The Year of Living Audaciously

Former food blog, now travel blog - following my year as a Fulbright ETA in Indonesia

Archives for June 2015

This Just Got Real

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I received my site placement last week. In about three months I’ll be settling in to my new home in Palangkaraya! Where in the world is that, you ask? Yeah, me too.

Map of Indonesia

Because Indonesia is 12 hours ahead (of US central time), most emails from AMINEF (the organization in charge of our grants) arrive in the middle of the night and are a fun surprise to wake up to in the mornings. There had been some rumblings between the other Fulbrighters that we would receive our placements soon but I was still shocked when I refreshed my email and saw an email from AMINEF with the subject heading, Palangkaraya. (And yes, I have a horrible habit of checking my email first thing in the morning… before I’m even out of bed. That will change soon, as I don’t believe I will have much internet access in my new home!)

I quickly scanned the email, flew out of bed to find my laptop, and searched Palangkaraya. While I’ve been to Indonesia before, Palangkaraya didn’t ring a bell and I couldn’t have guessed where it was. Well, it’s smack in the middle of Borneo (also known as Kalimantan in Indonesia), the third largest island in the world (Madagascar is fourth for reference). Borneo is divided among three countries, Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia. Almost 3/4 of the island is Indonesian and is divided into five Indonesian provinces. My city, Palangkaraya, is the capitol of one of these five provinces, Central Kalimantan. From what I can tell (from trusty ol’ Wikipedia), Kalimantan is a jungle island and I’m going to be smack in the middle of it (kinda, actual more on the southern end of the island, just north of Banjarmasin).

Map of Kalimant

It’s a bit different than what I’d expected, considering I had applied to a country of 17,000 islands. My placement is about as far away from water (besides a river) as you can possibly get in Indonesia, which I find fairly amusing.

Having been to Madagascar and traveling through a lot of that island/jungle/rainforest country, I can picture what my new home will be like… I think. Honestly, I have no idea but google maps and random youtube videos that I’ve found have been great and I can piece together those, with my prior experience in Indonesia and Madagascar. I should probably stop doing this as I’m probably widely off with my expectations (both high and low!) but I can’t help myself trying to imagine what this journey will look like.

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I was also given my school placement – but as neat as it is to know, it doesn’t really mean anything to me at the moment. None of it really does but I’m sure after our pre-departure orientation in DC next week, I’ll know a lot more! At least I’m hoping so…

With ten weeks to go, I figured its probably time I start learning Indonesian. Realizing that I will be living in a fairly remote city, I don’t expect many people to speak English, so if there’s little else I can do to prepare in the meantime, I can at least start learning some Indonesian so I’m a little more comfortable when I arrive. Thus, I’ve brought out the flashcards and purchased two Indonesian language books and I’ll see how much I can teach myself!

Lastly, and this one is for my grandparents… Wash U sends a daily (weekly in the summer) news bulletin out to the whole campus community. And yours truly got a shoutout this week – here’s the article.

Selamat jalan, teman saya! (Goodbye, my friends!)

(Thanks google images for the pictures… I’ll have my own soon enough!)

WUSTL Graduation and the Start to Summer

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It’s mid-June, 100 degrees in St. Louis, and I’m still adjusting to this post-college life of no stress, no deadlines, and decent sleep! The last few months passed in a whirlwind of excitement as I learned of my Fulbright grant, finished my final college papers, and walked across the stage as a proud graduate of Washington University in St. Louis. It’s hard to put into words how fulfilling and happy the last year has been – I’ve found new passions, established old ones, learned more about myself, made new lifelong friends, deepened relationships with mentors, and am so excited about the future, whatever it may hold.

I haven’t blogged in ages, I know – but blogging didn’t hold the same charm for me as it used to. I started this blog as a means to share my life with family and friends but with all the other social media outlets out there, I’ve felt less of a need to blog in order to stay connected with them. This blog also used to be about cooking and baking and the joy I found in the kitchen – but in the last six months, I think I’ve made cookies once, roasted a lot of brussels sprouts, and made countless batches of hummus…but that’s about it. My meals are quite simple these days but that’s how I prefer it at the moment and hey, I’ve lost a few pounds not baking all the time!

I know I’ll start blogging regularly again when I leave for Indonesia – this blog is how I plan to share that experience. I’m growing increasingly excited about Indonesia, although I still don’t know much about where I will be or what my day to day will look like. We are supposed to hear soon what our placement will be and then I’ll know which of the 17,000 islands I’ll be living on! We are also all flying out to DC in about ten days for the Fulbright Pre-Departure Orientation. I’ll get to meet the other ETAs headed to Indonesia and will hopefully learn a lot about what my year will look like! I’m also thrilled to be headed back to DC and will get to see a lot of my friends and coworkers from last summer.

In the meantime, I’m staying in St. Louis for the remainder of the summer. It was wonderful to have my family in town for graduation – here are a few pictures from the weekend.

WUSTL Graduation 2015

My wonderful momma and I

WUSTL Graduation 2015

So happy to have my family in town!

WUSTL Graduation 2015

A wonderful dinner at Olio

WUSTL Graduation 2015

A fabulous night at Taste!

In addition to the craziness of the end of senior year, I also began working at Taste, a cocktail bar/restaurant in the Central West End. When I started, I had no idea what I was getting myself in to or how much I would learn or how much fun I would have… but it has been an absolute blast and I loved it so much I decided to stay on for the summer before heading to Indonesia! I work at the restaurant most evenings and have most of my days open to read, sleep, run, meet friends for lunch… it’s been an incredibly relaxing couple of weeks but as nice as it is, I’m getting a little stir crazy and ready for some intellectual stimulation again 🙂 But for the next seven weeks, I’m going to enjoy these free days while I have them and then I’ll be off to the other side of the world!

A Look Back

This blog is not an official U.S. Department of State website and the views and opinions expressed here are entirely my own, and do not represent the U.S. Department of State or the Fulbright Program.