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Hello,

I touched down at Logan at 6AM this morning (local time). The Delta red-eye from LAX gets the thumbs-down. I wanted to give whoever decided that a Bruce Willis action flick would make a good on-flight movie for the red-eye a piece of my mind. I'm pretty jet-lagged, so I'll update with photos, etc. tonight or tomorrow.

-Janine

inter-web superstar

I just discovered that this blog is linked from the vet school website.

http://vet.tufts.edu/content/events/950750028.html

Which feels a little strange, I have to say. I thought this would be read by friends & family. Hope I didn't post anything incriminating. I don't think I did. hmm. That would be very unprofessional for something that is linked from a professional school website.

I debriefed this morning with livestock services folks...they all work at the Ministry of Agriculture's (HPAI) campaign Management Unit. They had some really good input for me. And I had a bunch of documents on my laptop that I'm using as background refs that I gave to them. A productive meeting for all (I hope...it was for me, at least). One of them was a PDR (participatory disease response) team member from Yojakarta before she came to the central CMU a few months ago. So she had an interesting perspective on my work.

I'm meeting with some FAO personnel tomorrow to discuss HPAI surveillance and wrap up loose ends. After that, I'm off to spend another day or so having fun with Thersya before I head for home.

By the way, Chris was on News Hour earlier this month. Haven't watched the clip. That might have to wait until I'm back in broadband-landia and not in the world of dial-up access.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/july-dec06/birdflu_07-03.html

I'll try to post more photos before I head for home. If not, stay tuned. I'll get more up as I recover from my impending jet lag. (Which I have to do in time to act coherant when I stand in front of our cholinesterase analysis poster at the Wildlife Disease Association conference...I'm so glad it's only at UCONN and won't require major travel!)

Hope you're all well.

-Janine

weekend in Jakarta with Thersya!

I had a lovely weekend with Thersya in Jakarta. (For those of you who met me after college, Thersya and I graduated from Drew together—she’s a lovely Chinese-Indonesian and grew up between Singapore & Jakarta. She has been back in Jakarta for almost 3 years. Oh, and she’s a lot of fun.)

I took the executive-class train between Bandung & Jakarta. It was a pretty nice ride…big seats, tons of leg room (or crap room, if you are a short pack rat like myself), and they feed you and show you bad movies & music videos…all for only 75,000 Rp (about $8.30). It’s a beautiful ride. Well, most of it is. The train goes right by some small villages that you can’t see from the highway. Seeing the ramshackle houses, gross streams that get household waste water and piles of burning trash remind you that you’re in a developing country. A beautiful country, but very much a developing country with a lot of poverty.

Anyway, Thersya and I had a fun tourist weekend. On Saturday, we went to a few museums downtown that are all in the Kota area—known as Batavia during the Dutch colonial period. Not many of the old buildings are left, but the old town square is still there, and some of the buildings right around it are now museums. We went to the Wayang (puppet) museum, the ceramics museum, the Jakarta History museum and Balai Seni Rupa (the fine arts museum). Sounds like an overwhelming museum day, I know, but they are all small and not well-curated, so we went through them pretty quickly. It’s sort of sad: they have some really nice things, but the buildings are all dusty, the temperature & humidity aren’t controlled, there’s very little information posted in most of the galleries, etc. But the buildings themselves were gorgeous: high ceilings; huge old windows; impressive, solid beams and floor boards; beautiful staircases (including the two most beautiful spiral staircases I’ve ever seen). It was Thersya’s first time at any of these museums, too. We decided that we liked the buildings more than a lot of the galleries, but there was some gorgeous furniture in the history museum (big pieces, solid teak, really intricately carved) and a few really nice paintings in the art museum. The Cannon Si Jaguar was kind of neat, too. It was a Portuguese cannon, brought to as a trophy to Batavia after the Dutch booted the Portuguese out of Indonesia (mid 1600s). It has a hand making an impolite gesture coming out of the back…for some reason, it’s a sexual symbol in Indonesia and women who are having trouble getting pregnant supposedly sit on it.

