Going Solo

Right now, in all hemispheres, it is my birthday. I have had some notable birthdays over the past few years, including brunch in Berlin, leaping off waterfalls, swimming in sinkholes, and always enjoying the wonderful company of my family and/or friends. This year I was ready for a new adventure – an Indonesian adventure.

So I went on an exploratory adventure to the city of Solo in Central Java. Solo has much to offer in the way of art and culture, but my goals for this first, celebratory birthday foray into the great Javanese unknown were simple and few: figure out how to get there, scope out hotels for future visits, drink coffee at Starbucks, eat Italian food, and return to the desa with a yoga mat. Two fellow brave and patient Peace Corps souls joined me in my endeavors, and thanks to the help of some well-placed, extremely helpful Indonesians who pushed us onto busses and pointed us (eventually) in the right direction, we returned home satisfied and victorious. And with our success we bridged yet another gap between our new Indonesian lives and the coffee dates, fitness habits, and dietary choices of our past.

The following is an inventory of our success…

1. Traveling “Naik Bis” (By Bus)

A popular, convenient, cheap, and sometimes hair-raising mode of transportation, buses are seen throughout Indonesia speeding over mountain tops, swerving around motorbikes, and barreling through rice paddies. We stood for an hour in the aisle, got to know our fellow passengers, and even heard a cat. Can’t get much more Indonesian than that.

Tickets in hand and on the bus!

2. Finding a Hotel

After being pointed in many directions by many friendly and helpful Indonesians, we finally found our hotel for that night and probably for all future visits. Rumah Turi, a self-proclaimed eco-hotel, felt like a home-away-from-home with its air conditioning, comfortable and clean beds, hot showers, western toilets, TV’s with American channels, friendly staff, and inviting sitting areas. With their eclectic array of potted plants and environmentally-minded hotel design it was love at first sight. Not to mention a huge vote in their favor: getting to watch the first 20-minutes of the U.S.A. v. Germany soccer game before passing out between my crisp, clean sheets (because let’s be real, at the age of 24 I have become a true old lady here in Indonesia who never misses her bedtime at 8:30pm).

3. Drinking Coffee, Eating Pasta, and Being Merry

When we first entered Solo’s Grand Mall and later the Solo Paragon Mall – home of one of Indonesia’s few Starbucks!!! –  we felt as if we were immerging from the desert expanse and entering a refreshing oasis of coffee, pizza, yoga mats, and almost American groceries. We laughed, we smiled, we were giddy and probably looked a little crazed to our fellow shoppers. We drank coffee, bought much more than we can afford on our Peace Corps budget, and felt a growing sense of contentment.

An oasis.

Celebrate? Why yes, I think we will.

A taste of home…

Riding our wave of elation, we found our way to O Solo Mio, a favorite of ex-pats in Indonesia. We ate pasta smothered in cheese, finished off with apple pie and molten chocolate lava cakes, and stared at other westerners while whispering and giggling to one another about how funny they looked. Bellies full, palates happy, and sleep encroaching, we wondered what was happening to our lives.

Dinner at O Solo Mio

So much pasta, so much cheese.

Some call it love…

4. Bringing Home the Spoils

As I have justified this entire endeavor as my birthday gift to myself, I thought it only fitting that I return home with some presents. One yoga mat, two 3kg weights, one bottle of olive oil, one jar of honey, an assortment of spices, and one bottle of nail-polish remover later, I have returned to my desa.

***

Looking back over our exploits, I recognize that this adventure was both Indonesian and not. In many ways it was an attempt to reconnect with our former selves – the people we were and the lives we lived pre-Indonesia. And I think that is good sometimes, because that will always be a part of who we are, even as we continue to be changed by our experiences here. Addictions die hard, and my addiction to Starbucks is far from dead. I will always adore cheese, and I will always have a soft spot for hot showers and western-style toilets. What we’re about here isn’t giving up our old selves, but bridging the gap between our lives in the U.S. and our new lives in Indonesia. And that is just the reminder I needed as I enter upon my 25^th year of life and the next two years of it that I will spend in Indonesia.

