Let's Show Some Basic Humanity People!

This is not going to be a typical blog post for me. So far, I have used this blog as a way to tell people back in the US what I have been doing, now I feel I need to use to tell people what I've learned. It's fairly simple: we are all human. No matter what culture we come from, language we speak, religion we follow, our most basic values, like peace, love, and acceptance are the same. We all believe that we can make the world a better place by being kind and by helping one another, and that war and hatred make the world worse.

These "revelations" may sound a bit cliche and simplistic, something that we teach to children from their very first day of school, but as I read many of the political reactions to the horrors from Paris, I find it hard to believe that we have actually learned them. Many of our politicians, including Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, are taking the attacks in Paris as a reason to reject Syrian refugees and close our borders. I believe they have gotten the wrong lesson from the attacks. They are looking at the handful of violent extremists and are missing the hundreds of thousands of people left stranded and homeless by the same violence we just saw in France. Instead of seeing this as an example of what happens when we accept migrants into our countries, we should see this as an example of the migrants are fleeing from, the reason why they became migrants and refugees, and the reason that they so desperately need our help.

Friday saw the deaths of 129 people in Paris-which is undeniably horrible-but the last time the average daily death toll in Syria dropped that low was last February. To rephrase that-what happened in Paris on Friday has happened in Syria every single day for the past eight months. And, at this rate, the death toll for 2015 will be significantly lower than it was in 2013 and 2014. Is it any wonder that so many Syrians are trying to escape that? I find it more amazing that in the face of such a humanitarian crisis, anyone could think that turning them away was a reasonable option. How can we turn our backs on our fellow humans when we know that this is what they are facing?

America claims to be a nation that stands for good, for human rights, and for helping others, yet when given a chance to help those who need it most, we are threatening to forsake those values and deny the helpless entrance to our country. Its callous, heartless and almost inhuman. We are a nation with the resources and the space to help people, but due to bigotry and prejudice we are keeping those blessing to ourselves. If we don't take the refugees, where are they supposed to go? They can't return to their homes, and Europe is already taking as many as they possibly can (including France, who after the attacks actually increased the numbers they were committed to accepting). The US is one of the only havens left for them, but instead of welcoming them or offering support, we are rallying around closing our borders.

The only thing we should be doing right now, as human beings, is help and support those effected by violence. In the wake of the Paris attacks, many showed that they stood with the French, either by flying the French flag, or putting filters over their profile pictures. This is good, but its not enough. We need to stand with everyone. Stand with the Russians who just lost 224 people to a plane explosion in Syria. Stand with the rest of Europe as they struggle with the increasing numbers of immigrants entering their borders. And most importantly, stand with and help the Syrian people as they flee the war zone that their home has become. Stand with them all, because at the end of the day, regardless of nationality, religion, or ideology, we all want peace and working together and supporting each other is the only way to achieve it.


A few other resources, in case you need more convincing:

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html (pay close attention to the rights for all people, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness part)

For the Christians who read this go also read Luke 10:29-37 and Matthew 25:31-46

France's reaction to the attacks:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/11/18/france-says-it-will-take-30000-syrian-refugees-while-u-s-republicans-would-turn-them-away/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/11/17/isis-wants-you-to-hate-muslims/ (another interesting news article)

For anyone who wants to know how they can help:

http://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2015/related/proposals/ab506 (a bill proposed to the Wisconsin legislature to fund support for Syrian refugees)

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&cpid=1523#.Vk1Hw3YrLIU (a website that helps find charities that help Syrian refugees)

And also, please share this and spread it around a bit!

GO STUDY ABROAD!!!

To anyone who is in high school, I have one suggestion to make your next year much more interesting: go study abroad next year! Imagine an experience where you get to travel, meet interesting people, not have to do your homework, eat new food, experience a culture in the most in depth way possible, work towards world peace, learn a new language and then get an amazing thing to put on college applications. That experience that your thinking of is an understatement of what study abroad has to offer. It is by far the most rewarding and exciting thing I have ever done and I would highly recommend it to pretty much anyone. Application deadlines are approaching so apply soon for the greatest adventure you can go on in high school!

