I Climbed a Volcano!

So volcano climbing has been on the bucket list for a while and this past weekend I actually got to go! (Because nothing sounds scary after you move to the other side of the world). We took a LOOONG car ride out of the Jakarta area to climb Papandayan, a volcano that erupted about 10 years ago. The nicer part about the whole thing is that we drove pretty far up into the foothills before we started the hike. So even though we only hiked for about 3 and a half hours, we ended up at 7,500 feet.

We got there around noon on Saturday and our guides fed us food before we started our hike through the sulfur fields. I have to say, I found it pretty funny that the hike was labeled "easy" as it required quite a bit of climbing. In the US it would have been labeled "advanced" with a warning for people with heart and health conditions. While nothing about the trail was tricky or required special equipment, it was very physically demanding. My Fitbit counts every ten feet in elevation as a flight of stairs and it says I climbed 154 flights that the first day.

Once we made it to our campsite, which was also the sunrise location, our guides set up tents for us and cooked us dinner. It was really nice only having to take clothes and personal items and not have to bring up tents and equipment.

The next morning stole my breath away with the sunrise over the peaks.

The second day we hiked around a bit and saw some Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music movie). It only grows above 5,900 feet from sea level.  It was looking a little dry (as it is the dry season here) but we promptly sang just about every song from The Sound of Music while hiking the rest of the day.

 

Then we explored what is known as The Dead Forest. This is where the eruption happened recently and killed off everything with just the tree trunks left.

Then we spent about two hours hiking down the stairs carved into the mountainside and trying desperately not to slip and fall. Thankfully we only had some minor slips and we all made it down with just a few scrapes.

I rather enjoyed my time on the volcano and I can't wait for my next adventure!

Indonesian (Bahasa) words:

Ibu: Miss/ Mrs.

Pak: Sir/Mr.

Terima kasih: Thank you

-Rachael

Lost My Phone, Discovered How to Buy Cheese, and Embraced the Culture

It is really a very typical small town girl in a big city story. While I was at the mall (which is HUGE by the way) someone stole my phone right out of my backpack. If this was a romantic comedy, it would have been raining dramatically and Chris Evans would have shown up to rescue me. Neither of those things happened (in case you were wondering).

However, something wonderful did come out of it. One of the teachers and his wife ran into me at the mall right after I had lost it and gave me hugs and prayed for me and that made me feel a lot better. Then my new teacher friends asked around and within 48 hours I had bought a phone that one of the other teachers had refurbished recently and it was like brand new (and better than my old one). I felt very loved by the way they pulled together for me. Everyone kept checking in on me and took me to the mall to get a new number and phone case.

And if any of you want to message me, if you download Whatsapp onto your phone you can message me any time!

But I know you are all dying to know how to buy cheese here. Well, you can do it the normal boring way and just go to the store. But it turns out when you don't live right next to Wisconsin, cheese is way expensive! They don't make cheese in Asia the way North America and Europe do so most of it here is imported. And because it has a shelf life, cheese costs lots.

So the way to get around that is to know a local who buys it in bulk. I ordered a block of mozzarella through my teacher friend Zoe who gets hers from a local. I got a block ten inches square and three inches thick for about $24. I cut it into blocks and put it into my freezer. Every so often I pull out a block to thaw and keep it in the fridge to cut and use. I have no clue where it comes from but it is really good cheese!

Embracing the culture here is not so hard as I thought it would be. Once you know things are just different, it becomes easier to accept. Orderly lines and procedures are not commonplace. People may cut in front of you while you are waiting, and I have yet to discover the rules of the road. Horns are used a lot to communicate while driving and motorbikes can pretty much do whatever they want on roads that often do not have centerlines or curbs.

Not everything happens on time here. The locals joke that "Indo time" means you can show up 20 to 30 minutes late. School, of course, is not like that and I think some of the students struggle to come to class on time because they grew up in a culture that says time isn't so important.

I am growing to know the quirky little things that make this country what it is. From the crazy patterned clothing to the rice with every meal to the crazy driving practices, I think I will be happy to call Indonesia home for the next two years.

Indonesian words:

Bulia: a white person from another country

Selamat pagi (sometimes shortened to just "pagi"): good morning

Nasi: cooked rice

-Rachael