Jalan-Jalan

February 9, 2016 by Mackenzie

In December and January I was able to do a little jalan-jalan (travel) around Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and let me tell you – it was very much needed!

Due to the smoke, my school didn’t have a proper winter holiday – instead, we only got December 24 and 25 off and December 31 and January 1. Luckily, those lined up with weekends so I had two four-day weekends. I didn’t want to sit in an empty asrama (dorm) on Christmas, so I decided to join my friend and fellow ETA, Shalina, in Jogja for the Christmas break!

Jogja is… wow. I’m so very jealous of the ETAs who are placed there. Jogja is a bustling city in Java known for being the cultural heart of Indonesia.

Malioboro – the famous market street

Shalina and I spent our short vacation exploring all that Jogja has to offer – we went to the Keraton, or Sultan’s Palace:

We went to Taman Sari, the Water Castle:

The Palace of the Prince of Solo:

And of course… Borobudur and Prambanan. Borobudur is a 9th century Buddhist temple, and is the largest Buddhist temple in the world… it’s truly indescribable… but let me try. It’s enormous. There are nine levels that you can walk all the way around and each level has reliefs depicting Buddha’s life. In total, there are 2,672 relief panels, 504 buddha statues, and 72 stupas with buddhas sitting inside. It’s estimated that it took 75 YEARS to build. Imagine… an entire lifetime. And, most impressively of all (to me at least) is that they used no glue/cement/other binding material. It’s all interlocking stones. And it’s now lasted some 1300 years. Holy shit.

Parts of it are destroyed… note the headless Budha

Prambanan Temple is a 9th century Hindu temple and is again, one of the largest temples in the world.

The compound is composed of several large temples and you can climb up each one and see the statues to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Gah, it’s just so, so cool. And SO OLD.

I call this… “sassy mack”

Oh, and we also ate a bunch of Western food 😀 😀 This was our Christmas Eve dinner – new tradition I think! (also, omg my mouth is watering just looking at this!)

The pizza was at this adorable Italian restaurant with the prettiest patio. I was in love.

Okay, so after Jogja, I came home and had a very quiet New Year’s. I went down to the roundabout and joined in the festivities with a friend – but other than that, I spent almost the whole weekend at home. I was pretty bored so I decided to read Harry Potter – haven’t read that in years! I read book 1 on New Year’s Eve. Book 2 on New Year’s Day. And eventually finished all 7 books in the month of January. LOL. #junglelife

The third week of January, I headed off to Jakarta for our Mid-Year Enrichment Conference. I hadn’t seen most of my fellow ETAs since our orientation in September so it was a BLAST to be back together again. We all have so many hilarious stories and it’s so good to talk to other people who understand the cockroach struggles…

The group of ETAs and coteachers at the US Embassy Chief of Mission’s Residence

Our coteachers came along with us so we could do some teacher training all together – I chose to bring Tisia and we had a blast 😀 We even had matching dresses made…

The ACCESS coteachers who I worked with during the evacuations in Jakarta were helping out with the teacher training. It was SO wonderful to see them again and I was just a very, very happy girl that week.

We also put on a little show at the @America center in Jakarta. It was a pretty amusing show with each region contributing a 15 minute something… My group, the Kalimantan group, did a puppet show. Yep. It was awesome.

Then… I went home to Palangkaraya for about 16 hours and then jetted off to Thailand! My students had their semester exams so I was free to jalan-jalan. We only get a certain amount of international vacation days and domestic vacation days so I really wanted to use my international days while I had the chance. So… off to Thailand I went! I’ve been wanting to get my scuba diving certification for awhile now and decided this solo vacation would be the perfect time to do it!

I threw this trip together the day before I left for Jakarta. It involved three flights and a five hour ferry. When we finally pulled up to the dock to get on the ferry, my jaw dropped. This is what I saw:

I knew I was in for a great week.

