Confessions of an ELF in Indonesia

First Underwater Photos Published!

2011-06-11T13:45:00.000+07:00

I used to want to be a marine biologist but I realized in college that I had more of a knack for languages than lab reports. Still, I have always loved the ocean and I have always loved swimming. The diving I have done these past two years in Indonesia has reignited my love affair with the ocean and has shown me that even though I am not a professional marine biologist, I can can still be passionate about the ocean in other ways. I have done 168 dives to date, I am a certified PADI Rescue Diver and I have also fallen in love with underwater photography. At this point in my life, if you asked me what my absolute dream job would be I would say a freelance travel writer and underwater photographer since this job would combine my loves of writing, traveling, diving and photography. Therefore, it's perhaps no surprise that I consider the publication of my first dive article and underwater photos to be the unofficial highlight of my two-year fellowship in Indonesia.

Rantje first asked me to write an article for 'What's Happening?', the free North Sulawesi tourism magazine, more than a year ago near the end of my first fellowship year in Gorontalo and now it's finally been published in the Spring 2011 edition of the magazine. And he really surprised me by submitting two of my own photographs with the article! I knew there would be the photo of me with the Salavador Dali sponge because we did a special underwater photo shoot for that last year but I had no idea my own photos would be published! I was thrilled when Rantje sent me the hard copies in the mail last week. However, my photos were extremely dark because the publisher got the printing saturation wrong on the first run. Fortunately, this mistake was corrected in subsequent printings and in the online version of my article that you can read here on page 18.

Although I've been fortunate to dive in some pretty spectacular places like Komodo, Nusa Lembongan, Bunaken, Lembeh, and the Togean Islands, Gorontalo will always be my absolute favorite diving destination in Indonesia for all of the reasons that I listed in my article. Since leaving Gorontalo, I've been back twice to dive - once in December with my sister and Mark and once again in March with Megan and Christina. I love diving there, I love diving with Rantje and the gang and I love introducing Gorontalo to other divers. That's why I was thrilled once again when Rantje unveiled Miguel's Diving's new t-shirt design:

Miguel's Diving t-shirt

The diver with the wavy blond hair admiring a Salvador Dali sponge while a whale shark passes overhead? That's me!!

My diving days in Gorontalo have come to an end (for now) but I find it beyond fitting that my departure from Indonesia is marked by the publication of my article about diving in Gorontalo and the introduction of the new Gorontalo t-shirts with my likeness!

I hear there will be a new ELF in Gorontalo next year. I really hope that person is a diver too so he or she can enjoy Gorontalo's hidden paradise!

Durian - What's The Big Stink?

2011-06-10T19:46:00.000+07:00

I had somehow managed to survive nearly two years in Indonesia without sampling what can arguably be called its most famous fruit - durian. Resembling a large, slightly oblong bowling ball covered in spikes, this is a fruit with a colorful, or should I say, malodorous, reputation. Banned in hotels and airplanes for its intensely fragrant aroma (stench?), this is not a fruit to be messed with. Food and travel writer Richard Sterling once famously described its odor as a mix of 'pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock'. Anthony Bourdain, host of the popular food and travel show 'Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations', noted that after eating durian, 'your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother'. In spite of these descriptions by Western writers, durian remains a popular flavor here in Indonesia for everything from ice-cream to condoms.

You would really have to like durian a lot to use these...

With just over a week left in Indonesia, I decided that I had to try durian just once to see what all the fuss was about. It seems that people either love it or hate it and I was curious about which category I would fall into.

After my ICRS farewell party, where I had mentioned my desire to try durian before I left Indonesia, one of my coworkers offered to take me to a roadside durian stand on the way back to my guesthouse. I was all for the idea. We drove down Jl. Kaliurang until we came to a row of 5 or 6 durian sellers on the side of the road. We parked the car, crossed two busy lanes of traffic and then sat down on the mat next to several big mounds of durians. The durian seller started sniffing different fruits until he picked one that was suitably ripe for us. He sliced it open with a huge machete type knife and then set the two halves down in front of us.

Time to dig in!

I pulled out a big chunk of gooey, light yellow colored fruit. I cautiously took a bite, expecting it to taste something like a pungently ripe piece of soft cheese and was surprised to find that it didn't taste like that at all. And, for that matter, it didn't taste like for turpentine, onions or gym socks, either. It had a mild, not unpleasant taste, sort of like almonds. And the texture was creamy and custard-like. Dicky and I ate our way through the first layer of fruit and then the seller cut the halves in half again to reveal further seeds and flesh. We kept eating. I surprised myself by eating so much of it. I had imagined just taking one bite and then being done but it really wasn't bad at all. Dicky asked me to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 and I gave it a 7. Maybe that was a little high, but I think I was factoring in the whole authentic experience of sitting at the side of a busy road with my Indonesian colleague and the durian seller while countless motorbikes whizzed by.

Devouring the roadside delicacy

As we ate our way through the entire fruit, Dicky told me interesting facts like how the durians we were eating weren't from Yogya because the durian season in Yogya is only from November to February. The durians we were eating came from Sumatra. He also said it was possible to get drunk by eating durian. Well, I didn't feel drunk at the end of our culinary adventure but I do sort of agree with Anthony Bourdain's comment about the aftertaste!

I'm glad I tried it and I was happy that the odor and taste of that particular durian weren't as bad as I expected but I think my life will go on just fine without durian once I'm back in the US.

Mission successful. Still smiling after my first durian experience.

The Monkey Thief of Uluwatu

2011-06-02T21:53:00.000+07:00

Last week, the entire ICRS office went to Bali for a couple of days. Several of my Indonesian colleagues had never been there before so the purpose of our trip was to spend time together and see some of Bali's famous sites like Pura Luhur Uluwatu, a Hindu temple perched on a step cliff. Since we were traveling as a group, I didn't even bother to bring my Lonely Planet guide book. If I had, I would have read this warning about Uluwatu: "This temple is home to scores of grey monkeys. Greedy little buggers, when they're not energetically fornicating, they snatch sunglasses, handbags, hats and anything else within reach. Of course, if you want to start a riot, throw them your banana." Boy, do I wish I had read that warning beforehand! Or paid attention to any of the other warnings that followed...

When we arrived at Uluwatu, the guide at the front gate warned all of us to take off our hats, jewelery and glasses because the monkeys would take them. Now, I had been to the Sacred Monkey Forest in Ubud and had no problems with the monkeys there. So, I figured I could handle these monkeys, too. After all, if I didn't bother them, they would have no reason to bother me, right? And besides, if I took off my glasses I would barely be able to see anything. And what's the point of visiting one of the most famous sites in Bali if I can't see it? With those thoughts in mind, I confidently set off on the path to the temple.

I walked right past this sign:

And this one:

The message was repeated in Indonesian, French, Italian, German and a couple of other languages.

I walked right up to the edge of the cliff and oohh'ed and ahhh'ed at the beautiful view:

I heard some people start to shriek and when I turned around I quickly spotted the cause of all the commotion. A monkey was nonchalantly sitting on a wall munching away on someone's glasses. How funny, I thought, and took a picture:

Even after hearing the guide's warning, seeing the signs, and seeing a monkey furiously nibbling away at someone else's glasses, I still did not remove my own glasses. I figured I wasn't standing next to the wall or under a tree or anywhere where a monkey could suddenly jump on me. And surely I would sense it if a monkey started crawling up my leg or something.

So, there I was minding my own business taking in the scenery when all of the sudden my vision became terribly blurry. What the...?! NOOOOOOO!!! A monkey had come out of nowhere and snatched off my glasses before I even realized he was there. Squinting, I tried to make out where the monkey had run off to but there was more than one monkey and I couldn't tell them apart. Oh noooooo! My glasses!!! My brand new glasses that I had just bought in Washington, DC in April! And now I had no idea where they were. I could feel the tears welling up as I realized how utterly helpless I was. A monkey had just run off with my new $400 glasses and I couldn't do anything about it. I felt like I had been mugged.

Fortunately, my predicament didn't go unnoticed. Mas Ramang, one of my colleagues, attempted to go after the monkey. But that monkey wasn't going to give up the glasses for nothing. He quickly scampered off. Someone else gave chase and came back with my glasses a few (very long) moments later. THANK GOD!! Then he asked for a tip for the food he used to bribe the monkey. I was too flustered to do anything but one of our tour guides paid him 10,000 Rp., about $1 - thank you, thank you, thank you. So worth it!

I gingerly put the glasses back on my face but quickly realized something was wrong. Taking them off again, I noticed that the lenses were smeared with monkey saliva. Ewww.... A closer inspection also revealed that the monkey had chewed up the ends of the branches, taken a big chunk out of the frame over my left eye, and dented both lenses in various places. Sigh. At least I could see again and the glasses sat properly on my face.

But I wasn't going to take any more chances. I had finally learned my lesson. I put those glasses in my bag, vowing not to put them on again until we were safely back in the car.

I continued walking around Uluwatu with my coworkers but it wasn't much fun because 1) I couldn't see very well and 2) I was terrified of the monkeys. I felt like I was in a real live horror movie where unseen beasts could attack at any given moment. I couldn't wait to get out of there!

Smiling blindly through the terror

Back in the parking lot, Charlotte found these abandoned glasses glistening on the ground - a sad reminder of another tourist who did not follow the rules:

At our next stop of the day, I saw this t-shirt for sale that pretty much sums up how I feel about the aggressive monkeys of Uluwatu:

I realize it was totally my own fault that the monkey snatched my glasses. I was given ample warnings and blithely ignored them. Still, I wonder if Lenscrafters will replace them free of charge...

The Great Job Search of 2011

2011-05-15T22:10:00.000+07:00

With only 5 weeks left of my contract in Indonesia and only one more payment from Georgetown on the horizon, my thoughts have been increasingly focused on my financial situation and the big question of what am I going to do next to earn money? I've dubbed my job search The Great Job Search of 2011 and have entered the process optimistically, comparing it to a big raffle.

Every job application I send off is like a raffle ticket. Clicking 'submit' or 'send' represents a chance to win the big prize worth tens of thousands of dollars - a full-time job with benefits! And even if I don't win the big prize right away, there are a lot of smaller prizes to be raffled off as well, namely telephone interviews and on-campus interviews. Over the past month and a half, I've submitted 8 applications to various jobs. I've already gotten one rejection email but I'm not going to let that get me down because I still have 7 tickets left in the bowl. And the great part is, there's no limit to the number of tickets I can buy! I'll just keep buying and buying until I win something.

So, where am I looking and what kind of job do I want?

Well, it's been clear to me for a while now that I want to live in the United States again for the foreseeable future. While I'm grateful for all my adventures and experiences overseas, I feel that my life is waiting for me back home. I want to share Thanksgiving dinner with my family and I want to spend time with my cousins' children (especially my goddaughter). Basically, I just want to feel more a part of the fabric of my own life. My number one rule for the job search is I can only apply to places that are within a day's drive of my family. Essentially, this means I am only considering jobs in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states. And I have a particular focus on the DC metro area because of a certain someone :-).

As for the type of job I want, well, there are some options. The obvious choice would be to apply for faculty ESL positions since I've got the degree and I've certainly got the experience. A big problem with ESL positions, however, is that many of them are for adjunct/part-time work. Occasionally, I'll see postings for full-time positions - and I've even applied for one - but those are pretty rare. Another consideration is that, after teaching English for seven years, I'd like to spice things up a bit. Call it the career version of the seven-year itch, but I just have a really strong urge to do something a little bit different. That's why ESL jobs with added responsibilities in the direction of language program administration or campus-wide ESL support are appealing. Another strong area of interest for me is international education. I've applied for a handful of jobs with the title of International Student Advisor, where I would be responsible for counseling international students about academic, visa and cross-cultural adjustment issues. I would also get the opportunity to develop workshops and programs to cater to the needs of those students as they transition into American culture.

I'm excited about the possibilities out there. I search the job boards every day hoping to find some interesting gems to apply to. I realize that 8 applications in a month and a half is not much. My pace may have started off slow but it's definitely picking up speed now that my contract is coming to an end and unemployment looms. If anyone reading this happens to have some leads for me, please send them along. You never know which application will be the winning ticket!

Take A Chance On Me

2011-05-14T09:16:00.052+07:00

For those of you who may be wondering, my trip to Washington, DC to visit Henry last month went really well. In his words, it went better than expected and it meant a lot to him that I came all that way to see him. All of the weirdness I felt over New Year's was gone and we had a lot of fun together. My first night there he took me to the Melting Pot restaurant where we feasted on cheese fondue, salad, meat fondue and dessert fondue. And we washed it all down with a bottle of Riesling. It was delicious! The next day we headed off for our road trip to North Carolina. We spent a couple of days exploring the Outer Banks and then headed back to DC via Charlottesville, VA, where we stopped to see Monticello and dine on food from yesteryear at Michie's Tavern. Somewhere in between eating delicious food and laughing along to Car Talk podcasts on our road trip, we realized that we can be a couple again.

But we still have our challenges. Since the trip, Henry and I have been emailing a lot and talking about the issues that didn't get discussed while I was there. Maybe this is because we were too busy sightseeing or meeting up with my friends for dinner in DC. Or maybe it was because we were just too shy. Whatever the reason, we're talking more now than we have in a long time and I think that's a very good thing.

I'll be back in the U.S. soon and we'll take it from there!

Love On Hold...

2011-04-04T20:44:00.020+07:00

When Henry and I first talked about the possibility of a long-distance relationship back in August, I hesitated. Long distance relationships have never really worked out for me and I thought for sure that a long-distance romance based on only 3 days together wouldn't stand a chance.

But Henry has surprised me over and over again these past few months. He's been the perfect long-distance boyfriend: he calls when he says he will; he listens, really listens when we talk or gchat; he's interested in my life; he counts the days in disbelief that we DON'T communicate; he sends flowers and hand-written cards; he comments on my Facebook status updates; he tells me about his family and he talks about the future. He also supported me through that whole medical scare I had last year by letting me know I could call him any time of day or night and he even consulted his own doctor about my mysterious conditions. In short, he's been absolutely wonderful to me and knowing he is in my life has given me a certain confidence and happy buzz.

Everything was going just great between us - until he came to Indonesia over New Year's to visit.

Things didn't bode well for his trip right from the start. His luggage was held up in Brussels and didn't arrive in Jakarta until the end of his trip. On his second full day in Indonesia, we flew to Lombok and transferred to Gili Air by boat. The seas were a bit rough and when he jumped off the boat, his iPhone, forgotten in his pocket, was instantly swamped. As frustrating as either of those two events would have been for some, Henry wasn't phased. He hadn't come to Indonesia to show off his fashionable beach wear or spend all day glued to his email messages. He came to spend time with me and see my world.

To prepare for his trip he spent a lot of time, energy and money in learning how to scuba dive. His goals were to see this underwater world of mine that I rave about so much and to take pictures of us wearing goofy scuba masks. To get his certification, he did his Open Water dives in a rock quarry in Virgina, in December, huddled around a space heater with the other guys in between dives. He even did his Advanced Open Water as well to increase his confidence underwater. Only later, after I subjected him to diving with sharks and diving in a frightening current, did he admit that diving actually terrifies him. But he tried it anyway. He tried it for me.

So, between the lost luggage and the dead iPhone and his fear of diving, Henry had a lot on his mind and was completely thrown off guard by what happened next. So was I. In fact, neither one of us could have predicted it. My tall, blond, blue-eyed guy who I had been missing for months just traveled half away across the world to see me and I freaked out. Finally, we were in the same place again but for some reason I was nervous, uptight, stand-offish and just not myself. Things grew incredibly strained between us and after five nights of a pretty icy reception from me, he cut his trip short and flew back to the US, heartbroken.

In the months since he left, both have us have been trying to figure out what happened and make sense of it all. What went wrong? How come this man, who felt like such an intimate soul mate from afar, suddenly felt like a stranger to me in person? Why did I feel such an overwhelming need for space and breathing room? You would think after four months of not seeing him I would jump at the chance to...well...jump into bed with him. But instead I felt paralyzed. And the more he tried to be affectionate, the more I pushed him away. I spent so much time thinking about how awkward and uncomfortable I felt, that I completely failed to see just how confusing and dismaying my behavior was to him. All he wanted to do was hold me but for some reason I couldn't relax in his arms.

Right now we're at a terrible impasse where we're broken up but neither of us wants to be. Well, at least I'm sure I don't want to be. I had no plans to end the most wonderful relationship I've ever been in and I'm sitting here still stunned that that's what happened. I've tried to explain myself to Henry and I've asked for his forgiveness and a chance to give this relationship another try. So, after much consideration, discussion and planning, we're going to see each other again in just a few days in Washington, D.C! If our chemistry clicks this time, I think this love story might still have a happy ending.

Gorontalo...Again!

2011-03-28T21:54:00.004+07:00

Here are some images from my most recent trip to Gorontalo. In all likelihood, it was probably my last trip there for a very long time but that's kinda hard to think about. So, I'll just call it my most recent trip.

Blue starfish

Detail of ruby-lined sea cucumber

Gorgonian crab

Unidentified crab

Lionfish

Shrimp

Randall's sailfin goby

Tiny shrimp on blue starfish

With Christina and Megan

Orangutans in Borneo

2011-02-27T14:31:00.179+07:00

'Tom' - King of the Orangutans

Indonesia is a great country for seeing magnificent animals in their natural habitats. I've been lucky enough already to see whale sharks off the coast of Gorontalo, manta rays off the coasts of Bali and Flores and Komodo dragons on Rinca Island. Now I can also say I've seen orangutans, proboscis monkeys, and gibbons in the jungles of Borneo. Inspired by friends' photos last year, I quickly said yes when Mark started organizing an orangutan river trip for the end of February. Our merry band of travelers included Mark and his friend Dave, visiting from Alaska; my ELF friends Noreen and Michaela; and my housemates Melanie and Anastasia from Yogya.

