hello blog readers! one last post for you. i returned to the u.s. a few weeks ago and have had some time to rest and readjust and meet up with friends and family before heading back to walla walla to finish up my senior year.

it was a bit overwhelming to get back to the us the day before christmas eve and really jump into the swing of the holidays and new years, anticipating everything that comes with this new year (a twister of thesis and getting back to whitman academics and graduation and larger questions of post-grad jobs and grad school and on and on). i pulled a lot of strings to be able to study abroad during my senior year and i am being faced with some of the consequences of that choice now. picking up a thesis project i stopped working on about seven months ago has been as challenging as i expected, especially in the fatigue of returning from abroad and the large thesis-sized project i just completed. i left my thesis in more of an open-ended state than i remembered, so i’ll have to straighten that out when i get back to walla walla. anyways, this is all to say i’ve been out of the academic loop and am anticipating a learning curve in getting back into the swing of things.

otherwise, i haven’t experienced any grand moments of reverse culture shock. i was very excited to get to do the things i had been missing, drive my car, pet my dog, eat bagels with cream cheese, wear sweaters and beanies, drink a dirty chai latte, and so forth. i’ve started to miss my time in indonesia more over the last few days as the swirl of this upcoming semester descends upon me and have taken to looking through the photos i took there.

reflections and advice for future sit indonesia goers

it may seem obvious, but try your hand at learning some bahasa indonesian before you get out there. there will be classes, but the language barrier made things so much more stressful and difficult for me, especially in trying to connect with my host family. there were definitely situations that i would’ve gotten a lot more from should i had understood the language even a little bit more. i puttered around on duolingo the summer before i left, but barely. and you can keep using duolingo while you’re there too alongside the classes.

in scouring other blogs about this program and reading over the pre-departure documents, an idea that came up again and again was to “go with the flow” and this is good advice, but it came up in a way i wasn’t expecting. i thought that the flow would be erratic in a fast-paced, spontaneous, don’t-think-just-do way, which is sometimes true, but “go with the flow” emerged mostly in just being patient with a lot of waiting around. i am a pretty schedule-oriented person, and the difference in conceptions of timeliness was frustrating for me. these periods of waiting around and twiddling our thumbs really felt like a waste of my time some days, which was weird, considering we were in such a cool place. there were many times we just had to sit around for a couple of hours, waiting for our presenter of the day to arrive because they were late, or waiting to leave a hotel because of some kind of mix-up with the drivers and so on. the program tries their best, but when we’re partnering with a lot of other folks, we can’t (and shouldn’t) control their timeliness. “bali time” runs about thirty minutes to an hour later than the appointed time. so, patience is key here. i’d recommend bringing a book of sudoku and a deck of cards for all this random downtime.

singapore!

this is no longer rosa in bali but an additional tidbit of travel, so read along as that interests you. a lot of the students on the program didn’t go straight back to the u.s., opting to travel around asia for a bit after the conclusion of the program. my time in jogjakarta definitely prepared me well for the experience i had in singapore where i truly was on my own. i didn’t know anyone in singapore, i had never been to singapore, frankly, i didn’t really even know anything about singapore, so i was really winging it. i got a really good deal at a nice hostel near chinatown; i had a very small room that did not have any windows which was disorienting. that first evening i just walked around, got dinner at a local food court and marveled at how it could be that i was in singapore.

i was there for three full days and managed to get a lot in. when i was in jogja i didn’t do much sightseeing and i was otherwise always moving around with the larger group, so it was nice to be able to do some sightseeing on my own. i basically did lots of walking and visited lots of museums.

on that first day i ambitiously ended up walking about twelve miles. i started by visiting the buddha tooth relic temple that was just a few blocks away from my hostel. it was right by the marketplace in chinatown which i also perused. i didn’t know that singapore had a subway system, but they do! and it is very nice and easy to learn and as someone who has not grown up in an area with a subway system—or a very efficient public transportation system for that matter—it was very fun to figure out and ride! i wanted to get a new journal and i saw there was a moleskine store in singapore, except it was on orchard road which i didn’t realize is a main luxury shopping district in the city so you can imagine my surprise when i got off of the subway and stepped immediately into the basement floor of a huge mall of very very fancy stores. the journal i had in mind ended up being almost $50 anyways so i decided to pass. i then took the subway out to gardens by the bay, one of the only things i knew to visit in singapore. it was, unsurprisingly, very expensive to visit! and also very confusing, lots of different sections and price points. i ended up getting a ticket to the flower dome which was cool but the crowds kind of swayed me away from the experience overall. it started raining at this point so i couldn’t walk around the outdoor parts of the gardens much, plus i was getting grumpy due to a lack of lunch. i told myself i’d go back in the next few days but never managed to. i returned to my hostel, took a nap, went to a café to read, then to a little used bookstore, got some pho for dinner and then bussed out to see the merlion!!!!!!!! a site that i didn’t even realize i really wanted to see until i got there. when i was a kid, my grandma got me a figurine of the merlion which i really liked for some reason so i was really excited to see it myself. i walked around the bay and caught a laser lights show on the water before calling it a day.

the next morning i woke up very disoriented in a very dark room and headed for the red dot design museum, i also went an exhibit at the artscience museum on mental health and, frankly, as someone with a few toes in the museum world, i didn’t really like either of them that much, but maybe i just didn’t really get it. anyways, i walked across the helix bridge and found some barbecue duck at a food court for lunch, stopped by a couple more bookstores, got lost in another mall looking for the famous singaporean kaya toast which i finally got with a delicious, iced coffee. i walked down to the singapore national gallery, sat on their grand front steps, and ate my toast and drank my coffee, which was a nice moment. my day of museums was rescued by an exhibit i visited here. it was a very excellent and inspiring exhibit on sculptures that filled my little cup! at this point, i was too tuckered out to explore the rest of the museum so i vowed to return the next day. back to another food court for a sate dinner and finished day two!

i started out my last full day at a coffee shop that someone i’d met in indonesia recommended to me. i returned to the national gallery and walked through an exhibit on photography in southeast asia. it was far too big of a museum to explore every cranny of, but that is okay. i then had a shamefully expensive bowl of pho for lunch, and then, on a whim, decided to meander up a hill near the pho place, which turned out to be fort canning park, which was the best part of my time in singapore. just as in traveling in a group, when i was traveling alone i found that i had to monitor my mood and adjust my activities accordingly, steering away from hunger-induced grumpiness and the like. and at this point in the day, i really wanted to just lie down. one thing that i missed in indonesia is that they didn’t have very many parks and i realized how much time i spend in that kind of recreational space in walla walla. luckily, i found a very nice patch of grass under some very big trees, took my shoes and socks off and just laid down for a while. there was a delectable breeze and it was the perfect temperature. and when i felt i was ready to go again i took the subway over to the last and coolest museum of my visit, the asian civilization museum. they had exhibits that made it seem that the curator had known the exact intersection of my interests and decided to make a display on it, it was so wonderfully done! perhaps even the best museum i have visited. i then took the train half an hour out of the city center to visit a thai buddhist temple that my dad recommended to me. i miraculously found it and tiptoed in. they were supposed to have a public meditation session that night but long story short i don’t know that i was actually supposed to be there but ended up mediating in this room of strangers for a couple of hours before realizing that probably wasn’t the meditation session i thought it was a tiptoed back out. i got some really spicy indian food for dinner and headed back to my hostel, ready to for a marathon of travel the next morning.

my journey back went by smoothly but even so, twenty-four hours of travel is no joke and i was very grateful to have made it back to seattle. i slept until three pm the next day, which, as mentioned, was also christmas eve. so, being back and reflecting on the semester, there are plenty of lessons learned and moments i am very grateful to have experienced and shared. and i look forward to what further reflections will unravel from this semester in the future.

thank you for sticking with me till the end here and reading this very last post <3

return to kerambitan

well well well blog readers here we are at my last week in indonesia. it’s been a big vat of bittersweetness. but let’s return to the beginning of the week, when it was more sweet and less bitter. so, i returned to kerambitan from jogjakarta on sunday of last week and it was both strange and comforting to be back in bali, which has a pretty distinct feel.

on monday, we reunited in our pavilion classroom and broadly went over our isp experiences. i finally finished my essay after the words started to sound like jumble and my brain and body felt like soup because it was so so so hot (absolutely boiling) when we got back, much hotter than it was before we left. so, in celebration of finishing my isp, i went home to take a freezing cold shower and lay down in front of my fan for a couple hours. we also had to produce hardcopies for sit’s isp library at the puri so we went to the local computer shop to get them printed and bound. and it was so rewarding to have the final copy as a physical book in my hands with an official-looking title page and everything, moment of celebration in the computer shop! i printed one out for myself as well.

