Celebrating Europe Indonesian Style

It's my first full day in Yogyakarta! On the way back from lunch we took a walk through the university campus we're staying at and got to explore a little bit. Turns out the International Relations department is hosting European Week this week. When we were walking past the department there was an outdoor festival celebrating different European countries. Needless to say, I bounded up to the Germany booth and greeted them with German. After an excited "Guten Tag!" the girl on the left immedately responded (in perfect English) "You speak German?!". So I acclimated to their booth. Leave it to me to make friends with German loving strangers in Indonesia.

Good ol' U S of A

I’m cheating a bit on this post as I wanted to write about getting ready to leave, except I’ve already been traveling for almost a full day. I am currently in transit toward Bangkok, and am feeling the lack of sleep really building up. But I must backtrack…

Clearly, packing is something that should be left to the last minute. And in this regard, I am a professional. And last minute packing only leads to minor issues: like forgetting all your rain gear despite spending a month in Thailand during the rainy season. No big deal.

As far as travel, my first flight was delayed, but I still made it to my connection at JFK airport with plenty of time. I could have gotten food… but I was in the international wing of terminals. Why waste such great opportunities? I hunted down the gates that were headed to Germany and parked a seat. Figured I might as well get some German practice in. I was actually surprised at how many Germans there didn’t speak English, but was more thrown off by a group of Austrians I tried to interact with.

I had been sitting there for probably half an hour when I mustered up the courage to ask a woman where she was from. I was having a hard time understanding her and her friends because of their accent and dialect. Well, she was put off, but I learned she was from Austria. (This is all taking place auf Deutsch by the way.) Except, when we were done talking she started ranting to her friends. I told her it was hard for me to understand her, not that I couldn’t. Well she apparently didn’t grasp this because I heard her as she spoke about me to her friends. I mean… I was kind of being a little creepy since I was listening to them, but that doesn’t mean she had to be a jerk in how she talked about me.

Thankfully a cute German exchange student (he was the German TA for Oberlin College this year) found humor in the situation and we sat and talked until his flight left.  

Before long, I had boarded and was on course for a 14 hour flight to Tokyo.