Sucking The Marrow!

Whenever my sisters or I go on any sort of adventure, my mom always says “suck the marrow!” or even now just “suck it!” in our family lingo. And now, on a five week holiday from my program, my mom’s words are constantly playing in my head. Or, less gently put by my friend laughing at me for running to catch a train immediately after our final exam, “you have no patience.” Whether it be impatience or a zest for life, I’m ready to get everything out of these five weeks as possible.

My last week of school wrapped up nicely. Everything was a blur to finalize all my final projects and exams, finish any last trip touches, and submit any last applications and computer tasks. I’m leaving my computer behind for these entire five weeks (the longest I think I’ve ever gone without touching my computer in my life), which could be my favorite part of this whole trip. I’m excited to just be present and have all of this work behind me. Speaking of, if my posts these next few weeks are terrible or way too long or way too short just blame it on the fact that I’m working off my phone.

With my final grades for school, I had to take one final exam on Tuesday, give my final presentation on Wednesday, and take the Indonesian proficiency exam on Thursday. My final exam and proficiency test weren’t too stressful as this class, in the whole scheme of things, really doesn’t matter. And, I had plenty of studying through completing my final presentation. That presentation, however, I did freak out about. I had to present for 15 minutes in Indonesian and answer questions about my topic afterwards. I wrote about the different drug laws and culture around drugs in America and Indonesia. In light of a post a couple posts back about not changing things about ourselves, I know I am still largely driven by academic validation. My teacher posted a video of me presenting on his Instagram saying he was proud of me after I started learning from square one with him. The best part though was he started recording the video with flash and it made me laugh so much during my presentation I lost all my nerves. I think it went well in the end, I got asked more questions than anyone else presenting. One fun question was even about whether I think these countries should adopt the Philippines law of just shooting people on the street seen doing drugs.

I also had to finish up my meetings with my language partner. She’s really become such a wonderful person in my learning, practicing speaking in only Indonesian for hours at a time. For our final meeting, I visited her house. Even against all these wonderful days exploring the tourist vacation spots in Indonesia, that day with her family could have been my favorite day here. After I arrived in her village, I sat in her family room and met her dad and sisters, though I’ve met two of them at some of our other meetings already. We sat for a little while being entertained by her two year old baby sister that thankfully gave something to say after any awkward pauses in our conversations when I had to say I didn’t understand something. Then, my language partner and two of her sisters and I hopped on two bikes and went to a traditional place (picture almost a camp ground?) for traditional food. There were spots to sit outside along the river and educational signs about how the area used to be used. In villages, there were spots like these along rivers to bathe and clean clothes and kitchen items. I also learned there are separate places for women on their period as they would dirty the water for everyone there. Yay more chances to talk about menstruation!!

After we came back from the excursion, I ate lunch with her family and we planned monopoly. Her mom cooked all my favorite foods, which she knew about from my language partner, which she knew about from listening to me. I didn’t even remember sharing all of them. I felt so loved and special to be included in their Saturday activities, their whole family laughing around the baby, their dad playing guitar in the background. They all invited me back, which felt genuine and like a big compliment. I cried a little on the way home. It’s nice to suck the marrow like my mom suggests and go experience these things far away from home, but sometimes I see how this is home for other people and get to feel that for a second, and then I miss my mom too.

As much as I’ve had a lot to say about this semester, I couldn’t believe it was over when it actually was. After our proficiency exam on Thursday, we had a photoshoot with matching tshirts from our school, and I had to run out early to get my train. The train was 13 hours to Jakarta. I left myself plenty of tasks to do to fill the time, but I ended up staring out the window blankly or sleeping the entire time. Speaking and processing in a different language truly does fry your brain in a different way than other tasks - everything is just naturally so much more exhausting. I enjoyed the time to just sit and not think, finally not feeling any stress. Then I realized I didn’t know how to get from the train station to the airport, I for some reason couldn’t check in for my flight on my phone, and I might be arriving to my final destination too late to book a tour for the next day (we’ll get to that). Traveling is such a fun different kind of stress.

I took a bus from the train station to the airport and waited there until my friend Marta joined me. Marta is my friend from Poland in Darmasiswa that shared that fateful first hotel room for our orientation in Jakarta. She studies in a different city, so it’s nice to see her and feel like she’s a familiar face, even when we only also meet when we got here. We’re traveling for the first two parts of our trip together to Flores and Lombok, two islands east of Java. Then, I’ll go to Bali and meet Lennon - a true familiar face. Our flight to Flores was easy, I even saw an amazing sunset over the islands from the plane. We were (probably way too) excited to be able to walk from the airport to our hotel. We each only have a backpack, and there are no sidewalks in either of our cities. The walk was 20 minutes, and immediately the culture of the city felt different, like island culture. Little boys played on the street and yelled “ulur!” or “snake!” at me before sprinting up to me and then showing me a fake one they were playing with.

I got most of my advice on my trip from a staff member at my school that lives in Labuan Bajo, the city on Flores that we were staying in. Labuan Bajo is a coastal city and is the gateway to Komodo National Park - a collection of islands to the west of Flores that is home to world renowned snorkeling and of course the Komodo dragon! The staff member told me to just plan my snorkeling trips once I got there because there would be tour companies lining the main strip of the city selling tours, and I could bargain the price. When I asked my hotel host - a sweet man that immediately engaged in so much conversation in Indonesian with me - about this, he asked if he could call his neighbor, he’s the captain of a boat. Two minutes later, his neighbor came over and I told him all the places I did and didn’t want to go and he gave other suggestions of good spots to go. Within 15 minutes of arriving, I had planned out the ideal snorkeling trip, avoiding the organized tours from the main strip, for a fair price. And practiced my Indonesian! All the stress of the travel had dissipated, replaced with confidence that when you don’t have a plan that can be organized through the avenues we’re used to, you can go by local recommendation instead.

I’m actually posting this from my car ride to Mount Rinjani on Lombok island four days after my trip to Flores. I’ll be hiking for three days and don’t want to fall fatally behind on these posts with everything I have to share from my adventures, so let’s just consider this part 1 and will post the rest after my hike. To be continued!…

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 :/).