Selamat Datang!

Hi! Sorry I haven’t been writing regularly, but our internet access has been really limited and even now, I’m borrowing my friend’s laptop in order to get this post developed to upload later. These past 3 weeks have been so busy and hectic and strange that I don’t even know where to begin. I’m not going to be very detailed with the beginning, but here is what has happened since I left the states:

I got to San Francisco, where I stayed one night. We had some pre-staging information and I met the 19 other people that I would be serving with for the next 27 months. Even from the very beginning, we all felt so lucky to be in this particular group that’s starting up the Indonesian Peace Corps program. Not only are we so excited to be doing this, but so is everyone else! A rep from the US Embassy flew down from DC to talk with us, and then we had dinner at the home of the Indonesian Consulate General in San Francisco. They prepared an amazing meal for us and were so gracious—they sat with us and answered our many questions, told us what to expect/what not to expect, and also gave us some useful cultural tips.

Then we travelled for 3 days. It was miserable because I HATE flying, but it was interesting how well we all worked together in that situation. From San Francisco we flew to Tokyo, Japan, then to Bangkok, Thailand (which has the nicest airport hotel I’ve ever seen!), and finally to Jakarta, Indonesia.

Jakarta was such an interesting experience. When we got there, we found out that the reason we were even in Jakarta was because President Obama was scheduled to come to Indonesia and we were to be available in case he had some time on his schedule! You can not imagine our excitement! It turns out that the health care bill needed his full attention and the trip was cancelled, but we ended up staying in Jakarta until Tuesday and just started our training there. Jakarta is a great city, so alive, big, and so different from anything we were expecting from our “Peace Corps experience.”

After our brief stay in paradise, on Tuesday, March 23rd, we left the big city and finally made our way to our real destination—the host sites for our training period—Malang. Malang is the big city near the 4 little villages where we actually live. The group of 20 was split into 4 groups of 5 and each group was distributed to one of the four villages (also called “clusters”): Giri Purno, Pandanrejo, Tlekong, and Junrejo. I live in Giri Purno. Two Clusters make a “link” and the other cluster in our link is Pandanrejo. The people in Giri Purno and Pandanrejo are the ones I see almost everyday.

Ok now you are caught up on absolutely nothing interesting =) I will work on getting the more juicy stuff up soon! I plan on getting a laptop soon, so it should be a lot easier to update this blog in the coming weeks!

Oh! By the way, the language I’m learning is called Bahasa Indonesia, which means “Language of Indonesia” in case any of you were wondering!

Coming soon: My fellow volunteers, my host family, food, drinks, language, transportation, sports, culture, and whatever else comes up!

Sampai Jumpa! (See you later!)

--Nisha