i am here!

I am here.

Yes, after 39+ hours and thousands of miles I made it to Java. I wandered throughout airports, experienced Hong Kong and Singapore only through windows, and finally inhaled Indonesian air while wandering outside Jakarta’s international airport. The air was smoggy, filled with a sharp taste of fuel, yet anything was better than the recycled air I had been putting into my lungs. I might add too that I experienced my first squatting toilet at this airport, which was not as bad as others made it out to be. Right away though, the bathroom/WC experience really tinkered with my mental wiring and stimulated a neural energy very unfamiliar to my American self.

We (being me + the 24 other students) flew from Jakarta to Malang and I, for the first time in this travel time period, got the window seat. As I looked over java, I felt like I was looking over myself. This place has been a mental projection/future place for me since mid March of 2010 and it has grown with me throughout my time at Berkeley; I have catered a majority of my studies to Indonesia (specifically Java) and have let time outside of academia drift towards daydreaming about it. I saw the curvatures of shorelines, patchy brown deforested hectares, and concentrated urban areas. As the plane got closer to landing, Malang blushed at me with red tiled roof tops and caught my attention with floating fish nets, and rice paddy fields right by the airport.

Malang introduced itself to me with bright colored buildings, gasoline fumes, street side markets, lots of motor bikes, tasty veggie food, and so many smiles! After all the sites, and three days without taking a shower, I took a shower as soon as we got to the hotel to wash off the airport grime and sleep away some of America in order to make room inside myself for my new home (!).

There are so many things I could choose to focus on. Smiles exchanged with children through neighborhood gates, motocycles adorned with large baskets carrying food (like krupuk, these fried-interestingly-shaped crackers or all sorts of clippings from gardens), and inviting businesses right outside of someone’s home, the patchiness of sidewalks and streets. I like this place--its honest. It admits to not being perfect without even crediting the fact that perfect exists. When I walk along streets I can actually see whats below me (mainly sewer pipes but still). And there are things that happen here that would never occur as openly in America. Like Splendid Market (ironically named, a market that sells all sorts of animals, mainly exotic birds and rodents that do not look happy!!) or pedestrians not having the right of way or even the simple act of bargaining. And I am so grateful that I get to experience even the sad sights. That I did not have to wait for the continents to remesh in order to experience this. That I can now, in my twenties, taste it and really feel it. That I can have new people help me find places within myself that I did not originally have a map for.
Two of the main things I have been mulling-like-cidar over is the relationship to animals here and the cluster or markets. In English, we “humans” like to refer to other living things (besides plants) as “animals” The same goes for Indonesian where there is a seperation between the “non human” and the “human.” However, in Indonesian the seperation does not stop there. It continues with the different words that are used for gender and for being alive (human female and male, alive or dead, are different for animal female and male, alive or dead). There is another word bank entirely dedicating to continued the removal of humans for animals. This word bank also allows one to give more respect to other humans. The irony to this however is how closely Indonesians (at least those in Malang) live with animals because they are intimately connected and tied to naimals during the every day. How chickens, birds, cats, and a whole slet of animals I don’t know the names for hang out over here and encounter humans everyday. Maybe its because of these intimate relationsihps that there is such a rhetoric for talking about animals. Or maybe not. This is simply me pondering away. Maybe the significane has lost its meaning all together.

Much like how birds of a feather flock together, the same can be saifd about businesses. If, lets say, you want to make ceramics (like I did a few days ago!!)you go to a district solely dedicated to ceramics. The same foes for animals, clothes, etc. Its as if businesses take on a farmer’s market mentality where they have grown about the same thing but theres something about it that makes it unique. This cluster of businesses also allows the consumer to compare, contrast, and decide upon a product.

Learning a language this intensely has given me a mental silence at times. Where I don’t know how to think in either English or Indonesian. Where my mind reaches a clarity of the present moment because it cant reason a distance brought on by thinking. I’m telling you, this is intense! But I am making breakthrough(t)s. I can now listen to people and get the jist of what they are saying although my speaking skills lack so much! Hopefully by the end of these 8 weeks I can feel confident (confidence in Indonesian is “hadiri” which means worth of self--I like that).
　
Already, I have experienced a beautiful beach with the name senang biru (happy blue), explored a tea plantation (wow!! I had no idea how tea was made. Quite enlightening to see the mass production of a crop (instead of timber)), explored my campus, and hopefully this upcoming Thursday, I will explore the mud volcanoe which is the result of the bakri brothers (spelling?) mining for oil. The mud eruption has completely wiped out several towns much like the recent tornadoes in the US.

I miss everyone so much! Especially my sweetheart. I love though how I can meet new people that I will soon miss and yet take with me on to my next undulation. Life is fun being dynamic, isn’t it?

Ah tomorrow I have my first quiz in Indonesian. Wish me luck! I wish you the world.
Love,
ray