Lonely Planet describes these orangutan river trips to Tanjung Puting National Park in Central Kalimantan (part of Indonesian Borneo) as "the world's easiest adventure travel" and I'd have to agree. An English-speaking guide named Ambo (like Rambo without the 'r', he told us) met our plane at the tiny airport in Pangkalan Bun and whisked us off by car to our awaiting klotok on the river. This traditional river boat would be our home for the next three days and two nights as we leisurely cruised up and down the rivers of the park, disembarking only to visit orangutan rehabilitation camps. My friends and I spent all of our time on the klotok topside and the crew did a fantastic job of transforming our living space from a lounging area to a dining area to a sleeping area and back again multiple times. We ate delicious food, slept under mosquito nets at night and kept our eyes peeled for primates in the trees.

A klotok heading up river

Dining topside

Early morning on the klotok

Looking for wildlife

Proboscis monkey - look at that nose and the long tail!

Orangutan rehabilitation has actually been deemed controversial. The original idea was to train formerly captive orangutans to live in the wild but this idea backfired when scientists realized that the reintroduced orangutans were spreading human diseases they had picked up in captivity to native orangutan populations, who were also forced to compete for food and mates. Currently, orangutans are only rehabilitated into areas with no native populations.

A mother and baby eating bananas

Michaela, Anastasia, Melanie and Mark at an orangutan feeding station

Did you know 'orangutan' is an Indonesian word that means 'forest person'?

Treehugger :-)

There WERE crocodiles in the river! My friends saw some but I didn't :-(

A gibbon! We would listen to their calls while eating breakfast on the klotok.

A wild boar at a feeding station

Orangutans are only found in the wild in Borneo and Sumatra.

Melanie, Michaela and Noreen

Me on a boat in Borneo :-)

One of the unexpected highlights of the trip was seeing fireflies at night. At home, fireflies seem to come out individually and spread themselves out over a large area. Here, the fireflies came out in droves and would concentrate themselves around individual trees, giving the effect of Christmas trees covered in live twinkling lights. I've never seen anything like it.

Cruising down up and down the river was magical for all the reasons I've already mentioned but it was also thrilling to think about some of the other, unseen animals of the jungle just beyond the riverbanks like sun bears, clouded leopards, and pythons...

Does Vagina Chalk Really Exist?

2011-02-19T14:23:00.007+07:00

Via Via is one of my favorite restaurants in Yogya. Calling itself a 'travelers' cafe', it not only offers up a delicious mix of world cuisines and live jazz on Friday nights but it also organizes interesting sightseeing trips around town using local forms of transportation. One of the tours on offer is the 'Jamu Tour'.

Jamu is the word for traditional herbal Indonesian medicines and you can see jamu sellers all over town - these women are easily recognized by the big woven baskets of traditional medicine they carry around strapped to their backs. And yes, they're always women. This is because women are believed to have magical powers for making jamu - a carefully concocted blend of bark, leaves, roots, and fruit used to heal an array of ailments.

Anastasia, Melanie, Michaela and Jackie and I headed down to Via Via early one morning to meet our tour guide in front of the restaurant. We were interested in learning more about the traditional medicines but we were even more intrigued by the existence of something called vagina chalk. Apparently, there is a special stick of chalk that Indonesian women insert into their vaginas before sex to make themselves drier. Say what?! Yes, apparently, Indonesian men desire their women to be dry because that means they are more virtuous or something. We simply had to find out more about this.

After meeting our guide, we climbed into our three awaiting becaks, a type of bicycle rickshaw, and headed off to the local market to visit the stall of a woman who sells jamu ingredients. We stood around her stall for a good long while sampling the many fruits and leaves she had to offer. Then we piled back into our becaks and went to the house of a retired jamu seller to see these raw ingredients transformed into a special elixir.

Jamu ingredients for sale at the local market

Anastasia and Jackie in a becak

Anastasia paints a sticky rice face mask on Melanie.

Turmeric and asam are ground together for our jamu.

Jamu maker and her final product - a jamu juice to relieve menstrual cramps

All of this facial mask making and turmeric juice sampling was fine and good but when we got back to Via Via we begged our tour guide to tell us about the 'sexy' jamus we had heard about. She laughed, disappeared inside the store and reappeared a few minutes with this box of questionable items.

Note the 'Worldy Stick of Joy'!! A.k.a. 'vagina chalk' this was the item we had only heard rumors about before. And now here it was. It really exists! Women really use this!!

Vagina chalk!

The box was filled with all sorts of interesting powder and capsule jamus. There were jamus to increase sexual stamina for men, tighten the vagina, and even ones for 'late menstruation' i.e. abortion. We weren't tempted to buy anything but later one of Michaela's friends commented on her blog, "If you get me anything - anything at all [from Indonesia] - it has to be the Vagina Chalk."

Ancient Temples of Borobudur & Prambanan

2011-02-17T18:46:00.116+07:00

The Buddhist temple of Borobudur and the Hindu temple compound known as Prambanan are Yogyakarta's most popular tourist attractions. Although one is Buddhist and the other Hindu, these two places of worship have very similar histories. Both were built in the ninth century, abandoned shortly thereafter, and devastated by disaster and neglect for centuries. Today both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and are right in my backyard.

I visited both of these sites for the first time in September and then again in February when my ELF friends Jackie and Michaela came to visit. We left the ICRS guesthouse at 5:30 in the morning to beat the heat and the crowds. Our efforts paid off because we had Borobudur practically all to ourselves on a gloriously sunny morning. But by the time we got to Prambanan, the midday sun was at its strongest and we felt ourselves fading fast and in need of some frozen mango drinks at Parsley. However, before we called it a day we got in some great photo-ops and learned some interesting facts.

The origins of the name 'Borobudur' are disputed
but it might mean 'temple above the hill'.

Borobudur was abandoned in the 10th century
and remained buried under volcanic ash until its rediscovery in the 18th century.

Borobudur is Indonesia's most visited tourist attraction.

There are 2,672 relief panels representing Buddhist cosmology

from the lusty everyday to Nirvana.

Originally there were 504 Buddha statues.
Today more than 300 are damaged and more than 40 are missing.

One of the few intact Buddha statues. Many statues were decapitated soon after Borobudur's rediscovery in the 18th century. The heads can be found in museums all over the world.

There are more Buddha statues inside each of these latticed stupas. This top level of the temple was closed because the Buddhas in the stupas are still covered in ash from the recent 2010 eruptions of Mt. Merapi.

Like Borobudur, Prambanan was abandoned in the 10th century, probably because of a volcanic eruption, and was further damaged in a big earthquake in the 16th century. Proper restoration began in the 20th century but earthquakes remain a constant threat. The main temple is still closed to visitors today because of the 2006 Yogya earthquake.

Four-headed Hindu statue in one of the smaller shrines.

Flores & Rinca Island

2011-02-05T12:15:00.121+07:00

In mid-December shortly after I returned to Yogyakarta from my three-week extended stay in Jakarta, I got an email from my boss asking for pairs of ELF volunteers to conduct three days of teaching training and youth outreach for the Access Microscholarship Program in various parts of Indonesia. This program, the same one I worked with in Jakarta, provides after-school English language classes for smart but economically disadvantaged high school students and is funded by the U.S. Department of State.

The sites up for grabs included Banjarmasin, Bengkulu, Kupong, Ende, and Lombok. I didn't immediately recognize the town of Ende on the list but once I realized it was on Flores I couldn't get over this stroke of good luck. A predominantly Catholic island, Flores lies to the east of both Bali and Lombok. Perhaps you've heard of another island very near by - Komodo Island? Flores is a place I've been wanting to visit for several reasons - to see the Komodo dragons, of course; to dive the turbulent waters known for big pelagics; and to see the island where my dear friend and co-worker Ingrid is from. Flores is a place that Ingrid raves about constantly - a place of great natural beauty, friendly people and delicious food. Expensive to get to and a bit off the beaten track, I had no idea when, if ever, I would get to visit Flores but now the perfect opportunity had just landed in my lap.

I immediately emailed back my interest in the Flores site and recruited my ELF friend Mark to co-present with me since I knew he had been wanting to go to Flores too and he's a diver. Mark quickly texted back his interest, my boss signed off his approval and soon I was writing up a budget proposal for the trip. It was on!

As my plane flew into the tiny town of Labuanbajo at the end of January, I was entranced by the sight of the rolling green mountains and vast expanses of ocean dotted by small islands. One plane change and 35 minutes later, I found myself landing in the town of Ende, my attention grabbed again by the sight of black-sand beaches, blue water and green palm trees.

Father Kons, from the local Catholic high school SMAK Syuradikara, and Mark met me at the airport and took me back to the Hotel Mentari where we met up with Ingrid's aunt and uncle who graciously took Mark and me sightseeing that day. We headed out to the village of Wolotopo to see some traditional houses, stopping at one of the many black-sand beaches along the way.

Beautiful black-sand beach!

Ikat (traditional cloth) weaver in Wolotopo

Traditional house in Wolotopo

Eating delicious local food at the Pusat Pangan Lokal - note the mugs made out of coconut shells!

Two days later, Ingrid's aunt and uncle took us to Kelimutu National Park, where we hiked up to the rim of the tri-colored lakes on top of an ancient volcano. Well, the three lakes were supposed to be different colors but when we went two were the same turquoise color and one was black. The dissolving mineral content of the lakes can change their colors to shades of yellow, orange, red and brown. Locals believe that when villagers die, their souls leave the villages and stay in Kelimutu forever.

Hiking Kelimutu with Ingrid's aunt and uncle and Pak Diding from Universitas Indonesia

The two turquoise lakes

The black lake

Ikat weavings for sale at Kelimutu

Ingrid's uncle aka 'The Dancing Professor'

After getting back from our morning hike to Kelimutu, Mark and I kicked off our English Camp at SMAK Syuradikara with an afternoon program of introductions and ice-breakers with the high school students. The next day we had our teacher training sessions in the morning and our sessions with the kids in the afternoon. Then we returned the following day for a marathon eight-hour session of activities with the kids. We were totally exhausted by the end but the teachers found our teacher training useful, despite numerous logistical SNAFUs, and the Access kids enjoyed our program of activities focusing on speaking fluency and cross-cultural understanding.

With Access Microscholarship kids in Ende

Enthusiastic Access kids

The program came to an official end with a dinner - a feast, actually - of local food at the same restaurant Ingrid's uncle had recommended to us a few days before. I was glad to return because I found the local food from Ende to be DELICIOUS! Sweet appetizer balls made of cassava and brown sugar, sweet potato satay, cassava leaf and coconut salad, young bamboo shoot salad, grilled fish, brown rice, white rice mixed with corn, chicken, fish meatballs (no, seriously, these were pretty good), more cassava dishes and on and on. I washed it all down with some seriously good mint iced tea.

A delicious feast of local food with Father Kons and others from SMAK Syuradikara

Our work done, Mark and I took the short flight back to Labuanbajo the next day to squeeze in some diving and dragon spotting before heading home. We found some cheap rooms right on the main street near the dive shops. The rooms had no AC or hot water but look at the view we had:

Harbor of Labuanbajo as seen from the Gardena Hotel

The next day we headed out to sea with the Bajo Dive Club. We had the boat to ourselves and the itinerary for the day included two dives, lunch and then a stop at Rinca Island to see the famous Komodo dragons. To my great and utter dismay, I realized that I had forgotten to pack the o-ring for my camera housing! This devastating oversight meant I couldn't take any pictures underwater. I tried to convince myself that I would just focus on living in the moment instead but after two amazing dives with sharks, manta rays, turtles and gorgeous coral, I do kinda wish I had some pictures to show! At least I could take pictures on land. Our dive boat dropped us off on Rinca Island where we hired a guide to take us on a hour long 'trek' around part of the island.

Dive boat moored on Rinca Island

My first Komodo dragon sighting!

Whoa...lots of dragons. Here a male is keeping a watchful eye over the females.

The guide carried a long dragon-poking stick in case they got too close.

Where there be dragon eggs

Look at those big claws!

While posing for this one the guide warned me not to swing my backpack around because the dragons might mistake it for a hunk of meat. And that would not end well...

It was a great trip but like so many of my excursions to the more remote corners of Indonesia, it was all too short and leaves me wanting more. If I ever get the chance to return to Flores I would 1) do more diving around Komodo! 2) check out the muck diving near Maumere and 3) spend time in the traditional villages near Bajawa.

Diving the Gili Islands

2011-01-19T12:00:00.001+07:00

I remember first reading about the Gili Islands in a travel memoir before I even moved to Indonesia. The three islands of Gili Trawangan, Gili Meno and Gili Air were described as little-known rustic outposts for road-weary travelers looking for a place off the beaten track to put down their heavy backpacks. Days easily turned into weeks and months as travelers languished in hammocks, swam in the turquoise sea and enjoyed life on the traffic-free islands.

Today these islands are a major tourist destination in Indonesia - especially Gili Trawangan, which has gained a reputation as a party island with all-night raves and easy access to 'shrooms and pot. And although the diving opportunities were said to be plentiful, I had also heard that a lot of the coral around the islands had been damaged by El Nino beaching. For these two reasons, I had never been particularly interested in going to the Gilis but when I started researching places to dive with Henry, I reconsidered the Gilis because they're relatively easy to get to from Jakarta; they're tourist-friendly and offer a mix of Indonesian and Western food; and several friends had described Gili Air to me as a particularly lovely and romantic island with private bungalows and bamboo lounge chairs on the beach. So, we went to Gili Air and it was exactly as promised - I would recommend it to anyone looking for a little romantic getaway. However, things with Henry didn't exactly work out and I found myself finishing out the rest of the week by myself on Gili Trawangan - the one island I had been avoiding for the past year and a half.

Although I would never have planned a trip to Gili Trawangan for myself, it ironically turned out to be a pretty great solo travel destination and not nearly as much of a party island as I had feared. The island pretty much consists of one main street lined with dive shops and beach-front restaurants offering a good variety of food. Actually, it was pretty ideal in that way. I booked myself into a vaguely Indian themed hotel two doors down from the Blue Marlin dive shop and in between dives I went to a place called 'The Deli' that had excellent European style sandwiches and protein shakes. And the diving itself was much better than I had expected too. I have never seen so many sharks and turtles in my entire life! On practically every dive I saw one or the other. The coral, of course, can't compete with Gorontalo, but it was fun to see the bigger stuff. There was also a shipwreck and an interesting artificial reef called 'biorocks' that hosted a ton of marine life.

Yellow boxfish

Giant clam

Coral crab

Sea urchin

Turtle

Sharks under rock

But without a doubt, the best diving experience I had in the Gilis was an exploratory muck dive with one of the Blue Marlin instructors. After a few days of seeing lots of sharks and turtles, I found myself getting restless and longing for a good macro muck dive but 'Hans Reef', the muck diving site off Gili Air, wasn't being dived that week because the water was green. After a bit of discussion with the instructors at the shop, Donna mentioned a brand-new site called 'Magic Pier' off the mainland of Lombok. This site was so new that Donna had never been to it. In fact, only one person on staff had ever dived it and he was out sick. Donna warned me that she had very little information to go on but she had been wanting to check out the site too for some time. So she agreed to take me there provided I understood she couldn't guarantee me anything and there was a good chance we wouldn't see anything at all. But being a newly certified Muck Diver, I was more than up for it and found it thrilling to be heading out for a real underwater exploration.

Once we got to the site and figured out which buoy corresponded to the rough sketch we had gotten from the shop, we splashed in and dropped down along the buoy line to 17 meters. There was only about a half meter of visibility!! Good thing Donna had her compass with her - she successfully led us towards the jetty despite the poor vis but I had to be extra vigilant about keeping my eye on her. I didn't want to get separated in half a meter of vis! After a good 20 minutes of poking around in the poor vis, we ascended to 11 meters where we found LOADS of cool stuff on the chain off the pier. We were convinced we could have found frogfish there if we had stayed longer but we decided to surface after 68 minutes. I really wanted to dive the site again the next day now that I knew what to look for but I had to fly home. If I ever go back to the Gilis, I'll be heading straight for 'Magic Pier'.

Unidentified fish at 'Magic Pier'

Return to Gorontalo

2011-01-12T15:52:00.023+07:00

With my newly certified dive buddy at my side, we set out overland for Gorontalo, where we met up with my ELF friend Mark for four days of excellent diving with Rantje. It was fun to show my sister where I used live and work and even more fun to show her my old diving haunts! And, after 60+ dives in Gorontalo last year without a camera, I was thrilled to finally be able to take pictures at some of my favorite dive sites. Although Colleen didn't get to see any of the whale sharks that occasionally cruise by overhead, she did see many other interesting things that make diving in Gorontalo so special such as the enormous intricately carved Salvador Dali sponges, the hundreds and hundreds of types of corals, the mysterious Jinn Caves dive site, and the local fishing village of Olele.

Surface interval @ Hidden Beach
(Rantje later used this photo in the new German language edition of the Miguel's Diving brochure!)

White-eyed moray eel

Beautiful Gorontalo corals!

Big ol' clam

Gorgonian crab @ Jinn Caves

Blue-spotted fantail stingray @ Jinn Caves

Unidentifed frogfish

Surface interval @ Olele Village

Another great Gorontalo dive comes to an end

Colleen left Indonesia with 18 dives under her belt! And she's a born natural too, although that's no surprise since she's a great swimmer. I can't wait for us to have more diving adventures together, wherever in the world that may be!

New Diver in the Family!

2011-01-10T18:59:00.010+07:00

My sister, Colleen, came to visit me for nearly two weeks over Christmas vacation and she's now the second certified diver in the family!! She did her Open Water course at Two Fish Divers Lembeh at the same time Megan and I did our Muck Diver course. Lembeh is a pretty ideal place to do the Open Water course because there's virtually no current and divers can see some very cool stuff. My lucky sister saw a wonderpus on her second dive ever!

My sister with Gizmo, her Open Water Instructor

After completing her Open Water course, Colleen also did the Deep Adventure Dive and the Peak Performance Buoyancy Adventure Dive in preparation for the next stop on our diving vacation - Gorontalo!

Wow..Muck Diver Course!