tuesday and wednesday were full of isp presentations and it was nice to see the final product of what everyone was working on! we’d talk about what we were cooking up for our isps every so often, but it was cool to see their work in full and it is encouraging to be working alongside people who are passionate about their ideas! after everyone’s presentations, we talked about our reentry to the u.s. and what to expect from that, anticipating any potential reverse culture shock, but i’m not too worried about that. otherwise, the week was spent playing badminton at the park with isaac, going to rise up kopi with anna, going to the market in tabanan to get some last-minute souvenirs, and staying out of the heat as much as was possible.

trip to lembongan + nusa penida

for the second half of the week, we went on a conclusionary and celebratory trip to lembongan and nusa penida, two smaller islands off the southwestern coast of mainland bali. on thursday morning, after a long drive to a strangely nice ferry station, we took a questionably fast boat to lembongan. and the water was so very clear and bright blue—anytime i mention water features from this point forward please imagine it in your mind as an incredible turquoise. we took these open-air truck shuttle things to the hotel and then isaac, anna and i went to get lunch at a small place on the beach. i had an extremely delicious grilled vegetable sandwich. we swam in the pool and chatted a bit, then took a little tour of the island in the same truck/shuttles (perhaps the images of these vehicles will do a better job of elucidating what i’m referring to). it was really fun to be in an open-air vehicle, but those in the front (edo and isaac) did have to concern themselves with avoiding getting smacked in the face by the hanging palm fronds as we sped by. we visited a landmark called the yellow bridge which connects lembongan to ceningan, the smallest of the island trio. it’s not quite wide enough for a car so it’s a well-known spot for crossing by motorbike, but we just used our own two feet and giggled all the way across. afterward, we went to another spot known by the sweet and charming name of devil’s tears. it’s an incredible cliffside that is shaped in a way which creates an alluring mist every time the waves crash over it. we even saw a sea turtle in there! hope it’s okay and didn’t get churned about too badly. after we got back, isaac and i watched the sunset at the beach and talked about how the program was coming to a close, how we’d soon be on our way and how we were feeling about it all. cue the entrance of bittersweetness.

on friday, we took a small boat over to the biggest of the three islands, nusa pinita. we drove on the lumpiest and bumpiest road we’ve been on so far this semester (which is saying a lot) to another beautiful spot called the broken beach. it was an extremely cool horseshoe-shaped bay closed off by a huge archway that you can walk across the top of. as a group, we have been to a lot of cool places this semester and especially in these few days, but i think what made this trip especially fun is that at this point in the semester, we are closer than we have ever been and everyone seemed to be in a really chipper mood, so not only was it a really cool place, but it made it even more enjoyable to experience it while being silly with friends. next, we went to kelingking beach which is known for being shaped like a dinosaur. we were considering trekking all the way down but everyone who had just hiked all the way back up was truly huffing and puffing for their dear lives so we figured we could skip out this time around. we had lunch at a very beautiful restaurant that also had what i believe was a hawk right outside the front entrance which was confusing and surprising but, honestly, nothing really is that surprising anymore, you just go with it. sure, of course there would be a hawk outside of this restaurant. on our way back to lembongan, we took a spin through some of the mangroves around the islands and they were so creepy, reminded me of images of bayous in the american south. definitely something lurking in there. that night we had our last dinner as a group, which was really warm and fun. at one point janie and i began to sing the song the wells fargo wagon from the musical oklahoma! and i laughed until my stomach hurt. most of the students on this program are seniors, but this is actually janie and saisahana’s last semester of college! so sarah made little graduation caps for them and we had a small fake ceremony in which i gave them some of the restaurant’s paper menus as diplomas. it was very sweet.

before we headed out on saturday morning, we got up early to go snorkeling! the best way to start the day i think. it has been a long time since i’ve snorkeled and it is still extremely cool. the fish were incredible! some of them were neon pink and green and yellow and iridescent and it is mind-boggling how they have skipped down the path of evolution to look like that. it also started raining at some point while we were snorkeling which added an interesting element to the experience. after snorkeling we took turns jumping and diving into the water which was so so so (so) fun, i have really improved my diving skills over the last few months. the snorkeling was the grand finale of our little island vacay so we headed back to the mainland.

sampai jumpa

okay, brief language lesson: there are a few different ways to say goodbye in bahasa indonesia. “sampai nanti” for see you later in the short term, “sampai besok” for see you tomorrow, and “sampai jumpa” for see you later in the long term, an indefinite goodbye when you are unsure when you will see each other again. and we have reached the sampai jumpa part of this trip.

most of us are leaving on monday, but isaac left very early sunday morning so we had to say sampai jumpa on saturday afternoon after getting back from the island. we did fit in one last game of badminton at the park though. on sunday, the last full day, we had a lunch at the puri with the host families and the teachers’ families, some of the local students from udayana came too. anna made little cards for all of the teachers and we passed them around, and there was lots of hugging and picture taking and thanking and a little bit of crying too. i am more sad to leave than i thought i would be but i don’t feel terribly emotionally impacted because i do believe that i will see the friends i made on this program again in the u.s. but i will miss the teachers and i will miss this place and it’s sights and sounds and smells.

after an unbelievable packing effort that took a couple of hours, i went on one last jalan jalan to the bamboo hut in the rice fields, watched the sunset and journaled a bit. later, keyana came out and joined me and we talked about leaving and thinking about this experience retroactively and how to say goodbye and the slippery passage of time. then i had one last evening trip to rise up, thanked the barista through google translate for all the lattes and walked home.

there is a building on a corner near my compound that i walk past every day that has been under construction the entire time i have been here. when i arrived in september it was just a bunch of bamboo scaffolding. my host dad told me that it would be a new community center and that, hopefully, it’d be done before i left. and he was right! when a new building is constructed in bali, they have what is essentially a housewarming ceremony for it, and the first day of that ceremony was today, my last day. i remember when they were working on the pillars, when they put the foundation in, when they got the staircase up, when they were melding the railing together, and today it was finally done! all dressed up for its ceremony, ready to serve its community. and it was fantastic timing that its first day was my last.

i leave bali for singapore tomorrow morning! i’ll be spending five days there, then i’ll whizz back to the states. but that is a wrap on the active telling of this study abroad experience! i expect to be doing a lot of reflecting and processing during my time in singapore so stay tuned for at least one if not two follow-up in the coming weeks, but wow! we did it! thank you so much for reading along through this experience.

hi everyone! i had a great and eventful last week in jogja. as soon as i finished the last blog post my efforts were directed at grinding out my isp (which, spoiler, i just finished at 36 pages, definitely the longest paper i have ever written). i just returned to kerambitan and we have one remaining week of presentations, one final bahasa indonesia evaluation and then we’re going to lembongan, a smaller island just to the southeast of bali, for a few days. then back to bali, a round of farewells and then we’ll be done!

writing writing writing

the primary activity of this past week was writing my isp. i spent hours upon hours typing away at saorasa, my favorite café which ended up prevailing over the rest. in fact, on thursday i even had all three of my meals there. the baristas became familiar with me, the grab app knew to suggest it as the location i wanted to go to, i probably ate about a dozen dragon fruit smoothie bowls and i didn’t realize until thursday that they have, non-hyperbolically, probably some of the best chocolate chip cookies i have ever had. perfect for dipping into a latte. the writing process wasn’t particularly arduous until the very end after i had reread and reread what i’d already written so many times it felt like every sentence was the same jumble of “buddhism adaption religious buddhist jogjakarta religion indonesia development islam” and i had to finally call it. i’m proud of how this paper and research turned out, but i wish that i had received more support throughout the process, a second set of eyes to double-check my ideas, because right now my brain is the only one this paper has filtered through, and it would have been helpful to have received some criticisms or affirmations over the last month.

random salsa dancing??