We were eating champions this weekend. Sushi & sashimi on Friday night (from a restaurant that sends little covered dishes along the big conveyor belt that goes around the big rectangular bar—all the rage in Japan these days.) Dinner was followed by some wine at an outdoor bar/café & a late-night phone call to Mikey for his birthday!) Chinese noodles for breakfast and mutton sashimi for lunch with Thersya’s family on Saturday. Korean barbecue for Saturday dinner with some of Thersya’s friends. Dim sum brunch on Sunday (after a Balinese massage & scrub in the morning). Mmmmmm. Everything was so good. The food & weather in southeast Asia really agree with me. And I think I made Thersya’s dad happy by enthusiastically eating food with a lot of chilies.

Thersya and I were also shopping champions. I hate clothes shopping for myself, but I love shopping for gifts for people. And the array of batik, wood carvings, etc. in Sarinah department store is absolutely dizzying. Sarinah is a big department store downtown with one entire floor devoted to batik and other textiles, and another devoted only to other handicrafts. I got some really nice gifts. And the department stores that carry handicrafts usually have good quality and reasonable prices in an environment where bargaining is not part of the package. Westerners who shop in little stores here & there usually get quoted outrageous prices to start with and have to either completely overspend or bargain people down. That requires a lot of energy.

I head back home in less than a week. I have to make a list of all the outstanding photos I want to take and all of the food I want to eat before I leave! Haven’t had jackfruit yet. Don’t think I can hack durian (on this trip, at least). I did eat chicken feet at dim sum on Sunday, though. Surprisingly good. A little messy to eat, though—lots of little bones to spit out. So I’ve revised my “I will not eat…” list down to durian, brain (prion diseases freak me out), and bits of intestine. I will happily eat sausage in natural casings, but the sight of chopped up, cooked pieces of intestines grosses me out. The livestock services folks who go out into the field with us find this list to be quite amusing.

I’m going to see Thersya again for my last day or so in the country. I’m heading to Jakarta on Wednesday PM and going in to the office Thursday to debrief. Theoretically. They've not volunteered a lot of details re: Thursday morning. Like which office I should go to for a 9:30 AM presentation. Or what I'm supposed to do in the afternoon. Or whether they have anything they want me to do on Friday. You know, little things. Anyway, I'll meet up again with Thersya on Froday PM or Saturday AM, and then I'm back to the States eeeeeearly Sunday morning.

I'm trying to upload photos, but it doesn't seem to be working. Will try again later.

-Janine

Pangandaran

The beach resort community of Pangandaran is only about 3 hours further to the south and east past Tasikmalaya. So Utari & I decided to go for the weekend (Fri night to early Mon morning). I had really considered shifting our work in Tasik to Tuesday and spending an extra day at the beach, and I am so, so grateful that my workaholic tendencies won out. We left Pangandaran at 6:30 AM and an earthquake occurred about 9 hours later. A tsunami slammed the western side of Pangandaran. The town is on a narrow isthmus off the southern Java coast, in the SE corner of West Java. It has a large, forested national park at the headland. The whole town is just above sea level. I’ve heard estimates of 3-6 meters for the height of the tsunami. So far, I think there are about 350 confirmed dead.

Some of you will soon be getting cheery postcards written out at the beach. I felt weird sending them.

Sigh.

We had a really, really nice time in Pangandaran. We stayed in a teeny hotel—not the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in. But it was pretty clean, the rooms opened onto a little garden, the owners were really sweet and it was on an alley between the 2 main drags, about 2 blocks from the entrance to the national park and a few blocks from the fish markets, restaurants, etc. So it was pretty quiet, except when the mosque across the street was blaring the calls to prayer at a truly ear-splitting volume. They gave us breakfast, which we didn’t realize when we booked the room. Coffee/tea, toast, hard-boiled eggs and, each morning, an entire pineapple cut into the shape of a flower and sliced. Yum. And it was really cheap.

The eastern side of the isthmus had no beach, pretty much. There was a big retaining wall down the whole length of the town and a few areas to land boats and pull out fishing nets. The western side was the swimming beach. Black sand, nice waves. It was crowded, but not unbearably so. I saw a few guys in trunks, but the only 2 women I saw in bathing suits were westerners. A lot of the women swam in long pants, long-sleeved shirts and veils. And I saw several people walking down the beach in jackets and sweaters. It wasn’t as hot as I expected (not like Jakarta), but coats?!?!

I ate a lot of seafood: shrimp (with the shells still on…surprisingly good), crab, squid and fish. I think I gained back all the weight I lost while I was sick and then some. Sad.