Swimming in Our Sunday Best

After living on a tropical island for three months I have seen the beach for the first time!

 

Teleng Ria Beach, Pacitan

As an American I have a certain concept of what it means to go to the beach. Bathing suit clad families splashing in the water and picnics spread out on beach blankets come to mind. But on this day, a day out with the teachers from my school and their families, the scene looked a little different.

Can you spot the differences?

I knew that I wasn’t going to see any teachers in their bathing suits that day. But having at least planned to change into yoga pants and an old t-shirt before going in the water, I was taken a little by surprise when everyone started wading into the waves in the same clothes they had been wearing when we had boarded the bus at 4:30 that morning. I stood, toes digging into the sand, in my skirt and t-shirt. I looked out at the families happily splashing in the waves, fathers in shorts and t-shirts, children in the casual clothes they had come in, and mothers wearing colorful jilbabs, long skirts or pants, and long sleeved shirts. And then I was invited to join them.

My counter part teacher and her family playing in the water.

Wearing what I might have worn to church on Sunday back in the States, I joined my Indonesian friends in the water. We splashed, we laughed, we corralled small children back towards the shallow water. All the while I tried to keep my skirt on and thought about how I had never experienced the beach quite like this before.

Before…

After! (With my counter part teacher and family)

All I had to do was look down the beach and see people swimming in their regular clothes to know that there was something different about this place. But at the same time the smiles and the laughter and the joy of families enjoying the sun and the waves was so familiar. That’s often how Indonesia feels – so very different and so very familiar at the same time.

A look down the beach.

Sun bathing.

I want to share a little piece of my personal history with you to help you understand what a beautiful experience our trip to the beach was. Almost two years ago in the waves off the Gulf Coast of Florida, I reaffirmed my baptism in front of a group of college students who I dearly love and count as some of my closest friends. We had spent that afternoon playing messy games (that involved digging in the sand, cheese puffs, and catchup), and were still dressed in our team colors. As the sun set, that group of wild and crazy college students cheered joyfully for each person who went out to be baptized.

With my friends two years ago in Florida.

My friends yesterday!

I know that not all my readers are Christian, and I respect that deeply. But the picture I want to create is how that group of my goofy American friends laughing and playing and celebrating in that ocean is connected to my new Indonesian friends who laughed and played and celebrated in the waves yesterday. To me the ocean has become like a promise. It is a promise that across miles and miles and unfathomable depths of history, experience, and culture – across incredible differences – we are all still connected. It might take years and years, but it is the same water cycling throughout the world, the same water that we swam and played and bathed in. And even though we are sometimes so far apart, there is a joy and a delight in the sun and the waves that brings us together. I wish that you could have been with me at the beach yesterday! I wish you could have seen the smiles and the joyful faces and recognized as I did that, although we may be so very different in some ways, we are so very similar in others.

 

Classy Lady

Cool as Es

Indonesia is hot. Heat makes you thirsty. And Indonesians have come up with a clever solution to this problem – other than, you know, just drinking water. But who wants water when you can have a sweet, refreshing concoction of fruit, jelly, and, well, anything else you want to throw in there?

You know I’m a foodie at heart, and in all its strange glory, “Es” has become my newest food fascination. The word “Es” means ice, but it is also used for the many varieties of what is best described as a sort of dessert soup. I’ll start you off easy with a rather basic form of Es, Es Buah (Fruit Ice).

First you need fruit. And in Indonesia, a land of tropical and majestic fruit variety, you have a lot to choose from! Today we had melon, papaya, starfruit, coconut, and watermelon.

Cut the fruit.

Then you need some form of gelatin. I was very suspicious of this jello-like substance for a long time. “Why,” I asked myself, “is it white on the top?” Today I learned that it is because they mix coconut milk in which then, as the gelatin hardens, rises to the top. Nothing wrong with that!

Then it all goes in a bowl with some simple syrup, water (or coconut water if you’re lucky!), sweetened condensed milk, and actual ice. Voila! Es.