on thursday night, keyana and i heard of a salsa dancing event so we grabbed over to the location and it was in the lounge of a very very nice and perplexingly large hotel. after wandering to and fro, we finally found the room containing the salsa and it was not at all what we were anticipating. i guess we had both imagined it to be a larger event, maybe something along the lines of a party that would occur in the lounge of a big, fancy hotel, but there were (i took a headcount) nine other people in the room and one of them was literally an infant. and there were two couples on the dance floor. so, a sparse and intimidating vibe for dancing, to say the least. but there was a guy from the temple there! and he remembered me and i remembered him which was nice. keyana and i were immediately welcomed, and i confessed my complete lack of salsa experience, which they assured me was just fine. i was taught the initial steps and some spinning which i was very terrible at, but my instructor told me not to look at his feet, which seemed like the opposite of what i needed to do but ended up being the right move. he told me not to think too much and to just go with the flow of the dance, even if i didn’t know all the steps (there is definitely a life metaphor sewn in there). while they were teaching me to salsa, i guess they figured they might as well teach me to bachata and kizomba as well, and it was great! i had no idea what i was doing, but i was doing it!

day trip to the beach + surprise crab

on friday, after about two hours of sleep, i woke up bright and early at four am and met up with keyana and three more friends (gading, june and imo) to drive about two hours and fifteen minutes to a beach southeast of jojga called jungwok beach. the drive was oh so incredibly windy but imo did an admirable job of navigating the traffic and the roads. and the beach was beautiful! i have mentioned this before, but the beaches i have visited in indonesia have not at all been like beaches i am accustomed to going to in that the water is too dangerous/ intense to swim in. but it was a beautiful, blue day and this was a sweet, small beach. definitely took the Best Beach Cake. after a few hours of chatting and wading and collecting seashells and playing sudoku and snacking and laying about the sun and passing a ukulele around and singing, we decided it was time to head back. on the way home, gading, keyana and i were knocked out in the backseat. as i was dozing, i felt a tickle on my arm and cracked my eyes open, expecting to see the familiar face of a mosquito or ant, but i was so mistaken! because it was actually a little crab! go figure! it was about the size of a half-dollar coin, scuttling down my left arm. struck with shock and maybe a sprinkle of panic, i shook the little guy off and he scooted under the passenger seat, not to be dealt with by me again.

farewell vihara 🙁

after getting back to the hostel from the beach, i took a shower and a twenty-minute nap and then grabbed over to the temple for the last time. i’m not sure how much i’ve detailed the temple visits in previous blog posts, but after the services, everyone gets some food and tea and sits in circles on the floor chatting late into the night. and i had really cool and long-winded conversations on both wednesday and friday about my research topic (honestly these conversations would have been great interviews for the paper but i was long past the interview stage at that point), differences between life in indonesia and the u.s., whether aliens are real, and so forth. my research process certainly would not have gone as smoothly if it had not been for the kindness and eagerness to help that was extended to me by the folks at the temple, which i am very grateful for. it was a bit sad to be leaving the temple for the last time on friday evening.

more last visits

on saturday, i took a grab out to godean to visit the host family i’d stayed with when i was here in jogja in september/ october. i tried to find some mangosteens to take with me as a gift because my host mom always gave me an enormous quantity of mangosteens when i was staying with them, but i couldn’t find any so i settled for two huge dragon fruits (which, by the way, cost me 20,000 rupiah—so $1.28 for two huge dragon fruits?!?!?!?!!! oh how i will miss this level of access to dragon fruits). i later picked out my ibu saying “buah naga” (meaning dragon fruit) while she was talking to her friends, which i imagine was her telling them of the gift i had brought, which tickled me. i saw dewi (my host sister-in-law) again, and got a coffee from analog, of course. we went to my ibu’s house and it was very nice to see her and be back. when i left jogja last time, i didn’t know that i’d be there again for my isp, so i had left assuming that it would be a very long time before i’d be back, so it was a nice surprise that i was able to see them again. afterwards, i got ramen with some of the other students at the hostel and then met up with isaac for one last hang out at a local coffee shop during which we drank our caffeinated beverages at far too late of an hour to be doing so (me a latte, him an espresso) and played one of the two card games we knew to play (and my favorite card game), egyptian ratscrew.

one electricity please

also, on this last day, i ran out of electricity! the electricity system was so so confusing and i still don’t fully understand it, but basically, last week i had to go to indomaret (a convenience store) to buy a “token” of electricity (i still do not know what this means really) which was 20,000 rupiah (about $1.28) which lasted me 29 days. the process of trying to figure out how to make this purchase was honestly really stressful because i had no clue how this system worked. when the very friendly and helpful cashiers at indomarets asked me how many tokens i wanted to buy i did not know at all how to answer them. one electicty please? so this interaction required a confusing google translate back and forth which we eventually figured out. but anyway, on saturday morning, my lights didn’t turn on. i realized what had happened but i also was not going to buy more electricity when i was leaving the next day, maybe i should’ve, it only would have been $1.28, but i didn’t really care to. this did mean that i had to pack my bags by the flashlight of my phone and in the heat of my non-air-conditioned room though, which was kind of ridiculous, but ultimately just fine.

missed the train: a bit of traveling drama

so i was supposed to meet keyana at the train station on sunday morning to go to the airport, but the grab i ordered to get to the train station took a much longer time to get to the hostel than i anticipated, so i ended up getting to the station right as the train was scheduled to leave, quite dramatic timing and totally my bad. i informed my grab driver of the situation and he agreed, i would not make this train nor would i make it for my flight if i waited for the next one. great! but luckily, he said he could drive me to the airport and that was likely the only way i’d make it in time. so, off we went! he told me he would “drive fast” in order to get me there on time, and that he did! my awe at drivers’ abilities to navigate traffic will never cease. the secondary pickle was that i did not have enough cash to pay him. i know, i didn’t think i’d be in this situation again either. but since i had only booked my grab to the train station and we simply agreed to go to the airport off of grab, i couldn’t just buzz the money to him through the app. i kept my cool though and we ended up having enough time to stop at an atm and the situation resolved itself, as it usually seems to.

despite the dramatic exit, i was feeling more sad to leave jogja than i anticipated. because i spent more consecutive time in jogja than any other place this semester, i came to cultivate an affinity for the city and the places i went to and the routine i’d picked up on. it was not always a cheery time, the first week especially was a tough transition, but i had come to really enjoy my time there. because we had spent about three weeks in java before and i was there for four weeks just now, my time in indonesia has been nearly cleanly split in half between java and bali which is something i have really enjoyed about this semester. so i have since returned to bali and turned in my isp! but more on this last week next time around. thank you for reading to the end of this long long blog post and the end of this semester!

greetings blog readers, we’re in december now! how bananas. i have just two more weeks here in indonesia, one in jogja and one back in bali. it’s been a comparably slow week here, just goofing off and working on more isp interviews. i am now at the precipice of the writing process which i have admittedly been avoiding and maybe am actually still avoiding at this moment by writing this blog post instead but i will get around to it i swear i swear. i’ve got a week to get it done so let’s hope i can locate my thinking cap before then.

i am still figuring out how to balance making the most of my time here while also being really quite tired from the overall experience of being abroad. remember what i’d said about blending in and locals assuming that i am also local? well, a part of not receiving the special foreigner treatment is that people often don’t know that i actually have no idea what i’m doing and don’t know to help me until i have already goofed up or misunderstood a situation in some capacity. i know that the stakes of misunderstanding mundane social situations (ordering a coffee, checking out at a grocery store, getting a grab, etc) are not that high but having to explain myself in every social interaction builds on itself and makes me nervous to try a new restaurant if i don’t know how their ordering procedure works or whatever the situation is. and frankly it feels kind of infantilizing to not know what to do when everyone thinks i do. moving through indonesia with my clearly not indonesian friends is (unfortunately) a lot easier because i don’t have to explain myself at every turn. people will just know to speak english with us or help to guide us through the social situation at hand. i wasn’t expecting this blending in to rear its head and i am also not sure why it has affected me so much—something to reflect on, i guess. it is possible that there’s also room for me to be less of a wuss and more comfortable with the inevitability of goofing up and asking for help. 

anyways, on monday, keyana and i went to our friends’ band’s concert! they’re called the broken heart scenes and they were really really great! it was an event put on by the chemistry college at ugm and it was awesome to see them perform and to hang out afterwards. later that night, we met up with janie for dinner. she had to leave early, but keyana and i ended up chatting until the restaurant closed. at the very beginning of this semester, we all made lists of our hopes and fears for this trip; keyana and i were in the same group and one of the hopes we penciled down was something along the lines of “enriching discussions made possible by the diverse backgrounds of the group.” at the time we joked about how college-pamphlet-y that sounded and since then have also joked about how true that statement has been. we talked about friendship and relationships and our experiences with race and how to best be critical and so forth. on my motorbike ride home, i was thinking about how it was the kind of conversation i felt that i’d learned from and grown from. enriching discussions made possible by diverse backgrounds indeed!