2011-01-09T16:31:00.015+07:00

My ELF friend Megan and I have the distinguished honor of being the first two PADI certified Muck Divers in the world! We took this brand new course while staying with Two Fish Divers in Lembeh, Sulawesi - the "muck diving capital of the world".

Muck diving is diving in sandy, muddy or "mucky" water. The visibility might not be so good and there will probably be some tires and trash strewn about. But many people are drawn to this type of diving for chance to glimpse and photograph some truly bizarre looking creatures, or critters as they're called in the muck diving world. Lembeh is particularly famous for its black-sand muck diving.

Helen, one of the Two Fish instructors who designed the course, guided us through a series of peak performancy buoyancy drills underwater and told us about some of the crazy critters at Lembeh. As we we looked through a critter identification book before one of our dives, I mentioned to Helen that the thing I wanted to see most of all on this trip was a stargazer. I'd seen pictures of this creature before and it really freaked me out because it looks like a skeleton head buried in the sand. Helen said that the stargazers are seen more often on night dives but lucky for us, she managed to find one for us during our morning dive!

Stargazer - freaky or what?!

Some other special Lembeh critters I saw for the first time:

Giant Yellow Frogfish

Flamboyant Cuttlefish

The creatures in Lembeh were amazing. In addition to these, I saw snake eels, several strange crabs, spiny devil scorpionfish, coconut and reef octopuses, Ambon scorpionfish, Banggai cardinalfish, and many common seahorses. But this is still not enough - a return trip to Lembeh is a must in the future to check off a few other critters on my wish list including a hairy frogfish, a mimic octopus, a wonderpus, and a blue-ringed octopus!

Helen and I demonstrating the dive signal for 'ghost pipefish' - another great muck critter!

Fish Spa

2010-12-14T15:56:00.002+07:00

I love spas - thermal baths, mud baths, hot stone massages, chocolate body scrubs - you name it and I'll probably be game. So when I found out about something here in Indonesia called a fish spa, I couldn't resist. What was this all about?

I got my chance to try one when I was exiled in Jakarta. I happened to be wondering around the Grand Indonesia mall with my Fulbrighter friend Megan. We had just had a delicious lunch when Megan asked, "What do you feel like doing now?" And I responded, "How about a fish spa?" Megan was a little dubious about the whole idea. A fish what?

So we walked over to the store and looked in the window. There were several large tanks with fish of varying sizes. A few people were sitting on cushioned seats next to the tanks with their feet dangling in the water. It looked harmless enough and Megan decided it would be fun to try after all. We inquired about the prices and then soon found ourselves having our feet washed in preparation.Then we sat on the cushioned seats and peered into the tank below. Gingerly we both lowered our feet in and were instantly swarmed by eager fish. Megan shrieked in surprise and then started giggling - nibbling fish are very ticklish!

Ticklish!

Nibble, nibble

A pamphlet we picked up on the way out provided a bit of background information on this whole phenomenon. Fish spas apparently started in Turkey and other parts of the Middle East hundreds of years ago and are now growing in popularity in Asia. The fish used for this, a member of the carp family called garra rufa, love to dine on dead skin....yum!

As the pamphlet puts it, "this fish acts like pumice stone, rubbing off the dead epidermis layer of the skin, and leaving behind baby-smooth skin. The feeling of the fish nibbling is highly relaxing and you will experience the sensation of "micro massage" to your skin. It stimulates the acupressure points of your body and regulates the nervous system to generate the sense of well being and healthy lifestyle."

I enjoyed the 20 minute foot therapy. It feels super ticklish for the first couple of minutes and then you sort of get used to it. It's a novel way to get your feet feeling smooth and pretty. However, even I am a little reluctant to try to the 45 minute full body fish spa that is advertised in the pamphlet...

Diving Pulau Weh

2010-12-13T22:26:00.002+07:00

Pulau Weh is a little tiny island off the northern tip of Sumatra, a short ferry ride away from Banda Aceh. Megan and I made sure to squeeze in a few days of diving after our workshop in Banda Aceh.

Durban Hingebeak Shrimp

School of Juvenile Striped Catfish

Upside Down Lionfish

Peacock Mantis Shrimp

After a few fun days of diving, we packed up all our gear and took an hour long shuttle ride to the port town of Sabang to catch our ferry back to Banda Aceh. We said goodbye to our driver, loaded our bags on the boat and took our seats. An hour or so later, we were still sitting at the dock. Then there came some announcement in Indonesian over the loudspeaker followed by a mass exodus of all the Indonesian passengers on the boat. We eventually figured out that the ferry had been canceled for the day because of rough seas. The next ferry wouldn't be leaving until the following morning. So, we gathered our bags again and disembarked. Luckily, our driver was still lingering around the ferry terminal and agreed to take us back to the dive resort for a discounted price. As a bonus, we got to do an extra dive that day and it was a great one - a big dogtooth tuna swam right up to me as I descended, we saw a blacktip reef shark and lots of giant moray eels and, as a final highlight, we saw dolphins from the boat on our way back to the resort.

When we finally returned to Banda Aceh the next day, our host Khairil told us that it's very unusual for the ferries to be canceled; it happens only a few times a year. He then went on to say that there had been several fatal ferry accidents in recent years on the Banda Aceh - Pulau Weh route because of overloaded boats going out in bad weather. After hearing that, we were even more glad that our ferry the day before had been canceled. We had to rebook our return flight to Jakarta but it was more than worth it for an extra day of diving and a SAFE return to Banda Aceh.

Tsunami Sightseeing in Banda Aceh

2010-12-12T21:16:00.000+07:00

I never imagined that I would ever go to Banda Aceh, Indonesia. As I sat in the kitchen of my parents' house in NJ on December 26, 2004 watching the news of the devastating tsunami in Asia unfold, that area of the world seemed about as far away from my current reality as one could possibly get. Finding myself living in Indonesia six years later, a natural curiosity led me to do a little bit of tsunami sightseeing while I was in Banda Aceh for my workshop last month with Megan.

NGO money actually led to the construction of a tsunami museum in Banda Aceh, but it still wasn't open when we visited. Fortunately, Megan and I had two lovely hosts, Khairil and Jal, who were willing to drive us around town to the different sites. Our first stop, even before checking into our hotel, was to see the power generator vessel, a 2500 ton ship that was carried inland about 4km by the tsunami. For a small donation, we were able to climb up on the ship, explore the decks and admire the view of the newly rebuilt town below.

Power generator vessel

Later on I heard from a colleague in Yogya that the ship actually came to rest on several houses, tragically killing the families inside. Several years later when one of the surviving children got married, the wedding reception was held on the deck of the ship.

Power generator vessel as seen from Taman Edukasi Tsunami Park

Located in the Taman Edukasi Tsunami Park is a powerful display of photographs documenting the aftermath of the tsunami in Banda Aceh. Despite all the coverage I watched six years ago, the full extent of the tragedy first hit me as I studied photos of the destruction. Megan and I talked about how we had somehow been under the impression that most victims of the tsunami were just washed out to sea. No doubt we got this idea from American TV, which does not generally show dead bodies. But here, photo after photo showed the corpses as they were found: blackened, bloated, half flesh and half bone. I have never seen anything like it. One particular image of a body stuck to fence as if caught in a drain particularly moved me. The tsunami claimed more than 230,000 lives in 14 countries. These figures are just statistics until you look at the pictures and the reality of the disaster sets in.

Taman Edukasi Tsunami also has a playground, planted flowers and lots of families wandering around with their kids. As if to show life goes on, this young girl happily posed for me by the Taman Edukasi Tsunami sign:

A few days later we went to see another remnant of the tsunami - the famous fishing boat on a house. While I walked around the boat taking pictures, a man came out of the house next door and struck up a conversation with me in surprisingly good English. He told me the story of how 54 people took refuge in the boat for 7 hours until the waters receded. The man turned out to be a member of a well-known singing group in Indonesia and showed me pictures of both the destruction in the neighborhood and members of his group in better days. Although he had escaped the tsunami unharmed, several members of his band had perished. He also told me he once performed with Cat Stevens. This performance may have been at a benefit concert in Jakarta the month after the tsunami where Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) performed with many local musicians to raise money for Aceh province.

Boat on a house

From another angle

Neighbor (and family) who told me about the boat and Cat Stevens

In the center of town there is also a large park with a display called "Aceh Thanks the World." The paths of the park are lined with monuments in the shape of the bow of a ship with messages of thanks and peace to all the countries of the world who donated disaster relief funds to help Aceh rebuild.

Aceh thanks the United States

Tsunamis are not uncommon in this part of the world. Sadly, just two weeks before my visit to Banda Aceh another tsunami struck the Mentawai Islands off the west coast of Sumatra, killing hundreds. Although I have no current plans to go there, you never know.

On Wearing a Headscarf

2010-12-03T12:50:00.000+07:00

Muslim women in Indonesia are encouraged to wear headscarves, known here as jilbabs, out of a sense of modesty in lines with the Islamic faith. The wearing of such headscarves is optional in most parts of Indonesia, and from what I've observed on Sulawesi and Java, the rules surrounding the wearing of jilbabs are pretty lax. However, there is at least one part of Indonesia where Muslim women are required to wear headscarves - Banda Aceh. When Megan and I were invited to this conservative city to give a workshop on English Language Teaching, our co-workers in Yogyakarta and Manado strongly encouraged us to cover our heads as a sign of respect.

I had only worn a headscarf here in Indonesia on one other occasion, for a friend's wedding in Gorontalo last year, and that was a bit of a mistake. My intention was to try to look a bit more dressed up for her special day but I ended up attracting a lot of unnecessary attention to myself that I felt should have been given to the bride instead.

So, I didn't really have much experience when it came to wearing headscarves and had to ask around at the office to see if anyone had any I could borrow for the trip to Banda Aceh. Megan did some shopping in Manado as well and we compared notes in Jakarta. I was impressed...and intimidated... when Megan pulled a proper pull-over-the-head type jilbab out of her suitcase as well as matching arm covers! I displayed my borrowed collection of scarves as well as one of my own batik scarves I got in Yogya and admitted to Megan that I didn't have any idea how to wear it. Fortunately, Megan had learned how to properly drape a head scarf from one of her Muslim students in Chicago. For the rest of the trip, I happily let Megan do this for me!

On the day of our flight to Banda Aceh, we decided to put on our headscarves before we even got in the taxi. We did this because we wanted to be respectful right from the very start of our trip. Sharia law is strictly enforced in Banda Aceh and the Sharia police have been known to dole out 40 public lashings to Muslim women caught without proper headscarves or caught wearing too-tight clothing. These people don't mess around. We later found out from our host that it's not necessary at all for non-Muslim women to wear headscarves in Banda Aceh and people probably would not have thought twice about seeing two bules in line to check in for a flight to Banda Aceh without them. But we didn't know this then and I'm glad we didn't because I got to experience what it's like to wear a jilbab for a few days.

In recent years in America and Europe there has been a lot of public outcry about the wearing of headscarves. The headscarf is often seen as a symbol of the inferiority or invisibility of women or as a threat to Western ideals about the separation of religion and public life. It seems to me that a lot of this debate stems from Islamaphobia. Personally, I liked wearing a jilbab for a few days.

As a fashion accessory, the jilbab is pure genius. It makes any outfit look instantly dressier and more put together. In fact, Muslim women have a staggering number of headscarves in just about every Crayola color imaginable that they color-coordinate with their outfits. A sparkly pin or two to hold the scarf in place adds a little extra bling to the look as well. And in Indonesia, where humidity and lack of air-conditioning has forced me to wear my hair pulled back in a rather boring pony-tail most days, the jilbab is a welcomed answer to bad hair day issues. It's way more glamorous than a baseball cap.

Feeling well-dressed in my batik scarf from Yogya

More surprisingly, wearing a jilbab suddenly made me feel visible and accepted in a country where there's no getting around the fact that I'm a bule. For starters, people started addressing me as Ibu instead of Mrs, Miss, Ma'am or nothing at all. Airport porters rushed to assist me with my bags, gazing at me with awe. Random strangers told me how beautiful I looked (ok, granted I get a lot of this too without wearing a headscarf but now the compliment felt more genuine and respectful instead of creepy). And, best of all, the flight attendant on Garuda asked me, IN INDONESIAN, if I wanted to eat nasi ayam (chicken with rice) or nasi ikan (fish with rice). What a victory - I was no longer the invisible or gawked at bule.

Two American tourists in Banda Aceh

Megan and I with our jilbab-wearing workshop participants

With a bit of reluctance, I packed my scarves away after I returned to Jakarta. The only annoying thing about wearing a headscarf is getting it to stay in place for an entire day. Mine kept slipping off, forcing me to ask Megan to readjust it or to re-drape it myself in a decidedly less elegant way. But I think Muslim women actually wear a sort of under jilbab cover that keeps the whole thing in place. I had also been concerned about how I would react to having my head covered in the heat of Indonesia but I found that I actually didn't mind. Just like wearing jeans and a long-sleeved shirt on a hot day, wearing a headscarf also prevents sunburn!

There are a lot of practical reasons for wearing a headscarf and my little experiment helped me to see the headscarf as normal, rather than a marker of difference. However, I believe the wearing of headscarves, especially for Muslim women, should be optional and based on personal preference, as it is in most of Indonesia. 40 public lashings for not wearing one seems very harsh and unnecessary.

The Story Behind the Dress

2010-11-27T15:07:00.000+07:00

I was excited when I found out that the ELFs had once again been invited to the Marine Ball in Jakarta and even more excited when I realized that this year I could actually go. Jackie, Noreen, Michaela and Megan were all planning on attending too, so it promised to be a fun night out. We might even get to see our boss tear it up on the dance floor! Jackie was organizing our tickets and offering up her apartment as a place for all of us to crash, so the only thing I had to worry about was finding a fancy dress. What should have been a fun task turned into one of the most challenging of my fellowship so far - it ain't easy finding a floor-length ball gown in Indonesia!

About a month before the big event I went looking for a dress in Yogya. First I went to Galleria Mall where I found a small collection of dresses at the Matahari Department Store. It was an odd assortment and grew even odder when the saleswoman told me that the dresses were one-size-fits-all. How is that even possible? Without bothering to try anything on, I headed over to Amplatz Mall and also left empty handed. It occurred to me that searching for a dress in my size in a country where the women tend to be significantly smaller than me was going to be a bit more challenging than I had thought. I briefly considered getting a dress made but once I found out I was flying to Jakarta for a doctor's appointment, I figured I would be able to find something easily in one of the dozens of malls in the capital city.

In between doctor's visits I spent practically the entire week I was in Jakarta hunting for a dress. I tried on dresses at Pondok Indah Mall, Senayan City Mall, Mangga Dua Square, Artha Gading Mall, and Grand Indonesia. Mostly I went by myself but sometimes I went with Jackie and her friends and colleagues who seemed eager to help. (Jackie and Megan, by the way, had smartly decided to get dresses made as soon as they found out about the ball and thus avoided the several weeks of fruitless searching that Michaela, Noreen and I endured). The dresses I found generally fell into three categories of undesirableness: dresses that seemed like costumes for little girls wanting to dress up as princesses (including two-piece dresses with puffy sleeves and corsets), dresses that were cute but that I couldn't even zip up, and dresses that were outrageously priced. Once while checking out Senayan Plaza Mall I made the mistake of wandering into a Roberto Cavalli store thinking I might find something on the 70% off rack. Ha! 70% off of 56 million Rp ($6,222) was still WAY more than I would ever dream of spending on a dress.

An example of a dress I really liked but couldn't zip up

A nice Seibu dress...

...but more than I could afford

I left Jakarta empty handed but returned about a week later and hit the malls again with renewed determination with Michaela and Noreen. Starting to feel the time crunch, we decided that our best bet was to go back to Grand Indonesia where we had seen nice but expensive dresses in the $200 and up range at Seibu. Although this was more than any of us wanted to spend for dresses we would wear once at an event where we weren't even bringing dates, we were starting to worry that we wouldn't be able to attend the ball at all if we didn't have dresses - just like Cinderella! However, we were still confident that if we just forked up the money at Seibu we would at least have something to wear and could stop spending all our free time roaming Jakarta's many malls. Once we arrived at Seibu we formulated an action plan and got to work. We scoured the racks, plucking anything that was labeled size 12 or higher, regardless of style, color or price and disappeared into the dressing rooms. Noreen got lucky and found a very cute white cocktail dress. So what if it wasn't floor length. It looked stunning on her and, to borrow Henry's expression, the price was merely rude rather than outright offensive.

Michaela and I weren't as lucky. We tried on dress after dress and continually ran into the same problem - these dresses just weren't made for our body types. We struggled with zippers and puzzled over molded bra cups that just didn't sit in the right place. The number of dresses to try on grew smaller and smaller. Our definition of 'fit' didn't including flattering or stylish. It got to the point where we were just looking for something that would zip up. At the end of the day, it came down to just one option - two orange dresses that hung on our bodies like shapeless potato sacks. These were the only dresses in all of Jakarta that fit us. We stared at our reflections in the mirror and decided that we weren't quite ready to take that step. We held out hope that we would find something in Bandung - a known shopping mecca.

Unfortunately, Bandung had nothing to offer and after the TEFLIN conference we found ourselves back in Jakarta with one day to go before the ball and still no dresses. We had one hope left. Jackie and Megan claimed to have seen a small dress shop in Ambassador Mall that appeared to have dresses in Western (a.k.a big) sizes. We headed over there, joking that if this didn't work out at least we could still go back and buy the matching potato sack dresses. At The Fairly Bridal Boutique, the saleswoman pulled out a suitcase of extra large dresses and got to work outfitting us. The first couple of dresses we tried on were kinda ridiculous - I tried on a light pink number that made me look like I was wearing a Greek Goddess Halloween costume and Michaela's wasn't much better. However, someone somewhere must have been looking out for us because both of us FINALLY managed to find dresses that fit us reasonably well and weren't half bad to look at. My dress is actually part batik, a traditional Javanese material. Someday I hope I can wear this dress again and have it serve as a conversation piece at a cocktail party. 'Oh this? Why yes, I bought this in Indonesia,' I'll say casually.