Scholarship Programs

-NSLI-Y: http://www.nsliforyouth.org/

-CBYX: http://www.usagermanyscholarship.org/

-YES Abroad (obviously the best in my clearly unbiased opinion): http://www.yes-abroad.org/

Other Amazing Programs

-AFS: http://www.afsusa.org/

-AmidEast: http://amideast.org/abroad/home

-American Councils: http://www.americancouncils.org/programs

There are many other programs out there as well, I just don't know about them. If anybody has any questions about studying abroad, applying for study abroad or pretty much anything else (within reason) feel free to send me an email or a Facebook message, I would be happy to help you out!

Other Blogs That Might Interest You

If you want to read more about Indonesia or get a different perspective or are simply frustrated by the "consistent schedule" on this blog, go check out these blogs from some of the other wonderful people I'm here in Indonesia with.

Preston: http://fausettadventures.com/

Ruthie: thetruthbyruth.wordpress.com

Lizzie: http://lizziefierro.tumblr.com/

Eid al Adha

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING BLOG POST CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF EVENTS THAT MAY BE CONSIDERED GRAPHIC. IF YOU ARE REALLY YOUNG, FAINT OF HEART, OR HAVE AN INORDINATE AMOUNT OF EMPATHY FOR ANIMALS, GO DO SOMETHING ELSE.

So Eid al Adha actually happened almost a month ago, but I've been really busy/mildly lazy since then, so its a bit late. Eid al Adha is one of the two major Muslim holidays (the other is Eid al Fitr after Ramadan) and I got the opportunity to experience it this year because my host family, like 88% of all Indonesians, is Muslim. Preparation for the holiday begins the day before, with Muslims fasting from dawn until dusk and then again from the prayer in the early morning until after the solat (prayer) on the day of the actual holiday. In addition, during the entire night before Eid al Adha, people pray at the mosque and broadcast the call to prayer over the loudspeakers. There is a mosque about a five minutes walk from my house and I could hear the sound of the prayers every time I woke up during that night. In the morning a prayer/sermon is held in a flat, open space (not a mosque) and everyone gets dressed in the Muslim prayer clothing: long pants, a long sleeved white shirt with a flat collar and a skull cap or fez for the men and a long skirt, poncho and head scarf for the women. The solat in our neighborhood was held at the park at the entrance of our complex so we walked there with many of our neighbors and I got to watch them at prayer. Afterwards we broke the fast with the traditional meal of ketupat (rice cake), opor ayam (chicken with a yellow sauce), lidah (cow tongue) and rendang (spicy beef flavored with coconut).

A photo of the morning solat on Eid al Adha

THIS IS WHERE IT ACTUALLY GETS GRAPHIC, TURN BACK NOW.

Eid al Adha is the day of sacrifice, where animals are sacrificed and the meat is given to the poor. Our family bought a goat the night before the Eid and named it Kuping, which means ears, because it had really long ears. After the solat and breakfast, we took Kuping to the mosque where he was sacrificed along with many other goats and a few cows. Sacrificing a goat is fairly simple, the goat is flipped over on to its side and held there while its throat is cut. It all happens quickly and requires only one or two people. Sacrificing a cow is a bit more of a process. Cows are bigger, much harder to get on their sides and have legs that are dangerous if not properly secured, so it takes five or six people to push it into position, tie its head to a post, knock it over, tie up its legs and hold it in place before its throat is cut. After the sacrifice, the animal is drained and the blood is washed into a pit or the sewer, depending on the facilities available, then butchered on site and given out to the poor and the hungry. After this, the day is spent visiting family and friends and eating lots of food, like a normal holiday in the US.

Kuping the goat. Notice the ears.