cafe lineup

after sampling many yet still just a fraction of the cafes jogjakarta has to offer, i’ve settled on a rotation of my top four on the basis of vibe, comfortability of the seating/ table, and latte deliciousness. because i don’t have a desk in my room or a personal workspace, i’ve floated around a lot of cafes to find the best place to get work done, thus my prolonged attention on cafes. coming in first is saorasa, it’s a bit further out from my hostel but they have very scrumptious smoothie bowls, encouraging cats roaming about, and a fantastic wall of plants. and their playlist is also always very good. second is sembari (which is where i am now)–it’s a quieter café that has the best chair-to-table height ratio by far, and it’s satisfyingly nestled on the inside of a curved street just about a five-minute walk from my hostel. the yellow chairs with backs and workability of the table space are what have me coming back here. third is a café at the forestry school at ugm called zomia, their logo is a funny little squirrel and it’s a beautiful space. the baristas are super super nice to me which is honestly the main reason i go back because their seating selection does leave more to be desired. and finally, there’s gira’s warkop which has more of a grungey vibe that lends itself to being a better space for hanging out than actually getting work done. it’s usually bustling with students but if i go in the early afternoon it’s usually empty. and the baristas are especially nice to me there too. so somewhere between these four spaces is where i will churn out my isp.

isp!!!

speaking of, i have been in the laborious and not very fun stage of transcribing my interviews which perhaps partially explains my slow progress but i think the writing will come together well. i do feel very grateful for my experience writing for the wire (school newspaper) over the last few years. it has provided me with a wealth of experience in conducting interviews and converting a transcription into a coherent piece of writing.

i conducted a great impromptu group interview with five generationally buddhist college students at the temple on wednesday. prior to this, all of my interviews had been with individuals who were either not buddhist or had converted to buddhism, so i was excited for the difference in perspective.

a part of my hopes for this project and the semester as a whole was to learn more about my own personal relationship with buddhism, and spirituality more generally. and the conversation i had with them felt like a noteworthy part of my reflections. it was another one of those conversations that i walked away from feeling like my brain was a little bigger. grateful to have had many of those recently! one of the questions i asked the group (and something i’ve asked all of my interviewees) is what does buddhism mean to you? what role does it play in your life? and after they all went around, they reflected the question back at me, which i was excited about and grateful they were curious about my experience too. i told them that at the beginning of this trip, i would have hesitated if someone asked me what religion i practice. that i wouldn’t have called myself buddhist despite my experiences with the temple growing up and my family’s buddhist background. that to me, buddhism has always been more of a cultural experience than a religious one. i explained that this semester was the first time i’d gone to a buddhist temple without my family, so it wasn’t just that i was at the temple because my family took me there, rather i was there because i wanted to be there and that has changed the experience of what it means to me. although there is variation in our experiences as generational buddhists, there was a definite throughline and it was nice to talk to a group of people who get it.

okay, i will now stop dilly-dallying and hop to it with my isp and my last week in jogja, do wish me luck!

my second week in jogja has breezed by me. upon counting the days just now, i am exactly halfway through my time here and finally feel that i have found my footing. the isp looms above me, like any big assignment typically does, but my ideas have been coming together, it’s now just a matter of getting that out of my brain and onto a word document.

i’ve still been walking to more local cafes, doing more reading and writing and whatnot. i’ve become much more familiar with how to navigate my neighborhood, which is a good feeling. earlier this week i met up with janie + sarah + keyana at a café in the forestry college at ugm and it was a cool spot with really nice baristas. and it was encouraging to do work in the company of others also trying to do work. we got dinner afterward and ended up sticking around the restaurant for hours after we paid the bill to continue talking about our how we’ve been thinking about this study abroad, debriefing experiences we had earlier this semester, what we’ve learned, what we want to learn and so forth. and it was so so good! certainly filled my proverbial cup. on wednesday i joined keyana and janie for a yoga class, it was great and also two and a half hours long which i did not expect when the class started lol.

on monday, my host sister-in-law from godean (the place we were staying at when we were in jogja in september), dewi, came out to the city to pay me a visit! which was very nice, she brought me a belated birthday gift and some coffee from my favored coffee shop, analog coffee and we jalan-jalaned a bit, stopping at a café to continue chatting.

i’ve been making fruit salads and cooking some pasta dishes in the kitchen, which, not to toot my own horn, are impressively delicious given the confines of my ingredient pool. my sleep schedule has been incredibly wonky as of late, so there have been a few days this week where i’ve gone to bed at three am and woken up at one pm, which doesn’t entirely not work but i could afford to rein it in.  there have been a couple times this week when i’ve been making a late pasta dinner at a cool two am while listening to a podcast, laughing to myself in the kitchen.

the temple community

yesterday, isaac and i went to kota gede, an old neighborhood in jogjakarta with two friends from the temple, sam and pita. we had plans to walk around the city a bit, but the torrential afternoon downpour kept us in the small restaurant we got lunch at. basically bound to the security of the ceiling above us, we loitered about with some other patrons trying to stay out of the rain. so we ate peanuts and chatted and untangled a wad of string isaac had in his backpack and made bracelets and explained how snow works and what the winter is like and how many siblings we have and whatnot. when the rain minimized to a sprinkle, we returned to where we’d parked which also happened to be right beside the oldest mosque in jogjakarta, which we peeked around a bit before piling onto sam and pita’s motorbikes to go to the meditation service at the temple.

last night was my fourth time at this temple and i was already starting to feel very comfortable in the space. it is nice to return to it every week, seeing the same people and getting to know them more closely, knowing more of what to expect from the services and so forth. this is a part of why i wanted to stay in one place for the entire isp despite the opportunity to travel all around indonesia: i’ve basically been traveling for the last two months straight and wanted a second to not feel like a total fish out of water. and the consistency and growing familiarity of the temple community has certainly been a part of this more grounded experience.

after services, people grab tea and food and sit in circles on the floor to eat and chat. they are really proud of their house-made kombucha, a project of a microbiology major that we talked to. he explained that he uses the leftover tea they make in huge quantities. we’re introduced to new people every week and there is a sure outpour of support. people are eager to talk to isaac and i, wanting to get to know us, practice their english or are generally curious about our projects.

isp sneak peek

i had a really great conversation at the temple last night with a man named fuji. he’s an anthropologist and a lecturer in sociology at ugm so it was really exciting to talk to him as he knew what my perspective was as an anthropology student. we ended up talking for almost two hours and i had several mind-blown moments during our conversation. it was as though he zoomed out on the topic i am attempting to explore and provided me with the context to understand what is happening on either side of my research question.

the temple meets twice a week, on wednesday nights there is a regular service and on friday nights there is a meditation service that is open to folks of any religion. one thing i learned from fuji was how unique this particular temple is in the especially unique city of jogjakarta. as i’ve mentioned before, jogja is home to some of the biggest and best universities in indonesia, meaning a large portion of the population is college students. this creates a unique social environment of educated, open-minded and curious individuals in a phase of life peppered with the tribulations of self-discovery. this sets the stage for a particularly fascinating religious climate. people are confused, people are stressed out, people are asking big questions and seeking big answers which they can sometimes find in religious spaces. many of the congregation members at this temple are either buddhists who have converted from other religions (not a socially or politically easy thing to do) or people who don’t officially or personally identify as buddhist but find peace and community in the temple and buddhist teachings.

the more i learn about the state of religion in indonesia the more confused and interested i become. in nearly every conversation i’ve had with folks about their religious identification, i almost never get a straightforward answer, it always requires some kind of explanation. how they were raised this but practice that, how their i.d. says that but they believe this. it’s a great demonstration of how religious belief, practice and identification don’t always come in a set. religion isn’t a straightforward or stagnant thing despite the government’s attempts to regulate it. in fact, as i have been learning more and more about it, their attempted regulation just makes for a convoluted kind of religious freedom that actually breeds a kind of subliminal intolerance.

