Yogyakarta!

I arrived in Yogyakarta (Yogya-pronounced jok-cha) Saturday evening and was welcomed warmly by five other Shansi fellows. Indonesia is shaping up to be everything I had hoped for - spicy and incredibly delicious food, cheap, well, everything, tropical plants, and warm weather. I have yet to see any monkeys, but I'm hoping Aceh will have more of those. I'm feeling pretty lucky to have all these other Obies around to help translate both menus and cultural differences, that's probably why I'm not feeling too much of culture shock. The homestay is great, and actually much more accurate to its name than the others I've been in. The family is very nice, but I see them little, and am simply living there. I have my own very nice room, and am served breakfast and dinner (both great). There are two other language students staying there - one from Japan and one from Australia. Like most of the language students here the Australian is studying for a brief time before starting work with an NGO- she's focusing on socio-economic research. The Japanese student is studying Indonesian before heading to Bali to write her PhD thesis on eco-tourism.

The most exciting thing I've done so far was last night. We headed up to a village on the nearby volcano to see Jahtilan. This is an Indonesian trance dance performed to get rid of nasty ghosts. The dancers are trained and then hired for events. This one lasted about four hours, but I'm told it was incredibly tame and short for how these things usually are. It was quite interesting though and I'm going to try to post some footage, though hopefully I'll have some better ones soon. Jesse captured some sweet footage of one of the dancers being taken down by a Shaman. The Shamans basically stand guard around the dancers to help them when the ghosts take over.

Other than that, though, things are pretty relaxed. I have school from 10-1 and then am free the rest of the day. Tomorrow is a holiday and I'm hoping to go to a beach not too far away.
I hope you are all doing well! Enjoy the pics!

Foggy Taipei

Hello from Taipei. I'm still about five hours away from Indonesia and nine from actually setting foot in Yogya, my first destination. While leaving the US was definitely harder than it's ever been, I'm excited to get there. I've already had some food that I couldn't identify and am eager to be in this new setting. Hopefully I'll have some good stories (and pictures) to put up here really soon. But for now, just a quick little hello from a not so quick layover.