So, I had this on my tumblr, but I found it pretty amusing and pretty accurate if I do say so myself. haha, No I think the good looking part is debatable. I think its more foreign people seem more attractive because they are different (especially in countries where everyone looks mostly the same because there isn't a lot of diversity), but who knows.  Oh yeah, and btw I'm not swiching to just tumblr, obviously.  I'm still figuring out which I like better so for now I have both!

Happy Independence Day Indonesia!

Thanks to my fellow YES alum friends on facebook, I found out that today is Indonesia’s Independence day! Unfortunately, I wasn’t there to celebrate, but I still dressed up in red and white with my little homemade Indonesian flag to show my support! 

Here’s a little history about Indonesia’s Independence (thank you Wikipedia)

Sukarno- 1st President

On August 17th, 1945, Indonesia declared its independence from the Netherlands in a Proclamation of Indonesian Independence.  After several years of struggle, Indonesia became free of hundreds of years of imperialistic power by the Dutch and shortly by the Japanese, and became its own republic. Nationalist war hero, Sukarno, became Indonesia’s first president following the country’s independence, after overcoming colonial opposition and imprisonment. He served as a figurehead in the new Indonesian government for 22 years, while the country got off to a rocky start with disagreements over which type of government Indonesia would have. His idea of ‘guided democracy’ was viewed as too autocratic by some, and eventually the system failed.  He was replaced by Suharto, who established a military-based, centralized government, that was successful initially, but later caused controversy. Eventually Suharto resigned from the presidency, and led way to the representative democracy that Indonesia has today.
Ok, I tried to sum up a lot of info into a short-ish paragraph, so hopefully i got the gist of it. Dirgahayu RI! ( i think this means Long live Indonesia!)

We Are Family

First off, excuse my cheesy blog title. Someone’s blog I read used songs for the titles and this popped into my head, but I won’t make a habit of it.  So I have some great news and some bad news, but I’ll start with the great news: I got my host family! I would tell you the name of their family, but apparently Indonesians in the same family don’t have the same last names, its very confusing. But anyways, here they are!!

My host dad, Deni, and host brother, Egi, are in the back, and my sisters, Amanda and Novita, are in the front with my host mom, Rita. Amanda is 15, Egi is 20 or 21, and Novita is 22.  The older two are in college, but live at home (that’s the norm in Indonesia) and my younger sister goes to the school that I will be going to, so I will have a chance to get to know them all well.  My host dad is a banker and my host mom is a lecturer at a university! Also there is a cat Pocky, and 2 bunnies!! Basically, the perfect family :D





 My host family lives in Bandung, Indonesia, which is the 3rd largest city in the country and is on the island of Java not to far from the capital city, Jakarta. It’s known for its ‘cool’ temperature, beautiful surrounding scenery, good food, and great outlet shopping! It sounds perfect! I’m happy to be in a city (I google-mapped my family’s address and they are right in the middle of the city!), but without quite as much traffic and pollution as Jakarta.  I made a little collage of pictures of Bandung, but I doubt they really represent it well.  Here it is though:

 And now the bad news :(.  AFS is having some problems with our visas, so out departure date has been pushed back two weeks from Sept. 5th to the 21st! Now my countdown is way back to 36 days- which seems so long! I still super grateful to be going though, so I will just have to use this time to do college apps and learn more Indonesian before I go! Plus I do get a little more time with my family which is nice.  I can’t wait to get there though, the closer it gets the more excited I am! And also, there are lots of YES inbound alum (Indonesian kids who came to the U.S. last year on an exchange) living in Bandung, so I have already been talking to them and planning to meet up! Hopefully the wait goes by fast, so I can actually start blogging about my year!!