SO CUTE. Two of them were babies, so they were really struggling to climb around on the branches. Ari and I could have watched them for hours, but it was just a little too cold. So we stuck around to watch sea lion feeding and training (which was also pretty fun) and then headed home. 

The autumn leaves drift by my window

Actually, we have no autumn leaves by our window; the trees by our apartment are still green. But, if you walk a block north, you end up in the southernmost corner of Prospect Park, where the autumn leaves are in full, orangey-yellowy color.

Ari and I are both relatively free on Thursdays, so we took a short walk through the park to get some shots of the trees before they all fall off in the next few days. Annoyingly, it's been cloudy ever since I charged my camera to take pictures, but--I am worried I may not get another chance to photograph how gorgeous it is!

And, just for good measure, I took some shots of our new apartment, finally put together in a way Ari and I are both happy with. We spent last Saturday morning carrying the yellow couch from Ari's old apartment (about 3 blocks away) to our new place. I wouldn't have made it, so thank goodness our wonderful building super helped Ari heave the couch up the final flight of stairs to our place. 

The main living room

Here you can see our tiny kitchen (with a dishwasher! That we still haven't used!) on the left. 

The bedroom, with an actual BED!, and the same Ikea bedspread I've had since freshman year of undergrad....

So that gives you an idea of the place. We're pretty happy with it, barring a few non-deal-breaker issues (central heating is SUPER loud, kitchen sink leaks a little, oven is difficult to turn on). We also hope to get a nice area rug for the main area to really tie the room together.  Hooray for not living out of my suitcase anymore!

I have to hand it to DSW

For putting an albino hedgehog (and no shoes) in their advertising.

And that is all I have to say for tonight.

Please allow me to rave a bit

About the movie I saw today: The Young Girls of Rochefort (Original title: Les Demoiselles de Rochefort), from 1967. This film screened at Film Forum as part of a Jacques Demy retrospective, and the only thing I knew about Demy was that he made The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I watched on a whim in undergrad, and found interesting enough and unique, if a bit vacuous. Lots of singing, very colorful, vibrant sets and costumes, and the beautiful Catherine Deneuve at the height of her charms.

So, I figured I'd go see this other film by him, since I knew it also involved music and dancing and Catherine Deneuve and awesome 60's design.

But I didn't know how awesome it would be. The plot was still pretty darn pointless, don't get me wrong. But that didn't bother me--this is basically movie escapism at its finest.

First of all, the two main characters are two sisters, played by actual sisters Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac. One of them teaches ballet, the other one composes music and teaches piano. And they play like 6 instruments TOTALLY realistically: 

That song in the YouTube video gives you an idea of what the rest of the movie is like. Sure, it's over 2 hours, which is a little on the long side. But there's dancing! 

And Gene Kelly's in it! Dancing! And being overdubbed speaking French! (He also happens to be 30 years older than his love interest in the story, but...it was a different time?)

And randomly, the guy who played Bernardo in West Side Story (George Chakiris) is also in the movie, also dancing and ALSO overdubbed speaking French!  (He's the guy in the orange shirt.)

And everyone's singing is overdubbed! Hooray! 

But seriously, if this kind of movie doesn't drive you crazy with its saccharine ridiculousness, you will love it. Rent it. Or see it on the big screen if you can!

And BONUS if you want to watch another awesomely retro dance scene: 

The apartment does not look pulled together yet. But I'm sharing a picture anyway.

Our apartment's living room looks like this now:

Basically extremely cluttered. I am taking deep breaths. We will build the Ikea armoire next weekend. (We spent all this weekend building the bed, which required extra time due to the fact we forgot to buy an integral part of it and had to go back to buy it this morning.) And then we will feel much better about life.

Irony

It just occurred to me that I am teaching my ESL students about the wonderful American constitution and government this week--coincidentally the same week that our government has SHUT DOWN.

In other news

My sister Leah has a one-way ticket to Paris, France, and she's leaving on Friday.

NOO LEAHHH DON'T GOOOOOOO!!!

I'm gonna miss her. It was nice having her in the same country as me for a month.

We've moved!

And I can blog about it because we just got internet yesterday! Things are looking up!

Ari and I were finally able to move into our new place this Saturday, after much calling back and forth with the realtor and the building manager, then arguing about whether we had to pay rent for the weeks we hadn't moved. (Because there wasn't gas in the building yet! and no dishwasher installed! And the apartment was still dirty! But I digress.)