okay that is the extent of the isp sneak peek for now, please wait until i actually write the darn thing for more. thank you for reading 🙂

finding my jogjakarta legs

hello blog readers! i ended last week’s blog with the hope that i would be more grounded by the time i typed this one out, which has turned out! but i have also been struggling with the responsibility of being totally on my own this week that i am still turning the corner on. i would color myself to be an extroverted person (according to the online meyers briggs personality quiz i just took, i am allegedly 91% extroverted) and although i was looking forward to the independence of this isp and i appreciate the flexibility of making my own decisions, i miss having people to share my experiences with. i think i’ve realized that i care far more about the people that i am with than the place i am at. but at the same time, i feel that it is important that i’m also able to get on alone and take care of myself without the presence of others keeping me in check. so, i’ve learned where the grocery store is, how it works, what meals i can cook for myself with one stovetop, i’ve oriented where i am in the city, and with one month left in indonesia, i’ve started to compile a list of things i’d still like to do.

after a couple months of waking up around 5-7am, i’d been treating myself to getting out of bed at noon, but that (unsurprisingly) wasn’t the best system as it tends to rain (+ thunder + lightning) profusely here in the afternoon (i’ve purchased a big bright humorous yellow rain jacket because of this). so, if i’m only awake for the afternoon of rain the possibilities of what i can get up to are pretty limited. basically, my week has consisted of walking to a lot of cafes (there are at least a dozen within the neighborhood i’m in and i aim to try as many as i can, in fact, i’ve written this very blog in two different cafés), reading articles for my isp and thesis, finally making a dent in braiding sweetgrass (i’ve found that a chapter before bed each night is the perfect sleep aid), journaling, listening to podcasts and new music, and figuring out what in the world i’m doing here.

the ugm campus is big and beautiful and confusing and about a twenty-minute walk to the south of my hostel. on friday morning i picked myself up by the scruff at eight am and went for a run at a park where i’d seen other students running. as i walked back to my hostel, sweaty, parched, etc., i had possibly the best smoothie i have ever had in my life. like a mood-lifting, perspective-shifting, the-world-isn’t-so-bad-after-all-and-i-can-do-this smoothie. this was a strawberry guava smoothie that left me uttering “oh my god” to myself after i finished it and walked the rest of the way home. i actually do conceive of this smoothie as being the turning point in my week from scary and overwhelming to feeling capable of being here.

top ten goofiest places i’ve ever been: the chicken/ dove/ pigeon

isaac is also in jogjakarta studying buddhism so we’ve met up a couple of times to go to cafes and what not but yesterday we decided to go to one of the silliest places i’ve ever been. in fact, probably the silliest place i’ve ever been. the chicken church. aka bukit rhema gereja ayam. a church about an hour out from jogja that is shaped like a chicken. actually, our tour guide was insistent that it is, in fact, NOT a chicken, rather, it is intended to be a dove or pigeon.

although before we made it to the holy bird, we had quite the grab adventure. isaac and i took separate grab motorbikes, i got there first, and opened up my wallet to discover that i did not have enough cash to pay this driver who just took me out to the sticks to see this chicken (this was an act of silliness on my part, i have since added my card to the grab app so this won’t happen again, worry not). isaac called me and said his driver actually dropped him off at a random chicken restaurant rather than the chicken church and that they had also unfortunately/ accidentally ran over a chicken themselves on their way. i told him to get his caboose to the chicken church asap to help me pay this driver. my driver (tommy) was unbelievably chill about this situation. i told him (through google translate) that my friend was on his way and that he could help cover the cost, tommy suggested we wait in a nearby warung (small shop) and have some coffee in the meantime. after about fifteen minutes of google translate facilitated small talk, isaac finally appeared, and even combined we were still 500 rupiahs short (about three cents). not only did tommy say this was fine, but he also paid for my coffee. so special shoutout to tommy the grab driver, i learned my lesson and will carry extra cash with me <3

anyways, the chicken! it was so goofy. it was a really cool experience because i think oftentimes religiosity and humor don’t come in a pair and i appreciated the objective silliness of this structure. we got a quick tour of the inside and were told that the founder of the church was christian but since the majority of the population in that area are muslim, it has become an interfaith place of worship open to anyone. and as for the obvious question: why is this building shaped like a large bird? simply because the dove is a symbol of peace. fair enough. we were able to go all the way up to the dove/ pigeon’s crown. after waiting a moment in the beak, we went up a very small spiral staircase to the crown which had a breathtaking 360 view of the surrounding valley. we could even see borobudur at a distance! which was very cool to see the largest buddhist monument in the world as a tiny little faraway structure.

after another hour-long motorbike drive back to the city, i met up with keyana + janie + sarah for dinner as they are also studying in jogja. it was really nice to catch up with them and affirmative to hear that they were also having similar experiences with the transition into the isp phase. we agreed that going from interacting with people practically all of the time to being totally alone was a jarring difference. i think we’ll be meeting up again for thanksgiving next week which i am very much looking forward to 🙂

the grab motorbike

last week i briefly mentioned the joy of taking motorbikes to and fro and that has remained true. the most convenient mode of transportation is to get a grab (uber equivalent) motorbike. it’s also very affordable, a half-hour ride across the city cost me about 22,500 rupiahs so about $1.50 and it’s a lot faster than taking a car. yesterday, given the trip to the chicken (dove/pigeon) and getting dinner, i was on the back of a motorbike for roughly a combined three and a half hours (this is where the listening to podcasts and music comes in). i think it’s a very connective method of transport too, especially in a city which is teeming with motorbikes. at stoplights you’re close enough to smell the driver next to you. i’ve been tickled, impressed, and concerned by observing conversations occurring between two motorbike drivers moving side by side. it also appears to be humorously creative sometimes. oh the things that i have seen being transported on a motorbike. a whole drumkit, families of four, several bird cages, five five-gallon water jugs, you name it. i’ve become a lot more familiar with the city on the back of a motorbike. and the drivers are very friendly, over the past week i’ve definitely used the most bahasa in trying to answer questions about where i’m from and what i’m doing in jogja while shouting over the wind and the traffic.

i met a few students from solo who were visiting jogja for the weekend and when i asked them what they do for fun in solo, they said they go on a lot of night rides and i can definitely see why. moving swiftly through the comparatively cool evening air, the light mist, the warm streetlights overhead bouncing off the glistening pavement, only a few other motorbikes and cars around in typically bustling streets and intersections, maybe you even have the perfect song playing and it is a really good time. it’s honestly a really fun way to pass the time and i’ve thought of getting a grab just to drive around the city.

okay and as for the actual isp part of this whole thing

isaac and i were paired with a professor at ugm who has connections with the buddhist community here in jogja and he invited us to his temple which is called vihāra karangdjati. they meet on wednesday evenings and have a meditation session on friday nights which are open to folks of any faith. so we attended both evenings and were introduced to a lot of people who were interested in our projects, which is exciting! it’s a very dynamic space, so i have to play it by ear a bit as to when or how to fit in interviews but i think the main hurdle there is really just the classic scary task of walking up to a circle of people and introducing yourself because everyone i’ve talked to has been really kind and open for discussion. i had my first interview on friday with a member of the congregation named linda who had an interesting muslim to buddhist conversion story (as is the case for many folks at this temple it seems) and she also works at borobudur as a tour guide. i think once i get the interview ball rolling, my isp should come together relatively easily.

so things are looking up in jogja! i am scheduled to leave indonesia in less than a month so i am brainstorming what i want this last month to look like. thank you for reading! same time next week! :^)

it was our last week in kerambitan and it was a pretty slow one. we did all the classics: jalan jalaning to lembah cinta, spending evenings at rise up kopi, finishing up a slurry of final assignments, and playing badminton at the park. the most notable event happened earlier in the week: there was an afternoon rainstorm brewing and i was occupied with an afternoon nap when isaac called me saying he’d just found a lonely, helpless kitten in the rice fields and it wasn’t looking too hot. we tried to figure out what to do, there wasn’t exactly a place we could take her so until we could determine a longer-term course of action, we had a cat to take care of! we found an old coconut cream box to keep her in, got some milk and a baby bottle and figured out how to feed her. we named her susu, meaning milk. she was so so tiny, about the size of my hand. the next day isaac and i brought her out for a trip to lembah cinta and it was fun to have a little creature to care for and look after. eventually, bu ary said she’d take susu back to her village and she could join the cats there. a happy ending for susu! hopefully she lives a long and happy life.