There are several islands/destinations in Southern Thailand and I’m not sure how I randomly picked the most beautiful and remote island ever but when the boat docked (after a five hour ferry ride!) my jaw dropped for a second time that day. This is what I saw:

And sunset night #1

Most of my six days there were spent diving. The PADI course is several hour of classroom work/movies and then one confined water dive (pool) and four ocean water dives! Omg I was terrified at first. I almost quit. I was in a class with three other macho guys. Like army, not scared of anything guys. And then there’s me. The adventurous but never life-on-the-line adventurous kind of girl. But hey. I had to prove that girls can do this too. I am proud that I beat two of the guys in the 200 meter swim and while while I was terrified for parts of the diving – once I got over it, it was AWESOME. I 100% loved it. And now I’m a certified scuba diver!

(For anyone else who randomly wants to visit Koh Tao, Thailand and learn to dive – I can’t recommend Master Divers enough. Lemme know if you want more details…)

This trip is best told in photos so I’ll just share the rest of them… 😀

Oceanside brunch

Hiking

Stunning view of the island

The other view from the hike… WOW

Sunrise on the ferry home…

And then… I had to say goodbye to painted skies and endless oceans, and come home to Palangkaraya. Yup, think Flint’s water is bad??

The BEST Worst Day (Part XII)

September 16, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part XII:

Hour seven of, hopefully, eight:

In twos and threes, fellow members of our cohort have departed for their sites throughout the day, and now, it’s just Carlie and I left… with only another hour to wait, if we’re lucky. We were on the road before 7am this morning, driving the three or so hours from Bandung to Jakarta, and now, ten hours after leaving the hotel, we’re SO close to being on our way home.

The one thing that stands in our way, however, is the lovely smog that has descended on Palangkaraya at state of emergency levels. It’s all over the news: flights have been canceled, school has been canceled… it’s terrible. The smoke comes from the illegal slash and burn deforestation to create room for palm oil fields – aka another example of Western capitalism destroying the environment and upending people’s lives. Here’s my favorite video illustrating this:

It’s one thing to read about it, another thing to see it in a funny awareness video, and a FAR different thing to be living it. It’s similar to when I was in Madagascar learning about forest conservation and how poverty is driving the local people to cut down the forests. But here, it’s the demand for palm oil (in everything from cooking oils to laundry detergent) that is driving the local people (hired by large corporations) to burn the forests to make way for palm oil fields. I’m still learning about all of this – but my understanding is that it’s either “burn the forests” time or it’s just made worse because it’s dry season. Either way, the smog has descended on Palangkaraya (and much of the islands of Kalimantan and Sumatra) and we are stuck in the airport because the planes can’t land (which, knowing Indonesia’s air travel record (abysmal), I’m perfectly content being grounded for as long as need be!)

Going a little crazy!

Hour eight of a now indefinite period:

It’s 6:30pm and we were supposed to board at 6:15. They have stopped making announcements in English, the bilingual announcer must have gone home, so I’m trying desperately to pick apart the Indonesian announcement and listen for “enam, tujuh, delapan” (678, our flight number) or for “palangkaraya”. So far no word. I ask the flight agent in my broken bahasa, and she responds in broken English, “something wrong with the weather. We do not know.” Awesome. Oh, and they already canceled the previous flight to Palangkaraya… so our hopes of this one leaving are slim.

However, this last hour has been the most enjoyable hour yet of our airport stay. I had been flipping through my notes from the last two weeks of Bahasa class when the guy sitting next to me sees the Bahasa words and asks if I speak Indonesian. “Sedikit” (a little), I respond. We start chatting (in English at this point) about where we are from, that Carlie and I are teachers in Palangkaraya, etc… He invites us to his wedding in Bandung in a few weeks (damn the travel policy). Later, he asks me to practice my Indonesian with him. I jump on the opportunity. I absolutely loved my Bahasa classes in Bandung and feel like I learned so much – definitely enough to have a basic conversation, and here’s someone new I can practice with! He takes my notes, flips through them, and starts quizzing me on words. I nail every single one (thanks quizlet). By now, there’s about 15 people near us watching, laughing, and pointing at us. They, and my new friend Adi, are absolutely delighted. We break away from the notes and a natural conversation flows – I’m having a blast and I CAN ACTUALLY DO THIS!

Bahasa friend!

