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!

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).

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.

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!

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