Am I...A Microcelebrity?!

Oct 23, 2024

Dear Dad,

Fine. I’ll say it: you were right. Money matters. It cannot buy happiness, but it can buy the Dove body wash from home that doesn’t make my skin breakout like the local brand, it can buy a gym membership to give me an outlet, it can buy another Gojek to go somewhere further out of the city that I’ve been wanting to see. I may never be the capitalist you wanted me to be, but I will admit you were right about money mattering.

Living in a country with such a drastically different cost of living, it is obvious how being able to spend the money to treat yourself makes a difference. I’m actually able to do that here - treating myself to a coffee still only costs $1 USD. It’s a much different conversation than treating myself to an $8 latte at home. I’m not saying I want to throw money at my problems, but spending $1 to sit at the cafe with good AC and wifi does make getting homework done before I go back to an AC-less room where I wake up sweaty every night much more bearable. I don’t want this to be my final realization of my time here, but it is worth considering this when I am aware of my privilege to go and travel other places (like last weekend) when kids on my program from countries with similar costs of living cannot do the same much less the locals that say I’ve seen more of Indonesia than they have.

I’m getting all of my truths out: whoever told me that cultural shock follows a W pattern is a liar - my journey looks a lot more like a chevron pattern that covered the it-girl shirts in 2012. There are so many ups and downs already. I felt restored after my trip last weekend, but there are days when I leave the convenience store with tears in my eyes because I tried so hard to communicate in the language that I study everyday, and I still cannot understand when someone speaks to me with a native accent and speed. I was so disappointed in my program last week. In our large WhatsApp group chat, some students shared they have not gotten paid yet - after two months of living here - and they’re surviving off loans from friends or out of pocket funds from the kind staff that work in their university’s international affairs office. They said we’d have cultural involvement opportunities too, but so far, they just stuck us in our language class on the first day and everything else has been up to us. Some students at other universities get to interview locals at different job sites every week to practice speaking. Some students go on a weekly excursion to a cultural site in their town. Everything is so different across the board. This week, however, we start our first elective class - Javanese dance! I was not planning to share that on here, but apparently the white girls at our final dance showcase always become the front page of the Malang newspaper that week.

For the most part, I would say I get more settled everyday. As my main anxiety here has been my health, I got a gym membership. A place I found so annoying and claustrophobic in America is now my safe space here where I can relieve my stress. However, the other week, I realized I was getting recorded while working out for about 15 minutes before I noticed. A guy in the gym just set his phone up on the table next to me and let it run while I was doing yoga. I get asked for pictures all the time and see people recording me, but this one was different. I love walking around not knowing anyone, I love being invisible in that way. But now, in a place far away from everyone I’ve ever known, more people notice me and interact with me on the street than ever before. One of my Gojek drivers even recognized me and said he’s driven me before.

It can be very comforting in some ways, like I’m part of the environment here. Besides that day in the gym, I don’t mind the the picture taking or these interactions - they show me how nice Indonesians are, just how excited they are to see a “bule” (foreigner, slang for white person) and want to know why we chose to visit their country and what we think of it. Two weeks ago, two girls chased me down the street. When they reached me, they were out of breathe. They asked if I was from America, and when I said yes, they responded with most shrill “YAAA” I could have imagined. Their group of friends, about six in total, then caught up to us and asked for a picture together. Two of them got my number and have been asking to be friends since, which I am excited about.

Immediately after that interaction, a couple with a young girl in the mother’s arms stopped me on the street. The little girl hid her face in her mom’s hair while her dad told me the girl thinks I’m a beautiful Bule. I waved at the girl and told her she is too, and she held onto my finger curiously for a couple of seconds before retreating into her mom’s neck. The kids here are always some of my favorite interactions. One of the local schools has their kids do PE class outside my dorm building in the morning. They shout “hello, miss!” at me, say good morning, ask if I’m from America, and one even repeatedly tells me I look like Chappell Roan (?). I even felt seen in class when one of the sentences in our workbook talked about a cafe that closed a couple years back in Ann Arbor, naming the famous cross streets it was on. It turns out students from the US’s Critical Language Scholars summer program come to my language school, and they helped to write some of the materials we see. One of them a few years ago was from UofM.

I’m chipping away at the local involvement. One of my friends on campus studies Management, so he works with a local company to help them with studying English for Business. He goest to their site to teach a course on it. I went one week with him to help them practice interview skills. The site is a yeast manufacturer for a French baked goods company. They have multiple factories in different countries. At this location, all the yeast is produced from sugar waste from local farms. This is the only entirely sustainable location - I find this insanely impressive when comparing to the US’s lack of sustainability efforts in a lot of companies. The whole parking lot smells like molasses and beer.