So me, Ari, and my friend Michelle (who Ari lived with the past year) moved all our stuff into the newly renovated, yet pretty darn tiny, apartment where we'll hopefully be staying for the next year-and-a-half to two years--at least until Ari finishes his MA at Teachers College. It is so small. But I like the way it's shaping up so far. We have yet to put together the new furniture we bought from Ikea on Saturday, so we can't really figure out the room layout yet. Hopefully that will happen this weekend, when we both have some time to actually build stuff!

Also, it's kind of funny because the building is still pretty intensely under construction. There are workers here every day from about 7 in the morning till 5pm, painting and working on the unfinished apartments. And fixing some of the issues, such as the fact that our shower apparently leaks really heavily through the ceiling of the apartment below us. So we had a plumber knocking on our door at 6:45 yesterday morning, asking if he could check out our bathroom. Then, just now (at 7:50pm), another manager guy knocked on the door to see the bathroom AGAIN, about the same issue. Honestly, it feels like Indonesia all over again, what with random people knocking on your door at all hours of the day. I think I'm a little less disgruntled by it then I would have been a year ago.

Anyway, I'm happy to be in the new place, and starting to settle in. I will try to post pictures as soon as the place looks halfway put together.

Worlds Collide!

That title is very dramatic, but my story is not that dramatic. Nevertheless, I thought it was worth posting on the blog. So.

I have been reading David Foster Wallace's massive novella, Infinite Jest, for a little over a month now. It was really hard to get into at first, but now that I've made it through a staggering 33% of the book (NOT including endnotes), I'm starting to actually enjoy it. And as books do, when you read them for a long period of time, it has started to kind of take over my life. I think a lot more about what it must be like to be seriously addicted to heroin or alcohol, and I read about the U.S. Open with a new interest (drug addiction and tennis academies are major themes in the book, in case you didn't know).

Anyway, tonight I was catching up on season 5 of Parks and Recreation, one of my favorite shows on TV right now (tied with Mad Men, basically), and it was the episode where Ben goes back to his hometown of Partridge, Minnesota. One of the minor characters in Infinite Jest is from Partridge, Kansas, and apparently this was all the creator of the show, Michael Schur (aka Mose from The Office), needed to throw in a TON of book references. I noticed it right off the bat, when they go to a law firm named:

All of those names are characters from the book. Then Anne and Chris take an online test called the "Incandenza Pemulis" test. More character references. 

And...I'm starting to realize that this whole post might not be interesting to anyone who hasn't read Infinite Jest. So I think I'll stop there. And just say that I was really excited and proud of myself for catching the references. And so well-timed in my life! 

P.S. Regarding the housing situation, Ari and I have not moved in yet. Hoping to do it this coming weekend, if the place is actually done being renovated. 

Yeesh.

Well, hello there!

I've been putting off posting mainly because I wanted to feel settled before announcing any more news. And I realized that feeling settled is really a long way off. Thankfully, within my first month of moving back to the city of New York City (and constantly asking myself, "Why do people live in this godforsaken city?" one minute and the next minute, "Why would I ever leave this wonderful city?"), I was able to find a good teaching job (English Language Institute at Pace University!) and an apartment.

Both things (work and housing) are progressing, but at different rates. I feel like I am starting to get the swing of things at my job, but I literally have a saved email of an ever-expanding list of questions to ask my boss the next time I can pin her down for longer than five minutes--we don't seem to cross paths as often as I'd like.

As for the housing--Gggahhhahhhh. Ari and I found a pretty sweet apartment the day before his birthday on August 30th. It was undergoing brand new renovations, but they said we could move in Sep. 15th, and probably even a few days before that. Then we had to re-sign the lease. We were supposed to get the keys today, but our broker didn't have them and told us to call another guy, who said he could give them to us at 5pm, but then his phone was mysteriously switched off at 5pm. Finally got ahold of him at 7pm, only to discover that the renovations were still in progress, and...our building has no front door yet. So the keys aren't really necessary yet. The guy seemed surprised to hear that we were planning to move in on Sunday.

So, long story not so short, we hope to move in on Sunday. If our building has a front door. Things in general are not quite as settled as I'd like them to be, but honestly, I am happy to be back in this city. Ari's here! A lot of my friends are here! I can actually Skype with my parents (which was mostly impossible in Indonesia), and I can eat Chipotle whenever I want!

