*Warning: Not Safe For Appetites* I live around the corner from a warung, a local street-food stand that is famous for serving one specific dish. At jam 3 sore, three in the afternoon, they start building the tented structure that soon becomes a mini roadside restaurant. By 8pm they are usually sold out and have begun putting away the rusted poles, tarps and benches. They make a killing. The warung is by far the most…
King of Fruits, the true test of a fruitphile, a delicacy, Durian is an assault on the claim of all other fruits to their categorization, and it only grows in Southeast Asia. The fruit is most notable for its pungent smell that has been compared to rotting flesh, and heaven. The odor is so abrasive it is banned from confined public spaces like airplanes and hotels. Traveling through Lombok with my German friends, I had…
If I ever fall off the face of the Earth and you really need to get hold of me, I’ll be basking in a bungalow on Gili Air. Dig through the archives to find this post, and come search for me. The only flaw in your plan will be you mysteriously forget why it was so imperative to find me and will instead join me. You’ll get stuck, just like I did. During another round…
My parents and I meeting my headmaster. Batik school uniforms FTW! For my quarter-century celebration my family came to visit me in Indonesia. My parents came first to live for two days in the asrama (dormitory), my aunt and cousin from South Africa met us in Bali, where my brother Max showed up as well. Showing my family the life I lead was a surprisingly pleasant experience. Each had their own difficulty adapting to life…
On our trip to Labujan Bajo, a city on the island of Flores Max and I went through the four day process of getting our Padi Scuba certification. The photo above is of the descent during our first open-water dive. The first day of the course is spent in the classroom going through all of the need-to-know information about scuba from what causes "the bends" to appropriate hand signals and emergency situations. After passing the…
A few weeks ago 8 fellow Fulbrighters came to visit Jogja on vacation. I, unfortunately, was still teaching for most of their visit, but I got to participate in one day of adventure. We went to Goa Pindul, an area known for a small mountain, rivers, and caves. We took a day trip, about 1.5 hours outside the city, to get there and took a tour of the caves via tubes. To follow we headed…
Last week, the entire Fulbright ETA program gathered together for our Mid-Year Conference held in Jakarta this year. After being at our individual sites spread all over Indonesia for the last few months, it was nice to finally be back together to swap stories and whine a little bit. The most common cultural adaptation to vex us is the immense differences between school systems in Indonesia and the United States. For example, senior high-school students…
The term "documentation" may be a curse of the worker, or it may be a human curse finally granted a name once the brutality of the real-world makes itself known. While in university, the extent of my knowledge of documentation was to never put anything disparaging in writing that could be dug up and reproduced in the future, photo albums & scrapbooks, and Facebook photos. The term has taken on new meaning as a full-time…