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. 

My favorite compliment received so far

End-of-Year Conference

On May 16 - 19, the English Language Fellows got to gather all together one last time for an end-of-year conference in Makassar (South Sulawesi Island--the same city I visited before the Tana Toraja trip).

On the first day, we had to do outreach (ie teacher training workshops at different sites). But before we headed off in our different groups, we managed to take a group photo with (almost) everyone in it. IRIS! Why were you late for breakfast???

I love this picture because most of us look genuinely happy. This is because were amused by the photographer, who apparently had no idea how to use a camera.

For the outreach, I was in Jackie and Josh's group. The Dream Team! No really, those two guys are pretty impressive cohorts. Anyway, we ended up being taken on a two-hour drive (slightly longer than we were expecting due to a local carnival blocking the streets), to a smaller town outside of Makassar, called Gowah. We presented ideas for teaching "Beyond the Textbook" (catchy, eh?) for a middle school English teachers association. When we arrived at the school, the students were done with their lessons for the day, but they all stayed at school, to crowd around us when we arrived. They didn't want to talk to us! But they did want to see the bules.

Jackie and some of the students. 

The students also crowded in the doorway to watch some of our presentation.

Josh presents to the teachers...and the students. 

We weren't really sure how much of what we said was really absorbed by the teachers, but we did our best. And then when we got back to the hotel, we jumped in the pool!

Jackie looking like Miami Vice. 

Deirdre having a blast. 

My hotel room had a pretty great view of the ocean (bay?) and the "floating mosque" of Makassar.

Watching the sunset. 

During day one of our actual conference, we had to brainstorm and write down all of what we'd accomplished over the past nine months. It was pretty impressive once we'd put together everyone's activities and outreach.

Autumn and Tabitha add their activities to the lists. 

We put post-it notes over all the places we'd visited in Indonesia--color coded for our site, travel for work, and travel for pleasure. 

At the end of the day on Friday, Deirdre and I formally presented gifts that we'd bought (and everyone had paid for) to our wonderful boss Eran (he got a fancy pen and an Amazon gift card) and his awesome assistants Dian and Ayunda (they each got fancy leather purses). Then Eran brought out a fancy bottle of Scotch (courtesy of the Embassy) and we had a happy hour hangout time.

On Saturday, day two of the conference, we talked about our plans for the future (blaahhhh who wants to talk about that???). Thankfully we finished early, by 1:30, so Ron (who lives in Makassar) chartered a boat for all of us to go out to a tiny island and snorkel. 

Fellows on the boat. 

Jess and me on the boat. 

It was actually some surprisingly good snorkeling. Pretty coral, bright yellow and blue fish. I even saw an eel! (My first eel seen in the wild!)

Esteban, Jon, Holly, Iris, Autumn, Christy, Jess, Jackie, me 

We also saw the mangiest, saddest-looking cat I have ever seen. This scrawny little thing followed us around and just wanted to be pet. We named it Struggles and gave it some water (it was super thirsty) and thought about taking it back to the mainland with us on the boat. Ultimately, we decided to leave Struggles on the island, since there were other cats there, and we didn't want to stress it out too much. Poor thing.

I let him sleep on my (hotel) towel. 

After we took the boat to the mainland, we had trouble getting a taxi to pick us up. There were about 25 of us, so Jess and I got impatient and decided to take a becak (pedicab) back to the hotel. It was a bit of a trek (about 40 mins?And the driver had to pedal two 6' tall bules!) but really refreshing and fun to take that way back. 

Me and Jess on the becak. We could barely fit both of us on the seat. 

For dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, we had all gone out to eat together as a group. But on Saturday night, some people wanted Italian food, some people wanted to eat local traditional seafood dishes, and some people wanted to go clubbing (namely, the boys). So we split up for dinner and met up later for dessert.

I was in the group that wanted to eat the local seafood dishes. We went to this great restaurant called Lae Lae, where you choose the fish you want out of these coolers, and they fry it up right there for you.

I think we just asked one of the restaurant people to choose for us. Too difficult!

DELICIOUS fish and some tasty side dishes too. All of this added up to $5 per person. 

Jess (we hung out a lot on this trip!) and me about to dig in. 

After the fish, we met up at a local gelato place, and I had a mint and chocolate gelato dessert.

On Sunday morning, we all had breakfast together to say our goodbyes. It actually wasn't goodbye for most people, since we made plans to meet up in Bali in June before everyone leaves. But Autumn wasn't going to Bali, so we all gave her a group hug. 

Autumn in the middle. Jackie, Holly, me, Deirdre, and Jess on the outside. 

This wasn't really a sad time yet, because I didn't feel like it was done yet. I still had 3 more weeks to teach, and I was going to see most of the people in Bali again. But this weekend was basically the beginning of the realization that this Fellowship is almost over. How do I feel about that? Um, how about I talk about that in another post, okay?