My dress - I love the way it twirls!

We were all able to attend the ball after all!

Scuba Diving Class: A Boyfriend's Perspective

2010-11-23T08:42:00.000+07:00

And now for something completely different. Today's post is brought to you by my first guest author - a man who shows us he's willing to go to some pretty lengthy extremes to follow his girlfriend into her underwater realm! This is an account of Henry's first pool session this past weekend for his Open Water diving certification.

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Scuba Diving Class: A Boyfriend's Perspective

By Henry Chance

I awoke to find myself in a Richmond, Virginia hotel room. Most Saturday mornings this would be a troubling start, but today I had work to do. Today I will to get fitted for fins, a mask & snorkel, and learn how to breathe at the bottom of a pool. This is day one of my scuba certification class.

Regular readers will recall back in August, when a seemingly innocent offer of dinner and a chance to rekindle a college friendship flared into something much more! In just over a month I will fly to Indonesia for a twelve day visit to once again sweep Julianne off her feet, and see my girlfriend the mermaid’s aquatic world.

So I got up and readied for the day. The lesson was scheduled from 11:00 to 5:00 so I grabbed a hearty breakfast in the hotel. I answered a few work emails I missed the night before, took a trip to the drug store and the post office for an important errand, and made my way to Richmond Dive and Travel. Route 60, south of Downtown Richmond, is a wide two lane road with simple brick houses and small businesses on half-acre lots. Most of the houses looked like they might be unlocked. I parked my car outside the Dive Center entrance, opened the door and walked in.

The Dive Center’s storefront was small, clean and had a smooth cement floor crowded with racks and racks of dive equipment. I was also the only one there. I paced the rough aisles and walked up to the cash register, where a doorway led to another room. An air compressor labored somewhere in the back. I ducked my head in as a man in his mid 40s came around the corner. His eyes widened in surprise for a second. “You must be Henry,” he said and reached out a hand. Carl introduced himself and bustled around, explaining the day to me and looking for various pieces and parts to fit me. Richmond Dive and Travel is insistent about their students owning their own essential gear. Beginners don’t need to buy their own wetsuit or scuba tank, however I was fitted for fins, boots, a weight belt, dive mask, and snorkel all for $224.

Julianne had warned me to try not to get swept up by the flashy glittery gear. Very sound advice for an engineering guy who loves gadgets. Fortunately, Carl wasn’t looking to sell me the entire shop. In fact, most of his store appeared to have simple honest equipment at prices that were merely rude rather than outright offensive. While wrangling a flipper around my ankle, the shop door opened and a stout man came in. He wore a thin pair of sweats and a Richmond Fire Department t-shirt. He looked like he was built to comfortably squeeze through the doorway of a burning building and kick down a wall to get out. After introducing me to Sam, Carl said “Let’s get started on your paperwork and the quiz.”

Twenty minutes later, Carl graded my quiz while a third instructor, Nathan, came in. Nathan was almost as tall as me with a strong build and a shock of red hair. Carl finished up some paperwork while I made small talk with Nathan and Sam, asking about their dive experience and why they took up the sport. Carl put aside my paperwork and said “Well Henry, I guess we need to fit you for a wet suit. Go with Sam and he will find you an extra large to try on.” We went outside to an outbuilding where wetsuits, air tanks and other rental equipment were kept. Sam held several one piece neoprene suits up to me and muttered mostly to himself about large and extra large sizes. I couldn’t see any difference.

Sam sent me back into the test room to try on the one piece wetsuit, where fortune frowned upon me. I held the large piece of neoprene up to my body planning my entrance and exit strategies. Brute force seemed my best bet. I stripped down to my bathing suit, made sure the wetsuit was as unzipped as possible and stepped in. For those of you who don’t know, neoprene is snug. I wriggled and struggled to get both my feet through the legs with partial success. I got the left foot through, stepped on the suit’s right leg with my other foot, stumbled back and reassessed. I have an analytical mind. I can do this. I started working on the left side, hauling and grabbing at neoprene until I got most of the legging over the calf and up to the knee. I switched back to the right side and started hauling. The feet weren’t fitting through well. I couldn’t figure out why. A few minutes of grunting and heavy breathing later and I was ready to try for the arms. The suit’s waist was still around my thighs, but I figured I could help myself by getting leverage from my shoulders and back to pull the neoprene up. But how to get the arms up and over? I shrugged one shoulder in and stood up straight. The suit sloped at a diagonal across my chest. If Tarzan had worn a neoprene hide rather than a leopard skin the fit would have looked something like mine. Undeterred I shrugged my other shoulder into the wetsuit and stood straight, this time with both arms above my head. Muscles strained against dark synthetic fabric, and the waist slid up enough that I could almost walk. A few more cinches and the suit was on. I could even breathe. I grabbed the cord attached to the wetsuit’s large zipper and closed it, CAREFULLY. Every guy treats a zipper touching his skin with utmost respect and delicacy. It’s a survival instinct older than zippers.

All that effort and the suit felt… actually not bad! The thick neoprene made my muscles feel springy and tight, like whipcord under tension. The suit wrapped around my throat fairly tight, but I walked back out front to greet my instructors. Nathan and Sam eyed me speculatively.

“How’s it feel?” Carl asked without looking up.

“Fine”, I replied.”

“It’s on backwards.”

“What?”

“It’s on backwards,” Nathan reiterated. I stood there squinting at him in confusion.

“Your suit’s on backwards”, Nathan said with a patient voice. “The zipper’s supposed to be in the back.”

That made absolutely no sense to me but I shrugged and turned back to Carl. Carl went over a couple other points while the neoprene continued to hug my jugular. He told me to get changed again, then put everything into a mesh bag to go to the pool. “And next time put the suit on with the zipper in the back.” Right. I nodded and went back in to change.

Back in the exam room, I unzipped the suit and made no additional progress undressing for the next two minutes. It turns out wetsuits are designed to peel off your shoulders simply by gripping the collar with both hands and straightening your arms down to your waist. Then, it’s simple to slide your arms free. But I couldn’t make that motion because my suit was facing the wrong way. Instead I ripped and clawed my left shoulder out of the suit half way, then did the same to the right. But the zipper only went so far. In short order I had trapped myself in an improvised straight jacket that was constricting my lungs with my own arms! Mild claustrophobia set in and I began thrashing to draw a full breath and cease the constriction. Failing that, I forced myself to calm down and went back to contorting one side of my body until I could get an arm free. Light at the end of the tunnel! The rest was uncomplicated though not easy.

I finished packing my gear as another diver-in-training, Brendan, arrived. Brendan is a Marine looking to join the Navy Seals. So he was here to learn something about diving before he went to training. We headed to a YMCA pool in separate cars. Carl went to open the back door for us while everyone else unloaded bags, air tanks, lead weights and some other gear. First, Brendan and I had to prove we could swim and tread water. No problem. We spent 25 minutes swimming laps with fins on and treading water in the deep end. The instructors spent the time talking about a recent industry trade show in Las Vegas. All their questions started with “Did you see the _______ over by…?” I can only imagine the wide range of toys and gadgets glittering in Las Vegas, a town famous for encouraging bad financial decisions! This diving thing could prove a very expensive hobby.

Next the three instructors took turns walking us through each piece of gear. When that was done we assembled our gear, jumped in the water and donned our gear in the water. Nathan took over the remainder of the training. With crisp military precision, he walked us through the agenda. We would practice breathing, switching between snorkel and scuba mask on the fly. We would learn to drain the water out of our scuba mask WHILE UNDERWATER (like James Bond did in Operation Thunderball). We would learn what to do if we ran out of air, how to manage our equipment, etc.

So step one, breathing underwater. I put the scuba mask on and immediately realized how much I missed breathing through my nose. Scuba masks cover the eyes and nose in an airtight seal. Thus when I tried to inhale like normal, I got nothing. Two seconds later I relearned how to breathe (because nothing motivates like a deadline) and crouched on my knees under the water. It took some practice getting the regulator to do what I wanted, but eventually we came to an understanding. I didn’t have as much luck with my weight belt.

Here’s something you may not know. The human body, plus an air tank, plus a buoyancy control device (BCD) make divers very light. So they wear lead weights to help them submerge. The weights must be measured carefully. Too much and the diver can’t surface. Not enough weight or poorly balanced weights give you my situation. Our second drill involved lying belly down on the surface of the pool. I went to crouch down and my feet lifted off the pool floor. I tried again. The same thing happened. Nathan gave me two additional five pound weights and told me to exhale thereby reducing my buoyancy. Okay, no problem.

Floating on the water’s surface, I exhaled deeply and slowly submerged three feet to the bottom of the pool. But I inhaled and immediately started to rise. So I exhaled. I hovered for a second then sank back down, just as out of breath as before. I inhaled and started ascending again. My predicament was amusing for all of two seconds before another problem arose. I started listing to one side.

Here’s something else you may not know. Tall guys, as a rule, are not graceful creatures. Give us incredibly long footwear, confine us in a close space and our sense of balance goes out the window. Back to the situation at hand, I’m tilting to one side. My natural reaction is to get my feet under me and try again, but I can’t. The tips of my fins are striking bottom and my ankle won’t flex because it’s stuck in the stupid flipper! Natural reaction number two is to thrash wildly. The theory is that something will give, and I’ll wind up in a different situation than I am in right now. Even odds it’s a better one. At the very least, thrashing might help control my spin. But I can’t. The pool wall is directly to my left. My dive buddy Brandon is in front of me and there are three instructors within arms length of me who would get smacked as I tried to right myself. That and the 3,000psi air tanks strapped to each of our backs encouraged me to move slowly. My listing to port capsized me when I reached the surface. I spun my arms and kick my legs a couple times finally righting myself as I coughed and sputtered. Nathan came up from the bottom. “Okay, let’s try this again and this time, try to stay level.”

One try later, Sam and Carl start stuffing my BCD’s pockets with lead weights anywhere they can hide them. I finally submerge. Ha ha! The rest of the afternoon passes without incident and we actually have some fun. At the end of the day I pack up my bought and borrowed gear and head to my hotel. The forward facing wetsuit peeled off almost easily this time. I drove to my hotel room and after three trips to and from the car, all the scuba equipment was rinsed and drying in the shower. I opted for a bowl bath by the sink and tried to tell myself I’m only giving up my bathroom this one time. I also started to rethink my suitcase strategy for the upcoming trip to Indonesia.

For tomorrow’s pool dive we’ll be in the deep end. I’m looking forward to it. Partly because this diving thing may actually be fun some day! I’m not doing the diving world any favors just now, but I can start to see why people enjoy the sport. Mostly though, I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s class because every diving class I complete, every necessary piece of equipment I buy, brings me one step closer to her, my mermaid.

Indonesia's Brigadoon

2010-11-22T22:04:00.000+07:00

The musical Brigadoon tells the story of an enchanted village in Scotland that appears out of the mist every one hundred years and disappears again after only one day. I saw the movie version many many years ago and really don't remember too much about it but it immediately came to mind when I arrived in Bandung at the beginning of November for the TEFLIN conference. (Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia). Like Brigadoon, Bandung (even the names sound kinda similar, right?) seems to have almost magical, surreal qualities.

The only thing I really knew about Bandung beforehand was its reputation for having a cooler climate than the rest of Indonesia. I also knew that my housemate Anastasia lived with a host family there during high school and really liked it. Perhaps that's an understatement; she raves about Bandung all the time. And the Bandung Institute of Technology is quite famous. And the city is also a shopping mecca for outlet stores. Ok, so maybe I knew more than one thing about Bandung before I went, but knowing those few things still left me unprepared.

We traveled by bus from Jakarta and I was blown away by the beautiful landscape. The urban sprawl of Jakarta quickly gave way to stunning mountains, terraced rice paddies and tea plantations, waterfalls, and traditional houses. Without a doubt, this was the most breathtaking scenery I have ever seen in Indonesia. This is a landscape photographer's dream. I could hardly do it justice by snapping pictures from the bus, but here's one shot to give you an idea of the gorgeous terraced tea plantations.

Mile after mile of stunning landscapes

Then we arrived at our hotel, the GH Universal, which looked like a palace up in the hills. In the lobby there was a bubbling fountain and a magnificent chandelier. And whole room was draped in heavy red velvet curtains from ceiling to floor. I quickly checked in and made my way to my room. As soon as I opened the door, classical music filled my ears and it took me a moment to realize it was coming from my TV. The place oozed over-the-top romance and decadence, but who am I to complain. I kinda loved it. And the bed was quite possibly one of the most comfortable beds I have ever sleep in.

Yes, the bed is draped in black lace

The food at the conference also took me by surprise. It was delicious. And for those of you who have been following this blog regularly over the past year, you know that this is not an adjective I typically use for Indonesian food. The meal at the end-of-conference dinner and cultural show was absolutely fantastic. I enjoyed trying the different Sundanese dishes and the sweet, hot drinks. Maybe this cusine explains why my housemate Anastasia is so enthusiastic about Indonesian food. Her enthusiasm truly puzzled me before, but now I see where she's coming from.

The cultural show itself exceeded all my expectations too. There were a few traditional numbers, which were quite good and energetic. And then Heather, one of the Fulbright ETAs in Bandung, took to the stage and started singing. Suddenly, students poured onto the dance floor from every table at the dinner and women were rockin' out in their jilbabs and the night exploded into one big long dance party. There was a congo line, there was some swing dancing, there was even a moment when the band played 'November Rain' and a line of people sat in front of the stage and waved their lighters. Imagine that - a band covering Guns N' Roses at the TEFLIN conference! This night was truly unlike any other English language teaching event I had ever attended in Indonesia.

'Everybody needs somebody'

Between the nice cool weather, the gorgeous landscapes, the 'romantical' hotel (to use Noreen's expression), the delicious food and the night of musical madness at the TEFLIN conference, Bandung really did prove itself to be Indonesia's version of Brigadoon, an enchanted village in the mist. I just hope I don't have to wait 100 years until my next visit.

Jackie by a mist covered volcano crater

The angklung -a traditional Sundanese instrument

A Medical Mystery

2010-11-21T19:53:00.000+07:00

For the past few months, I have been troubled by an array of odd symptoms and even odder medical advice. It all started the day my plane landed back in NJ after my first ten months in Indonesia. I noticed that the right side of my body sometimes felt very strange - a little bit numb, some tingling sensations - and felt colder than the left side of my body. And then the left side of my mouth started drooping! Alarmed, I went to see a doctor at home who ended up sending me for an MRI to rule out the possibility of MS. The MRI came back normal and the doctor concluded my symptoms must be caused by stress. This seemed to be a cop out answer to me since there was nothing in my life that I was feeling particularly stressed about. But in any event, my symptoms lessened and I returned to Indonesia feeling relatively fine.

However, by the beginning of October I was forced to acknowledge that I really wasn't fine. The odd sensations and mouth drooping were back, I felt unusually tired and lightheaded at the end of the day, I was having trouble gripping things in my right hand and, most disturbingly, there was a period of two to three days when I experienced really bad headaches that made my head feel like it was going to explode. These shooting pains in my head scared me enough to confide in Ingrid and seek out a doctor in Yogya. Ingrid did some research and took me to a doctor that several people had recommended.

Unfortunately, this doctor in Yogya turned out to be a bit wacky. His initial assessment of me was done through iris imaging. We looked at pictures of my eyes on a TV screen and he told us how spots on the iris correlated to organs of my body. My heart and lungs were fine but he mentioned in passing that I have a dirty left ovary. I'm sorry, what? A dirty left ovary?? But I quickly forgot about this as he announced his provisional diagnosis. According to him, I had a 'viral infection on a nerve in the brain'. Yikes! A brain infection?? And he can tell this by looking at pictures of my eyes? I was doubtful, but he ordered some blood work done and I figured a blood test would probably be a more reliable measure.

So the next day Ingrid and I went back to see him about the results of the blood test. He glanced at the paper we handed him from the lab and he announced that I have rubella. Really? I knew I had been vaccinated against rubella as a child and I didn't have a rash so this struck me as odd, but perhaps there was an Indonesian strand of the virus that I did not have immunity against. What do I know; I'm certainly not a doctor. Anyway, he prescribed two different medications, 6 to 12 rounds of physiotherapy, a detoxifying ionic foot bath (more on that in a minute) and last but not least he wanted me to wear a cervical collar for a month to put my facial muscles back in place. A cervical collar!! I asked him many questions but I could tell he was getting impatient. Ingrid translated that he felt like he was giving a lecture. He ended our session by saying that if I had any more questions I should just Google them. I promised myself I would do just that as soon as I got home, but first there was the experience of the ionic foot bath.

The ionic foot bath consisted of a tub of cold water with some sort of metal device that was plugged into a machine. The guy in charge (the attendant, the technician?) explained that the impurities from my body would float out of my feet and collect on the surface of the water as a layer of scum. Well, those weren't his exact words but that was the idea. If the scum formed one circle that meant I was relatively healthy. If the scum formed separate circles, it meant there was a problem somewhere. I peered into the tub; three distinct circles had formed. The guy looked at me sadly and shook his head. He told me the best thing to do in my case was to pray. Then he held up a worn copy of an English language book entitled 'Alone with God' and asked me if I wanted to read it. I politely declined and high tailed it out of there with Ingrid. I'm not saying prayer won't help, but it's not exactly what I wanted to hear at the doctor's office!

Back in my room, I Googled 'rubella' and found out that the blood work I had gotten done tested positive for the presence of IgG rubella antibodies, which should be present since I was vaccinated. I had tested negative for IgM rubella antibodies, which would have indicated that I currently had the virus. I sat there dumbfounded by the idea that the doctor I had gone to see had misinterpreted a simple blood test like this. On the spot I discounted everything he said to me - which to be honest was kind of hard to swallow anyway - and wrote to my RELO supervisors to see what I should do next. They suggested I fly to Jakarta to see a more reputable doctor at the International SOS Clinic.

