home for a bit

Hey everyone i am sorry its been such a long time since i updated you on everything. I know that most people me on facebook as well so i didnt think i needed to write on here but i have heard some people want more of an update so here it is.

I cant believe how fast this school year went. Since i last blogged i have gone a few adventures. March i went on my first trip out of the country to Maylasia. It was a great trip. I got to see the largest flower in the world in bloom. Its called the rafflesia flower and its about 3 feet in diameter or bigger and can weigh up to about 20 lbs. It was a sight to see because they are only in bloom for like 2 weeks and I saw it. I have some pictures posted on Facebook.

In April i went to Jojakarta which is close by to the volcano Mt Murapi that erupted in October. We got to see the destruction it caused and believe it or not it was still smoking from october. Also there I saw two famous temples, Borobudur a buddist temple and Prambanan a hindu temple. They are both built during the 9th century. Its amazing to think that these temples were made with no modern technology.

In May i spent a weekend exploring a new island of Indonesia. It was remote and you had to get there by fast boat. It was great no cars or motor bikes. If you wanted to get around you walked, rode a bicycle, or went on a horse drawn cart. What a relaxing weekend. We did have a few hiccups with transportation but made our flights on time and know what to do for next time.

Also in May i moved apartments. I love my new apartment!! Its about the same size as the other one but is a 10 minute walk to school and i can get to downtown in like 15-20mins. I live in a little residential neighborhood and we can walk to 3 different malls. Its nice to have options and not be limited to what you do because of traffic. I am sure i will love life even more this next year.
We have had some troubles trying to get taxi's to find our new place because there are many streets that look the same and with the same name. We live in between two pretty big roads but there are 5 streets names Jalan Dahksa and we live in between two of them lol. I have only lived there 3 weeks but enjoy my little garden and roof top pool that the apartment has to offer.

The school year finished about the same as everyone elses. The students last day was on June 9th. The school year went by so fast. I am sad to see my kids move on because we had such a great year but a majority of them will be back next year so i will still see them.

I stayed the weekend after school ended and left on monday and arrived states side last Tuesday. After 3 long plane rides i finally made it home. All the flights went pretty smoothly and were on time so that was such a blessing. I was a little jet lagged but got over it pretty quickly. I was back to normal by Saturday.

Being home is nice but different. Things here dont change but I feel that i have so its weird to come back. I have been just relaxing the last week. I have spent a lot of time with the family. I will be in PA for most of the next month. I will be going to Colorado to visit some friends and then go to NC where i used to live to visit friends and colleagues in July for 5 days. I hope i get to see a lot of people while i am home. I wont be home this Christmas because i have decided to travel to Sri Lanka and Australia.

If you want to hear more about my adventures feel free to email me or send me a msg on facebook. Thanks for following me and my adventures over the last year.

Summer plans are finally made!

I know that most of you are wondering summer plans already but summer is still months away but it will be over before you know it. The snow will be gone and will be warming up for you guys on the other side of the world. Here its about 86 everyday! I am still loving it.

I havent done to much since i last posted. I went a long holiday weekend to another indonesia island. It was only a Thursday-Sunday trip but a lot of fun. Its amazing how each one of these islands are completely different. Some of you may know that Indonesia is one of the largest muslim countries in the world. If you didnt now you do! With that being said it was a completely different experience in Menado on the island of North Sulawesi. I felt like i was in the jungle and in some parts i was. We stayed out in the country and were surrounded by green trees and tons of palm trees. It was nice to breath fresh air made by all these trees. Some major highlights from the trip were going to see the smallest monkey in the world the Tarseir monkey. Please look him up. They are nocturnal so we walked through the jungle at dusk and went to a tree in the middle of the jungle to see him. Another great thing in Menado was the diving outside Bunaken Island. This are is a national park area and it is protected so it was just beautiful. I will have more pictures up soon about what i saw. I was surprised of all the different corals and fish that i saw. I even saw an 80yr old sea turtle. He was HUGE! He was about 5 ft in diameter. The other turtle was probably about 3ft in diameter. I was so surprised i was just snorkeling and not diving.

I cant believe all the awesome things i have got to do so far and its all here in Indonesia. Next month will be my first time visiting outside Indo. I am going to Maylasia for 6 days.

School update. I got three new students in January. Two of the three are adapting well but I am having lots of struggles with the third. I just dont know if our school is the right place for her. We struggle with things daily. So please pray for Gita and I. It can be challenging every day.

Something cool that happened in my room was when Carl Anderson came in for Professional Development from the US. He is a guru in teaching writing and has written many books. He came into my room and taught and it was great to see him use my students and I learned a lot about my students from the experience.

