First Entry, Yay!

 Halo and greetings from Bali!

Wednesday I arrived in the beautiful country of Indonesia after a long 33 hours of travel time.  I am here studying in the SIT: Indonesia program with 14 other American girls.   They are all incredibly nice, which is wonderful because I was worried when I first heard that it was a bunch of girls.  Right now we are in orientation in a city called Amlapur, which is on the east coast on Bali.  On Wednesday we will travel to the village of Bedulu (near Ubud) to meet our homestay families, and I am really excited!  There we have to give them a short speech about ourselves in Bahasa Indonesia (the lingua franca of Indonesia which we are studying.)   The language is pretty easy to learn.  The most difficult thing about it is learning vocabulary, but that comes with time and practice.  Our teachers, Pak Yudi, Dede, and Aries, have been extremely helpful, and are just delightful to be around.  The program director, Bu Ari, and her assistant, Mirah, crack me up constantly and have been incredibly helpful.  I am happy we are blessed with such a wonderful staff!

Yesterday we did our first “drop-off” activity.  Basically, we were all taken to surrounding villages via bemo and dropped off individually for an hour to make conversation with local people without help from our teachers or classmates.  It was just me, a notebook, and hopefully people that spoke Indonesian instead of Balinese... scary.    Although it was intimidating at first, I was thrown into very convenient situation.  They dropped me off in front of a store which was initially barren, but once I walked up the dirty steps I was warmly greeted by a woman who promptly sat me down and told me to wait.  So, I waited.  A few moments later a girl came out to greet me.  Her name was Anida and she was a 21-year-old student who was studying in Denpasar to be an English language teacher.   Lucky, right?!  We chatted together for the whole hour in the Indonesian version of Spanglish, whatever that is.  She told me all about herself and introduced me to the women of her family.  All in all, it was a great experience, and I learned a lot about the language and culture of Bali.  I am thrilled to have a whole Indonesian family to talk to in just a few short days!

 Today we went to a local market to practice our newly acquired Indonesian bargaining skills.  It is pretty much the same as bargaining at the Indian market in Panama, which was a relief!  We all purchased our first pakaian adat, or traditional ceremonial clothing.  The outfit is beautiful, especially the batik!   Even though Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world, people on Bali are mostly Hindu, so we will learn a lot about both.  I am very anxious to get to the homestay, because I think that we will learn a lot from them.  I bet they’re super sweet too.   Everyone in Indonesia has been so far!  In a couple of weeks we have a two week excursion to Yogyakarta (on Java) which is what I am most excited about.  Good thing I brought my parallel Indonesian-English Bible with me! (Makasih, Agung!!)  I am hopeful about the chance to share Jesus with one or both of my homestay families while I am here, or at least introduce them to what my relationship with him is all about.  Because this program has an artistic aspect to it, we will be doing artsy activities throughout our stay, like making batik in Java (yay!) and various religious crafts in Bali.  There is just so much to look forward to.   I can’t wait to be able to tell you of all of the great adventures we’ll have!

Sampai nanti!!