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| Paige and her students before performing a "Marak" dance. Click on the image to see more of our friends. |
Returned Peace Corps Volunteers
June 6, 2013 at 5 pm we become official Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCV). Along with 17 other volunteers, we survived 2 years and 3 months of the social experiment that has been Peace Corps Indonesia.
As the days clicked by closer and closer to today, we tried our best to process emotions and live in the moment. Knowing that no matter what we decided to do after Peace Corps, this is a life experience like no other and we wanted to cherish it, both the good and the bad.
We have tried to visit everyone we could for last conversations, apologies for any mistakes we have made during our time, and to thank them for all the help they gave us throughout our time. Daniel mentioned that he found the last few weeks an eye opener to the way people process emotions, especially with the subject of good-byes. We found that many of our friends had a difficult time voicing their feelings. A few exchanges have honestly been disappointing. As we have prepared to finish, we've sorted through our belongings and given things out to friends. With some kids, we have tried to pull out verbally what they have enjoyed about this last year, only to get 30 minutes of horribly awkward silence and eye avoidance, followed by taking the gift, jumping on their bike and riding away.
For some, while meeting, the conversation wouldn't go too deep, basically just questions about what our plans were next, and then at the last minute, they would hand us some kind of gift. Unlike back home, here it's not really common to open the present in front of the giver. So we get home, and open our gift to find something well beyond a basic gift. These gifts blew us away. Not only were they possibly financially straining on the giver, but they displayed the thought and time that they put into the gift. A beautiful silver cross necklace from a Muslim friend, a large printed picture of me and students, cross-stitched javanese art, engraved matching rings and hand picked matching batik clothing. The gifts were amazing, but the feeling of humbleness and love was unbeliveable.
We are saying good-bye to many new friends that we are forever linked to as RPCVs. We've spent the last 3 days enjoying their company while closing out our adminsitrative duties. We gonged the gong in the Peace Corps office signifying our graduation from PCV to RPCV. We pray for them all as they head back to the USA for grad school, work, and the fun of mixing back in to the "American Dream".
As for us, we are headed to Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia to pursue the next phase of life. Daniel will be working for a company based out of California as a quality control manager and Paige will be looking for editing opportunites at the local universities and publishing companies. We are excited about having modern living conditions again with A/C and high speed internet connection while still living in the heart of Indonesian culture. It will be a very fun adjustment that will keep the adventure alive.
We are saying good-bye to many new friends that we are forever linked to as RPCVs. We've spent the last 3 days enjoying their company while closing out our adminsitrative duties. We gonged the gong in the Peace Corps office signifying our graduation from PCV to RPCV. We pray for them all as they head back to the USA for grad school, work, and the fun of mixing back in to the "American Dream".
As for us, we are headed to Surakarta, Central Java, Indonesia to pursue the next phase of life. Daniel will be working for a company based out of California as a quality control manager and Paige will be looking for editing opportunites at the local universities and publishing companies. We are excited about having modern living conditions again with A/C and high speed internet connection while still living in the heart of Indonesian culture. It will be a very fun adjustment that will keep the adventure alive.
We plan on keeping this blog alive to document this next phase in Indonesia. But as a closing Peace Corps note we wanted to share a few statistics we roughly estimated to show some of the life we've been living.
In the numbers after 27 months (representation of us individually)
820 days of Peace Corps service
2200 miles of bike riding
800 days not driving a car/motorcyle
100+ trips by bus
9 countries visited (USA, China, Honk Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia)
19 airline flights
2400 liters/ 530 gallons of water consumed (estimated 3000 liters sweated out)
125 pounds of rice consumed (Daniel)
125 pounds of rice consumed (Daniel)
4100 times of hearing the (Islamic) call to prayer
750 sessions of dish washing by hand
750+ days without air conditioning
35 days/times we experienced below 70 degrees (30 during our trip home to the USA during Christmas)
750+ days without air conditioning
35 days/times we experienced below 70 degrees (30 during our trip home to the USA during Christmas)
15 dogs seen while in Indonesia, 8 dogs petted
22 schools entered for teaching, motivation, etc. (10,000 students)
4,782 new Facebook friends and counting
8,200 times asked "Misterrrrrrr, Mau Kemana?" (Where are you going?)
12 bottles of sunscreen
820 second-hand cigarettes smoked (approx at least 1 a day)
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