Preparing for the Plunge

There are only 5 days standing between myself and Indonesia. Kind of a scary thought, ya? My mind has been consumed by preparatory tedium lately - e.g. emailing place A to have them fax document X to place B so that they can process document Y and express mail it to my P.O. box by date Z. I can guarantee you it's exactly as much fun as it all sounds - especially when Murphy's Law is in full effect. I hate not being able to do things like this all on my own, but bitching about it doesn't do me much good anyhow. At this moment, all I'm waiting for is my tourist visa to be processed and my passport mailed back to me. We'll see if Mr. Gumilar, the man processing my visa application, will come through for me. God willing...

As you might be able to tell, this past week I haven't been particularly preoccupied with thinking about the stuff I'm going to be doing AFTER I get to Indonesia. Yeah, I should probably get on that.. Things will sort themselves out, I feel like. A stack of home-made Indonesian flash cards is collecting dust on top of my suitcase, which still has a lot of stuff in it from my trip home close to a month ago. It's been hard to fathom stepping off a plane into an orgy of unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells, barely able to understand 1/10 of anything spoken while rapid-fire Javanese and Indonesian syllables roll off of native tongues and bombard me from all sides. Subconciously I seem to almost be in denial about what I'll soon be thrust into. People ask me if I'm excited. I guess so... Meanwhile a thousand questions swirl around in my head: What will people there make of me? When I do interviews, will they tell me just what they think I want to hear? Will it be unbearably hot? Will I get sick? Will my bathroom be a fly-ridden hole in the ground? Will I get ripped off? The list goes on... So am I excited? Sure, but not in the sense that I'm looking forward to an easy, relaxing, trip. This is by no means a vacation.

All that being said, I'm really thankful to have such a unique opportunity, and I know I'll come out stronger for all the challenges I face. Let's do this!