On the day of my flight to Jakarta I found out that the neurologist I was scheduled to see had to cancel because of an emergency surgery. At the last minute RELO was able to get me another appointment with another neurologist at a Jakarta hospital. This doctor listened to what I had to say, did a few physical tests and told me I had migraines. Now, migraines sounded much more plausible than rubella but it still didn't ring true for me. I had been experiencing all these weird symptoms for over three months and only had one bout of bad headaches. And there was no aura or sensitivity to light or noise or any of the classic other migraine symptoms. I also didn't care for his recommendation of avoiding cheese, chocolate, coffee, citrus and cola. No cheese?? That's a horrible, horrible thing to forbid a girl who spent her twenties in a country famous for its cheese and who was cheese deprived for the entire 10 months she spent in Gorontalo.

To get a second opinion, I booked another appointment with the SOS doctor that I was originally supposed to go see. Of the three doctors I saw, Dr. Amanda did the most thorough testing and questioning. In fact she was so thorough that she sent me to get more extensive blood work done, an EEG and two evoked potentials tests called VEP and SSEP. The SSEP test was horribly painful. My body was hooked up to all sorts of electrodes and tortured with a vibrating current. It was most painful in my feet.

When the lab doctor wordlessly handed me her report at the end of the session, all I saw where the following words in bold type on the top of the page: Diagnosis: Multiple Sclerosis. At first I was stunned. Oh no!! And then I was angry. Who does that??? Who hands somebody a diagnosis of MS without saying a word about it?? It was shocking and I spent the taxi ride back to Jackie's quietly contemplating my fate and calling my parents. By the time I got back to the apartment I was visibly upset when I told the other girls. But Megan, to whom I will be forever grateful, calmed me down and explained that this was probably just a bad translation. A better wording would have been something like this: Reason for Test: Possibility of Multiple Sclerosis. Megan also pointed to the conclusion section of the report which said nothing about MS and just stated that the test results were compatible with sensory neuropathy in both lower extremities. What did that mean? Well, I had to wait another week or so before I could go back for a follow up appointment with Dr. Amanda.

When I finally got to sit down again with Dr. Amanda, I learned that I have a calcium deficiency. I had grown up knowing that I should drink milk for strong bones but I never realized before or had forgotten that calcium ions transmit messages from one nerve to the next. My decreased level of calcium was slowing these transmissions and causing nerve pain! Dr. Amanda speculates that I depleted my calcium stores living in Gorontalo where I pretty much involuntarily eliminated milk, cheese and broccoli from my diet. Never underestimate the importance of cheese! No wonder I craved pizza practically every time I left Gorontalo. My body was literally crying out for it. To fix this, Dr. Amanda prescribed me some calcium/vitamin D supplements and B12 supplements for good measure. I also asked her if there were any specific foods I should be eating as well, thinking she might say something like milk or cheese. But instead she replied, "Bone." Bone?!?! Bone has never been a diet staple in the part of the world where I'm from. She clarified by explaining that those little tiny fish that Indonesians dry and salt are a very good source of calcium. Right. Dried whole fish. Sounds yummy!

I tried the dried fish one night with some nasi goreng. They tasted just like bacon!

After months of worrying about what could be wrong with me, I'm relieved to find out it's something as simple and treatable as a calcium deficiency. I'm so glad it's not MS or migraines or a 'brain infection'. I just need to eat more cheese...and bone!

Escape from Merapi

2010-11-17T18:59:00.000+07:00

In mid-October I moved into a new cubicle at ICRS. The new office space has tons of advantages: it's much bigger than my previous cramped quarters; it's centrally located in the hub of all ICRS activity so I don't feel like I'm all alone in the building when five o'clock rolls around; it's right next to Ingrid and Ipung's desks so I can easily chat, ask questions and steal some warm pisang goreng from Ingrid; it's close to the coffee and tea supply; and perhaps most impressively, it boasts a great view of Mount Merapi on a clear day. I thought it was pretty darn cool to have an office with a view of a volcano but on Oct 22 I noticed that the volcano seemed to be smoking. I pointed this alarming fact out to Ingrid, who told me that it's normal to see smoke coming from Merapi since it's an active volcano but also reassured me that we had nothing to worry about.

When I came home from work on Oct 25, I learned from my housemate Anastasia, who's always on top of the news, that experts were predicting an imminent eruption of Mount Merapi and had already started evacuating nearby villages. We sat glued to the TV that night, wondering what might happen next. The very next day, Oct 26, Merapi started to erupt, spewing ash and rocks into the air. That night found all of us once again glued to the TV in the common room as we watched the ash-covered evacuees talk to local reporters. A light ash rain fell in the background as people wearing face masks huddled together. I couldn't help but wonder why the shelters were so close to the volcano. Why weren't these people being taken farther away? Like to Yogya, a city about 25 km away and out of the danger zone where we were just comfortably sitting around watching the events unfold on TV?

I got the answer to my question the next day at work when Ipung explained to me that the villagers were reluctant to move far away from their cattle and livestock on the slopes. These animals represented their sole means of earning a living; if the animals died, so would their livelihoods. The men felt a strong need to stay close to their homes so they could run back and check on their cows during periods of low volcanic activity. If the authorities had insisted on evacuating these people farther away, they probably would have refused to evacuate at all.

I also learned that day that the eruption had already claimed a number of lives, including that of an elderly man known as Mbah Maridjan who was regarded as the spiritual guardian of the volcano. For many years, Mbah Maridjan's responsibility was to appease the gods of the 'Fire Mountain' with offerings of rice or flowers. Locals believed that if a serious eruption was imminent, Maridjan would be warned in a vision. On Oct 26 he stubbornly chose to ignore official orders to evacuate. His ash-covered body was later found in a praying position. Tragically, 13 other bodies of people who had either followed his example of staying despite evacuation orders or who had tried to persuade him to leave were found as well, including those of a journalist and a Red Cross volunteer. News of his death spread quickly through ICRS and saddened many.

Mount Merapi as seen on Oct 27 from my office window

On Oct 28 I flew to Jakarta. No one had ordered me to evacuate; I just happened to have a doctor's appointment. I also had plans to stay out of town for the next two weeks because of a conference in Bandung, the Marine Ball in Jakarta and another workshop in Banda Aceh. My timing couldn't have been better. The day after I arrived in Jakarta I started to get frightening reports from friends back in Yogya: Merapi had erupted two more times, the airport was shut down, and the volcanic ash had reached Yogya - it even dusted our guesthouse. Merapi was nowhere near being done erupting. In fact, she was just gathering energy. I was glad to be out of harm's way, but I worried for those still in Yogya.

On Nov 5 I woke up to the following text message from my counterpart, "Julianne, don't get back to Jogja first, Mt Merapi is getting worst. Ipung." A text from RELO followed shortly thereafter asking all ELFs to confirm our locations and to warn us to stay away from Mt Merapi, Yogya and Solo. It turns out that in the early morning hours of Nov 5 there had been what the media was calling the "worst eruption of the century". This eruption would eventually push the death toll up from 44 to over 250 and counting and triggered a series of emergency actions: my host university canceled all its classes for the week and many of UGM's buildings were converted into shelters for displaced people; the Indonesian government promised they would reimburse farmers for the loss of their cattle in an effort to convince them to stay away from Merapi's deadly slopes; and AMINEF pulled the ETAs out of the region and temporarily relocated them to Jakarta. In the days immediately following the eruption, I heard tales of intense rain, lightening and even a 5.6 earthquake in Yogya (said to be unrelated to Merapi, but still).

There have been no major eruptions since Nov 5, the danger zone has decreased in some areas and classes have resumed at UGM and ICRS. However, Merapi continues to cough and rumble. How long this will go on is anyone's guess. Ingrid and Ipung report that Yogya is feeling normal again but on Nov 10 the U.S. State Department issued a travel alert for the area until Dec 31. The ETAs have been moved from Jakarta to work indefinitely at other schools on Java; Demi is now in Bandung and Brett is in East Java.

As for me, I'm stuck in Jakarta for the time being. My original flight back to Yogya was scheduled for Nov 14 but the Yogya airport is closed until Nov 20. But even then, is it safe to go back? Demi tells me that AMINEF is keeping the ETAs out of the region until the Indonesian government officially lowers Merapi's alert status. Consequently, RELO is checking with the Embassy Regional Security Office about when it will be safe for me to return. In the meantime, I'm being put up in nice hotels in Jakarta and RELO is giving me various little projects to work on. Yesterday I was a guest visitor in an Access Microscholarship Program English class. I'll return tomorrow to lead the class through some speaking and writing activities. On Friday and Saturday I'm volunteering to help interview Indonesian high school students for a year-long exchange program in the U.S. These are interesting tasks, but I hope it will be safe enough for me to return to Yogya soon to resume my life and regular classes there. It's not easy being in this state of limbo and uncertainty and I miss my friends and housemates in Yogya.

Quick Update

2010-11-17T10:35:00.000+07:00

Wow...it's been a while since I last updated this blog. The reason is not that nothing has been happening but rather that so much has been happening that I haven't had time to catch my breath and write it all down. In short, I had a medical mystery to solve, an erupting volcano to escape from, a couple of English language teaching workshops to deliver, a fancy ball to attend, a dive trip to go on and a lot of other sightseeing, shopping and traveling to do - just a typical few weeks in the life of an English Language Fellow in Indonesia! In my next several posts I will try to bring you all up to speed.

World's Most Expensive Coffee

2010-10-17T23:26:00.001+07:00

On the islands of Java and Sumatra there lives a small cat-like animal called a civet (or luwak by the locals). This cute little animal likes to eat cherry coffee berries. The coffee berries tumble around in the civet's digestive system, some chemical reactions happen, and then the still-intact coffee beans are pooped out. These beans are then washed, dried, roasted and brewed as usual.

A luwak (www.elephantmountaincoffee.com)

Cherry coffee berries (www.kealaolafarm.com)

Luwak poop (www.wb7.itrademarket.com)

World's most expensive coffee (www.artsyspot.com)

Although I've lived in Indonesia for more than a year, I had never tried this specialty until today. I was walking around the Grand Indonesia Mall in Jakarta with Jackie and her friend Miranda when I spied a Kopi Luwak cafe. Spontaneously, I suggested we go in. The sign on the table reminded us that kopi luak is the world's most expensive coffee; a pound of the stuff apparently goes for $300 in the US. And at certain establishments one cup of this special joe can cost $50. Fortunately for us, this particular cafe was selling it for about $8 a cup, which, while still super expensive for a cup of coffee in Indonesia, is still much cheaper than $50 in the US. So, I ordered one cup for Jackie and me to try.

No sooner had we placed our order than we were approached by a camera crew from CNN wondering if they could interview me as I drank my first cup of kopi luwak! What a way to make this special moment even more extraordinary! The woman interviewing me turned out to be Sara Sidner, an international correspondent based in New Delhi who was putting together a multi-day feature on Indonesia that will air November 22nd to 26th. She asked me if I came here today especially to drink kopi luwak (no, it was a spontaneous decision), how I thought it tasted (good...I guess), if I thought it was worth the price (well, maybe just once to try it) and a few other questions. I wonder if my interview will make it on air.

With Jackie, Miranda and Sara Sidner at Kopi Luwak Cafe

What I didn't say was how surprised I was that the coffee wasn't freshly brewed. Instead, the waitress came over with an empty mug, a bag of powder and a thermos of hot water. Essentially, she was making instant coffee for me at the table. Really? I'm paying $8 a cup for instant coffee? To her credit, she let us all sniff the contents of the powder bag before she stirred in the water. It smelled aromatic enough. We were then instructed to wait two minutes for the coffee to settle in the mug. The camera crew hovered nearby as Miranda kept an eye on her watch. And then the moment of truth. I raised my mug, inhaled deeply and took my first sip. I was expecting to be wow'ed by its exotic flavor and hints of whoknowswhat but instead it just sort of tasted like regular coffee, albeit a very dark and silky one. I usually don't drink black coffee and had to fight the urge to add milk and sugar. I will say, though, that it had a very nice, clean aftertaste.

If anyone sees us on TV, please let me know!

The Stoning of Soraya M

2010-10-10T12:39:00.001+07:00

Every other Friday afternoon there's a movie screening followed by a discussion at my host institution for the PhD students at ICRS (Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies) and the master's degree students at CRCS (Center for Religious and Cross Cultural Studies). The thought-provoking movies selected for discussion tend to focus on injustice, violence, and cross cultural conflict. So far this semester, I've seen Raise the Red Lantern (about the power struggle between the four wives of a wealthy Chinese merchant in 1920s China); Crash (about racial discrimination in modern day Los Angeles); and now The Stoning of Soraya M (about an innocent woman who is wrongly stoned to death for adultery under Islamic Sharia Law in Iran in 1986). Soraya's story is shocking, heartbreaking, and, worst of all, true.

In the opening scene, a woman is shown chasing dogs away from the remains of a body by a river. The woman collects the bones, washes them gently in the river and then buries them. As she is finishing her task, she notices a bus pulling a broken-down car along the main road to the village. It turns out the car belongs to a French/Iranian journalist who wants to get to the border by nightfall and is adamant that the local mechanic fix his car as soon as possible. The woman notices the tape recorder in the journalist's bag as he is speaking to the mechanic and attempts through a series of rushed whispered conversations to convince him that she has an important story to tell if he will listen.

The journalist makes his way to Zahra's house and the majority of the story is told through flashbacks as Zahra recounts the fate of her niece, Soraya, who was stoned to death the night before the journalist's arrival. Soraya, a 35 year-old mother of four children, is married to an abusive, philandering husband named Ali who wants a divorce so he can marry the 14 year-old daughter of one of his prisoners and he can't afford to have two wives. Soraya refuses to divorce him because she would then be left with no means to support the children. When a neighbor's wife dies, the village elders and Ali decide that Soraya should go help the widower and his son with the cooking and cleaning. Zahra manages to negotiate a salary for Soraya so she can slowly start to gain financial independence. This arrangement works for a little while, but Ali starts to get impatient and thinks up a new way to get ride of his wife - he accuses her of sleeping with the widower and he and the corrupt village leader threaten the widower with his life and his son's life to go along with the allegations, knowing that under Sharia Law the punishment for adultery is death by stoning.

Ali convinces all the men of the village, and many of the women, that Soraya is guilty of adultery. Zahra tries to sneak Soraya out of the house, but the attempt is futile - the house is surrounded by men with guns. So, Zahra does her best to help prepare Soraya for the inevitable. She helps her get dressed in a beautiful white gown and tells her that she will make it her duty to tell her story to the world. When the time comes, Soraya is led out of the house and buried waist deep in a dirt hole. Her hands are bound and she is positioned facing the villagers. One by one, the villagers pick up the stones and hit their target. Soraya's husband, her father and even her own sons join in. The scene is prolonged and painful; it shows the effect of each and every stone for several long minutes. The stones hit, Soraya's head swings down and the up, blood drips down her face turning her white gown red, and she makes eye contact with the crowd. Cries of Allahu Akbar! (God is Great!) fill the air as eventually everyone starts throwing stones at once until Soraya is dead. That night there is a great celebration in the village. While the villagers are celebrating, Zahra and a few other women take Soraya's body down to the river. They aren't allowed to bury her so they leave her by the water, where we know from the opening scene that her body will be eaten by wild dogs.

Then the film returns to the present where Zahra and the journalist are finishing their conversation. The mechanic, who we now recognize as the widower, arrives to announce that the car is ready. The journalist packs up his equipment and tries to leave town. The village elders stop him to ask what the old woman has been talking to him about for so long. They say that what happens in the village, stays in the village. The head of the village then destroys the tape with Soraya's story. The journalist storms off in his car. The villagers watch him drive off, smugly thinking they have prevented the story from leaking out. Little do they know that Zahra has outsmarted them again. She's waiting for the journalist down the road with the true tape held high in her hand. She successfully passes it off to him. The villagers see what has happened and try to run after the car. There's a tense moment when the old car stalls, but then the journalist gets it going again and successfully drives out of town with Soraya's story intact.

This incident really happened in Iran in 1986. The French/Iranian journalist wrote a book about Soraya's story called La femme Lapidee, which was published in 1990. The film, The Stoning of Soraya M, came out just last year.

The story left me in tears. The tyrannical husband, the mob-mentality of the villagers, the betrayal of Soraya's sons, the desperate attempts of Zahra to stop the inevitable, the brutal, bloody stoning scene. Why would anyone do this?? Many people in the story knew what was happening was wrong but still did nothing to stop it. An extra cruel turn of events comes at the end when we learn that Ali's marriage to the 14 year-old is off because the girl's father was executed. Soraya's death was for nothing - except that Zahra's promise to Soraya came true. The world now knows her story and a lot more about the similar fates of women in other countries where Sharia Law is practiced. If you haven't seen this movie yet, I highly recommend it. For Soraya's sake and sake of women like her, it's important that the world know what's going on. And what continues to happen in Iran to this day.

It was especially interesting to watch this movie about Islamic Sharia Law in a room full of practicing Muslims. The cries of Allahu Akbar! (God is Great!) by the murdering mob was deeply disturbing for many in the audience. Many Indonesian students were shocked. 'This is Islam??' Others were quick to point out that what Ali and the corrupt village elder did was manipulate religion to fit their cause, an ongoing theme in studies focusing on religious violence. Such manipulation is by no means restricted to Islam either.

One ICRS student also shared a very interesting academic theory as for why people would engage in an act as barbaric as stoning, especially to someone they know, love, and might even regard as innocent. Once an act of adultery has been committed, there is a disequilibrium in the community. In order to restore harmony, a scapegoat (guilty or innocent) must be found. Every stone that is thrown is a means to restore this harmony and win back God's good will. The otherwise inexplicable celebration scene following the stoning can be seen as a celebration of the restoration of harmony or equilibrium to the community. Powerful stuff, huh?

