Arrival in Indonesia

Hello to my friends and family!

I have been in Indonesia for about 2 weeks now, and it has definitely been an adventure!

When you are travelling two weeks feels more like 2 months, so I will try and just recap the highlights.

To preface that, I am in Indonesia on an exchange with AIESEC to teach english in a small environmental NGO, just outside Jakarta. The name of it is Workshop Hijau Hayati (WHH). Then I plan to travel for a month in Indonesia. Following this I am volunteering in Cambodia with RDI doing water and sanitation work...after which I will travel around mainland southeast asia for another month. Thats the plan, we shall see what happens!

To continue....

Indonesia truly is on the other side of the world, and has definitely lived up to the expectations for its warmth of people and climate, tropical vegetation, and extreme differences! as with ghana, there many things that are different: the food, the language, the customs, the religion, etc, but its comforting recognizing that we are all people and have a lot in common, like love for families, joy of eating and laughing together.

I'll share with you some of the things that stand out most for me were:

-1-the tropical vegetation everywhere...even though jakarta is a huge sprawling city, you can't seem to hold back the jungle! In my home in Bekasi (east of jakarta) there is every kind of tropical fruit tree surrounding us...mango, papaya, banana, jack fruit, star fruit, coconut rambutan, etc...its outrageous!

-2-the traffic...there sure are a lot of cars, motorbikes, buses, trucks....you name it! Traffic is really terrible and it takes forever to get anywhere...and they drive on the opposite side of the road. needless to say, i am not practicing my driving here!

-3-prayer calls....Indonesia is largely a Muslim country (though there is a lot of diversity of cultures and religions here, much like canada) so several times a day (and night) there are prayers that are called over the loud speakers, signalling its time to pray. These are beautiful, but very loud! in the middle of the night, it can create crazy dreams and be very disruptive! i hope to adapt to this. this also happened in ghana and i adjusted, so it should be ok:)

-4-unexpectedly there are areas in jakarta that feel like toronto! some of the shopping malls are absolutely gorgeous and you can buy mostly anything you can at home. i was worried about being able to get bathroom products here, etc, but that worry has been put to bed!

-5- trashy to trendy! Places in canada that we might not consider very upscale (i.e. McDonalds or 7-11) are actually quite fancy here! they are air-conditioned, kept very clean, have more nice dessert options and have free wi-fi!

-6-nasi and mie, nasi and mie, nasi and mie - (nasi=rice, mie=noodles). since i have arrived, i think i have mostly eaten rice and noodles with egg! there have been delicious interesting things thrown into the mix, and for the most part i really like the food, but there has been a lot of simple carbohydrates...and egg. i have to be careful with my weak belly eating spicy foods etc...so it has been a bit bland!

-7-breakfast, lunch and dinner confusion! in canada, its common to eat certain foods for certain meals, i.e. chicken and potatoes for dinner, and yogurt for breakfast...and dessert for....dessert. so far, my experience here has been, eat whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it. fried chicken for breakfast, be my guest! honey cake for dinner, go for it! its been interesting, a bit of an adjustment though!

-8-I am a white giant. I am a tall person to begin with, but my appearance and stature is quite dramatically different here in indonesia...aka i stick out like a sore thumb. As in Ghana i was quick to learn the word for foreigner - bule.

ok....

now that is enough of random thoughts!

Next get ready for some pictures of the workshop hijau hayati (WHH).

Sending all my love back home, miss everyone,

Kim