It’s been a bit since my last post. We have finished up language training in Yogyakarta, took a quick trip to Perth, Australia to renew our visas and visit my dear friend Sharne that I haven’t seen in over 10 years, and moved to our new location in Indonesia – Ambon!

We decided to focus just on grammar during our last couple weeks of language study at Wisma Bahasa, so we rushed through the two intermediate books without learning the sentence structures or vocabulary and were exhausted by the intricate prefixes and suffixes that change the meaning of any given word. This was all more formal forms of speech and different ways to articulate any given meaning, but from my understanding the day to day communications will be much more informal. We will have to go back and learn the parts we skipped on our own, but are happy to have made it to the intermediate level with the books. For our last day one of our professors prepared us a dog dish, since we spoke about eating dog so much.

Anging Rica Rica – The meal made of dog meat…yum!

I’ll try anything, so I had a few bites and Yasser actually liked it, but I couldn’t fully get past thinking of a cute little domesticated pet and couldn’t enjoy it to the fullest. Wisma Bahasa was an amazing language institute and I fully recommend it to anyone thinking of studying Bahasa Indonesia (they also offer e-classes). The variety of instructors meant that you never got bored and were always practicing different manners of speaking. The curriculum is top rate and the helpfulness of all the staff members is stellar.

Our amazing teachers at Wisma Bahasa on our last day of classes!

From Yogyakarta we headed to Perth for a visit to Sharne. I met Sharne during my study abroad program in undergrad. She was quickly my closest friend in Australia and it was so amazing seeing her again after more than 10 years, and to meet her amazing husband and daughter. It was great to hang out and even were visited by Troy, another great friend from my time in university there.  The luxuries of a developed country were nice, we ate a lot of great food, including Kangaroo and of course fish and chips!  Perth was still a great city and we took a roadtrip up North along the coast to Kalbarri and Coral Bay. The Indian Ocean is spectacular and these little gems are still the same as they were 10 years ago. Other than getting massively burned by the brutal sun, we had a great time relaxing by the water and Yasser caught us a few fish for dinner!

Yasser catching dinner at Exmouth!

Sunset at Coral Bay.

Me and Sharne playing in the Ocean.

Our trip from Australia back to Indonesia was a long one. We flew on Monday from Perth to Bali and arrived around midnight so had to spend the night in the airport to wait for our 6am flight to Yogyakarta (where we had left our bags). We arrived in Yogyakarta at 6am and didn’t leave on our next flight until 8pm so had the entire day to hang around in the city. At 8pm we left in a torrential downpour for Jakarta where we landed at 9pm and left on our last leg of our journey at 1:30am. We finally arrived in Ambon Wednesday morning at 7am. A driver from Mercy Corps was there to pick us up. We stopped by the office to meet my new boss Eldo and he took us to our homestay at Ms. Junes. We have been mostly sleeping since we got here and both have colds (I’m sure from the lengthy trip), but are happy to be in our new home. Everyone we have met so far have been extremely friendly. Our host family is very sweet and speak quite good English. Ms. June owns a coffee shop in town that was rated highly by Lonely Planet and is a recipient of a small business loan from Mercy Corps, so I am excited to learn more about that process and how she successfully built her business. We went for a walk around town yesterday and since there are rarely any ‘white’ people that come here (it is quite far off the tourist path) I was treated like quite a celebrity – school children followed me around yelling there few English words they knew and often calling me Mister.

Ambon is in the Maluku region of Indonesia, also known as the Spice Islands.

Everyone waved at us as we passed and the people we tried to speak Indonesian with were patient with us and very pleased that we were trying to communicate with them in their language. The town is on a small island and lies right by the sea. There is lush forest area right up to the beach area. The city beaches are quite littered, but we can tell the water is gorgeous and are looking forward to finding some beautiful beaches outside of the city to visit on weekends. I start work on Monday so will report more on the organization and my specific projects then and more on the town of Ambon as we venture out more. For now we’re getting settled in our new home resting up for our next adventure!