The aspects of Sharia Law depicted in this film also made me think about my upcoming trip to Banda Aceh, an Indonesian town in northern Sumatra governed by Sharia Law, where I've been asked to present a workshop next month. I've heard about the strict curfews and dress codes as well as the recent law change allowing stoning. Is it really true that right here in Indonesia adulterers can be punished with death by stoning? I dared to raise this question to the room. The response I got was that although death by stoning is on the books in Aceh, it's meant to scare people into behaving properly. The fact that four eye witnesses to the same act of adultery are needed to convict someone makes it highly unlikely that anyone will ever meet their end this way. A little online research at home revealed that the Acehenese defend their stoning law by asking how is it different from other countries with strict laws, such as death by lethal injection in the United States. The region also wants to attract tourists to the area so they can see for themselves how Sharia Law helps create a peaceful and secure community. Stay tuned for my reports from Aceh next month.

Sedikit Sedikit...

2010-09-30T16:08:00.000+07:00

Sedikit sedikit lama lama akan terbiasa berbicara Bahasa Indonesia. Little by little it will become easier to speak Indonesian.

At least, that's my hope now that I've started my Bahasa Indonesia classes at ICRS. Every Monday and Thursday as of this week I'll be meeting with Mbak Nina for an hour and a half lesson. RD (from Iowa) and Lily (from Burma) are also taking the class. They're both PhD students at ICRS and Lily is actually in my academic writing class. I think this marks the first time I've ever taken a class with one of my own students!

Admittedly, I didn't have high expectations for this class going in. Last year Amber had studied at Wisma Bahasa, the premier language school on Java, and I had hoped that I would be sent there as well. My housemate Anastasia goes to classes there four times a week and meets all sorts of interesting people sponsored by the embassies and big international organizations in Jakarta. What's more, she told me Wisma Bahasa really tailors their lessons to students' ability levels. This sounded perfect to me because I'm what you'd call a 'false beginner' in Indonesian. I've never had a formal class before, but I've lived here for a year so I know a lot of random vocabulary and I can hold basic conversations. But Wisma Bahasa is pretty pricey so ICRS decided to have a current PhD student teach us instead as part of her work-study program. I was a little disappointed to hear this news, especially when I found out I'd be lumped together with actual beginners and that Mbak Nina had never taught a Bahasa course before. How could this be a good thing?

To my great relief, however, the class at ICRS is really exceeding my expectations. It turns out that even though Mbak Nina has never taught Bahasa Indonesia before, she has 10 years of experience teaching English as a foreign language and clearly knows what she's doing. She also speaks Indonesian nice and slowly and with such a beautiful intonation that I find myself wanting to imitate her. It's also working out fine that we're starting the course from scratch. On day one we learned how to introduce ourselves, how to say the letters of the alphabet and how to spell our names. Really basic stuff, but still useful. We're also filling in gaps in our cultural knowledge. For instance, today as we reviewed the material from Monday with flashcards of political leaders around the world, we digressed briefly to talk about Indonesian presidents. So now, for the first time in a year, I actually understand the difference between President Sukarno, who was the first Indonesian president after the country gained its independence in 1945 and regarded as a national hero, and President Suharto, who held the presidency for over 30 years after Sukarno and was seen as corrupt. This distinction is tricky because their names differ by only two letters.

Having RD and Lily in the class makes it more fun, too. RD's background is in sociology and team building and he is just so supportive of everyone. He's quick to say, 'Thank you, Julianne, for asking that question. I really appreciate it.' Or if Lily or I say something correct, he'll quickly congratulate us with a Bagus! (Good!). I'm also fascinated by watching him learn Indonesian because he's never studied a second language before. Watching him struggle slightly through these first few lessons really makes me appreciate how my previous experience with language learning really does make learning additional languages easier.

I'm really happy to be back in the language classroom again as a learner. Taking language classes as been a hobby for most of my adult life, be it French, German, Spanish or Swiss German. I love those little moments when the light bulb goes off and you finally understand something you didn't before. I also like guessing spelling and meaning correctly and having it confirmed by the teacher. Most of all, I like the digressions and the cultural tidbits and sharing the learning experience with others. It's too bad I didn't have this opportunity last year, but I'll try to make the most of it this year.

Teaching Academic English

2010-09-29T16:23:00.000+07:00

I've finished my first month of teaching! Well, perhaps I should clarify that by saying that although I've finished teaching for the month of September, I've only actually taught four classes. My first week at ICRS was spent settling into my office and modifying the syllabus put together by Amber last year so that I could actually teach it. Then I went off to Bali for 10 days for the Idul Fitri holiday. And then I came back to teach my awesome schedule of only two classes per week. So now that I have this first month (or 4 classes) under my belt, I thought it was time to give an update on my teaching situation this year.

Let's backtrack to my first week at ICRS. I spent most of this week being alternately extremely grateful for all the files that Amber had left behind and also super intimidated by the work she had done. She was the first ELF at ICRS and she literally wrote the book on the academic writing curriculum here. Seriously. She WROTE A TEXTBOOK as part of her project last year. And while I was very thankful for all her groundwork and clearly labeled folders and documents on the hard drive, I also grew increasingly worried that I was in over my head. Amber is a PhD student in Rhetoric and Composition. Not too surprisingly, her extremely thorough syllabus is peppered with jargon from her field: discourse communities, genre analysis, rhetorical sequence, rhetorical situation, summary reminder phrases, and rhetorical prospectus. Fear raced through me as I read over her syllabus for the first time. How was I supposed to teach students to write a rhetorical prospectus if I didn't even know what that term meant? And, I wondered, if I had trouble understanding the terms on her syllabus, how did her students feel?

Fortunately, a nice long chat about expectations with my counterpart Ipung helped calm me down. Taking into account that my background is in TESOL, not rhetoric and composition, and also considering the feedback from last year's students who felt they had more work then they could handle in the academic writing class, Ipung and I decided that I could tweak the syllabus a bit. So, I went back to the drawing board and hashed out an adapted version of Amber's syllabus that I felt much more comfortable teaching. I took out the year-long research paper project (complete with annotated bibliography, lit review, and rhetorical prospectus) and focused instead on 4 distinct assignments each semester. This term I'll have my students write a personal literacy narrative, a summary of a religious studies article, a reaction paper and a final writer's reflection paper. Next term, I'll assign an editorial and response, a comparative summary of two religious studies articles, a book review and a film critique. Then they'll have a final publication project where they select and polish two pieces of writing from the year to be published and distributed to all members of the class and the ICRS office. My hope is that my students will see my class as a workshop where they can get comfortable with the conventions of writing in academic English. For most, this semester will be their first experience doing so since their bachelor and master's degrees were entirely in Indonesian. (As a side note, all ICRS classes are conducted in English. ICRS is an international, interreligious PhD program that attracts applicants from all over the world.)

Even after feeling good about my changes to the syllabus, I was still nervous for the first day of class. I was about to step foot into my first classroom of PhD level students. Many of them are currently lecturers at other universities on Java and have published numerous articles and books (in Indonesian) on religious studies, a field I know extremely little about. My students are Muslim, Buddhist and Christian and are comfortable tossing around buzzwords like 'interfaith dialogue'. This is completely new territory for me. Luckily, our first few sessions together have gone extremely well. There are only 12 students in the class and they all seem very approachable and eager to learn about academic English. I have a feeling that I will learn just as much from them this year about religious studies and 'interfaith dialogue' as they will (hopefully) learn from me about academic writing in English.

As part of the course, my students are required to come see me at least once per assignment for a 30 minute individual consultation session. This is a time where we can talk about the feedback they have gotten from their peers, the revisions they are working on, grammar points they want to clarify and anything else that comes to mind. I've had a handful of sessions so far and was, in a sense, relieved to hear that my students are still looking for help with things like prepositions and thesis statements. These requests I can handle, since they're much more within my realm of experience than, say, research proposals or rhetorical moves.

To finish this post, I'd like to share a funny anecdote from a recent individual consultation session. The student came in, sat down and handed me the first draft of his essay. I glanced over it and asked him, "Do you have any specific questions about this essay?" To my surprise, he started listing the places he had visited in America. He rattled off numerous states and even mentioned attending some sort of month-long program in Hawaii. I listened politely while trying desperately to figure out the connection between his list of places visited in America and draft 1 of his essay. Finally, he stopped and said, "No, I've traveled a lot there. I don't think I have any specific questions about the USA."

May I Take Your Picture?

2010-09-22T23:31:00.002+07:00

I love my new Canon G11 so much that I find myself spending a good amount of time playing around with it on land. I've never really been much of a photographer at all, but now, after venturing into underwater photography and having this great little camera on my hands, I feel inspired.

Maybe it's sort of a natural transition from liking to take macro close ups of fish and such, but I'm starting to get into portraits. There were two events on our recent trip to Bali that set me on this path. The first was one early morning on Nusa Lembongan when Jackie and I went for a walk along the beach. We headed off with the intention of taking some pictures of the Agung volcano looming in the distance but we soon found ourselves talking to two friendly little girls who were making mini Agung volcanos in the sand. We chatted with them in very basic Indonesian and I took several photos. After each photo, I would show them my LCD screen and they would shout, "Lagi, lagi!" (Again, again!). And then I'd take another photo. This one of 7 year-old Dila was my favorite one of the series:

When I showed the picture on my camera to Megan, Noreen and Michaela later they all commented on what a nice shot it was. But I still didn't think too much of it. When we got to Ubud, our next destination, I strolled down Monkey Forest Rd taking pictures of statues and flowers and other non-human things. Looking through the photos later I felt like something was missing but I couldn't figure out what. Then the second big event happened. One day later I wondered into a bookstore and bought a Lonely Planet guide to travel photography. As it happened to be raining that afternoon, I took the book back to the hotel and basically read it cover to cover. I found myself drawn to the chapters about portrait photography and realized what I needed to do to make my travel photos really come alive.

I've always thought that local people make very interesting subjects for travel photography but the whole notion of asking a complete stranger for permission to take their picture has always been super intimidating to me. My general approach for most of my life has been to try to sneakily take photos of people when they're not looking or to stand from a safe enough distance away so that if they got suspicious I could always just pretend I was taking a picture of the tree/statue/storefront next to them. However, living as a quasi-celebrity in Gorontalo last year, I got really uncomfortable and annoyed by all the random people constantly taking my picture, sometimes right up in my face, without even so much as a hello or a nod to their camera phone to ask for permission. Asking for permission is definitely the way to go.

This aspect of photography gets especially tricky in developing countries when many of the interesting subjects you want to shoot are living in such poverty that you feel guilty for wanting to take a few pictures of their daily existence only to wander back to your nice hotel later to play with the pics on your fancy laptop. But I guess the bottom line is it doesn't hurt to ask. Sometimes people will say no and they have every right to do so. But for those who say yes, you might be rewarded with some great photos.

The day after reading the chapters on portraits in my book, I headed off to a market in Ubud to challenge myself to interact with people and see if I could get their permission to take a few photos. I felt like I could at least say "Boleh?" (May I?) in Indonesian while holding up my camera. The first woman I encountered was busy sorting chili peppers. Ah ha, I thought. I can practice taking what my book called 'environmental portraits' or, in other words, portraits that make the picture more interesting by placing the subject in a specific context. I held up my camera and asked, "Boleh?" and then took a few snapshots of this woman at work:

At first glance, this photo might not look much different from your typical photo surreptitiously taken in a market, but because I asked for permission first I was able to stand closer than I normally would and take multiple shots. As a side note here, I like how the camera captured the movement in her right hand.

For my next subject, I employed the time honored technique of buying something first and then asking permission to take a photo. This technique works well because you feel you have established some sort of relationship with your subject before you take their picture. It also decreases the likelihood that they will say no to your request. However, the big drawback to this technique is that it can get expensive when you go around buying things you don't need just to get people's pictures.

Finally, one of my favorite shots of the day was of this sweet 90 year-old woman selling woven boxes. I thought her face was very photogenic but when I first asked to take her picture she said I had to buy a box first. Hmm...I thought. She's been around enough tourists to know how to up her sales! So I thanked her, told her that I didn't really need a woven box and started to walk away. But then she called me back, laughed and said it was fine if I took her picture. She kept saying "Tapi saya tua! Saya sudah 90 tahun" (But I'm old! I'm already 90 years old.) To which I responded, "Mungkin Anda sudah tua, tapi Anda masih cantik!" (Maybe you are old, but you are still beautiful!). She laughed again.

These brief exchanges with the women in the Ubud market were rewarding enough to make me think I might be on to something here. Stay tuned for more portrait photos this year!

Happy As a Clam

2010-09-21T10:47:00.001+07:00

I recently came back from a trip to Bali where I finally got a chance to play with my new toys - a Canon G11 and a Fisheye Fix underwater housing. Hilariously, I found out that my new housing is quite the guy magnet! This is ironic since I'm happily off the market now, but seriously, I had guys coming up to me saying stuff like, "That's a beautiful housing you have there" and "Excuse me, I'm a photographer and I couldn't help but notice...". Single ladies pay attention. You might want to invest in a nice piece of photographic equipment. I'm just sayin'.

Behold my power combo:

I was very nervous about taking my setup underwater for the first time. It's the single most expensive gear purchase I've made so far for my new hobby and I had nightmares about flooding the camera on my first dive. So I made sure to get some DAN equipment insurance beforehand and then I took down just the housing without the camera on my first dive to test the seal at depth.

The good news is that the camera works wonderfully underwater and did not flood at all. The housing is super easy to use and I just can't get over how much easier it is to press the shutter button on this housing compared to the Canon plastic housings. The ISO and exposure settings are all adjustable from the housing itself which really reduces the amount of time you have to spend fiddling with the menu settings.

The bad news is that I didn't get very many good pictures this trip. I like taking macro pictures and staying in one place for a long time to get that perfect shot by playing with the settings. But we were diving off Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida, areas known for their strong currents and surge. It's not really possible to stay in one place for long. At one point I was finning against the current trying to take some reefscape shots of some photogenic angelfish in a crevice. I snapped four shots and when I looked up I realized that I had lost my dive group! Fortunately the others weren't far away, but it drove home the lesson that I really can't take repeat shots in current. I also learned that photographers swimming against the current use up their air much faster than everyone else.

Of course, I knew that Nusa Lembongan and Nusa Penida were not ideal for beginner photographers since I had dived there before. But the islands are gorgeous and since I was in charge of showing the new ELFs a good time on Bali, I wanted to take them to this beautiful spot a little off the beaten path. I had also hoped that I would get a chance to practice my manual white balance skills with some of the big fish that come with the current and surge, namely manta rays, mola molas and sharks. To my great disappointment though I didn't see any of those things.

So, here's a sampling of a few shots I did manage to get while finning against the current, swaying in surge, struggling to keep up with my dive group and trying not to crash into the coral or my dive buddies:

Saddleback anenomefish

Sand perch

Swimmer crab

Flathead

Reefscape

Freckled hawkfish

Despite the frustrations of shooting in these conditions, I LOVE my new camera and housing and can't wait for my next dive trip. Hopefully, I'll be able to take a few long weekend trips to Lembeh and Gorontalo in the next couple of months. If so, I really will be as happy as a clam.

Dining Out in Yogya

2010-09-05T14:22:00.000+07:00

I'm writing this post while drinking my second cafe latte of the morning, having just finished a big Sunday brunch consisting of an omelet, toast, chicken sausage, melon and baked beans. Oh yeah, and I just ordered a chocolate croissant to go with my second cafe latte. What's more, I'm connected to the internet because this cafe has fast and free wi-fi! And all I had to do to get here was walk down the street from my guest house. Ooohhh...my croissant just arrived and it's even warm! I think I might make Sunday brunches at this cafe a regular event. Few things make me as happy as the prospect of a delicious meal.

I am truly in culinary heaven here in Yogya. I spent the past week checking out the various restaurants around town with Ingrid and my housemates. Highlights included spinach fettuccine and a tomato and mozzarella salad at Via Via, a chicken and mushroom brick-oven pizza followed by tiramisu at Nanamia, guacamole with toast and a spinach pancake with homemade cheese and mushrooms at Milas, chicken korma and pumpkin soup at Sangam House, and even a delicious 3 mushroom creamy fettuccine with garlic cheese bread at the Pizza Hut down the street. Italian, Indian, American....I definitely won't starve here!

This is a big relief, since, as followers of this blog know, Indonesian cuisine seldom whets my appetite. That said, the other day Anastasia, John and I were wandering around the kampung by the university looking for a place that was actually serving lunch during Ramadan and stumbled upon a great little warung that had a whole menu of tasty Indonesian options. I ordered nasi goreng tuna (fried rice with tuna) and terong goreng tepung (eggplant fried in flour). Even though both dishes were fried, they were surprisingly delicious! I washed it all down with a fresh strawberry juice, happy that I just found what might become my new regular lunch place.

A Blogger Romance

2010-08-29T17:58:00.000+07:00

It's interesting the things that happen once you start writing a blog. Over the past year I've had a fellow teacher use one of my blog posts in her English class, I've been invited to write a magazine article, and I've even been contacted by strangers in Italy looking for advice on moving to Gorontalo. But probably one of the best things to come out of writing this blog was reconnecting with a certain 6'4, blond, blue-eyed guy I knew from college.

Once upon a time I had made a list of qualities I was looking for in a guy. Ok, so it was last summer. After a frustrating summer escapade, I had had enough and decided that the next guy I was going to get serious about needed to meet my 'minimum requirements'. With rather astonishing speed, I quickly composed my list in my journal. Looking over my list a few minutes later, I realized with alarm that I should be dating myself. Slightly depressed, I stashed my journal away and shipped out to Indonesia.

One year later, I agreed to meet my friend Henry from college for dinner while I happened to be in Washington, DC. Although I hadn't seen him in 10 years, the conversation flowed freely over delicious Indian food and continued over drinks by the rooftop pool of his condo. The guy I had remembered from college as tall and slightly goofy was still tall and slightly goofy but in a way I was totally drawn to. The more we talked, the more I realized that I was sitting with my ideal guy, my perfect guy that I had envisioned for myself last summer. What's more, he seemed to have been waiting for me too. He told me the charming story of how he and a friend stumbled across my blog while Googling recipes for eggplant juice and he admitted to having a crush on me in college. What followed was a whirlwind three days of dinners, a baseball game and drinks with friends. At the end of the three days, he left DC to head up to Maine where he spends a week of vacation every year volunteering at a summer camp for the children and families of 9/11 victims.