All things considered, it's okay if things aren't totally settled.

Back in NYC

Phew.

After a wonderful whirlwind the last two months, including visits to Bali, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Fort Collins, I am now finally settled--sort of--in New York City for the next few years.

I say "sort of," because right now I am essentially crashing in Ari's tiny room with my three huge pieces of luggage, and sharing his bathroom with his other two roommates (one of which, fortunately, is my good friend Michelle). However, Ari and I hope to get our own place in the next month or two. Where it will be remains to be seen. I really like Brooklyn, but if I end up getting a job in the Bronx or Queens or something like that, it would make more sense to move into northern Manhattan, since Ari's working on his master's at Teachers College for the next year or so.

So: job interview tomorrow, job interview Wednesday. Wish me luck!

Assalamu'alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh

That's the phrase that all of my students at my university say to open and close their presentations. It means something like "Peace be upon you with God's blessings and prosperity." I thought it would be fitting to use that phrase in my last post from Indonesia, seeing as how Islam has been such a huge part of my life here. Teaching at a Muslim school for the past 10 months has led me to become much more curious about this religion, if for no other reason than to better understand the people I have lived and worked with in this country. Of course, not everyone here is Muslim; if I travel to Bali almost everyone is Hindu, while on the islands of Flores and Ambon and Papua, there are large groups of Christians. All of which goes to show how difficult it is to classify this country. Ten months is really too short to visit any country, let alone a country consisting of more than 17,000 islands and 300 languages.

So, my feelings upon ending this fellowship? I am mostly satisfied with what I was able to accomplish here. I tried to think of things on the small scale: students that got to interact with a true foreigner and learn something about a different culture, being able to try and set straight misconceptions about American society and the West; introducing teaching techniques that focus on communication and interaction rather than translation and grammar. There were of course moments (or days), of frustrations and actions that I'd do differently next time if I had another 10 months. However, I have overall been happy with the way things have progressed.

Will I come back to Indonesia? I have been asked this question by so many people here. Sadly, I think the most realistic answer is no. It is so far away, and I only have two or three people that I'd really hope to see again in the future. (I actually felt much the same way about Germany after studying abroad there for one year in college.) However, I don't know yet how much of an impact Indonesia has had on my life.  I think I'll need to wait for a year or so before truly being able to assess my relationship with this country.

I am a firm believer in living abroad whenever possible, rather than just visiting for a few weeks, largely because I hate that feeling of having just woken up from a dream. By visiting Indonesia, and living in its totally foreign culture for 10 months, I hope it won't feel like a dream. It's much too vital.

Here's the plan

I am basically gone from Indonesia from here on out, so there will probably be no blog posts from now until I get back to the States (mind blowing!).

I just got back from nine days in Bali (stayed in Ubud, Nusa Lembongan, and Jimbaran briefly)--awesome time, will post about it later, hopefully!

Tomorrow (at 5:40am!) headed to Vietnam from June 23 - July 5 to travel with my bestest friend, Cammy.

July 7 - 13: Visiting my friend Kristy in Hong Kong.

July 13: Arriving back home at LAX!

So that is my schedule, in case you were interested. See ya on the flip side--kind of literally.

Banyuwangi

For my last workshop in Indonesia (last one!!), I was asked by my two counterparts, Bu Wahju and Pak Milal, to travel all the way to Banyuwangi.

Ordinarily, I would have said no. This is because it was my last weekend in Surabaya, and the trip to Banyuwangi involves a 6.5-hour train ride either way, just to do a 2-hour workshop. BUT because it was my two wonderful counterparts asking, and because they've hardly ever asked anything of me the whole time I've been here (while I've asked THEM for a lot), I felt like I had to say yes.

Best map I could find showing where Banyuwangi is in relation to Surabaya. ALL the way to the east. 

So we left at 7am on Saturday, May 8, to catch the 9am train to Banyuwangi. The train ride was fine; I mostly just read my book and snacked on the PB & J that I'd brought along. There were some annoying train employees who were sitting behind me and half attempting to talk to me in English, but thankfully I was able to move seats and get away from them and travel the rest of the trip in peace.

We arrived about half an hour early to Banyuwangi, and therefore had a few minutes to wait till our host picked us up. Consequently, I had some time to take a couple shots of the rather picturesque train stop.