I miss home but i am happy seeing the world. Just FYI i will be home June 14th-July25th. Trip to NC end of June and Colorado trip mid July.

december update and happy 2011

Wow I dont know where the time goes. I cant believe we are already in 2011. These last 6mths have flown by. I hope you all had an awesome holiday season! I went home to see my family. It was a long trip home and I didnt get to sleep as much as I would have liked on the plane rides but I made there. When i got home it was like a blizzard. I had 70 degree temperate change when i made it to PA. December was a little harder than I anticipated with the unexpected passing of my grandfather. With this I went home a week earlier and spent more time with the family. I was so thankful that my school was so willing to help rearrange my ticket and let me leave 4 days early from break.

Being home was definitely good but weird. It was a little of a culture shock seeing so many westerners. I dont see many outside of my school. It was so weird wearing heavy clothes instead of shorts and flip flops. Most of the time I wore a long sleeve under my sweaters to stay warm enough. One thing i really enjoyed was being able to drive myself around and not have to wait for a taxi to come get me but leaving when i wanted to and not waiting in traffic was fantastic.

While i was home i was able to see many friends and family. I am not back in Jakarta and enjoying the warm weather and being back in my own place. I went to school to prepare for my new semester and met one of my three new students. I cant wait for the new year to begin.

Hope you all had a great holiday and talk to you soon!

November month of 1sts

Wow November was a month of many firsts in Indonesia. I took my first trip by myself to visit my friends from North Carolina on the neighboring island of Sumatra on November 5th. It was a hassle to get there because i guess my flight didn't go through when i booked it online but i made it there and was very thankful that the price of the flight hadn't gone up. I got to spend time with Matt and Jess and their beautiful girls and see their community where they live. The people they work with are great. It was a blast swimming and relaxing with them. They know so much more of the language than me but they have to. Everyone there speaks Bahasa indonesia and no english at all for the most part. Where I teach in English all day, i only have to use Bahasa to speak to taxi drivers and such. I can get by but need to continue to take lessons.

On the unfortunate side, i put my back out but i am doing so much better and i am back to 100%. It only took about 2 weeks to recover. I only missed 1 day of school. I could and should have missed more but I pushed through.

I went to my first shrimp boil. It was great. A big American oil company hosts it yearly. We had a blast seeing many people we know from the JIS community. If you have never been to a s shrimp boil i definitely reccommend going to one. At this one we got an apron and towel as we walked in the door. It was all you can eat, you put on your apron and walk up to an empty spot at a table and they bring the food to you. IT was awesome! The shrimp, corn on the cob, potatoes, and mushrooms all had amazing flavor. This was the first time where I kinda felt like i was at home in the states. There were many Americans there! It was great to hear the southern twang accents of people from Texas and Louisiana. They had a band and stayed for awhile.

I had my first visitor from outside the country come see me this past weekend. My old roommate and colleague Sarah from teaching in NC came to visit me. She is living outside of Manila and took a 4hr flight and came in for the weekend. We had a blast together. We shopped and bargain hunted a lot. I got 4 dresses for like $35 total. I was happy and got lots of other cool things as well. On our trip around the city on Monday, Sarah and I went to North Jakarta to the port. Our taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong spot and we ended up riding on the back of a motorbikes to get to the right part of the port. We weren't going to do it at first but this young man was very nice and talked to us and since their wasn't room for both Sarah and I on his bike he wished us safe travels and left. Five minutes later he came back and had a friend and helmets for us to ride with them. It was great they didn't even charge us to ride with them. Thanks to our new friend Sano, we got to see North Jakarta by motor bike and got to the port safely. It was great fun, and i might actually take bike more often. It would have been scary by myself but with Sarah by my side we did it together.

I cant believe here i have been here over 4 months and I will be home in less than 3 weeks. I am excited to come home but i will only be in PA for this break since I am only home for a little over 2 weeks. If you want to get a hold of me please call my parents place or msg or email. I would love to see you!

Please pray that I have a good flying experience home that I don't have any delays and that I can sleep during my flight. Also i would like you to be praying that my back doesn't give me any problems with a long 16hr flight as just one of my legs of my trip. Thanks!

so I just got back from another Bali adventure. I was on October break (end of first semester) last week and spent 9 days in Bali. This time i went all over the island. I went with two of my girlfriends Jessie and Christina. We arrived on Saturday and drove three hours up the coast to the north western part and went to Tulamben and did some snorkeling/diving. I am not dive certified yet but plan to start the adventure process before Christmas. I went snorkeling every time then went diving. I got to see a WW II ship wreck and then an awesome coral reef. I was surprised how much sea life i could see from the surface. I saw fish that were so tiny and then some that were huge. When i mean huge i mean between 3-4ft long. It wasn't to scary, it was just neat swimming amongst it all.

After spending 2 nights there we got in the car and unfortunately this lady was a crazy driver. We rode for about 2 hrs going up and down the mountains and through the country a lot of the times on the wrong side of the road trying to pass people. I was car sick sitting up front. But we did make to Ubud safely. We stayed there for 2 nights as well. Our hotel there was so nice. We had our own private balcony and looked over the rice paddies. My favorite part of the whole 9 days was in Ubud. We did a 25km bike rode mostly down hill through the villages and country side outside of town. We had an amazing tour guide name Jaring. He spoke great English and was so funny. He was so knowledgeable and made the trip a lot of fun.