the isp begins! i finally left for jogjakarta on friday morning! it was just supposed to be just me heading out but a handful of other students who were going to leave on sunday + monday had their flights canceled because of G20 (which i’ve gathered is a fancy shmancy meeting of international big wigs who will talk about big wig things). anyways, i’m staying in a nice little hostel near gadjah mada university in jogja. i’ve got my own room which is named “sido mukti,” i believe this is a province in central java but also a style of batik which is painted on one of my walls. i read it means “to be noble and prosperous” so that’s a good sign! there are a few very friendly cats who roam about, a nice little communal kitchen and a few communal hang out spots. the owner of the hostel told me there are a handful of other international students staying here so new friendship potential perhaps? i haven’t run into anyone yet. i set out to get to know the neighborhood and realized how grateful i am for all of the previous times we’ve aimlessly jalan-jalaned to get to know a new city which calmed my nerves of just wandering around a new place not knowing where i was going and trusting i wouldn’t get lost. but i realized it actually wasn’t totally new! my hostel is around the same area as one of the hotels we’d stayed in when we were here in september. last night i went to this fruit store (already cool in and of itself), bought two asian pears and a dragon fruit (first dragon fruit i’ve ever purchased) and then i saw a washington state apple sticker on the door! a little note of home way out here.

something i noticed right off the bat is that i totally blend in here. without the company of my clearly-not-indonesian friends, no one can tell that i am a foreigner and they treat me as such. i immediately picked up that no one looks at me for a little too long or goes out of their way to talk to me and i think everyone i have interacted with at restaurants and shops has approached me with lighting-fast bahasa indonesia to which i have already curated my response of “sorry, i only know a little bahasa indonesia” which always feels like a funny reveal. i knew that i blended in before but this is the first time i’ve actually continuously experienced it, and it’s really cool, it’s affirming and it feels like a little secret, especially when i’m able to get away with them thinking i know what i’m doing for the whole interaction (though usually i have to say more than a few words and it quickly becomes apparent that i do not, in fact, know what i’m doing). so, i don’t get special foreigner treatment anymore and i didn’t really even realize that i was getting special foreigner treatment before. it’s nice because sometimes people’s curiosity in my foreignness made it feel like they were overly in my biz but now no one really takes special interest in initiating conversation with me or making sure that i’m understanding a situation because they assume i’m on the same page. it’s kind of hard to explain, but i don’t get the forgiving cushion of “oh, it’s okay, she’s not from here” if i accidentally make a small social error which makes me a little nervous to move through spaces here but i think it’s just a part of the larger adjustment to this isp period. i was really looking forward to the independence of this portion of the trip but the transition has been a bit more jarring than i anticipated. i went from being doted on by sit and my host parents at every moment and for every meal to having to make every decision for myself. which is what i wanted, but it’s been intimidating. i’m sure i’ll find my sea legs soon especially as i get going on my work for the isp, but i’m just trying to orient myself for the time being. even with the independence i’m afforded living off-campus in walla walla, i am still surrounded by the close community of my housemates and friends. and although there are a few other sit students in jogja, i will mostly be alone for the next month and i don’t think i’ve had an experience like this before. looking forward to what i will learn from this.

i’m close to ugm and am in a neighborhood right by the city so i don’t have to walk far to get to shops or cafes, but i have already taken a few grabs (uber equivalent) and i have so super enjoyed taking motorbikes places, possibly one of my favorite activities. i would also say it’s one of the most distinctly different parts of being in indonesia. last night i needed to go out to get dinner but there was a relentless rainstorm happening. my plan was to walk just about five minutes to the closest shop and the moment i stepped outside i was trudging through water that literally went up to my shins, it was honestly kind of hilarious the degree to which i was unprepared for this rain. and it looks like that will be the regular weather pattern for the month so i will be investing in a poncho get-up. okay so my plan moving forward is to meet with my advisor (a prof of buddhism at ugm) and hopefully he’ll know some folks who would want to chat with me or send me to some temples to visit. as i’m writing this i’ve just reached out to some buddhist students i met during an interfaith discussion while we were here last and hopefully they’ll help me out too. i need to read up on my isp topic and develop my plans some more. i need to find a grocery store and determine how to shop for groceries/ cook here. i need to figure out a budget system? we were given an eight-million-rupiah stipend (roughly $525 usd) and i must spend it wisely. i should figure out some goals? things i want to do while i’m here? and some semblance of a routine? right? as you can glean i’m really just figuring this out as i go. okay! all for now! hopefully next week i will be on more solid ground 🙂

five days in the village

hello blog readers! as alluded to at the end of my last post, we spent this week in mundal pakel, our academic director bu ary’s home village. we were joined by a dozen students from udayana university who helped us to translate interview questions and interpret for interviews we’d conduct in the village for a “mini isp” assignment we were to work on during the week. we drove about forty minutes there from kerambitan and a handful of us opted to hike in, which was a casual two-hour walk and upon our arrival we received a freshly split coconut to drink from.

we were randomly assigned homestay families and although i didn’t interact with my homestay family too much because of how busy we were, i really enjoyed my time there. they had so many animals: very vocal roosters, a community of chickens and ducks, more than seven cats, many pigeons that had bells around their necks and my favorite of them all, a very cute and fluffy dog named doggy who usually slept on the veranda outside my room. most of the time we were hanging out around bu ary’s house, which was really nice. it was like a wood cabin which provided the pseudo-autumnal coziness many of us were missing. it was also very clear that we were in a small village. kerambitan is a small town, but compared to the village it’s a bustling metropolitan area, just like how walla walla can be both a big town and a small town depending on how you compare it. and the village vibe was really nice; there was one main sloped street that we all lived on and bu ary’s house/ the community center was at the top of the hill. bu ary explained that everyone in the village was actually a part of one really big extended family, so it wasn’t just that the community felt like a family, they are a family. and it felt really warm and supportive to be welcomed into that space.

on halloween we got up early to watch a sweet little sunrise. later in the morning, we learned about traditional medicine and traditional healers. we followed a humorously energetic herbalist around the local forest as he pointed out left and right which plants could be harvested and what they could be used for. afterward, he used some of the plants we’d collected (tree bark, turmeric root, etc) and made a paste that was bright yellow and essentially had the same effect as vaporub. after that, supplied with half a coconut and a large knife, we shaved down our own coconut bowls and then started the process of making coconut oil—splitting the coconuts, breaking them into shards, grinding them down, and squishing the water out between our hands. the next day we learned about subak, the balinese irrigation system and then we actually went out to the local rice fields and did some hoeing ourselves. the mud was satisfyingly squelchy, relievingly cool and went up to my knees. we did some mud racing (not to toot my own horn but i did win my heat) and nominated representatives for an sit vs udayana mud wrestling match (which we won :p). with mud caked in my hair and up my left nostril, we drank some more coconuts and went down to de-mud ourselves in the river. on wednesday there was an unbelievable rainstorm. it was the kind of rainstorm during which it felt like we had to stop what we were doing to observe how hard it was really raining. and the lighting was striking all around us. at one point it seemed like it must’ve struck right outside of bu ary’s house, at least that’s what it sounded like. isaac claims he felt a residual shock when he was accidentally leaning on a waterspout, i say that doesn’t count as getting struck by lightning.

lovina: the northern coast

after leaving the village on thursday, we took an extremely windy but beautiful road up to lovina which is on the north coast of bali. after checking into our hotel, a handful of us went to a local buddhist monastery called brahmavihara-arama which was really (really) beautiful. it was nestled into the hills right by the beach, so the views were incredible. there were a bunch of really large buddha sculptures and several temples on the grounds. one of the temples looked like a mini borobudur and i was surprised to find that one could actually go inside; they had some cushions for people to sit and meditate, which i tried my hand at. i realized that this was the first time i had ever gone to a buddhist temple without my family, which instigated a lot of reflection on my personal buddhist identity: all of my previous experiences with buddhism in my home, in my family, at the temple, amongst my peers and with myself. my own relationship with buddhism has been one of the overarching puzzles wrapped into my isp and thesis and it was meaningful to me to have been able to further reflect at this monastery.

that night, some of us went to this really good restaurant called akar cafe and it was supremely scrumptious. everything in this restaurant was green: the tables, the chairs, the cushions, the walls and so on (reminded me of early days pochis if anyone reading this from the greater seattle metropolitan area remembers that) and we were sitting on their very cozy back patio. there was a deeply hilarious moment that unfolded which resulted in the lot of us laughing so hard our stomachs hurt and we were gasping for air. while we were waiting for our dessert, eli suddenly jumped around in their chair, pointed at the booth janie and i were sitting on and exclaimed “oh my god oh my god!” with no further clarification as to what was so alarming. they sparked fear all around the table, especially within janie who was right beside the apparent threat. she jumped and thrashed around the booth scream-asking “what?! what!? what is it!?” and was met with no response from a still speechless eli. janie practically jumped over the table. after the distance had been gained, we discovered that a large, black rat had crawled out from behind the booth right beside janie, made a beeline under our table and over the edge of the patio. after we had all caught our breaths and our heart rates returned to a resting level, we decided that the rat was probably just late to some kind of rat gala or gathering in the river below and was taking a shortcut through the restaurant.

