Category: culture
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Bright Future
Voices, squeals, and laughter echo in the afternoon air as raindrops start to patter on the metal roof above. Girls and boys are scattered around the basketball court. A pack chases each other, dribbling a basketball. A lanky girl with hair pulled back in a ponytail squares up and shoots with great form, the ball…
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A Holy Cacophony
The sanctuary—lit by hundreds of candles set upon tables and on the floor that stretch the length of the open space—smells of incense, candles, sweat and the grass and pine that cover the floor. Large portraits and figures of the pantheon of Catholic saints line the walls, as people move freely around, praying or offering…
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Long Overdue Post
Apologies for the long silence on this blog. Since the last post, I have completed the last semester at Mianyang Teachers’ College and closed my service in the Peace Corps in mid-July. After a few weeks of travel, I returned to Seattle and started work at the end of August. I never intended such a long…
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Thanksgiving
One of the stressful things about living abroad is missing holidays and celebrations of the home country. It is a joy to engage and learn new things, but there’s often a longing to return to the familiar. Although I’m not surrounded by the holiday traditions from the USA, I can share them and make do…
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Indonesia: Going Home
When I finally set foot on Indonesian soil again this past August, after nearly three years, I knew I was home again. This post describes my short 10 days in Indonesia during the latter part of August, returning to the North Sumatran province. My first destination was Bukit Lawang, a mountain village next to the…
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Taipei, Idul Fitri, and the Indonesian Migrant Community
I was lost in a sea of people. It wasn’t an unusual occurrence after one year in China and two past years in Indonesia–but this time was different. This time my physical body was in Taipei Main Station–a sprawling transportation hub connected by passageways to an underground mall–but my eyes tricked me into thinking I…
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Sports Meet
Not unlike other colleges throughout China, my college held a Sports Meet this past month. Colleges and Universities here do not have organized team sports to the degree which the United States does. In fact, this 2-day event reminded me how deeply embedded sports is into my own culture from a very early age all…
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Sharing A Christmas Eve Tradition
Growing up, my house was filled with the smell of baking cookies during the month of December. The Christmas of my childhood has the smell and taste of spritz cookies imprinted in my memory. For several weeks leading up to Christmas, my mom would bake batches of several different kinds of cookies. She stored the…
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Making Saksang
Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands and the world’s 4th most populous nation with more than 250 million residents. In the lush area surrounding Sumatra’s Lake Toba in western Indonesia, live the ethnic groups of Batak people. Although the majority of Indonesians are Muslim, ethnic Bataks are mostly Christian. Their homeland around…
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Wedding Crasher
I stood in the yard in front of the church while the crowd began to gather. For once in my life I felt tall—at 5’2” I’m a short American, but next to the young Indonesian women who surrounded me, I could see the tops of their heads without straining. We had run across the courtyard…
Megs the Wanderer 