Home Again

I probably should have written this post approximately a week ago, but I'm home safely from Jakarta! Pretty much all my friends wanted to do there was hang out at malls. And that was fine with me. I had Starbucks every single day (um... I am crazy about salted caramel), and we beat the heat by staying in AC! I had a free place to stay, and transportation is ridiculously cheap when you know how to work the system!

I got some treasures - like green jeans and a red cardigan and a turquoise ring and some beef jerky. TWO H&M stores opened in Jakarta a week before I went, and I was super excited about that. The prices were the same as in America, which was also extra special.

My flights were especially adventurous. The flight there got delayed several times. I didn't understand why until someone turned on the TV at our gate to watch the Indonesia-Korea soccer game hosted in Jakarta. It was monsooning there, basically. It was raining so hard that the field started to flood and the game eventually got called, much to the disappointment of the now-standing-room-only crowd that had gathered there to SCREAM at the TV. Haha... I was the only foreigner at my gate, and people kept looking at me to check my reaction, I think. Eventually the rain in Jakarta stopped, the soccer field dried, and they continued the game. Our plane took off before we were able to see the finish. But our taxi driver in Jakarta told us that Indonesian won 3-2. In case you cared to know...

My flight back was also interesting. I forgot to ask for a window seat when I checked in and ended up sitting in between two other ladies. One was a kindly grandmother traveling to see her youngest daughter's graduation and one was a college student. They both talked to me pretty much the whole way home. The grandmother turned out to be Dutch (I actually thought she was Chinese...), but she spoke to me in Indonesian, because she knew it better than English. Her husband was Indonesian, but he died 20 years ago. They had 4 children, and since they were born and raised in Indonesia, she chose to stay here with them rather than move back to Holland. She invited me to come to stay at her house (in one of the ritzier parts of Jakarta) next time I'm in town.

The college student at first just wanted to practice her English. She was originally from Jakarta but was studying at a university in Semarang. She had gone home for the long weekend (Tuesday was a holiday, so almost everyone had Monday off as well) and was returning to school. Shortly before we landed, she turned to me and said, "You have such a nice personality. I feel comfortable to talk to you." That made me happy. We exchanged Facebook names, and we've chatted a couple of times since being back.

At any rate, it was a pretty uneventful trip in the best way possible! Gosh, I love vacations...