Top: Stitched photo from the northern summit of Raung. Middle: Annotated with the unconformity between Gadung and Raung as well as recent features such as the main vent and rock fall. Bottom: Illustration of the above photos and annotations. There are a few geo-nerds who read my blog, so I want to share this photo [...]
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One of the other ID-5 Volunteers posted a Year One in Numbers post. I’ve stolen his idea and added statistics for some of his categories and for some of my own. 275+ Pounds of rice eaten (assuming the national average) 12 Average number of tempe slices I consume in one day 0.30 Price in dollars of [...]
Nyepi* is the Balinese-Hindu new year celebration rooted in the belief that the island must be ridded of and protected from evil spirits at the beginning of each year. Spirits are scared away on the days leading up to Nyepi through prayer ceremonies and the procession of scary effigies called ogoh-ogoh. The island then remains [...]
Twelve months ago, I would have considered the prospect of driving nine hours from Houghton to Chicago just for a twenty minute meeting absurd. This, howeve, is essentially what I did last week, and I was strangely okay with it. One of the last parting advices I received before leaving to Indonesia was “Just try [...]
Dissection of times and schedules and resultant spontaneity. In January, I wrote a post that compared the beginning of the new semester to a track race that had been called back as a false start. It’s March now, and I feel like I’m still in the starting blocks waiting for the gun to go off [...]
My favorite Javanese song includes a line (the title of this post) that uses the imagery of waving palm branches as a signal to afternoon boaters that it’s time to return to shore. High above the ground (I would estimate as much as 30 meters), the weight of dozens of young coconuts and the branches [...]
I’ve revamped the language section of this blog in attempts to make it more readable and more interesting. This version is slightly longer than the old version, but I think the information is a lot more personable. I think I’ve transcribed this information in a way that tells a little about the history of the [...]
The shortest month became the longest. What happened? End of January and Early February: I traveled to the Pusat Volkonologi dan Geologi Mitigasi Bencana (CVGHM, Center for Volcanology and Geologic Hazards Mitigation) headquarters in Bandung, West Java. It took me seven hours to travel from my site to Surabaya and another thirteen hours by train [...]
Track and Cross Country were a large part of my college experience for four years, so competitive running often enters my mind as an analogous explanation for the world around me. Anyone who has seen a Gold Medal sprint during the Summer Olympics—even those who don’t follow track—can understand the tension that builds up as [...]
Someday I’ll actually get to writing about real wayang (including the two performances I participated in), but today, I’m only going to write about the wayang kertas assignment I gave to my Seni Budaya students at the end of the semester. Kertas means paper–the assignment was to draw any wayang character the student wanted on [...]
This post is going to be a little more casual. Hmm, what happened in November… Two wayang performances–one of my counterparts is a dhalang, a puppet master of the traditional shadow puppetry artform. The performances are all-night affairs. I followed two nights in a row and performed in each show. For the first show, [...]
My counterpart and I created our own deck of cards with information about the world written in both English and bahasa Indonesia. We use the deck as a means of selecting students to participate in class as well as an interesting piece of media to keep the students engaged. Each suit of the 52-card poker [...]
I just wrote a page titled ‘Banyak bahasa’ about the languages of Indonesia and Java. I have posted it as a ‘page’ under the tab ‘Learn About Indonesia.’ You’ll find that tab at the top of this website. Or you can click this link to go straight to the new article. Enjoy!
This blog entry is a long and wandering account of what my day looks like on a week to week basis. Parts of the text jump into a more reflective mood, but this post still paints a simple rendition of what my life has been like. I wish I could write something more substantial right [...]
‘Twas a good month to start the Saat series because the Julian calendar month of August 2011 happened to include Ramadan, Indonesia’s Independence Day, and the Kasada festival at G. Bromo—possibly the three most important annual events to occur in East Java. Independence Day follows the Julian calendar and is, therefore, celebrated every August 17, [...]
The blog includes a short video and a longer textual explanation of the Kasada festival at Gunung Bromo (Mt. Bromo) in East Java, Indonesia. Besides from being a beautiful and entertaining ritual, the legend and practice of Kasada also describe an interesting relationship between the local people and the volcanic environment. The thoughts and information [...]
