So apparently I've been rather bad about posting. I will try to post periodically over the next few days so as to catch up.

We (the 44 ETAs) stayed for one week in Jakarta. We had general orientation activities, mostly from representatives from the state department and the embassy.

The highlights:
→The security adviser told us to "shred, shred, shred" everything we received during orientation, for security purposes. The other presenters tried very hard not to laugh when he said this, as they told us later.

→The state department reads my blog: apparently they can track the usage of various words and phrases (i.e., Fulbright, state department, etc.). They want to know what people are saying about them. Since I am likely to use these phrases in many of my posts, the state department will have the joy of reading many of my posts.

→Apparently there is some restriction that Fulbrighters (and other people from the state department) have to stay in hotels of a certain quality or higher. Their cutoff is pretty high. While our hotel in Jakarta (and the one in Bandung) were not the nicest hotels I have ever stayed in, they were more than we needed. To some extent, the restriction makes since. Hillary Clinton should not be seen staying in a wisma (hostel). For us, though, the hotels were more than we needed. The money could have been used better elsewhere. The law that people with the state department have to stay in hotels of a certain quality might make more sense if it were a bit more finely tuned.

→Jakarta is quite dirty. Public trash cans are rare (don’t even think about recycling), so people burn trash, toss it in the street, or toss it in the canals/sewers, only some of which are covered by sidewalks (sidewalks are also rare), which are constructed in such a way that you can see through little holes into the canals/sewers. Bandung and Rantepao are slightly better, as I have not seen open canals. While my school does have trash cans (so the grounds are not covered in waste), I think we burn all of our trash.

→ Indonesians love Karaoke. Karaoke in Indonesia is very different from Karaoke in the states, though. While in Jakarta, some ETAs (not including me) went out for karaoke. It turned out that the karaoke place was actually a brothel. Oops. Apparently this is pretty standard. If you are ever in Indonesia and want to sing, look for Karaoke Keluarga (family karaoke). Also, sing Justin Bieber. Indonesians love Justin Bieber.


→Before coming to Jakarta, I thought D.C. traffic was bad. I was wrong. D.C. has rules and stoplights. Jakarta, not so much. It is not uncommon to see a motorcycle cut completely perpendicular to traffic. Check out this video (if it loads correctly--I may have to try again later) from in front of our hotel. Note that the lanes are not marked (they are in some places, though cars do not stay within these marked lanes, this intersection has no traffic light (though luckily traffic does come in waves from the left and moves in waves on the diagonal because of one, nearby light), and there are people in the middle of the mess directing traffic for tips. From a more practical standpoint for me, there are rarely crosswalks. If you want to cross a street, you just start walking and stare the vehicles down. It was a little scary at first, but it has gotten easier, especially in the smaller cities.