Every week, I volunteer at an American culture center (set up around different countries with funding from the Department of Education) and help practice their English with them. I have slowly tricked them into teaching me so much about Indonesia in return. One boy is really passionate about mental health and was telling me about the suicide rate being much higher for men than women. The culture here is to not hug your male friends or tell them you love them - they will call you gay. It’s starting to take a toll on their mental health, but younger generations are also more open to discussing it. They also all agreed on having different cultural practices than older generations. Before I arrived in Indonesia, we had a two week course on basic language skills and cultural lessons to help us avoid culture shock. Even in that course they warned us that Indonesians will ask really invasive questions about whether you’re married (and when you will get married if you aren’t yet), how much money you make, etc. (fun fact: they also call you fat as a conversation filler). The students in my generation said they find this weird from the older generations - they feel like it’s too personal. However, a group of boys from a local Islamic boarding school came into the center yesterday, and they had no problem blatantly asking who I voted for in the US election. I wonder which side of that social norm they will learn is appropriate or not. It’s interesting to get to witness a cultural practice slowly fade out first-hand.

I have a language partner that I meet with once a week. Sometimes she feels so much like a friend, I love to forget that she gets paid to meet with me! She doesn’t speak any English, so we converse entirely in Indonesia - usually for 2-3 hours. This is always a good confidence boost. Yesterday we met at an old restaurant that serves es teler and es campur. Both foods/drinks are essentially coconut water with fruit and jellies. It’s a fun and tropical little snack. The table next to us was a group of older women, and they immediately took interest in me. They started by commenting on my large nose. Apparently, this is a compliment to say that I look Western; they have small noses in Indonesia. But I felt no shock hearing this one after growing up with a Greek nose, perfectly forming a 30, 60, 90 degree triangle. I just didn’t know it could be a compliment! They then asked about where exactly I live here and if I have a boyfriend. Of course, I ended up sitting at their table and taking a picture with them. After they went outside, they continued their photoshoot taking each other’s pictures in front of the door. It was weirdly foreign, like seeing your grandparents perfectly know how to use social media.

I also met an American expat couple a couple of weeks ago; they work at a local international school and stop by our dorm a couple of times a semester as they made some friends here a couple of years ago. (Side note: have you ever wondered why Americans living and working abroad get to be called expats, not immigrants? But that’s not true for the reverse population in America? Interesting…) Last week, she took my roommate and I out to a lunch at a Western cafe, and I had Mediterranean food. It turns out she was the white savior that I needed! She also comforted us by sharing more about her own adjustments. When they first moved here, they lived in a village. One day, one of the cleaners at their house started screaming bloody murder and ran to the neighbor’s house. There was a python on the back porch starting to come in through the door. The neighbor came over quickly, holding a special stick with a fork-like end to throw the snake from the cement porch to the grassy backyard. He then macheted it to death. She also one time felt an ant on her face at night, so naturally, she swatted at it. It turns out it was a tomcat, a poisonous, ant-like bug. When you smash it, all the poison is released. She went to bed after, but she woke up with burns all over her face from the poison. They scabbed and scarred over for weeks before they cleared - she thought she would have permanently skin malformation afterward.

I know I sound like a broken record, but I have to say it: it’s so nice that my home country doesn’t have pythons or tomcats. But it was also hilarious explaining to my friends that having a baby in the US hospital system can cost $30k without insurance, and that my medication costs more per month than my yearly college tuition before insurance. I told them on our walk home from dinner one night. One of my friends was so shocked, he just kept stopping and saying, “what the f*** man” every few minutes, even after the conversation moved forward. He told me I “have to be in the streets everyday.”

I realized after last weekend, talking to my American friends in their program, I am really on my own here. Their program is a lot more organized, they come with a network and have a host family and cultural excursions. I’m given this opportunity by my program, but my experience itself is entirely up to me. I’m trying to just be present in every moment - which can be easy with all of my loved ones asleep at home. The other day, while taking a break from working on my grad school applications, I watched students catch fruit from a tree on campus. The best part is, there is a designated stick that sits by the tree trunk for this purpose. The students come and hit the branches and the trees provide for them. It was the perfect dichotomy: stressing about my future in front of me, and then watching students eat free tropical fruit, laughing. And like that tree provided for them, they provided for me. A good lesson to just enjoy the moment and look around - though usually that is when I realize someone is taking a picture of me.

Thank you for reading my words. As always, feel free to chat me in the Substack app, email me in response to this, or WhatsApp me as I won’t be getting iMessages here. Sending handshakes from Indonesia (they don’t hug here :/). Pictures below!