We were giving the training at a pesantren (Muslim boarding school) in Banyuwangi, and staying at the house of the Kiai (sp?), which is the man who is essentially the leader of the community and the dean of the schools--yes, there were actually several schools and even a university on the compound. Needless to say, he had a pretty nice house, although I still shared the bedroom with two other ladies, Bu Wahju and Mbak Etik, the assistant at the language center back at my site. 

After getting picked up at the train station by one of the Kiai's relatives, we were taken to the coast, where we got to take some pictures of the water with Bali in the background, and also eat some grilled corn and young coconut. 

That's Bali! Just a 2-hour boat ride away. 

That's...not Bali. Some other island, I suppose. 

Mbak Etik, me, Bu Wahju, Pak Hakim, and Pak Milal

Cool (yet probably really unhappy) horses on the beach. 

Pak Milal, me, a sad horse, Bu Wahju, and Etik.

Eating grilled corn. 

This lady hacked some juicy coconuts for us. 

Etik and Bu Wahju enjoying the flesh. Ew, flesh. 

After walking a bit, we drove to the house and basically just chatted amongs ourselves and with the few guests that randomly came by. It turned out the owner of the house (the kiai) wasn't available to talk to us that night, because his infant son (less than a month old) was in the hospital, so he was at the hospital. We did meet two or three other relatives (nieces, cousins, etc.) before going to sleep.

Oh yes, this was also the night that the bomb was dropped about when we'd be returning to Surabaya. I had already planned to give up basically my whole weekend for this workshop. Travel all day Saturday, workshop Sunday morning, then train all the way back to arrive home Sunday night. Nope. Turns out the train only leaves at two times to get back to Surabaya: 9am and 10pm. So we were catching the 10pm train back on Sunday night, to arrive in Surabaya at 4:30am. HOORAY. I had trouble keeping in my annoyance at that schedule when I figured out that's what we were doing. Oh well. Lots of time to enjoy Banyuwangi, since our workshop would be finished by noon! 

The next morning, we got up at 6am. The plan was to start our workshop at 8am and finish by 12pm. We were all ready to go at about 7, so we kind of just sat around and chatted until about 7:45am, when the owner of the house finally arrived to greet us. So we went downstairs to meet with him, where he talked for a while. Then he served us breakfast! By this point, it was about 8:30am. I was wondering if anyone was going to mention that we were supposed to start at 8am. Finally, the man asked what time we were planning to start our workshop, and Pak Milal had to inform him that we had intended to start a 8. The kiai seemed surprised, and mentioned that he didn't know any of the plans for the workshop because he turns off his phone all the time. Huh? So it goes in Indonesia.

So we got to the school around 8:45 (it was a short walk from the house we were staying at), only to be ushered into some kind of reception room and then just...sit there. And wait for someone to tell us where to go. Finally, by 9:15, someone takes to another room where all the teachers and students are ready for us. We have an opening ceremony (introductory remarks by the rector, short prayer, etc.), and by the time I actually get to start MY part of the workshop, it's 9:45. Hooray! My job was actually just to play English games with the students, which turned out to be a group of 25 girls and 4 boys who had just graduated from the high school there. They were very sweet and seemed to enjoy the games. Especially when I had exciting prizes like DICTIONARIES and PENCILS with a map of CALIFORNIA! 

Trying to organize a game of telephone. 

There were some unexpected issues with girls having to whisper into boys' ears. But we got through it. 

So we finished the workshop around 12:30pm, took the requisite photos, and headed back to the house to each lunch and hang out for an hour. I was seriously pretty worried that we'd just hang out at the house for another 7 hours until our trip to train station, but thankfully, our hosts offered to take us to one of the scenic spots in Banyuwangi: Red Island. Yes, it's actually called by the English name. Why? Who knows? I asked a few people, but no one could really say. 

Anyway, I am really glad we got to go to this beach. Because it was really beautiful. 

The eponymous "Red Island" behind me. The rocks are a reddish color. 

The ladies walk in the water.

Bu Wahju

A jumping shrimp Pak Hakim found in the tide pools.

Pak Milal

We walked around the beach for about an hour and a half, and got back to the house by around 6pm. Still another three hours to kill before our drive to the station! I went out on the front porch to read my book, since I wanted some fresh air (and some privacy), but instead was greeted with lots of curious questions from the girls who attended the local university. They were quite sweet and friendly, so I didn't mind. We of course had multiple photo shoots to document our meeting.