With Henry at a Nationals game in Washington, DC

What do you do when you think you might have met 'the one' but are leaving the country for 10 or 11 months? I've never had much luck with long distance relationships and so when Henry asked me if this was just a fling or something more, I hesitated. We had three absolutely fantastic days together and I can't remember ever feeling so happy, safe, understood and adored in a relationship. But still, it was only three days. Can either of us really commit to a relationship after such a short time? It seems like a crazy thing, but I think we both recognize what we've found in each other. I'm still hesitant to label this, but we talk on Skype and Gmail a lot and he even sent me a big bouquet of flowers with an adorable note on my first day at my new office. I have a good feeling about this.

Flowers from Henry

Seafood Feast at Depok

2010-08-29T12:44:00.000+07:00

After touring the Sultan's Water Palace, we were all in a water sort of mood and spontaneously decided to head to the ocean for a seafood dinner. We settled into the van for a one hour ride that turned out to be only 40 minutes since our driver drove like a maniac dodging motorbikes right and left. Thankfully, we survived that ride and found ourselves on a relatively uncrowded black sand beach just in time for sunset. We had arrived at the INDIAN OCEAN!

With Anya and Anastasia

Zipping around on an ATV seemed to be the thing to do

Sunset!

I had heard that the seas south of Yogya were rough and they certainly looked it. Thunderous waves crashed in every direction and no one was swimming although there were a few Indonesian guys splashing around, tempting the Queen of the South Seas. I was content to stand at the water's edge and let the warm water and black sand cover my feet as I watched the waves crash and roll. I'm glad Yogya isn't far from the ocean. Depok is one of the closest beaches to the city and Ingrid and Anastasia raved about the fresh seafood market here.

Ingrid selected a tasty sampling of seafood at the market for us to try. We carried our bags of seafood to a little warung on the beach where it was cooked up for us as we walked along the water. We feasted on grilled tuna, fried shrimp, squid, clams, grilled snapper, and crabs. The grilled tuna and the fried shrimp were particularly delicious.

The only dent in my enjoyment of the evening was seeing that there were baby sharks for sale at the seafood market. I was particularly affected by the sight of a baby hammerhead shark. When I was on Bunaken for my rescue diver course, my instructor was a major shark guy who showed all of us a presentation that he does on shark awareness. His gist is that sharks are amazing creatures, not man-eaters, and most importantly, they are the alpha predators of the ocean and without them the oceans will collapse. He detailed the problematic indiscriminate fishing of sharks, particularly in Asia, in a very thoughtful talk. He has reached many people in South East Asia with his presentation but clearly there is a long way to go with environmental education in Indonesia. Seeing a local woman proudly holding up a dead baby hammerhead shark is, sadly, not at all unusual in this part of the world.

Poor baby hammerhead

The Sultan's Water Palace

2010-08-29T10:07:00.000+07:00

At ICRS, Ingrid, Amber's AWESOME counterpart from last year, is in charge of organizing cultural activities for Luce Fellows and anyone else who happens to be staying at the ICRS guest house, including me, Anastasia and Anya. These excursions happen, from what I gather, almost every weekend. Yesterday we were going to go to the Sultan's Palace but when we arrived we found out that it had closed early that day because of Ramadan. So, we modified the plan and went instead to visit the ruins of the Sultan's Water Palace, also known as Taman Sari. This was a place I had been really intrigued by, so I'm glad it turned out to be our first outing.

Completed in 1765, the Taman Sari complex is a huge area adjacent to the regular palace that the royal family used for relaxation, entertainment and even education in the form of lessons for the royal children. The main palace was destroyed in an earthquake in 1865 but the Sultan's private bathing area has been restored. The whole area is pretty much devoted to sensual pleasures. The very first courtyard we entered contained 4 pavilions for gamelan orchestras. Our guide joked that having not one but four orchestras was the original definition of surround sound. Growing in this courtyard were also trees with sawo and kepel fruit. Sawo fruit is eaten by men and is supposed to give them superhero powers at night. Everyone chuckled at this, but our guide was quick to point out that the superhero powers were not confined to the bedroom but to any physical task a man might have to do in the evening. Kepel fruit is eaten by women to help them produce sweet smelling sweat AND it's believed to have anti-conception powers. I suppose this was very useful considering the Sultans had many wives.

Going down the stairs from the gamelan/fruit courtyard, we entered the bathing area. There were two large pools here- one for the children and one for the Sultan's wives. As the wives bathed below, the Sultan would watch them from his tower and then select the one he fancied sleeping with by throwing down a flower into the pool next to the chosen woman. Then, the wife would join the Sultan for a swim together in the Sultan's private pool behind the tower. We also peeked into the Sultan's bedroom in the tower. Interestingly, sandalwood was burned under the bed to help ward off mosquitoes and keep the Sultan smelling good.

View of the wives' pool and the tower.

Ingrid and Anya at the Sultan's private pool

Real World Academia Begins!

2010-08-28T12:57:00.001+07:00

I arrived in Yoga late Wednesday evening in a mini-van sized taxi with my NINE pieces of luggage. I had two giant suitcases, a small suitcase, a duffel bag full of diving and swimming stuff, a small wheeled carry-on bag, my laptop bag, a bag with my mattress pad from Gorontalo, the large framed Wayang Kulit shadow puppet figure on goat skin and, finally, my purse. My counterpart, Ipung, and Mas Marwan, who works at the guest house, miraculously whisked all of this up a narrow spiral staircase to my new bedroom. I cringed as I watched them carry the enormous suitcases up the stairs. Then I met John, a Luce Fellow from California studying religion and Arabic, who is also living in the house for the semester and had just arrived the day before. He told me he had packed everything he needed for the semester in two CARRY-ON sized backpacks. I was awed and vowed (once again) that I really must learn to pack lighter.

Also living in the house is Anastasia, a Boren Fellow originally from New Hampshire. She has been here for two months already but had lived in both Yogya and Bandung before. She is such a blessing. I've been relying on her to for basic information such as where the spare toilet paper is kept in the house and where to go eat. She also full of interesting information about Yogya and Bahasa Indonesia. Case in point, while walking to the university yesterday she told me and John how the Indonesian word for freckles literally means 'fly shit'. And how the word for speed bump means 'sleeping policeman'. She's going to be here for 8 months studying the language. What a cool fellowship! Afterwards I think she is required to work for the State Department for a year.

It's really great to have two other Americans living in the house. There's a third person here now too, Anya from Germany, but she'll be leaving next week. I haven't seen much of my counterpart since dinner the first night and a short meeting in my office yesterday about the upcoming semester. So it is FANTASTIC to have Anastasia, John and Anya to hang out on the front porch with, search for food with and to just have people around that I can relate to. In all my adult life since graduating college, I have never lived in a house or apartment with roommates. Well, I did live with a German family for 18 months in Switzerland but that was more of a host family situation than roommates. So, it's a novel experience to have people my own age around to do things with and explore the city with.

Yesterday, Anastasia took John and me to Jl Malioboro where we walked down the most touristy street in Yogya filled with batik vendors and trinket sellers. Our destination was a particular store that offers a wide selection of good quality batik at fixed prices. This was convenient because my Indonesian is certainly not capable of sophisticated bargaining. Plus, what I wanted was a patchwork batik blanket exactly like the one Anastasia had gotten at that very store earlier this summer. So, we had a very successful mission. We wrapped up the day with a delicious dinner at Via Via, a Belgian owned restaurant known for its outstanding Indonesian and Western food. Plus, it's supposedly the one place in town where you can actually order a glass of wine ;-)

Moving to Yogya!

2010-08-25T00:07:00.002+07:00

Tomorrow I'm moving to Yogyakarta!

When I decided to renew my ELF fellowship for a second year, I learned that I would have to relocate to another host site. Gorontalo was not going to be renewed for a third year. Having visited Yogya twice over the past year and knowing that the ELF project there was writing based, I asked my supervisor at the US Embassy if I could be posted in Yogya for my second year. Luckily for me he said yes!

Before I go on, here's a short excerpt from Lonely Planet for a bit of background information:

If Jakarta is Java's financial and industrial powerhouse, Yogyakarta is its soul. Central to the island's artistic and cultural heritage, Yogyakarta (pronounced 'Jogjakarta'), called Yogya for short, is where the Javanese language is at its purest, Java's arts at their brightest and its traditions at their most visible.

Fiercely independent and protective of its customs, Yogya is now the site of an uneasy truce between the old ways of life and the onslaught of modernity. Still headed by its sultan, whose kraton remains the hub of traditional life, contemporary Yogya is nevertheless as much as a city of cybercafes, lounge bars, and traffic jams as batik, gamelan and ritual. But while the process of modernization homogenizes many of Java's cities, Yogya continues to juggle past and present with relative ease, sustaining a slower, more conservative way of life in the quiet kampung that thrive only a stone's throw away from the throbbing main streets.

Yogya's potency has long outweighed its size, and it remains Java's premier tourist city with countless hotels, restaurants, and attractions of its own. The city is also an ideal base for exploring nearby attractions, including Indonesia's most important archaeological sites, Borobudur and Prambanan.

I'm thrilled that I'll be in Yogya this year, but before saying too much about why, I just want to say how much I'll miss Gorontalo. Gorontalo was not an easy place to get used to at first, but by the end of the year I really felt a strong connection to it, especially to the diving, Rantje, the whale sharks, my lovely students, the rice paddies, the fabulous sunsets, the misty mountains, the bentors, the candy colored houses and everything else. Yesterday I met Christina and Jolie, the new ETAs heading to Gorontalo, and felt both excited for them and sad for me that I won't be there. At least I'll be able to go back to visit.

Not only am I leaving the town of Gorontalo behind, but I'm also leaving the exotic, remote island of Sulawesi altogether and heading to Java, Indonesia's most populated and most developed island. A part of me longs to hold on the adventure and ruggedness that Sulawesi implies, but another part of me is also ready to embrace the comforts and sophistication of Java, especially Yogya.

I think my experiences in Yogya will be like night and day compared to Gorontalo. Just look at my housing situation for starters. Instead of being all alone in a house plagued with rats, power outages and a terrible internet connection, I am moving into what we affectionately dubbed 'The Palace' last year. My friend Amber (aka 'Princess') lived in a guest house belonging to the university. When we all descended upon the Palace for Thanksgiving last year, we were astounded at the Javanese wood furnishings, the wi-fi access, the hot showers, the goldfish ponds in the communal areas and the live-in help. And now I get to live there! Yes! I'm also looking forward to the fact that the guest house will host a rotating variety of international scholars throughout the year. It will be like Real World Academia. I've already been in email contact with an American woman named Anastasia, a Boren Fellow. And she mentioned that there's also a German woman staying at the house now. And then I learned from someone else that a Luce Fellow will be arriving soon. It'll be fun to have some interesting roommates.

Another big difference will be in the job itself. I'll be working at the Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies, which is part of the graduate school of Gadjah Mada University. GRADUATE school. Just that fact alone implies that the students will be much better prepared for academic work than my plagiarizing undergrads in Gorontalo. At least I hope so. Also, Gadjah Mada or UGM is considered part of the Indonesian 'Ivy League'. When I went to visit Amber there last January, I was very impressed by everything from the quality of the facilities to the professionalism of the faculty and staff I met. My job will be to teach a writing class twice a week and then meet with students for individual consultations and tutorials to fulfill the rest of my 12 hours/week teaching requirement. I also think I'll be leading monthly movie sessions featuring films that deal with intercultural conflict.

And then there's the city of Yogya itself. I've heard that it's the second most visited place in Indonesia besides Bali. What that means for me is that in addition to the wonderful art scene and traditional culture, there will also be plenty of comforts that Gorontalo lacked.

Finally, as if Yogya weren't enough of a destination in itself, it's located very close to some other pretty spectacular places. To the west of the city lies the huge ninth century Buddhist temple of Borobudur that was unearthed only in 1815 after being quietly buried under volcanic ash for centuries. To the east are the ninth century Hindu temples of Prambanan. To the north is the mighty Merapi volcano, which garnered the following description in LP:

Few of Southeast Asia's volcanoes are as evocative, or as destructive, as Gunung Merapi (Fire Mountain). Towering 2911 m over Yogyakarta, Borobudur and Prambanan, this immense Fujiesque cone is a threatening, disturbing presence for thousands. The volcano has erupted dozens of times over the past century and some observers have theorized that it was even responsible for the mysterious evacuation of Borobudur and the collapse of the old Mataram kingdom during the eleventh century.

Lovely thought, huh? Locals routinely make offerings to appease the gods of the volcano as well as to the Queen of the South Seas who reigns over the Indian Ocean about an hour south of Yogya. The ocean waters here are reputedly dangerous but swimming is possible in protected fresh water pools and hot springs.

Overall, from my housing to my job to the availability of international cuisine to the lure of ancient temples and raging ocean swells, I think I will enjoy this new posting very much. I'm ready for this next chapter to begin.

PADI Digital Underwater Photographer Course

2010-07-31T23:52:00.000+07:00

Once I had completed the, let’s be honest, somewhat stressful Rescue Diver course, I could focus on my next goal – underwater digital photography! I had been looking forward to this course for a few months and had high hopes that it would be better than the photography adventure dive I did for my Advanced Open Water back in January at a different resort. That resort had let my friend Mark and me use our Olympus Tough cameras for the dive. The thing is, those cameras are only waterproof to 10 meters and, when diving, we routinely go to 20 or 30 meters. Mark’s LED screen malfunctioned after just a few pictures and I spent the whole dive more attuned to my depth gauge to make sure I didn’t go below 10 meters than I did to my photos. Never mind the fact that we didn’t even get any tips on how to take good underwater photos.

I’m pleased to say that the PADI Digital Underwater Photographer course at Two Fish was much, much better than my previous foray into underwater photography. First of all, I spent an entire afternoon studying the PADI manual where I learned about the usefulness of such things as histograms and manual white balance. The next day, after having gone over the knowledge reviews with my instructor, Abraham, I had a land lesson on how to use the resort’s camera, a Canon Digital IXUS 100 IS, in its underwater housing. Abraham gave me assignments around the resort to practice using the ISO and exposure settings, as well as the digital zoom to get close ups of macro subjects. After successfully taking pictures of my room key, ants on a log and various other things, I was ready to take the camera diving.

The course included two dives with just Abraham and me. He pointed out some interesting subjects and let me take my sweet time adjusting the camera settings and trying different angles. What a luxury to be a photographer alone with a guide! I made the most of my dives but I was hungry for more practice so I rented the camera for three more days of fun diving. After each day of diving, I sat down with Abraham so he could critique my photos and show me how by adjusting contrast, brightness, midtones and saturation with Microsoft Office Picture Manager, I could easily make an OK photo pretty decent (and not have to spend a fortune on Photoshop). But the biggest lesson I learned from him was to get close, fill the frame with an interesting subject and try to get the best picture you can from the camera so there’s less to fix later.

Here are some of my favorite shots:

Thank you Abraham for getting me started on my new hobby! I can’t wait to buy a camera and continue taking pictures of the magnificent world under the sea.

PADI Rescue Diver Course

2010-07-28T05:44:00.000+07:00

We were lounging around the dive boat during a surface interval when a diver surfaced about 20 meters from the boat, panicked that his buddy had gone missing. Luke and Meagan strapped on their fins and swam out to bring the panicked diver back to the boat. I stayed on the boat and started to the gear ready for our search. With the panicked diver back on shore, the three of us grabbed on to a reel line and started to conduct a methodological search of the area where the diver was last seen. Luke spotted the missing diver first and tugged three times on our rope to get our attention. We found the diver unresponsive in about 6 meters of water trapped under a fallen log. I lifted the log off the diver while Luke and Meagan brought the diver to the surface. Luke started rescue breathing while Meagan set to work loosening the diver’s weight belt and I positioned myself at the diver’s feet and helped push him back to the boat. Once we were near the boat, I took over giving rescue breaths while the others scrambled to organize lifting the unresponsive diver onto the boat by strapping two empty weight belts around his torso. On the boat, Meagan initiated CPR while Luke started hooking up the oxygen. After I few minutes, I took over CPR and then our instructor ended the exercise.

This exercise was the final scenario for my PADI Rescue Diver course. Meagan, from South Africa and Luke, from California, were also staying at Two Fish Divers Bunaken and were doing the Rescue Diver course as a prerequisite for their PADI Divemaster course. We had spent the previous few days learning and practicing different rescue techniques with our instructor and had also completed a full day Emergency Responder course, which certified us in first aid and CPR. The above exercise combined all of our new skills into one elaborate scenario. The course reminded me very much of my lifeguard training in high school – except that it really emphasized working together as a team, whereas my lifeguard training gave us high stress individual scenarios. I still shudder to think of those days quaking with fear while waiting to be summoned to the pool deck from the locker room. This course was much better and I do think it helped make me a more confident diver.

Meagan and Luke are continuing on with their divemaster course and hope to find jobs as divemasters afterward, maybe in Malaysia. The victim in our rescue scenario, Ben, and his girlfriend, Tash, are also at Bunaken to complete their divemaster course. In fact, I was the only one out of the five of us NOT doing the full divemaster course, but it got me thinking. Becoming a divemaster would help me refine my diving skills even more and give me the option of perhaps staying on in South East Asia after my fellowship for a while to lead trips and get a lot of diving in. It’s a fun possibility to think about, but I still think of myself as too much of a novice diver to even consider leading trips at the moment. Now that I’ve reached my goals of becoming a Rescue Diver AND logging 100 dives, my next immediate goals are to log 200 dives and become a PADI Master Diver by completing five specialty courses by summer 2011.

My 100th dive!!

