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.

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.

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.

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…

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… 😀

 

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??