On Saturday, we went to see a big international kite festival. Sat was smaller, mostly Indonesian kites. Sunday, we discovered too late, was the day that the international teams rolled out their huge, really fancy kites. Oh, well. In the afternoon, we went to the national park and wandered around. We did it sans the local guides, who will take you into the areas of the park that are supposed to be off-limits because they were getting trampled. No, thanks. Saw the barking deer and a mess of gibbons. The monkeys are really naughty…people tease them and feed them all kinds of crap, so they’ve gotten really bold. As we were on our way in, a large male ran right up to me, jumped up onto my messenger bag, and tried to take my water bottle. No way, man! I yanked the bottle out of his hands and he ran away. Over the course of the afternoon, we saw a lot of people feeding the gibbons peanuts, chips and all sorts of other crap. Didn’t see many birds. (I’ve been using my Indo bird guide to ID people’s pets…lots of people have pet passerines, usually in small cages. Sad.)

We browsed through some of the junk shops, too. A lot of t-shirts, a zillion temporary tattoo stands, and other usual beach junk. There were a lot of people hawking shells, chunks of coral, etc. Taxidermy is big: I saw small komodo dragons, a lot of fish, and a disturbing number of turtles, some of them quite large. Should have taken pictures. Really, really sad.

On Sunday, we did a Green Canyon day tour. They take people in groups of 4 to see a few local industries: people who make coconut palm sugar, wooden puppets (both of which we saw), tofu, and shrimp crackers (neither of which we saw). Then, they take you to the Canyon for a boat ride up a river (through the canyon, which is indeed green), and at the end you can swim almost all the way up to a waterfall. Gorgeous. Then, it’s off to a nearby beach for lunch and lazing about on the beach for a couple of hours. A really nice day.

Monday was back to work early. At the time I was not particularly jazzed; in retrospect, though, it was a good thing that we left. Sad.

Photos: wayang golek (wooden puppets, usually characters in traditional Indonesian and/or Hindu stories); I loved the motorcycles crossing the bamboo suspension bridge; pulling in a fishing net.

Tasikmalaya

We spent Thurs, Fri & Mon working in Tasikmalaya. Tasik has a lot of longyam (integrated poultry/fish farms) and I’m going to post some photos here. The chicken houses (more broiler, but some layer, too) are built over ponds. Depending on the specific management practices, the broiler litter may be shoveled into the pond a couple of times a production period (30-35 days). The broilers may not have littler for the last 10-12 days or so…they just walk around on the bamboo floor and poop (mostly) through the slats. Layers are, sadly, housed in battery-style cages and the floors under their cages are much more open. Most of these producers are small (2000 chickens or less in a house) and their biosecurity practices are terrible. Add that to the neighbors’ backyard chickens, ducks and geese that run all over creation, and you’re just asking for a hi-path avian influenza outbreak. Yikes.

The interviews went well, though. Everyone was so happy to help us and the folks who accompanied us around bent over backward to be helpful and enthusiastically invited us back. I had one really long interview because the father, 2 sons & a neighbor (who all work in longyam broiler production) had a ton of questions about HPAI. I couldn’t answer a lot of them (epidemiologists, virologists, vets, physicians, everyone is stumped about this human case business: why the fatality rate is so high; why a good chunk of the victims were healthy adults; and why only 50-some-odd people have gotten sick in Indonesia, which has a huge population and literally millions and millions of people have close contact with poultry and other birds on a regular basis.) But I told them that the best things they could do to protect themselves were to use PPE and to use good biosecurity in their own chicken houses. If they keep their birds healthy by using dedicated clothing and tools, disinfecting their tools and boots when they enter & exit the houses, avoiding contact with other birds, etc. they will be protecting themselves, as well. They seemed to be pretty happy to hear practical suggestions, and also excited to do something to help out the new PDS/PDR (participatory disease surveillance and response) teams that were trained by FAO the week I arrived and just started working in Tasik as of July 1.

The hotel in Tasik that we stayed in was really funny. They bragged about how they were the only hotel in Tasik with “stars” (3 of them, but it was not clear from whence they came.) It was clearly fancy at one point, perhaps 25-30 years ago. Now it’s just ornate and sort of shabby. And way too expensive. We had a late dinner in their ‘coffee shop’ which had a gold disco ball, loud elevator music, and a fabulous stage—complete with air-brushed portraits of Elvis & Marilyn Monroe. They also had a clearly posted policy that ladies entertaining gentleman visitors (and vice-versa) had to keep their doors open—tee, hee. A nice thing: they had a few more TV channels than our hotel in Lembang, including Real Madrid TV. So I got to watch a re-play of a playoff game from earlier this year, with commentary in English. But the hotel in Lembang is *so* much nicer…really clean, super-nice staff that throws food at us, hot water all the time, normal toilet. (Never underestimate the value of having regular access to a decent toilet while traveling.)