Hour nine:

After exchanging numbers, taking photos, and him helping us learn that yes, our flight has been delayed indefinitely, Adi has boarded his flight to Benjarmasin and we are back to entertaining ourselves. However, by now, a number of people have witnessed our “amazing” (in their words) Bahasa skills and two more people start to talk with us. Unlike Adi, they speak ZERO English. However, they are from Palangkaraya so we have “much” in common. I thought the guy said he went to SMA 5 (my school) but later learned, that it was the woman’s daughter who actually went to SMA 5. We discovered this after the woman throws her phone at Carlie excitedly and says, “talk! My son!” Ummm, okay?

Carlie chats with her (quickly realized she meant daughter, not son), and then passes the phone to me. She has very good English and explains that she is currently in University in East Java but graduated from SMA 5 a few years ago! We chat excitedly and exchange contact information so we can meet up when she is home on holiday. How fun! Who would have thought that would have come out of randomly talking to a stranger with no English in the airport!

More new friends!

Hour 10:

It’s 8pm now (flight was supposed to leave at 6:45pm), and there is sudden movement around us. Our new friends say, “time, it time!” and we jump up excitedly. Finally! We are however, slightly concerned by the decision as it’s now pitch black, we’re certain the smoke is still there, and we’re flying on one of the less than ideal airlines. (We later learn – after arriving in Palangkaraya – that Garuda Airlines, the best one, canceled all their flights but Lion air will “take the risk” so that they don’t have to pay for people to stay in a hotel. Oh, Indonesia…)

But I’m happy to be on my way again so we board the plane and settle in for the short 1 ½ flight. Then, I get lucky again. The guy next to me asks what I’m doing in Palangkaraya, and I tell him I’m a teacher at SMA 5. He says he graduated from there in 2001! We continue chatting and he learns that I know a little Indonesian. So he decides that he’ll speak only in English, so he can practice that, and I’ll speak only in Bahasa, so I can practice that. We have an absolutely delightful conversation for the entire plane ride, sharing life stories, drawing maps of what the school looked like then, and now, and all the while, writing new words for each other in our respective notebooks. It was so.much.fun. I used the basic words I know to have a full, and fruitful conversation – it was amazing! I had no idea I could say all that I did in Indonesian!

When we finally land, scarily, as we land WAY to fast because I’m pretty certain they couldn’t see the ground through all the smoke (jk, I know they have instruments for that, but actually it was terrifying), I exchange contact information with him and make plans to see him again soon. He’s a journalist for one of the newspapers here and wants to interview me for a story about Fulbright and teaching here 🙂 We walk onto the tarmac and holy shit, I’ve never experienced anything like it. You know the super foggy mornings, when buildings are hidden and the rays of light look huge through the fog? Imagine that, but it’s not fog, it’s SMOG. Everywhere. It’s this thick haze that has descended everywhere and you can’t take a deep breathe without inhaling a mouthful of smoke, and can hardly see 100 yards ahead.

We step into the small airport, push through the crowd to get our bags, and emerge to find our counterparts and co-teachers ready and waiting to welcome us home!

This earie, smoggy city at midnight

We stop for a midnight snack of grilled banana topped with honey and cheese (interesting combo) and grilled spicy corn and then, finally, 17 hours after leaving Bandung, I open the door to my house (which actually was already standing open, sketch?) and collapse onto my bed. I’m home <3

Planes, Guns and Friends (Parts I-III)

August 23, 2015 by Mackenzie

Part 1:

I’m currently writing this while somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. I’m four hours and fifty minutes in to this ten hour flight, step one of our three-part adventure to Indonesia. Nestled in to the window seat that I somehow scored when the original occupant didn’t show up and I was relieved of my middle seat, has reminded me, again, how much I love to travel. Yes, this last week has been stressful. I only got my visa and plane ticket six days ago and have been on hold with customer service agents for what feels like the majority of my week. If I had to do this again, I would certainly have come home far sooner to begin to work out the final preparations. Eight days wasn’t nearly enough.

I won’t bore you with the details but here’s a small snippet of my time at home…

After ten days of adventure and travel with my best friend, Martha, I was quite relieved to pull my jeep into my parent’s driveway. The following day was spent unpacking and the next attending a family friend’s wedding. Then, it was off to Spokane to visit my grandparents and extended family for a few days. I returned home on the 13^th and finally, this trip sat squarely in front of me, with eight days until departure. I had constructed an eight page, color-coded to-do list and packing list and I was excited to finally begin checking things off. And I did, slowly but surely. REI, Target, Amazon… Then came the adventure of packing it all inside my suitcases… I may or may not have checked a bag that weighs 69 pounds… 🙂 (but what else are you supposed to do when you need to bring a year’s worth of contact solution?!)