An additional note, today marks exactly two months since I left home to embark on this amazing adventure. These past two months have been absolutely amazing, and life really seems to be starting to click for me here. I'm picking up more of the language and the culture and am incredibly happy here. If anyone has any specific questions about what I'm doing here or things you would like to see in a future blog post, feel free to leave a comment (I've heard you need to use a google+ account) or send me an email or Facebook message. Dadah!

Not in Kansas

Okay, sorry for the infrequency of these posts but I've been really busy here, which is great but it also means that finding time to post is a little challenging. I know many of you want to know about family and school and daily stuff like that, which I will get to soon, but some really interesting stuff has happened to me over the past couple of weeks and this post is more about those events than my day to day routine.

As many of you know, I celebrated my first birthday abroad a couple of weeks ago. On that day, I had to go get my KITAS, a card that says that I can stay in Indonesia as an expat for a year, so I didn't go to school and I wasn't expecting much of a celebration especially from my friends. My family woke me up in the morning with singing and a cake, but I thought that that would be all. Little did I know, my host family and friends from school had been working together to plan a surprise party for that afternoon. I had been taking a nap (being an exchange student is very tiring) and when I woke up, my friends had decorated the entire family room and were waiting to surprise me with a cake, some cool new batik (a type of traditional Indonesian fabric and design) and the Indonesian tradition of making a cake on someone for their birthday. I got a watered down version where they just sprayed flour all over me, but normally Indonesian high school students celebrate birthdays by covering their friends in flour, eggs, coffee, honey, chocolate and anything else that might be normally used to make a cake. Overall it was a really great experience.

Me with many of my new Indonesian friends on my birthday, as they prepared to cover me in flour...

...and as they actually start dumping the flour.

The next noteworthy event happened about a week after my birthday. My family took a trip to Bogor, a smaller city about an hour away from where we live, to attend a cousins circumcision party. It was actually the second circumcision party that I'd been to, apparently getting circumcised is a big deal in Islam, so the family and friends of the boy get together to celebrate the milestone. Anyway, there was live entertainment at this party, and after a little while one of the emcees noticed me in the crowd (I'm about 8 inches taller and several shades whiter than the average Indonesian so I stick out just a little bit). They pointed me out to the leader of the music group that was playing, and I ended up on a stage in front of everyone playing a drum with an Arabic singing/drum/dance group. My host mom got a video of it so enjoy!

The next day I had the chance to tour Istiqlal, the largest mosque in southeast Asia. For those of you who don't know, Indonesia has the highest Muslim population of any country in world and is much more open about religion in general, so I'd seen and experienced Islam quite a bit while I was here, but I'd never actually been inside of a mosque. One of the first things that I found very interesting was that I was the one who had to cover up. We hadn't been planning on going to Istiqlal, so I had been wearing shorts, which in Islam is seen as immodest before God, so I had to put on a long grey robe to be appropriately dressed. Other than that the tour, such as it was, was fairly simple. Mosques are meant only for praying, so besides the main praying room and the minarets (pictured below), there isn't much of the art or architecture that people go to see at many big churches or cathedrals to go see. I was not allowed into the main praying room, because I was not Muslim, but I did get to see it from an observation deck on the second story. While outside the mosque there were some vendors and people just hanging out, once we were inside, everything was focused towards prayer and reverence towards God. One of the final things that I noticed as I was leaving the mosque was that just on the other side of the street is where Indonesia's national cathedral is. While it may just be a coincidence, I believe it does show something I've noticed over my past month here, that different religions can coexist here, not because people hide their religion and keep it private, but because people are willing to show and discuss their religion with members of a different religion. I've had and heard many conversations about religion while I've been here, with both adults and high schoolers, and I've found that everyone is genuinely interested in hearing about different religions and about having respectful and intelligent conversations about religion, without judgment or attempting to change the religion of the person they are talking. I find it quite different from the US.

The inside of the dome above the main prayer room at Istiqlal.

The main prayer room at Istiqlal, as seen from the second floor observation deck.

