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