Volcanic Activity

This is Mount Merapi (literally translated as Fire Mountain) outside of Yogyakarta. Yesterday morning Tanto took us off-roading around the volcano.

This is all of us around our jeep before the trip. Tanto is on the far right. On the far left is Pak Pomo. It has been mutually agreed upon by all the AUA interns that he is one of our favorite people in Indonesia. He doesn't speak English, but he always greets us with a smile and goes out of his way to help us at any given moment. He's our driver for the AUA program (not the off-roading), so he's the one who picks us up and takes us to work during the week. But back to the volcano...

This is a picture of CDs post volcano erruption:

And then you see this:

I'd like to note, that although seemingly destructable, this is what a Nokia looks like after 700 degree Celsius volcanic ash. So that's still pretty freaking impressive.

During our off-roading we also stopped at a bunker that was supposed to keep people safe during the erruption... except it didn't work.

This is a picture of the bunker (to the left of the sign) with the volcano giving off smoke in the background.

 This is a picture of myself inside of the bunker.

So my personal favorite part of the photo of myself in the bunker is, first off, that I think it is every bit as creepy as the inside of the bunker itself is. But when Suraiya was taking the photo she said, "Hold on, let me take another. You're so white!" Except every photo turned out the same. I can't help I'm a bulai (a white foreigner). Later on in the day people were joking about how I'm a ghost. Even before this photo Tanto liked to occasionally comment on how my skin was blinding him. So, welcome to my life (apparently as a ghost) in Indonesia.

Overall is was an awesome adventure. Only slightly dangerous, although Pak Bulai (Ben) refused to be in pictures for the sake of his insurence. I can't imagine why...

We've only had one bahasa lesson, but we're pretty sure this sign says "explore here".