on friday we went to a tri-dharma temple called bumi raya. tri-dharma temples are an indonesian place of worship for buddhists, confucianists and taoists. the walls of this temple had illustrations on them that appeared to be charred and when we asked if there had been a fire at this temple at one point, we were told no, it was simply the result of all of the candles and incense that had burned in that temple over time. very cool! and we had the opportunity to light some incense and pray ourselves. after leaving the temple, we went to a waterfall in gitgit, the tallest waterfall in bali! we walked down a winding path for about twenty minutes. there were points during the journey down during which the sound of the cicada or cicada-adjacent insects was so loud we had to shout over them to hear each other. the waterfall was beautiful and we got soaking wet just from standing near it because of all of the wind and spray it produced.

climbing a mountain?!?!?!

on saturday we drove down to kintamani which is home to a few of bali’s active volcanoes, one of which we had plans to scale the next morning. it’s funny, i remember that at the end of this past summer, i was anxiously waiting to receive any crumbs of pre-departure information for this study abroad trip and when we finally got our itineraries, i set about scrolling through it at a café in walla walla (colville street patisserie). i distinctly remember getting to the part of the schedule where it said we’d be “climbing a mountain.” i turned to my friend and expressed my disbelief at the explicitly insurmountable idea of climbing a mountain. and then finally that day came. we woke up at three am, rode in the back of a pickup truck to the base of mount batur, were each handed flashlights and started climbing. it felt like we were going at a forty-five-degree angle the whole darn way!!! this is hyperbolic, of course, i am just not a big hiker. there were a lot of other folks up and at em that morning and it was cool to see little flurries of flashlights lighting up the path all the way up the mountain like distant fireflies. the sunrise began to peek out as we were ascending which was propelling us forward so as to not miss the whole thing. when we finally made it to the top, we did three cheers and admired the view. we were far above the clouds and the morning light over the valley below was spectacular. mount batur actually blew about four years ago so we were able to look right down into its crater. also, there were a lot of monkeys. the guide who led us up brought some breakfast items for us to snack on at the top, one of which was bananas, and the monkeys weren’t after us, but they were definitely after our food. but bring bananas to a monkey mountain and that’s what you get.

so that was the end of our week! we came back down to kerambitan and we have a week full of final assignments/ essays/ presentations/ paperwork/ exams to complete before our isp starts next week. i just bought my flight to jogjakarta and will be heading out bright and early saturday morning. so next i write i will be settled into my new place and we’ll see what happens from there! thank you for reading, same time next week everyone!

isp idea isp idea!

as promised in the salutation of my most recent blog, i can now excitedly present to you, dear readers of this blog, my isp idea! i will be returning to the grand city of jogjakarta for a month to study examples of cultural and religious hybridity in the buddhist community there. jogja is a particularly interesting space to consider this idea because it is considered a “university city,” that is, a city with a lot of major universities, and thus a high population of students from all over indonesia. these students bring together their diverse perspectives and ways of life in inventive new ways and i am interested in how that plays out in the context of buddhist practice. moreover, i am interested in the relationship between a religious minority group existing amidst an overwhelming religious majority group. i aim to consider how the traditions of the religious minority (buddhism) are impacted or changed by the permeating influence of the religious majority (islam) and how buddhism could be adapting to the muslim majority context, if at all. i suspect that, as the prevailing religious and cultural entity, elements of islam will have soaked into buddhist practice in jogjakarta. what are the forces behind developments in buddhism and what are its implications?

ultimately, this research is an attempt to explore what it means to be buddhist and reconcile the diversity of that broad religious label. the questions i pose are adapted from my senior thesis for whitman, which is similarly focused on buddhist adaptations + cultural hybridity, but specifically in the context of the cambodian diaspora in the seattle-area. for that project, i’ll be doing research at a temple my family regularly attends, hopefully interviewing monks and practitioners. i haven’t gotten my plans down pat yet but i’ll have to begin my research for that as soon as i get back to seattle following this trip, so being able to try out this whole conducting research business and just having the idea in my brain will be really helpful. i hope that these two projects will lean into one another.

i really enjoyed my time in jogja when we were there last month and am excited for the “independent” component of the independent study. it’s funny, at the beginning of this program, i remember feeling absolutely terrified of the idea of spending a single day alone in this country, but through the support and guidance of this program, the other sit students, local students, and my host families, i am primed and excited for the challenge. luckily, the connections that i made with local students while we were there have come in handy as they are helping me to locate an apartment for the month i’m there and, i imagine, will be invaluable as i navigate my time there.

lembah cinta + jalan jalans

as for my week in kerambitan, as you may have guessed, it did entail plenty of jalan-jalaning. on sunday, isaac and i walked about fifteen minutes beyond the typical bamboo hut spot and found a second very lovely hang out spot. he said he’d been there the day before and met some nice farmers who said they usually eat lunch there. after sitting for a bit, we forged onwards another fifteen minutes, all the way to the next town over. it seemed pretty sleepy; we passed by more dogs than people. on a whim, we took a left, went down a set of comically uneven stairs and found ourselves in a really beautiful yet also somewhat creepy spot that seemed to be something like an abandoned resort. there were a few old pools of murky water (one of which was shaped like a heart), an empty café, a handful of pavilions for leisurely sitting, and there was no one else there. this was all right on the edge of a wide river. we took a seat on a pair of swings that faced the river and boggled at how we’d ended up there. after a while of posing our guesses at what this place’s deal was, we decided it would be best to get out of there before sunset. the next day, i looked up the spot and turns out it is called lembah cinta or “the valley of love,” which is just a really nice little tourist spot past its heyday in a very sleepy town. we went back with janie and anna a few days later—we napped, we played badminton, we engaged in delightful conversation, we put our toes in the water of the river, and we talked to a couple folks who owned the place.

a few days later, isaac and i went back and eventually met one of the folks who help with the landscaping and general maintenance of the place. he suggested we head back to kerambitan as it’d be getting dark soon, but on the way up, he said he lived right there and invited us in for coffee. now—should i have been alone, or with another woman, this would be an alarm-blaringly stranger-danger type of situation. the tricky thing about that is that balinese people are notoriously hospitable and welcoming, so i’ve had to slightly adjust my assessment of stranger-danger situations. in this case, since i was with isaac, i felt okay proceeding, which ended up being a great idea! we met a few of the family members in his compound and sat down to drink some extremely sweet and scalding hot coffee. our new friend didn’t speak much english, but we chatted as much as we could. main takeaway was that he loves music, especially classic rock. we ended up singing some eagles and beatles song on karaoke which definitely felt like a “how did i end up here” situation. after a few songs, we decided it was time to go, at which point night had certainly fallen. this was tough considering we had a forty-five-minute jalan-jalan through the forest ahead of us. luckily, our friend proposed a solution: he would just give us a ride back on his motorbike. brilliant! so the three of us squished on his bike and we zoomed through a light mist back to kerambitan. it felt ridiculous and hilarious and really really fun. riding through the route we had walked so many times was really fun, especially since there are plenty of hills between lembah cinta and k-town. we were definitely giggling all the way back.

rise up kopi

aside from walking to lembah cinta, i’ve been spending a lot of time at rise up kopi, one of the local cafes. it’s about a five-minute walk from my house which is a journey i very much enjoy making. i’ve found it to be kind of awkward to hang out at one another’s homestays, so i often just meet up with anna at the café in the evenings. rise up is attached to a small barber shop, and the staff at both places are definitely familiar with us at this point. it’s been a nice place to get some homework done or isp brainstorming or journaling. it’s certainly not the quietest of workplaces, with motorbikes constantly zooming by and whatnot, but i like it, especially when it’s pouring down rain outside. there have been times when the sound of the rain is actually too loud to even hold a conversation. at the beginning of this trip, i was advised by a friend who had just returned from studying abroad that i should try to find “my spot,” a location that spoke to me and felt like a good place to be. i would say that rise up is one of these.