During this tour we got to eat breakfast overlook mt bantur and the amazing crater lakes, went through a village compound, shucked and cut rice in the rice paddy, some village children sang to us,and got to see a little bit of a Hindu celebration all while biking. It was an all day experience and completely worth it. At the end we had an amazing lunch with roast duck and other Balinese traditional food.

The other day we spent in Ubud we went to the market and around the town. I worked on speaking Bahasa to the locals and bartering for goods. We had so much fun and the people were great. I got a lot of good things including some wooden carved masks and some presents for my family members.

The last part of our trip was going an hr away back toward the airport and going to the Seminyak Kuta area. This is more of the beachy party scene area. I came here for Idul fitri but learned so much about the area. One day we went to the beach, one day we went to Uluwati temple, one day we just laid by the pool, and we finished the trip with some more shopping.

We had some nice dinners here. We met up with one of my colleagues and Echo beach for seafood and that was nice and we even tried out the party night life.

My favorite event in Kuta was going down to Nusa Dua and going to the Uluwati temple. This is one of the oldest temples in Bali. It is up on the cliffs and surrounded by monkeys. Please see my pictures. We had a good time watching the monkeys. The monkeys are funny. They tell you before going in no sunglasses, flashy jewelery or anything. Be care and hold on to your stuff.

In the first 10-15mins of being inside the temple we heard a girl scream and it was because the monkey stole her soda. He then drank her soda and look at my pics you will see it . Then later as we were walking around i had a monkey climb up my leg and try to steal a camera case that i had on top of my purse. He tried 2 different times and of course i scream and flipped out a little bit and kind of threw the monkey off me. We even saw a monkey with a mans glasses. The funniest part was watching them play around. As we were leaving we were talking to a Belgium scientist and my friend Christina had a monkey jump from one car land on her head then go to the next. It was pretty funny. She was more shocked than anything.

Kuta was good but crazy fun. I have never seen so many young Aussies in one place. This place is college party town central. There isn't really a drinking age here so there were lots of people from 18-22 partying for the semester break in college and Europeans on holiday.

We had fun and i stayed out late a few times but definition of late is different compared to others. I think late is anytime after 12:30-2. While my friends normally didn't get home until 330-530 in the morning. One day they even said on the cab ride back they watched the sun come up. The Kuta area does have lots of great live bands but i swear they all played the same songs in almost the same order. We would hop from place to place and hear the same songs.

I have learned my lesson with Bali go to the quiet beaches for most of the time and leave Kuta for the 20 yr olds. I cant wait to go back to Ubud and see more of the island. There is so much to do. On my next trip i am going climb a volcano and go see the elephants and maybe try some surfing.

Well that's it for now. I just have to find out where to plan my next adventure to!

Another Bali Adventure

bali trip

I know it’s been awhile since I have posted anything. I finally got out of Jakarta for a short holiday. On Wednesday I left and went to Bali. It was a great time. We stayed in Semanyak, which was nice and quiet the area we stayed not to touristy. We had a five-minute walk and we were on the beach.

I really liked where we stayed it was nice and better than what I expected considering we didn’t book it until Monday and we left Wednesday. We were going to just stay in hostels but decided to get a hotel. We had our own two bedroom apt with a bathroom, living room, kitchen and balcony. We had breakfast there every morning and one night I had dinner there. There were two pools and it was pretty relaxing! I loved having a private balcony to sit on and read and relax.

One of the cool things about Bali compared to Jakarta is that most of the people are Hindu and not Muslim. Therefore, we saw lots of carved gods, Buddha’s, and offerings. It was so neat to see people put out offerings daily. Some of the would be just flowers, slices of oranges and many other things. A lot of the businesses would have new offerings daily. Also where we entered the beach was outside of this temple and it was a private part of the beach where the locals would make offerings and pray. We saw people praying there always and it was kind of cool.

While at the beach I saw the highest waves I have ever seen. I have seen some big ones too. I remember going to Wilmington one time after a hurricane had just passed and these don’t even compare. Even though it was a red flag day we swam anyways. The waves were a little rough and you didn’t go out very far because of the undertow. I don’t think I went out past my waste but when the waves came you got pushed around and it was a blast. Yesterday, we went to beach again and walked the whole beach. It took us about an hr and half. It was cool to see the differences in the beaches in the area we were in. Near Semanyak the waves were much bigger but the closer you got to Kuda they were smaller and you had a lot more surfers. I couldn’t believe how talented these surfers were. I got a little sunburnt but its okay I will be tan tomorrow. The sun is much stronger there than in Jakarta because they don’t have pollution like we do.

Other things we did while in Bali were some shopping in the rain on our first full day there, a two and half hr spa treatment with massages and body scrub, and dinners out every night.

I can’t wait to go back in October and do some more shopping and see other parts of Bali. I am going to go to Ubud and climb a volcano and hope to do some snorkeling.