Instead of updating my blog with frequent posts about “I did this today/I did that today” and ending up with a thousand entries by the time things are done, I’m going to instead try to distill each month into one post full of tidbits from my journal, e-mail correspondences, or memory. I think that this [...]
Instead of updating my blog with frequent posts about “I did this today/I did that today” and ending up with a thousand entries by the time things are done, I’m going to instead try to distill each month into one post full of tidbits from my journal, e-mail correspondences, or memory. I think that this [...]
Instead of updating my blog with frequent posts about “I did this today/I did that today” and ending up with a thousand entries by the time things are done, I’m going to instead try to distill each month into one post full of tidbits from my journal, e-mail correspondences, or memory. I think that this [...]
Starting in August is the Muslim month of Ramadan. School hours will be significantly reduced to accommodate fasting during daylight hours. Ramadan is a major Islamic holiday, and the tradition of fasting means different things to different people. My students and the students of other Volunteers are intensely interested in U.S. Muslims or how non-Muslim U.S. citizens [...]
A Sweet and spicy peanut sauce served best with rice, spinach, and sprouts Nasi pecel (rice with pecel sauce) is my favorite food in Indonesia. If you are familiar with my eating habits in the U.S., you wont be surprised as to why I like pecel so much. This stuff is practically peanut butter for [...]
This was the question posed to me one Saturday morning. Actually, the title of this blog post wasn’t at all the original question posed to me. When I got to school Saturday morning, I was told that the staff of our school—a religious institution—would be attending a meeting with the Ministry of Religion somewhere in [...]
Indonesian streets are packed full with sepeda motors (motor cycle, vespa, moped, etc.). Cars aren’t uncommon, but they have to travel a lot slower on the small roads, so just about everyone travels on sepeda motor. I’ve seen kids who looked as young as age 7 driving these things (though this is definitely illegal) to [...]
Traditional Indonesian material is known as batik, a colorfully printed, often ornate pattern used primarily to make shirts. Both men and women wear them. They’re considered appropriately formal for an official event, but I’ve seen farmers wearing old ragged silk batiks in the fields. Different colors and patterns ‘originate’ from different places across Indonesia, but [...]
The food in Indonesia has been delicious, but it is also been the one constant source of frustration throughout PST. The food doesn’t exactly make the healthiest meals in the world, and the quantity that is served to me is often uncomfortably too much. A majority of the trainees have had similar experiences to mine. [...]
This is by far the most boring point of the ‘A Reflection Pre-Service Training’ series, but it will give you a rough idea of how I’ve been spending my last 10 weeks. This is just an outline, and commentary on some of these subjects is given in later posts. Week 1: Bahasa Indonesia; TEFL training [...]
The first ten weeks in Indonesia are drawing to a close. So far, I have participated in what Peace Corps calls ‘Pre-Service Training.’ I’ve been living with a host family in a village outside of one of East Java’s bigger towns. The village is quite urban—meaning it’s densely populated, but not necessarily developed in the [...]
Coming Soon… ___ Eight Part INTRO / PST Schedule / Daily Schedule / Language Acquisition / Food / Clothes / Transportation / Teaching Experiences and PC Activities / Other Fun Side Adventures
Coming Soon… ___ Eight Part INTRO / PST Schedule / Daily Schedule / Language Acquisition / Food / Clothes / Transportation / Teaching Experiences and PC Activities / Other Fun Side Adventures
What has the experience been like thus far as the Peace Corps group traveled from San Francisco to Surabaya, Indonesia? What sorts of things have you been doing in Pre-Service Training orientation in Surabaya? Where will you be staying for the 10-week Pre-Service training? As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall [...]
I have officially received placement in East Java, Indonesia. Staging will be on April 4th in San Francisco, and departure will be on April 5th. More information will follow soon. to see a map of Java, follow the link below Refer to the included map for details on East Java and Indonesia. The map will [...]
Welcome to my Peace Corps Masters International blog. This is where you will be able to follow my experiences as a volunteer and researcher throughout my time in the Peace Corps. Updated information will be infrequent during the Fall and Spring semesters as I complete coursework and await a Peace Corps assignment. In the mean [...]
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