The real stress came from attempting to get the insurance company to override my account so I could get a year’s worth of medication and take it with me… ha! I can tell you that while it wasn’t quite successful, (due to my naive assumption that a pharmacy would have 1200 capsules of that medication the day before I left), I did make three new friends at Regence and was apparently the talk of the department for a week 🙂

While the last few days were a tad stressful, I’m on the plane and my inner travelite is waking up. My last big trip was to Madagascar, and the year before that, to Indonesia – both of those trips, I remember descending into Antanarivo and Jakarta with pure excitement. I feel that now – and I’m still 25 hours from arrival. I’m soooooo ready for this trip. This morning, while I was filling out a last minute form for my new international bank (who conveniently shut down my account in the last week… yeah, add that to the stress…) I had to write the date and it took me a second to realize that today is 8/21! It’s the day I’ve been waiting for and counting down until for MONTHS!

I’m incredibly excited to see where I’ll be living and teaching for the next nine months. I’m nervous but thrilled to be thrown into a new culture, a foreign language (quite literally, my Bahasa studying went out the window in the last month… alas), and a new way of living. I know it will be a challenging year, but gosh, what more could an adventurous girl ask for her first year out of college?

Here’s to the next 25 hours of travel, the next year of discovery, and a lifetime of memories.

Part II:

I’m here. I’m stretched out on a bed, in an eclectic hotel room, listening to the traffic and a rooster outside my window. I’m positively exhausted but when I tried to sleep, I couldn’t… I’m just too excited to be here, and quite frankly past the point of sleep. The trip was exceptionally long. I think I’ve slept maybe 3 hours in the last two days…

We (Clara and I) flew ten hours from Seattle to Tokyo, then had a few hour layover where we met up with five others in our cohort. It was a blast to finally be in a group and share stories and the misery of this unnecessarily long trip (because its a State Dept. program we had to fly American carriers, which does not allow for the quickest or most direct route to Indonesia). We then flew seven hours to Singapore and got in at 11:30pm local time. Our flight to Jakarta wasn’t until 10am the next morning… which was made more painful by the fact that Jakarta is only a 1.5 hour flight away! We were so close!!! Yet we had to spend the whole night in the airport.

But let me tell you… the Singapore airport is incredible. A friendly airport employee suggested we sleep in the free movie theater (!!!!) but that was too loud. So we camped down by a koi fish pond and Clare and I wandered off to find an internet kiosk. On our way back we discovered free massage chairs. Like full body, super comfy massage chairs. And there were two open ones. It was a dream come true. We brought out bags over and settled in to the massage chairs for the night.

An hour later, I felt Clare hitting me and I peeked out from under the eye mask and slowly took my noise-canceling headphones off… And almost shrieked! There were five uniformed men with machine guns in front of us. UMMMMMM. I hadn’t heard them approach thanks to the headphones and Clare was frantically trying to explain why we didn’t have boarding passes…. We showed them our passports/visas and thankfully appeased them. The couple in the massage chairs next to us was not so lucky… their flight didn’t leave for two more days and they were actually trying to camp out in the airport for two days. I guess that’s what these police and their machine guns are looking for!

This was what we deliriously woke up to… except all five of them were standing directly in front of us. I took this photo as they questioned the couple next to us.

Clare and I, our hearts pounding (it was also only 3am by this point) decided to leave the massage chairs and regain the comfort and safety of our group. We moved back to them and stretched out on the floor to try and sleep (to little avail).

Hello Indonesia: country of 17,000 islands!

Finally, too many hours later it was time to board our flight. Off we went the short distance to Jakarta and then we were here!!! It was hot and humid but we were thrilled to see AMINEF staff with their signs. They brought us back to the hotel and let us chill for the day. For many of us, that meant an inexpensive, yet fantastic 60 minute massage and a shower. Praise the lord.

Welcome to Jakarta!