Monas, the national monument and a symbol of Jakarta (think Washington Monument), as seen from inside Istiqlal.

A random cat that decided that my robe was the best place to hang out while I was at Istiqlal.

A few pics of the national cathedral from the front door of Istiqlal.

The final experience I am going to write about in this post is my first time going to Car Free Day, an event that happens every Sunday in downtown Jakarta. Each week, the police shut down one road in Central Jakarta to cars and open it for anyone to come down and exercise, sell goods, or perform. I went with my family and joined the tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of people walking up and down this massive in the center of the city. Some highlights included having an Asian civet crawl back and forth across my shoulders, trying some street food, seeing a couple of the national monuments and buying my first completely genuine American t-shirt in Indonesia:

My absolutely authentic American t-shirt.

Me with a civet on my shoulder.

Me with my host family and grandparents in front of the Jakarta welcome monument.

Anyway, I hope you all are doing well back in the US and I will try to be slightly more regular in my postings. I do get and read any e-mails or Facebook posts/messages that you guys send my way, even if I don't always get the chance to respond to them quickly, so feel free to contact me in any of those ways or to comment on these blog posts. My first month here has gone by so fast, I'll be back to see you all before you know it! 

Welcome Party Video

As an addendum to the previous blog, a video of the US performance at the welcoming party.

Airplanes and Orientations

So, I made it to Indonesia in one piece and I'm posting...finally. It took me from early morning on August 19th to even earlier on August 22nd to actually get to Indonesia with a total of 22 hours of flight time. We landed in the Jakarta airport just after midnight on the 22nd and got to Taman Mini, the theme park/outdoor cultural museum where we stayed for the in country orientation, at about 3:00. Because it was so early in the morning, my first experience of Jakarta was of completely empty streets and a relatively cool 80 degrees. The next few days were a combination of information about Indonesia, preparing for the talent show, and meeting exchange students from different countries. There are 37 of us total here, 9 from the US, and the rest from Belgium, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Finland, Iceland, Panama, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, and Australia. In addition, a few dozen AFS Indonesia alumni, or kaks (big brothers/sisters), helped us to understand more about life in Indonesia. We learned about squat toilets and basin showers, Indonesian food, and the proper way to greet elders with a salim, or touching your forehead to the back of their hand. On the second day of orientation the staff took us out into Taman Mini to go to the Museum Indonesia and play an Amazing Race style game throughout the rest of the park. My team didn't win the overall competition, but we did have the best cheer. Day three was mostly preparation for the welcoming party talent show in the evening. Each country presented a song or dance from their country, like salsa dancing from Panama, a mambo from Italy, and a traditional dance that I don't know the name of from Thailand. The Americans all dressed up in matching t-shirts and did the Cha-Cha Slide. I wore the cheesehead that I brought; it was quite popular among the other exchange students. The welcoming party itself was held at a cafe about an hour away from Taman Mini. Many former AFS Indonesia alumni and host families came to welcome us to Indonesia and watch our talent show, although of the representatives from each embassy who apparently usually come, only one person from Spain actually showed up. Overall, the orientation and welcoming party were a great introduction to Indonesia.

 The courtyard where we did an exercise/dance routine to wake up one morning while at Taman Mini.

Random picture from the Desa Wisata hostel in Taman Mini.

 The hostel that I stayed in during orientation at Taman Mini.

 There were lots of cats like this one running around Desa Wisata.

 My alarm clock every morning during orientation.

 I didn't manage to get many pictures of Taman Mini outside Desa Wisata, but I did get this soccer ball building from the bus. Other buildings I didn't get pictures of were the traditional housing from each province of Jakarta and a building shaped like a komodo dragon.

 Creating a world of Packer fans, one person at a time.

 Typical Jakarta traffic, although usually both sides of the street are full.

 The American contingent of exchange students in Indonesia.

The American booth at our welcoming party, made of the hodge-podge of Americana stashed in our luggage.