 

 

Learning to Walk

Some days living in another country, surrounded by people from a completely different culture, can feel like starting back at square one. Everything is a process of watching, learning, and trying to imitate the behaviors I see around me while all at the same time trying to figure out my own style and rhythm. In many ways it is like learning to walk. You see other people doing this odd but efficient thing called “walking”, you decide you want to try it, you stumble and fall a few times, you probably feel suddenly very strange in your own body, you might get frustrated and cry a few times, but then FINALLY you take those first steps. And everyone around you cheers and is so excited! And as the already capable individuals around you start to take pictures and film videos that they will share with their ooh-ing and awe-ing friends and relations, you, too, are excited. But then, because you still haven’t quite found your footing, you flop down on your butt in a little pudgy pile of exhaustion and expended effort.

Indonesia right now feels much the same.

Trying to figure out all the cultural nuances and where I (a shy, white, American woman) fit into them is often overwhelming. If you ask my family and friends back home about me, they might tell you that I am also stubborn. And it’s true. I loathe admitting that I am weak or can’t do anything and everything absolutely and meticulously perfectly – not to mention on my  own.

You can imagine, then, that yesterday, when I started my morning by bashing my knee on a rock and ended it with a fever, headache, achy body, and nauseous stomach, I was NOT a happy camper. But all of those things, in themselves, weren’t my biggest problem. What was really getting me down was the fact that I felt like I was a bad volunteer. When I spilled tea all over the floor and had to crouch down with my stiff knee and my burning head, I felt like maybe I was defective. What hurt most wasn’t my swollen, bruised knee or my pulsing headache, but my pride and a crushing sense of guilt that I wasn’t the volunteer my school and my community had thought they were getting.

Today I dragged my sore body to school where I was asked repeatedly if I would attend a certain festival taking place in our village. I wanted to so badly, but (after a torturous internal battle with my stubborn self) decided that I should make myself take it easy and get healthy faster. There would be many more festivals to come over the next two years, right? Then my host family asked me to go.  And then I was called by the head of our office who also asked me to attend. I was told how special the festival was and how it doesn’t happen every day. And everyone was so excited for me to see it – they wanted to share their culture with me! But I was tired and still feeling a little sick, so the idea of standing in a busy crowd under the hot Indonesian sun with my ears being blasted by loud music and every other person trying to sneak a picture of me, raised many, many a red flag in my brain.

Enter guilt, again. I wondered if I was turning into that PC volunteer who stays holed up in their room all day. Maybe I wasn’t doing enough. Maybe my school would ask for a replacement volunteer. I just wanted to please everyone!

I think that PC, in many ways, draws people pleasers. We commit two years to serving others. We want to help people and make their lives better. We want to put the needs of others over our own. And I think that is a very good thing – most of the time. But we are people, too. We have needs, limitations, and weaknesses. The truth is that we never can do “enough” (whatever that even means). We get sick, we feel tired, and (some of us) inherit our clumsiness from our mothers. On top of all that we are all wonderfully individual with our own styles and our own rhythms. I have had to remind myself every day in Indonesia that I am a person, too. That I am only human, and that I should extend the same grace and compassion to myself as I do towards other people. It has been a rough few days, and I have to believe that it is okay for me to sit this one festival out. It is okay to write blog posts in my room and watch romantic comedies while icing my knee and drinking ginger tea that (thank goodness) did not fall on the floor this time around.

When our schools signed up to get a volunteer they agreed to that side of the bargain, too. They didn’t agree to get a perfect volunteer with superhuman powers of American charm and charisma, good health, and the ability to effortlessly learn local languages without making a single mistake. More importantly, we are not, nor should we be, the solutions to all their problems. This is a partnership, a shared learning experience where we all have to ask what it means to be part of our own culture, our host community, and ourselves.

When I joined the PC one of my many hopes was that I would gain a stronger sense of myself. And I realize that this is what is happening. It’s not always easy and it’s not always fun. Sometimes it involves physical bruises and emotional pain. But I’m taking life back to square one. I’m learning to walk, and in the process learning more about the world and myself. And I hope that you, no matter who you are, what you do, or where you live, will have many opportunities to be gracious with yourself and those around you – to try something new and feel the self-revealing, soul-bearing ups and downs of walking for the first time.