a cup of warm water

honestly, one of the aspects of living here that i wasn’t expecting to have trouble with is what it is like to live with parental figures in the first place. for the last few years, i have been living in off-campus houses and dorms and have become very accustomed to the independence that comes with that. it’s not that my host parents are overbearing by any means—in fact, i’d say they’re a lot more relaxed than what i’ve heard of some of the other host families—it’s just that it’s been a while since i’ve had to regularly think about being home a certain time for dinner or tell someone where i’m going and when i’ll be back. i deeply appreciate their hospitality and am also looking forward to more independence during the isp.

that being said, i have felt much closer to my homestay parents over the last few days. a part of it is simply that i am able to communicate far more than i was in the beginning (full sentences! jokes!), but there was one instance in particular that stuck with me. i’ve been working against a very mild and very annoying dry cough over the last couple of weeks and a few nights ago while i was half asleep, coughing plenty, i heard someone faintly calling my name, which, in my half-consciousness, was quite confusing. i looked at my phone and it was two o’clock in the morning. i realized the voice was my ibu’s and she was standing outside of my door. i stumbled over to open it and she was holding a cup of warm water for me to drink. for your throat, she said. at this point, i was beginning to piece together what was going on, but it still wasn’t totally clear, i just knew i was being cared for, which was very very nice.

we’ll be spending this coming week in munduk patel, a fairly remote village about forty minutes north of our program center in kerambitan. it’s bu ary’s home village and i think she is very excited to show us around her digs. then we’ll be moving further north to climb mt. batur during the weekend. so! more to come and, as always, thank you very much for reading along.

twenty-one + homesickness

i had my twenty-first birthday this past tuesday! the program staff got me a nice cake and a batik shirt and i received a remarkably sweet card from everyone on the program. anna coordinated surprise dinner plans with everyone which was very nice. my host family from java reached out to wish me a happy birthday and my ibu said that if i was still staying with them, she would’ve made me nasi kuning, yellow rice, which is usually prepared as a special birthday treat. and my host family here had a sweet little celebration for me as well. they got a pizza and my host dad played humorously strange variations of the happy birthday song from his phone lol. my heart felt warm and full to know that there are people who care about me across so many time zones. although because of the time difference (i’m fifteen hours ahead of most of my friends and family), it kind of felt like most people back home just forgot about my birthday but i received plenty of messages the following day, and i appreciated the opportunity to talk to some of my friends and family. it did, however, make me realize that i was perhaps more homesick than i had realized, but i think putting a name to that feeling was helpful. i’m trying to navigate how to still have a deeply fulfilling time here while feeling that way.

halfway through?? how did we get here

a realization that has helped with navigating that feeling is that we are far closer to the end of this program than i anticipated. it feels like i just wrote that we are a quarter of the way through?? and now we are hitting the halfway point this coming friday. it feels much closer to the end than it actually is though because we only have three more weeks together as a program before we all embark on our isps. those three weeks consist of one week in kerambitan and two on a trip to a small village in north bali. then isp, and a very short period of reconvening at the very end. so, to know that i only have three more weeks with the friends i’ve made on this program and with the program staff, and effectively just one more week with my host family and in kerambitan, it, in a way, almost nullifies my homesickness and brings me back into the present moment. it’s almost like a graduation glasses feeling, of nostalgia when you know a time in your life is about to end. i’ve thought a lot about how to remain present here when i’ve felt my mind drifting in the direction of homesickness. while i’ve been here i’ve also realized the parts of my life in walla walla i had taken for granted and then worried about the inevitability of taking things for granted here and how to try to work against that. a bit of gratitude and here and a dash of mindfulness there go a long way, but i am sure there are realizations i will come to about this experience that won’t surface until i return to the states. ah the secrets that time and distance keep.

art projects!

anyways, enough of that abstract stuff, let’s get to what i was actually up to this week. i’ve mentioned before that when we returned to bali we’d be starting our own art projects. the structure of how these projects were going to work was different than what i’d imagined (many things here are different from how i’d imagined, you just have to go with it). instead of choosing one artform to focus on, it’s more of a sampling of different arts for two weeks. so on tuesday, i tried my hand at balinese dance which was super super hard. there are a lot of really small, detailed movements to get right, including eye movements which is really cool and also very difficult. on wednesday, i went to a nice ceramics studio. i’ve never done any kind of ceramics before, so it was exciting to try something brand new. however, because i went in a larger group, i only had about twenty minutes on the wheel which is not actually enough time to pick up any skills. also, something that hasn’t always been true but is something bu ary warned us of is that, generally, the instructional method is culturally different where instead of telling you step by step what needs to happen, it’s more of a watch and then copy what you remember. given that + the language barrier + the limited time, it really just turned into the folks at this studio doing it for me while i pushed the pedal, which was kind of underwhelming but i got two very cute pieces out of it.

silversmithing!

by far my favorite art project that i’ve tried is silver jewelry making. igo, eli and i went to a small jewelry shop in the kerambitan marketplace and we set out to make some silver rings! i really liked the set up and vibe of the shop, there were just a bunch of tools everywhere and there seemed to be a system in place that only the jewelry maker knew. something i really enjoyed about this experience was the way we were instructed; he did not subscribe to the watch me do it and then you do it with no explanation method, perhaps because of the danger of messing up when you’re working with liquid metal and a blowtorch. he did all of the really dangerous parts that actually require skill and precision and we helped along the way. we started by melting down the small chunks of silver with a manual blowtorch. this was attached to a bellows foot pump which was connected by a tube to what seemed to be a water bottle full of gasoline that was then connected to the blowtorch which would be ignited by using a handheld lighter and moving your hand away really fast lol. then, mixed with a dash of borax, we melted the silver, he poured it into a rectangular mold, and we churned it through a heavy-duty pressing device to make this rectangular prism of silver skinnier. we measured our ring sizes, he cut the metal to the appropriate length, and we bent and hammered it around a ring cone. next came the soldering which was absolutely the coolest part. so he took a little piece of silver and a little piece of bronze, he melted them down so it was truly just one drop of each metal and then he just plopped them together, mixed some borax into this hybrid metal and connected the two open ends of the ring. my jaw was on the floor of the workshop. then we sanded and sanded and sanded and he gave the rings a bath so they’d be extra nice and shiny and low and behold! we had totally just made silver rings! it was one of the coolest experiences i’ve had on this trip so far and i hope to go back next week to make more.

something i took note of during all of these art lessons was to watch the hands of these artists at work. the muscle memory, the precision, and for the jewelry maker, the scars of having done this work for years. embodiment and embodied learning are ideas i started learning about during my junior year and is something that is even more present in a study abroad program where a lot of the learning happens outside of the classroom or in non-traditional classroom contexts. focusing on the inclusion of one’s body in the formation of art and thinking about how that connects art and the practice of it to someone’s life is an exciting train of thought to ride.

scholastic streak

we also had bahasa indonesia and thematic seminar midterms this week, so i spent some time studying at a local cafe called rise up–it is also attached to a barber shop which makes for a silly little vibe. the exams weren’t terribly difficult, it has just been a handful of years since i’ve been in a language class so it’s a different kind of learning that is challenging a part of my brain i feel like i haven’t tapped into since french classes in high school. one thing i wasn’t really expecting but am excited about is that i think learning and thinking in bahasa everyday has actually improved my khmer as well. i’ve noticed when i talk to my grandma on the phone in khmer, it feels like i am able to produce more complete sentences than usual.

anna and i have returned to ubud this weekend to get out of kerambitan and have a place to work on developing our isp ideas. as isp o’clock grows closer and closer, we need to be decided on our plans over the next three weeks so we are well prepared and supported when we are sent off on our own. i hope to work on something related to religious hybridity and adaptation, which is specifically interesting in indonesia given their legal requirements of monotheistic religious identification. at this point, i think i just need to find an appropriate tangible location or instance to explore these ideas through. ideally whatever i come up with will complement the idea i have planned for my senior thesis at whitman, which also centers around religious and cultural hybridity and adaptation.

we have now officially entered monsoon season, so it rains impressively hard in the afternoon. i had a really awesome moment on tuesday listening to one of my favorite songs, monsoon by hippo campus, (warning if you choose to listen, this is a really sad song) as i was drifting into an afternoon nap at the puri and it was raining outside. i could hear both kinds of monsoon and in the distance, the sound of the other students giggling and chatting which was very very very (very) sweet.

makasih for reading, it means a lot that you have an interest in what i am up to dear reader! i will write again next week with a fully formed isp idea in my pocket!