Photos: broiler and layer longyam, inside & outside. Chickens in a tree (gave some guys fixing a car a good laugh by taking that picture).

Orang amerika!

We worked in two more subdistricts of Bandung District on Weds, July 12. Hopefully, we’ll only have 1 more day of manure trader interviews left. We were accompanied by a woman from the local DINAS (livestock services) who had a ball…she bought snacks everywhere we went and ran around talking to people. When we finished for the day, we went back to her house and she tried to feed us. We had had a huge lunch: rice, fried tofu, chicken livers cooked in a gorgeous sauce and fried salted fish—small enough not to worry about the bones, except the vertebrae. With raw string beans and raw teeny, green, round eggplants. Delicious. (I am having a lot of fun picturing the yucky faces that some of you are making now…) I begged off eating more. While Utari was in the bathroom, the woman from DINAS (Junhariya) grabbed me by the hand and marched me outside to show me her neighbor’s mushroom greenhouses. The first few were locked, so we walked about (she still had me by the hand), looking for an open one. All the while, she was announcing “orang amerika! (person from America!)” to her neighbors. One of them tried to invite me in to eat a doughnut. Fortunately, we were on a mushroom-finding mission, so I didn’t have to eat any more. We finally found a neighbor who was a mushroom-greenhouse employee, and she let us in. Junhariya pointed out all the big, pretty ones to me, then proceeded to pick some of them off their little compressed sawdust substrate-thingies and hand them to me. By the time she was satisfied, I had a large armful of beautiful, huge oyster mushrooms—and absolutely no clue what to do with them. Fortunately, Dedi (our driver) likes mushrooms, so I sent him home with them. Junhariya was a hoot. I think we’re spending a day with her again at the end of the week. It should be fun.

another Singapore photo

This one got left out of the other Singapore photos somehow.

Singapore photos

The big archways are in the orchid gardens. They're completely covered with orchid plants...all of those teeny yellow dots are 'golden shower' orchids.

Banana tree was also in the botanical gardens. They had areas dedicated to bromeliads (including pineapples) and plants from the Zingiberidae, the ginger family (which I had no idea included bananas.)

I love Singapore!

Went to Singapore to renew my visa. I had such a nice weekend. I was fairly apprehensive about the whole concept of going there by myself, but I had a really good time. It’s probably the most beautiful city I’ve ever been in…it’s very clean and there is lots of green all over. Plus, it is so organized and efficient! A welcome respite from the chaos of Indonesia for my retentive self. Though, I must say, I am pretty amazed at how calm I have managed to remain so far despite traffic jams, getting blown off, having people talking while I’m presenting preliminary results, etc.

Anyway, I arrived mid-afternoon on Friday. (Singapore is one hour ahead of Jakarta, I think because they keep daylight savings time to stay a more uniform time distance from North America & Europe. Being practically on the equator, there’s no appreciable difference in day length during different parts of the year…daylight savings just means that the sun’s up from 7AM-7PM instead of 6AM-6PM).

Thersya was a godsend! FAO’s travel agent said he/she couldn’t get me a room for less than $250 USD per night, then he/she said that he/she couldn’t get me a room at all. Lame. Thersya went through her agent and booked me a room that was ~$80 SGD for the first night and ~$70 for the second ($1 US is about $1.5 Sing). Much better. The hotel was not very fancy and they flaked out on my wakeup call, but all I wanted was a clean bed, clean bathroom, lock on the door, and in a not-scary neighborhood. It fit the bill well. She couldn’t come to Sing with me because she had a wedding to go to, but I’m going to meet her in Jakarta next weekend.

My hotel was 2 blocks off Orchard St., the main shopping drag. All up and down both sides of the street were hotels, shopping malls, department stores and branded retail outlets with restaurants and convenience stores and coffee shops squeezed in between them. A lot of great food, people-watching and window shopping. I walked all over the place on Friday afternoon and evening. For-real shopping was out of the question for me (even through the annual Singapore Great Sale was on) since the likes of Prada, Cartier, Cole Haan, etc. are a bit outside my price range. Except for the occasional thousand pair lots of Prada deisgn mishaps in weird sizes that occasionally pop up at DSW. It’s never the nice ones that can be found there for a reasonable price.