I also was able to meet some friends from the last time I was in Indo. Chesna and Dyah were two of my favorite coworkers at Standard Chartered Bank and I was able to meet them for lunch in Jakarta. They sent a driver out to the hotel to get me and it was so bizzare driving back through the city and it all seeming so familiar! It seems like I was just here – not two years ago! We had a lovely lunch and then it was back to the hotel for me!

A lovely lunch with Chesna and Dyah!

Dinner our first night. Nasi goreng dengan ayam (fried rice with chicken) and fresh strawberry juice. Playing it safe for now…

Part III.

After finally getting a full night’s rest, we had a security briefing this morning, learned a bit more about each of our sites and then wandered down the street to buy Indonesian sim cards. They gave us each Indonesian brick phones when we arrived and then the plan was to also get Indo sim cards for our phones. Apparently all Indonesians have multiple phones… Well, walking out of my hotel room this morning I accidentally dropped the brick phone and cracked the screen. Awesome.

So I’m down to one phone, but was able to switch the sim card in the Indo phone to my iPhone. I think I’m set now? idk… someone text me from America to test it!

In an hour we head back to the airport and Carlie and I will board our flight to Palangkaraya! I’m so excited to see my school, my house, and meet my counterpart and coteachers. I’m thankful I have a working cell phone (at least I think!) with data on it (again, I think) so while I don’t expect to have wifi at my house, I should be able to at least use Whatsapp to communicate with friends, family and AMINEF for the time being.

What a great start to this year so far! Wish me luck this next week as I head to Palangkaraya and have no idea what I’m doing or any Bahasa! I would LOVE to hear from you! Leave me a comment here, text me, or send me an email!

Xoxo Mackenzie

Madagascar 2014

June 8, 2014 by Mackenzie

I just returned from Madagascar! I had an incredible time traveling through the country, living in the rural village of Mahabo, hiking through the forests to find lemurs, and conducting interviews for my senior honors thesis! Here’s some of my favorite photos that I think best tell the story of my trip 🙂

This is the capital city Antananarivo. Our hotel was situated halfway up the central hill in the city and we had an incredible view from the room of our hotel! (Yes, we snuck up there…) We drove for two days (25 hours in a bus!) from Antananarivo to Mahabo, a rural village on the southeastern coast of the island. Part of the drive was through the mountainous jungle and the views were unbelievable. Halfway through day 2 of the drive we finally reached the Indian Ocean! Lunch stop! We finally arrived in Mahabo late on the second day of driving – here is the hut Maisie and I shared! The Missouri Botanical Garden Compound in Mahabo – our home for a few weeks. Interviewing some of the women in a local village. This was the last group interview we did – it could get a bit chaotic and wasn’t proving to be very fruitful. I think 35 people were crowded into this hut. When they saw us coming they would called the whole village and it was difficult to turn them away – but eventually we managed the delicate balance of greeting villagers and conducting one-on-one interviews. One of the women’s babies… absolutely beautiful. We went for an 8 hour hike through the forests to find lemurs and to spend the afternoon at the ocean. It was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. We would hike through a stretch of forest, then it would open up onto a beautiful rice paddy (like above) and we’d have to hike through deep mud (or zebu poop?), cross streams and push through towering grass to get to the other side! Crossing a river Another wonderful woman that I had the opportunity to interview. Her house was also home to the water filtration system that part of the team installed. Selfies with some of the schoolkids! The LOVED taking pictures and then looking back at them on the camera! There was a HUGE political rally on our last day in Mahabo. A government official came down to the village to speak about ensuring justice through the courts and 500+ of the local community came into our compound to hear her speak. It was completely overwhelming! We escaped the political rally to go watch a local soccer game. Here’s the cheering squad! After two weeks in Mahabo, we drove for 2.5 days back to Antananarivo, the capital city. On our very last day in Madagascar, we went to a game farm (think petting zoo with no rules) and got to hang out with lemurs! They followed us around in the trees and would jump down and eat bananas out of our hands! It was so cool!!! Chilling with the Giant Tortoises… the big one is over 100 years old. “Banana?” “Yes, please!” 😀 Chameleons! But really they looked like baby dinosaurs! And with that, we headed back to St. Louis. It was a trip of a lifetime and I’m so thankful I had the opportunity to go. Now I’m on to the next adventure – as an intern for Senator Maria Cantwell in DC!

Mackenzie

A Look Back