Weekend in Singapore

2010-06-30T23:40:00.000+07:00

Since my Indonesian work visa was about to expire, I headed over to Singapore for a weekend to see the sights and catch up with my friend Louvelle, who teaches at an international school there. Singapore is known for being clean, modern and efficient and this was evident as soon as I stepped off the plane. Disembarking passengers were ushered in a straight line to an x-ray machine, where our carryon bags were x-rayed again. After my backpack containing chewing gum and pirated DVDs successfully cleared the x-ray machine, I breathed a sigh of relief and ducked into the bathroom where I used my first ever squat toilet that flushed automatically! I stared at the retreating water in amazement. What a country! Like my trip to Australia over Christmas, my weekend in Singapore was a breath of fresh air - a short respite in a world where everything works, the water is hot, and the food is delicious.

Scenes of Singapore

Louvelle was changing apartments that weekend so we stayed at a hotel – the Ibis on Bencoolen, which I would highly recommend for its central location, great restaurant, and super fast internet connection. In fact, I was so taken with the fastest internet connection I’ve had in 10 months that I spent many, many hours sitting in front of my laptop uploading photos and videos and chatting with friends. Admittedly, I did feel kinda lame about this. Here I was in a new city and a new country just goofing around in my hotel room on Facebook. But it paid off in an unexpected way. My status said I was in Singapore and a friend from grad school commented on it – “You’re in Singapore?! Me too!!” And so we met up and had a drink at the hotel and talked about life since grad school. It pays to update your status!

I also spent a lot of time eating. From my first taste of chicken rice at the Ibis restaurant to the exotic offerings of hawker food at the Makansutra hawker center, Singapore delighted me. I had wondered what the big deal about chicken rice was. Wasn’t it just rice and chicken? But then I learned that its delicious flavor comes from the fact that the rice is cooked in chicken soup. YUM! What’s more, the plate of bee hoon noodles I had at the hawker center was far better than any Italian pasta dish I’ve ever had. And that’s saying quite a bit. The satay was amazing as well and I even ventured a bite of barbequed stingray (too spicy!).

I had my fair share of western food too. One night we went out to dinner for Louvelle’s assistant’s birthday and her husband treated us all to a hedonistic feast of Mediterranean appetizers with garlic bread followed by kebabs of grilled swordfish, steak, prawns, and veggies. As side dishes we had paella and baked potatoes with sour cream. All this was washed down with a bottle of white wine from Australia and rounded off with the most divine tiramisu I have had since, well, the last time I was in Sydney. The very next morning we headed off to a fair trade café called Food for Thought where I ordered banana walnut pancakes with whipped cream, scrambled eggs with cream and cappuccino. I was in heaven.

No first trip to Singapore would be complete without a visit to the famous Raffles Hotel, which dates back to the colonial era and oozes old world charm and luxury. Louvelle took the requisite picture of me standing next to the Sheik doorman and then we roamed around inside visiting the museum, and peeking inside the Long Bar, the Bar & Billiard room and finally settling down at the Martini Bar to enjoy a couple of Singapore Slings at the establishment where it all began. The drinks are ridiculously overpriced and, according to Louvelle, made from a mix, but it’s something everyone has to do at least once when in Singapore.

Posing in front of the Raffles Hotel

With the Sheik doorman

Drinking Singapore Slings with Louvelle

After leaving Raffles, we hopped in a cab over to Riverside Point where we got on a river taxi that floated us up the river to the Merlion, the symbolic statue of Singapore. The river trip was highly entertaining. All the buildings were beautifully illuminated and we floated by the popular night life scene of Clarke Quay, the Extreme Swing, the fancy Fullerton Hotel, the Singapore Flyer, and the Esplanade Theater. The bumboat also featured a running commentary but we didn’t hear it as we were sitting outside in the back. The spectacular views more than made up for that however.

Two full days is really not enough time to explore all that Singapore as to offer. I would especially love to go back to linger in the cafés and restaurants of the Arab quarter and feast in Little India. Thankfully, Louvelle will be in Singapore for at least one more year and there are direct flights to Singapore from Yogya!

Until we meet again…

2010-06-29T23:15:00.000+07:00

For nearly ten months I kept to myself at UNG, sequestering myself in my little office with the AC where I tried to keep up with the rest of the world with my slow internet connection. I showed up for my classes on time, taught in the sweltering hot classrooms, then went home to shower off the dirt and grime from the day and, if I had any energy left, treated myself to a DVD. On weekends I met my American friends to go diving or travel around Indonesia. Occasionally, I would have dinner with one of the other lecturers. Never once in all that time did I consider my students to be potential friends. Although this outlook started to change with our class trip to Saronde Island, I was still caught off guard by the outpouring of emotion and heartfelt goodbyes from my students at my UNG farewell party and in the days that followed.

The fact that the English department even threw me a party at all was touching. I don’t think anyone has thrown a party for me since I was kid and my mom planned birthday parties for me at roller skating rinks, Burger King, and Gymnastics World. Even when I left my job in Switzerland after five years, I had to throw myself a party and buy all the food for my colleagues. This event was in a league of its own. I walked into the multi-purpose room to find a HUGE sign that said “Farewell Party Julianne Reynolds, M.A.” The head of the department, the dean of the faculty of letters and culture, and even the rector of the university himself gave speeches – and surprisingly personal ones at that. Then two of my students, Amad and Ucha, got up on stage to say a few words. I could feel the tears forming as they spoke and a slide show of pictures of me with the students from throughout the year played in the background. Somehow, through all the barriers I created around myself this past year, I had made a difference to my students and they were genuinely sad to see me leave Gorontalo.

As I sat there feeling all emotional, I was summoned to the stage to say a few words. It was horribly embarrassing because I was crying in front of a room full of colleagues and former students, but I managed to say a few words to thank everyone for the kindness they have shown me this year. Then it was time for the souvenirs. I stood in the front of the room as gift-wrapped presents from the department, the staff, the students and individual lecturers were ceremoniously given to me. I accepted each gift, kissed the giver on the checks or shook hands, and then placed the still wrapped gift on a silver tray so it could then be whisked off to a parked car outside.

Then it was time for songs and dances. Several students and lecturers sang to me, six of my guys performed a choreographed dance routine and then Class B came up to the stage and started singing ‘Assalamualaikum’ – the song we sang together on our trip to Saronde. Not only did they sing it, but they also beckoned for me to come up to the stage and sing it with them. Vana had even printed out the lyrics for me! So up to the stage I went and we all swayed and sang together, with me stumbling over the lyrics into the mic. But it was all good fun and I loved it.

Goodbye Class B! I will really miss you.

After a lovely lunch, I went back home to start packing up my house. But I wasn’t alone. A couple members of Class A came over to give me a beautiful photo album of us throughout the year that hilariously also included several ‘hidden camera’ shots that one of the students had taken of me during class! The students had also filled the album with personal messages. Near the end there is even one page called ‘Attendance List’ where they all signed their names in fancy ink – a stylized version of what I ask them to do every day in class! As the delegates of Class A were on their way out the door, delegates of Class B arrived and presented me with ANOTHER beautiful, thoughtful album of photos and memories. Then they stayed to help me open the rest of the gifts that I had received earlier – beautiful kerawang fabric of Gorontalo, traditional fans, and keychains made from recycled newspaper, among other things. Then Ibu Elsje came to pick up my furniture. When I sold her my sofa set and mattress, I had asked her to arrange for someone to pick them up. I was expecting her to show up with a van or a truck but instead she came with a roda – a traditional horse-drawn cart! My students helped the driver load the furniture and waited with me while the driver made a couple trips between my house and Ibu Elsje’s.

So many presents to unwrap!

The goodbye sendoff continued into that evening and the next couple of days. After we loaded up the furniture, we went back to campus where other members of Class B had been preparing a bbq for me! My students grilled up fresh corn and fish outside the language lab and we sat around talking and joking for a few more hours. But the day had been a long one, so I eventually bid them goodnight and went home. The next day I arrived at work bright and early to finish calculating my final grades and pack up my office. While I was scrambling to get all my work done, members of Class C appeared to invite me to dinner at one of the girls’ houses. Very reluctantly I told them that I couldn’t go because I HAD TO finish up my grades and, besides, my neighbors were already planning on taking me out for a farewell dinner. Time was short and there was still so much to do. Unfazed, Class C showed up at my house the next morning to accompany me to the airport. They had rented a car to follow me!

At the airport with Class C

All along I have been saying that I will definitely come back to Gorontalo to dive. But now I feel have another reason, too. I will really and truly miss these students of mine - these students who have now added me on Facebook and tell me how much they love and miss me. Instead of feeling like this is the end of an era, I feel like this is just the beginning of some new lifelong friendships. I will be back.

To market, to market to buy a fresh fish

2010-06-24T19:56:00.000+07:00

After our trip to Saronde Island last week, Amad, Vana and Vany asked me if there was anything else in Gorontalo that I wanted to do before I left. And actually there was. I wanted to go to the fish market. And not only that, I wanted to go there by bendi, a type of horse-drawn carriage that was the traditional means of transportation around town until bentors arrived on the scene about ten years ago. And so, at 6 am on a Wednesday morning, I met my students at the language lab on campus and we headed off to the morning fish market by bendi.

Off to the market by bendi

With Vany and Vana on the bendi

The fish market is held at a place called Tangga Dua Ribu or Two Thousand Steps that’s right at the mouth of the Bone river. We would pass it every morning on the dive boat as we headed off to our dive sites and it always intrigued me because it seemed to be a bustling, happening place. The fishing boats pull right up to the shore and hordes of people are always swarming about, buying their daily fish. Miguel’s Diving also happens to be located on the same street that leads to the fish market, so every day when we drove up to the dock to get on the boat, we would see fish sellers whizz by on their bikes, fish tails sticking out of the baskets besides them, as they hurried off to sell their fish in town. I was also particularly pleased whenever I saw bentors laden with large yellowfin tuna. I became convinced that seeing one was a good omen that a great day of diving was in store.

Clickety-clack, clickety-clack - we trotted along the early morning streets of Gorontalo in our horse-drawn carriage at a surprisingly brisk pace, passing the morning street cleaners busily sweeping the streets. In a country known for its littering problem, Gorontalo is unique in that its streets are swept clean every morning. We also passed fruits sellers and a shoe repairman who seemed to have taken up shop in the middle of the main street. Then we went by the Governor’s mansion and a string of colonial era houses. Along the way, Vana taught me an Indonesian children’s song about a young child going to the Sunday market with his father by bendi and sitting up front next to the kusir or driver. Children’s songs about going to market in a horse drawn carriage seem to belong to an earlier, simpler time, yet, in Gorontalo, this time still exists.

As could be expected, my arrival at the Gorontalo fish market did not go unnoticed. Shouts of “bule, bule!” filled the air as men dangled their fish in front of me and barked out the prices. “Mrs.! Di sini!” Come over here, Mrs.! The fish sellers beckoned and called to me while I manovered my way around the tables of shipjack tuna, tarps of trevally and buckets of small silvery fish. I did not find their shouts obnoxious at all. Instead, I reveled in the moment and enjoyed being the center of attention. I enjoyed exchanging a few words with the men in Indonesian, taking pictures and just generally soaking up the atmosphere of the early morning market. Vana bought some fish to take home to her aunt and I treated my students to a delicious pastry from Bandung called buroncong that we ate on the steps overlooking the ocean after our market visit.

Fish for sale!

I got to take the wheel of this bentor full of yellowfin tuna!

Once again I felt a pang of sadness that I’m leaving Gorontalo just when I’m finally starting to figure it out and really appreciate it. Thank you Vana, Vany and Amad for showing me another one of Gorontalo’s hidden treasures.

Saronde Dance Videos!

2010-06-20T11:38:00.000+07:00

Here are the videos of my students and me with our 'Canyuhswim?' dance on Saronde Island. Actually, the word 'Saronde' refers to a type of traditional Gorontalo dance. Our dance is hardly traditional, but it was a lot of fun!

Saronde Island

2010-06-19T11:40:00.000+07:00

I had heard tales about Saronde Island since I first moved to Gorontalo. Many of my writing students last semester wrote about it when I asked them to tell me about interesting places to visit in Gorontalo. This past Sunday, with less than two weeks of my fellowship left to go, I finally went to Saronde with about a dozen students from one of my speaking classes. It was one of the best days I’ve had in Gorontalo and now I kinda wish I didn’t have to leave.

We met on campus early Sunday morning and squeezed ourselves into an angkot or minibus for the hour long ride to Kwandang, a village on the north coast of Gorontalo province. We stopped at Vana’s house, where, much to my surprise, her family had prepared some food for us to take to the island including palm sugar cakes, a huge tub of delicious melon juice, and dabu dabu iris! I had made myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because I thought the plan was for everyone to bring their own lunch, but apparently, the new plan was to grill fish on the beach! YES!

Squeezed into the angkot

Stocked up with provisions, we drove a few more minutes to the harbor. Here, a quaint little boat called ‘Taxi Saronde’ was waiting to shuttle us across to the island, about half an hour away. En route we stopped at another island to buy some fresh fish at what turned out to be Vana’s boyfriend’s home village. While the boys went ashore to buy the fish, Ucha asked me what Indonesian songs I liked. I told them I liked ‘Assalamualaikum’ and started singing a few bars of the refrain. They squealed in delight and soon we were all singing it together. I also told them I liked ‘Jika Cinta Dia’ and we sang along to that one too. It was great fun.

Heading to our destination in the 'Taxi Saronde'

Soon we pulled ashore at Saronde Island. Without a doubt, it is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The entire island is ringed with about1 km of beautiful white sand beach. The water was every possible shade of blue imaginable and the beach was strewn with shells and coconut husks. In the middle there was small collection of huts and two cottages. I walked around in a daze and kept repeating how beautiful it was. Finally, Novah had to beg me to stop staying ‘beautiful’ so much. So then I rattled off a list of other adjectives: stunning, gorgeous, breathtaking, sublime, heavenly, magnificent and on and on. This is no exaggeration.

I love Saronde Island!

We all love Saronde Island!

Look at this white sand beach!!

We set ourselves up at one of the little huts near the water. It was midday so several students disappeared to go grill the fish over the coconut husks they brought with them and I stayed behind to play cards with Ucha, Novah, and Deysi, while several others looked on. We were in the middle of Rummy 500 when the others came back with the freshly grilled fish, elaborately served up on a palm leaf! We put the cards away and dug into the dabu dabu and packets of rice that someone had brought along. The dabu dabu was particularly spicy and my hiccups came out in full force, much to the amusement of some of the students!

My students posing with fresh grilled fish and dabu dabu salsa!

After lunch, Amad and I went for a walk around the entire island. Since it was so small this only took about 20 minutes, including the time we stopped to take pictures. Have I mentioned how beautiful this island is? As we finished our walk, we noticed that many of the others were already playing on the beach and in the water. So we joined them and thus began several hours of hilarity. One thing I love about Indonesians is that they can be very lebay. This is a slang word that means doing things in an overexaggerated fashion, especially posing for pictures. Since Amad is a pretty decent photographer, I gave him my cameras for the day and he took most of the pictures. Here are some of my favorite photos of the day:

These are our swimming clothes!

Indonesians are experts at instantly posing for group photos

Vany looked very photogenic in her pink jilbab!

There was an afternoon shower but then there was also this beautiful rainbow!

Amad's underwater self-portrait. Love the reflection in the goggles!

Probably the most lebay moment of all came when we decide to make a video of ourselves dancing to a song we made up that consists of three words, “Can you swim?” On the boat ride over to the island, I had asked Vany, who was sitting next to me, if she could swim. However, in my American accent, this question came out as one word - “Canyuhswim?” and Vany did not understand me at all. Once I explained that I was asking “Can you swim?” everyone thought this was hysterical and we took turns asking each other, “Canyuhswim?”. If you say it kind of fast and repetitively it turns into a sorta catchy tune. And thus our dance was born. I'll try to upload the video when I have a faster internet connection.

Surprisingly, many Indonesians cannot swim. There’s no such thing as swimming lessons as part of gym class here, so only people who grow up near the water ever learn. I would have thought that in a beach town such as Gorontalo, many people would know how to swim. What I learned this year is that people only learn if they’re literally within walking distance to a swimmable body of water (like the people of Torosiaje who live right on top of the ocean). So, even Vana, who grew up in the village of Kwandang, can’t really swim. I gave her a lesson though – we practiced blowing bubbles, breathing to the side and kicking. I also lent her my goggles for most of the afternoon. She had never seen underwater before and was transfixed. She’s really good at holding her breath and she would go under and report back all of the cool things she saw – blue starfish and ‘Nemo’ being at the top of her list! The next day I got a text from her, “By ur goggles I aware seaworld is beautiful… I see thng tht never I see b4. Thanks a lot.” While my English lessons may or may not stay with her once this year is over, I think I have left her with something else that will last forever – an appreciation of the underwater world! I’m so proud.

We stayed on the island until sunset and then reluctantly got back on the boat to head back to Kwandang and our waiting angkot. I could barely keep my eyes open for the ride back to town though. After a day spent swimming, running around the beach, turning cartwheels, giving swimming lessons, singing loudly and talking non-stop, I was utterly exhausted. But I loved it. My students are really a lot of fun to be with. It’s sort of ironic. All year long I have been keeping them at a distance – refusing to add them on Facebook, telling them it’s not appropriate to turn up unannounced at my door in the evening, and explicitly stating second semester in my syllabi that they are not to text me randomly at 10 pm to say ‘Miss what r u doing now?’ I kept them at bay because I thought, as their teacher, I was supposed to keep a professional distance. The thing is, my concept of ‘professional distance’ seems to be an American one. My fellow lecturers at UNG are friends with their students on FB, they encourage students to drop by their homes to ask questions and talk freely in what they see as a more comfortable environment and they text each other day and night. I’m afraid the only effect my ‘professional distance’ attitude served this year was to isolate me from a community of fun-loving, curious and friendly people. But I hope it’s not too late. I hope my students will add me as their friend on FB now and I hope we can stay in touch.

With Vana on the 'Taxi Saronde' at sunset