Sara, Indonesia
After seven hours by bus from Lorca to Madrid, seven hours in the first flight to Dubai, nine hours waiting in Dubai airport, eight hours flying to Yakarta and another flight to Semaran I finally arrive here.
After this first week in Indonesia I have to said that it is not too dificult to adapt to not have beds, not have shower and not warm water, share the hause with yekos and other insets and sometimes share it with around 20 volunteers... Today is one of these days and I'm writting my post while I' m in the volunteer queue to go to the toilet.
Here I'm doing things that I don' t usually do. When I arrive to semarang airport Tony a local volunteer was waiting for my, with his motorbike to go to the volunteer house. Yes, Tony my big luggage, my very big bag and me arrive to he volunteer house by motorbike. All my life, my mother has being running behind my shout me: “don't go without shoes in the house!!” and then, I come here and I have always to take off the shoes before to entry to an house.
I thing that spanish mother could't stand to live here. Here everything is diferent to Spain, there is lot of motorbikes and car in the city and normally they don't stop in in pedestrian crossing (for foreigner it an adventure to cross the roads) people usually eat in small places called warung and food is very, very spicy, people usually pray five times in the day and the first one is at five am. Local people have been really nice with me. In my second day here I had to go to Saratiga for doing my city orientation task and It was a really nice adventure. While I was waiting for taking one of the two that I had to take to go to Saratiga I meet and old men that decided to adopt me during the travel. He look after me during part of the travel and waited with my until I took the second ones. When I said he thank you he response: “Don't worry, you can consider me here your indonesian father”. In Saratiga I could see the orphanage where are working Nino and Jacobo.
I could to practice my bahasa indonesia with the kids that are living there. I really enjoy this time in Saratiga. Other nice experience visiting Mangkang where the EVS volunteers working planting a plant called Mangrove I general I had a happy first week in Indonesia and I learned so much about Indonesian culture and Linda, a really cute volunteer, teach me some words in Bahasa Indonesio, one of most important tidak pedas that means “no spicy”.
I only had some problems with mosquitos but for now I'm ok. In my second week here we are going to start preparing the training for new members where I'm going to share with local volunteer my experience as a volunteer in Spain. I'll see you next week.
