What People Don't Realize

I have heard countless people say that the United States and Southeast Asia are pretty much opposites. To be completely honest, I have no idea if this is true or not. As weird as it probably sounds, I had never been out of the country until I hopped on that plane to Japan last month. (Does that make me extra crazy for wanting to go on exchange??) Because of that, I really have nothing with which I can compare the United States to other than Indonesia. I mean, if we're getting technical here, I was in Japan too, but I was just in the airport for like 2 hours.

Anyway, the point of this post isn't actually my lack of experience in international travel. However, it is quite interesting that my first time abroad happens to include being over 10,000 miles away from my home in the US for almost 11 months, right? Okay so now that that's established, I'll start the actual post...

One of the questions I have been asked the most is this: What are the differences between the United States and Indonesia? I get this question from people in Indonesia and from people in the US. It seems simple enough, but sometimes I honestly don't know how to answer it. When I think about it, there are two ways to answer the question. The first way is the simpler of the two and the way that I usually choose. It typically involves me saying something about motorcycles, school, food, and the weather. However, there is a second way to answer the question. It's an answer that most people probably would not expect and almost certainly would not be satisfied to hear. You see, the truth is that Indonesia really is not as different as most people seem to think. The streets may look different and often lack sidewalks. There really are far too many motorcycles to count. The languages that roll off of people's tongues sometimes do still sound foreign. Despite all of that though, there is an almost indescribable sense that so many things are the same. (I literally sat at my desk for 15 minutes trying to come up with a better way to explain that). What many people seem to fail to realize is that people are people. I am not joking when I say that sometimes I wake up and completely forget that I'm not in the US. (That could also be because of the fact that I'm so tired...) It's actually really funny because my classmates remind me so much of some of my American friends, and my host family is like my family in so many ways. I guess what I'm trying to say is something that we have all heard before. We're not so different after all.

After what seems like the longest paragraph ever, I guess I should also give a mini update. This is going to be super short because I didn't do very much this week. I ended up getting sick and staying in bed for what felt like forever (it was only like 2 days though). I probably should have stayed home for three days, but I tried to be super Tori and went to school on Wednesday. (Note to future self: remember the 6th grade pneumonia incident? That never works out well...). I'm also (finally) going to church today, so that should be interesting!

Until next time!

Indonesian Word of the Day: Batuk - Cough

Ben Howard - The Fear

I think this will always be one of my favorite songs. Please give it a listen!

P.S. I know that my past few posts have been lacking pictures. I think I'll make up for it by making a post with a lot of pictures soon!