The malls that I ducked into to use the bathroom or get out of the sun for a bit were all gorgeous, too. One had an arc lamp next to the information desk, and several had gorgeous bent plywood and chrome chairs set up in little lounge areas for shoppers. Mmmmm…well-designed modern furniture…

Anyway, Friday was all walking around and people-watching. Saturday I got up early and was headed to the Botanical Gardens by 7AM. I spent the whole morning in the Botanical Gardens and the National Orchid Garden (which is a part of the Botanical Gardens). I headed back in the direction of my hotel for lunch, then went up to the zoo for the afternoon. I met an electrical engineer from Montreal who is in Singapore on business for 3 weeks; we walked through part of the zoo together and had dinner. A nice guy. And mealtime conversation was a nice change of pace…in Indonesia, it’s considered rude to talk a lot during meals. As someone who has always treated meals with other people as social affairs, I’ve found this a bit weird to get used to. Anyway, after dinner was night safari time…the Singapore Night Safari is next-door to the zoo (and parts of them overlap). They put soft lights on around the habitats for the nocturnal animals. The lights are oriented such that you can see the animals, but they have a hard time seeing you. You can take a tram ride through the park, and there are a few trails open as well. It was really neat.

Singapore was pretty hot…I think about 90F…and humid. I probably drank more than 4L of water on Sat, and I still don’t think that was enough. It was a little overcast and there was plenty of shade to be had at the Botanical Gardens & the Zoo, which was nice. Good thing I like hot weather. Some of the other tourists looked sort of miserable. The gardens had lots of little gazebos all over where you could sit down in the shade. The zoo bad benches in the shade, but also a lot of little air-con shelters—small buildings with glass doors that were air-conditioned and had vending machines with cold drinks. There seemed to be a lot of tourists from Australia, New Zealand & Europe. I didn’t hear many accents from the States or Canada.

I was beyond knackered by the end of the day and my feet are still a little sore. My Keen flip-flops are comfortable for walking in an all, but I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to spend >12 hours walking in them (with breaks for meals and bus/train rides) anytime soon.

I really wanted to wake up at 1AM to watch the World Cup final (Forza ragazzi! Azzurri!), but it didn’t quite happen.

Flight back to Jakarta was pleasant. Singapore Airlines is really, really, really nice. As was Cathay Pacific on the way from the States. And the Singapore and Hong Kong airports are both fabulous. Immaculate and very well-designed. American airlines and airports kind of suck! Southwest is at least nice to you, but Cathay and Singapore take it to an entirely different level. Hot towels right after you sit down, a free copy of the International Herald Tribune (or the Straight Times from Singapore or papers in Chinese or Bahasa Indonesia), actually pretty decent food, very pleasant flight attendants…now I understand why Josh’s mentor only flies on Singapore when headed to field sites in the Indo-Pacific. And I’m always amazed by the duty-free areas of the major international airports. Plus, the Singapore airport has orchid gardens scattered about, a movie theater, free wireless internet access and free internet kiosks throughout the terminals. And did I mention that everything is really well-designed? People in Asia don’t seem to do lines very well (there’s always lots of crowding, which I frankly find to be somewhat irritating) but in some areas (e.g. Hong Kong and SIngapore) they do industrial and interior design way, way better than we do.

okey-doke. I should run. Photos are all from the Orchid Garden or Zoo. Hope you’re all well!

unexpected day off!

Hi all,

Our work plans fell though for the day, so we had an unexpected day off. Went to a big, crazy bookstore and bought another book because I was not good at rationing the 3 I brought with me. Tuesdays with Morrie. My parents like it, I think. The selection of books in English was not great. Lots of Danielle Steele. A zillion copies of the DaVinci Code. And lots of cookbooks, some big, beautiful art & design books. Some classics (Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare, etc.) but I was not feeling so in the mood for any of those books that I hadn't already read.

We also went to this big annual Indonesian handicrafts fair. It was neat. Lots of gorgeous batik, some beautiful pottery, nice baskets...I've seen so many beautiful things I'd love to bring home for people, but I have to keep reminding myself that bringing back lots of smushable and/or breakabe things is peobably not so smart.