After about half an hour, however, Bu Wahju came out to tell me that the son of the kiai had died, and they were going to go over to another house to pay their respects to him and his wife. They thought I should come along, so I did. As we were walking over there, we saw all of the men in the community walking in a group, with the first man in the group carrying the baby in his arms who had died. Pak Hakim and Pak Milal joined the men, while I stayed with Bu Wahju and Mbak Etik, who went to a kind of meeting house to sit with the other local women. When we walked into the house, we were greeted by the father, who strangely (to me, at least) didn't seem sad at all. He was smiling and friendly and thanked us for our condolences, and then proceeded to ask us about what we'd done during the day, and how we liked Banyuwangi. It struck me as weird, but it's not the first time I've met an Indonesian person who appears to treat death as something lighthearted or at least not a big deal. 

His wife, on the other hand, didn't seem quite as happy as him. She wasn't crying, but she was quietly sitting in a small circle of women in a separate, smaller room. She was also fairly young; only 30 years old, and in fact, she was his second wife (since Muslims are allowed to have up to four wives). I don't know how many other children she had, but maybe it affected her more than him because he already had a lot of children with his first wife? I don't know. I'm just speculating. It was an interesting experience. 

After returning from giving our condolences, we were driven to the train station, which we arrived at about 9:45. The train wasn't actually expected until about 10:45, so we had another hour or so to kill. Despite the beautiful beach and the enjoyment I got from spending time with my coworkers (I truly like my coworkers here), I was so ready to be back in Surabaya. FINALLY the train came, and we boarded it, and pretty much fell asleep until we arrived home at 4:20 on Monday morning. Then a taxi back to my room, and sleep! 

Yogyakarta, May 23 - 26

Man, I'm a little behind on May. Because I DID SO MUCH in May. I was traveling every weekend!

The last weekend in May, I traveled to Yogyakarta (pronounced like "Jogjakarta") for the second and sadly last time, to hang out with Holly and co-present with her at her school there, UII (Universitas Islam Indonesia).

I got in on Thursday afternoon, after a 5-hour train ride from Surabaya during which I pretty much slept the entire time. I love trains! You get more personal space than you would in an airplane, you get to see the local scenery (if you're not sleeping), and you're not afraid of falling out of the sky.

Back to the story. Holly and I just hung out at her house most of Thursday, until we went out to what was supposed to be an early dinner at this awesome Italian restaurant nearby. But Holly couldn't find her keys. We'd last seen them out on the front porch, where we'd been petting the local stray cats, and they weren't there any more. Some neighborhood children had waved at us from the porch earlier that day, but we didn't think they'd TAKE her keys...would they?

Well, we couldn't find the keys anywhere, so eventually Holly went out to try and find someone who could ask the kids if they'd taken the keys. This older ibu, who is very kind but doesn't speak a lick of English, offered to help look for the keys, and while she did that, Holly called her counterpart to ask him what to do.

After about 10 minutes, the ibu came back with Holly's keys. Hooray! Holly took them and asked the ibu to talk to her counterpart on the phone to explain what happened. Meanwhile, we slowly noticed that the keys were wet...and kind of sticky...and smelled bad. Eventually we found out that the children HAD taken her keys, and then dropped them in the dirty water that runs along the side of the road! And when the ibu asked them to get the keys, they wouldn't tell her, so she looked around and find them herself! Man. The kindness of strangers. Or sort-of strangers. Anyway, Holly and I were very grateful, and Holly ended up buying the lady a nice scarf the next day when we were out shopping to say thank you.

And then we got delicious Italian food (Greek salad with real feta cheese! Margharita pizza!).

Friday morning we went to Holly's campus, which is freaking amazingly modern and clean and GREEN (there are trees everywhere!) and presented for about an hour and a half about alternative assessment. Yay.

I am actually totally posing here.

After the presentation, we took a taxi up to Mirota, which is the place to buy cheap souvenirs in Indonesia, and "got lost in the Mirota vortex" (as Holly put it) for a couple hours before grabbing a drink at the pretty cafe next door.

Then we went back to Holly's house to pet the stray cats again. Specifically, there are two stray cats, which consist of a mama cat and her one teenage offspring. They are soooo sweet. And I am sooooo animal starved. I think these two cats were the highlight of my trip to Yogya.

Mommy and baby. 

Mama cat has HUGE, gorgeous eyes! 