Had a nice lunch afterwards. I've been loving the food. West Java is Sundanese, and I like Sundanese food. Rice at very meal, and I've been eating a lot of fried tofu, tempe, and fish lately. Since I've been eating in a lot of restaraunts lately, I haven't been eating as many vegetables as I usually do, but I bought a cheap plasic bowl and some bleach the other day, so I can wash fruits and vetegables in chlorinated water in my hotel toom now. Sundanese restaraunts will often bring small bowls of every dish they have to the table. you take what you want, and they come by when you're done and tally up your bill. Food is prepared in the AM, and sits in glass-doored cabinets to keep the flies away until it's all eaten. It was (surprisingly) not a very weird adjustment to eating so much room-temperature food. And the fruit here is pretty glorious. Mangoes, papayas, bananas are all fabulous. Mangosteen, soursop, snakeskin fruit, passion fruit...mmmmmmm...I am again of the opinion that I should live only in places where bananas and papayas grow wild. No more of this snow and ice nonesense.

I had really, really good beef sate for lunch on the 4th. Not a burger, but it was still cow. Very American I had meant to buy myself a can of cold beer on the way home, but I forgot. We finished our last interview that day with a lovely woman who had her kid and a neighbor chase us down on their motorcycle as we were drving away. They had a plastic bag wtih a knot tied in the top...they said it was a sample for us. They had me fairly well convinced that they had come running after s with a sample of chicken manure, but they were only joking. It was 4 bags of tea from their village. It was very nice of her. And after I had probably grossed out everyone in her store by playing with some puppies and letting them chew on my hands. I cannot understand the Muslim aversion to dogs.


Well, I should get back to the hotel and work on my interview summary. Day off from working in the field shouldn't mean entire day off from working at all. Otherwise I will be miserable upon my return because I will have a rediculous amount of work to do and much fuzzier memories of everything that I'm writing about.

Not sure when I'll be able to post again. I'm going to Jakarta on Thursday afternoon/evening and I'll be in Sngapore, renewing my visa, from Fri to Sun.

Hope you're all well.

-Janine

sunday photos

In addition to three volcano photos, there's one of the teaestates we drove through. Gorgeous.

Hello all,

Utari & I went to Tangkuban Prahu yesterday (Sunday) morning. It’s a huge volcanic crater about 15km north of Lembang. There are two craters, Kawah Ratu & Kawah Upas, which both collapsed a long, long time ago under the weight of all the build up ash. It hasn’t seriously erupted in 35+ years, but it still emits sulphur fumes and there’s a lot of yellow dust about.

It was gorgeous, but very, very crowded. I keep forgetting that Java is a densely populated as it is and wondering why on earth everything is so crowded. But with 60% of Indonesia’s population (or 120 million people) on a 132,000 km² island, almost everywhere is bound to get crowded. I have not gotten a lot of funny comments when we've been in villages (just a lot of stares) but I got a bunch at Tangukuban Prahu. Lots of "hello, misses" a few "are you hungry? I am hungry" (which seemed like a strange thing to pick up), etc. Only one person asked me to pose for a photo with him.

Afterward, we tried to go to Ciater hot springs, but it was beyond mobbed. We paid, got in, and left about 10 minutes later. Sunday afternoon was probably the absolute worst time to go. But we drove through some gorgeous tea fields on the way there and back.

I’m in the field today and Tuesday, I’m going to try to finish my field summary on Wednesday, and then I have to present my preliminary results on Thursday morning, July 6. I leave for Jakarta after that, and I’m heading to Singapore to renew my visa on Friday.

I’ve been having some ups and downs lately. I spoke to Peter *and* my parents this morning, which was great. Peter was at a barbecue at Ken & Sarita’s house and Ed & Cary were up and Sarah & John and Roger & Lina and Jeremy and a bunch of other people were there. I spoke with Ed for a few minutes. I got kind of sad toward the end. I knew it would be tough to be this far away, but it still is hitting me harder than I expected in some ways. I think that when I went to Costa Rica, I knew I was going to be there for a while so I made more of an effort to meet people and start to put down some roots. It helped that I spoke Spanish, too. Here, I can only communicate with a few people, unless I’m exchanging very basic phrases sentences with the aid of a phrasebook. Which means it gets lonely at times. But all of the people I've dealt with here are so nice and so friendly, and that makes up for a lot.

Hope you’re all well.

-Janine