Before I came to Yogyakarta, Holly had asked me if I was interested in climbing Mt. Merapi, which is the local mountain there. I said SURE! Especially since I haven't really hiked any real volcanoes yet, and Indonesia is crawling with volcanoes. I felt like I needed to hike a good one before leaving. I didn't know anything about Merapi, really, except that it wasn't that tall. And I hadn't heard that it was so challenging to hike. 

It's probably best that I didn't know much about it beforehand, because let's just say it turned out to be much more challenging than I (or Holly, I think) expected. First of all, the guides we hired (two young guys named Dion and Badu, who had just hiked the mountain the night before with another group of tourists! Wow.) picked us up at 10pm on Friday night. Then we drove 2 hours to "base camp," where the guides loaded up their gear. We started hiking the mountain at a little after midnight. 

It takes about 5 hours to hike up Merapi, so the hike was timed to see the sunrise at the top. Most of the trail was a little on the steep side, involving fairly big steps and grabbing lots of random branches to help pull ourselves up. But it wasn't too tough until we got to the last hour or hour and a half, which was the final peak--that part of the trail consisted of lots of volcanic rock and pebbles. Part of that hike felt like quicksand; for every step you took, you would slide down a few inches. That part was pretty frustrating, but thankfully it only lasted a short time (maybe 15 or 20 minutes?). 

The very last part of the peak involved very steep hiking, grabbing on to any rocks you could, and trying to make sure that every step you took was onto something that wouldn't roll downhill. I was glad it was mostly too dark to see how steep the drop off was behind me. 

And finally, at about 5:30am, we reached the top! 

The lights of Yogyakarta behind us! 

Orange, glowing lava behind me! Apparently Merapi has a sizable eruption approximately every three years. This was an off-year, thankfully. 

The edge of the volcano opening. On the left, you can see the steam coming out of the volcano. 

Rays of light from the sunrise. 

The neighboring mountain; I think it might be Merbabu? 

One of our guides, Dion. 

Our other guide, Badu, making a silly face and looking like an old Muslim grandmother. 

See the person with a death wish standing on the highest peak there? So scary. 

The four of us! Dion, me, Holly, and Badu. 

 It was cold and windy at the top! Hence the bundled-up look.

We stayed at the top for about 30 minutes, and then began the hike down. The first part of the hike down wasn't too bad. Even though it was scarily steep, we could now SEE everything clearly! And the sky was a beautiful blue.

Climbing down from the peak. 

After the quicksand part.

Looking back and realizing how steep all of that was. See the tiny people in orange and red? 

Cool view to the side; you can see where the vegetation just stops. 

View to the other side. Beautiful! 

We stopped after climbing down the initial, really steep part, to have some breakfast. Dion and Badu cooked us fried rice and gave us bananas, and it was nice to just relax for about an hour before continuing down the mountain.

Group photo where we stopped to eat breakfast. 

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the end of our high spirits. Holly and I had no idea how exhaustingly tedious the rest of the hike down would be. Though it only took about 2.5 hours to hike down, it felt like FOREVER. The ground was pretty rocky, and it was still quite steep, so you were constantly trying to prevent yourself from slipping. And of course, the more your legs get tired as you keep walking downhill, the more you're likely to slip, which gets really frustrating after a while. Holly and I played this game, where she would ask, "Would you turn around now and hike to the top again, if you could get [insert reward here]?" For example, "Would you turn around now and hike to the top again, if you could get $100,000?" "A great teaching job when you get back to the States?" "One million dollars?" Eventually, we got so exhausted the answer to every option was NO WAY! By the last half hour or so, we gave up our conversation completely, and pretty much just gritted our teeth and tried not to complain too much about the fact that we just. wanted. to. be. finished.

The only picture I took of the rest of the descent. I was trying to appreciate the scenery, despite wishing the hike was DONE. 

Of course, we did finally reach the end, despite our fears to the contrary, and everyone passed out on the drive back to Holly's house. Holly and I slept most of the rest of Saturday (and woke up to pet the cats, of course), only leaving the house to get dinner that night. 

On Sunday, I had to catch a flight back at 3pm, so we had enough time to take a taxi to the Hyatt and spend the big bucks ($15!) to use their pool and eat the buffet brunch they were serving. Worth every penny. I believe the highlight was ordering multiple plates of waffles with chocolate syrup. And then I flew back to Surabaya, very sore but proud of our accomplishment. But no more volcanoes for another couple years.