150 DVDs

22 Pashmina Shawls

7 Countries

6 months

3 boughts of traveler's diarrhea

and countless memories....

and now I'm home. Email me and let's get together!

At 5:10am today I arrived in Dubai for a day long stopover. I've been so busy that I haven't had a chance to read by Lonely Planet Dubai Guide....but I had plenty of time before I ventured into the city so I found a food court area that was pretty deserted and sat down to plan out the day. Two hours later I was feeling good about my plans and starting to get hungry when a western guy walked by and said "you're stuck hungry until 7pm too huh?" I looked a little confused and so he explained it was Ramadan and that's why the food court was closed. Oh...Ramadan...lonely planet said it wasn't until the 24th. Interesting. Well good thing Nicola packed me a cream cheese bagel. I looked up Ramadan in the lonely planet and it said I can't even eat or drink in public as a westerner because it's offensive. Luckily no one was around so I quickly ate my food and headed to the bus area.

When I woke up on the plane to Dubai I realized my sandals were broken. The front strap of the flip flop had come apart from the shoe. Dang...this is the second time this happened...last time the store replaced it, but I can't believe it happened again! I tried to get all McGuyver and found a piece of shoelace in my bag to tie the two pieces back together, but it didn't last for more than 3 steps and I was stuck looking like a crazy person walking funny so my shoe would stay on with each step. First thing to do this morning was to find a replace pair of sandals.

So walking funny I headed to the bus for the mall---WOW it's hot outside! I thought Singapore and Indonesia were hot and humid, but this was ridiculous...and it's only 8am! Fortunately before long I found some cheap flip flops to get me through the day and spent most of the morning walking through the souqs (shopping areas) of Dubai. I started with the Gold Souq and then headed to the covered souq. I took a boat across the river where I could see the Dubai skyscrapers in the distance. Desperate for AC I headed to the Dubai museum where you can learn about the history of the area. I know the history goes back a lot further than 70 years, but it was amazing to think that 70 years across this place was just a desert....and today you can go skiing, shopping in one of 47 malls, or stay in one of their 147 5 star hotels.

By noon I was starving and desperate for at least some water. I found a mall and looked around, but the food court was closed. I came across a Mrs. Fields store and was able to get some cold water, but they gave it to me in a paper bag and told me to keep it that way. I felt like a street bum trying to hide my liquor. I decided to take a swig before I left the store and I got yelled at by the lady working there who said if the guard saw me he'd just them down for the day. So where can I go to drink it? The bathroom? Sheesh!

I decided I had enough of walking around in the nasty heat and found a bus tour. The bus took drove to all the major buildings and gave a bit of history about Dubai. Did you know that they're building an underwater hotel? They've also created 300 man made islands in the shape of the world and if you have 10 - 45 million dollars to spare you can buy an island. According to our tour guide Rod Stewart has already purchased England.

Overall I have to say I wasn't incredibly impressed by Dubai. It's clear there's a lot of wealth here, it's safe, and they do a good job of staying on top....the world's only 7 star hotel, palm tree shaped islands visible from space, building the world's tallest building and the world's largest shopping mall.....but the heat and humidity alone would keep me from leaving the airport if I went through Dubai again.

Friday I leave for home and so today I'm taking some time to reflect on my experience on an ADP project. One thing I've realized is that overseas work sounds so much more glamorous than it actually is. Don't get me wrong...it's been great and I would do it again in a heartbeat, but the idea of living and working in foreign countries always sounds cooler than where you are at the moment because the grass is always greener somewhere else. I remember being in Philadelphia thinking ohhhh Africa....that sounds so interesting. And then after two months in Africa I thought....ohhh Indonesia....now that sounds interesting. The next place always sounded better than the last, but in the end....there's no place like home.

And as I expected, doing ADP has given me a much greater appreciation for the small things...things I consider basic necessities, but are luxuries in other countries...things like hot water, toilets, toilet paper, milk, and drinkable tap water. Here I have come across families of 5 riding on a motorcycle together where in America we would insist on having an SUV. And I have also come across the roads that the original SUVs were actually made for!

I also have a new found look at community service and 'giving back'. I don't think there's anything wrong with donating cash or participating in a day's work of cleaning up a highway or raising money through a bowl-a-thon....in fact I think it's great! But after this experience I realize that I have a need to give back through relationships. My past community service always revolved around one-day activities. I'm sure part of that is due to the consultant lifestyle, but part of it is I never understood what a huge impact I could possibly make in someone's life by building a relationship with them. So many people out there don't have someone to encourage their dreams, applaud their accomplishments, or to just plain listen. I have had so many mentors in my life and I finally realize that I shouldn't take that for granted. I want to do some long term community work...whether it's bringing an elderly woman groceries each week and listening to her talk about her grandchildren....or be a big sister to a youth lacking a mentor.....or helping someone with their English. It doesn't mean I'll stop contributing to causes or attending one day community service events, but it does mean I don't want the wonderful feelings I have gained by working closely with the people who became my 'neighbors' in Aceh and elsewhere to subside once I get home. My house will have hot water and my bathroom will have toilet paper, but it doesn't mean there aren't people in need all around.

On Monday morning we headed out to Lamno for two days for a workshop. We had a large group so World Vision rented out a large room at a school for us. Unfortunately it was one of the hottest days I've experienced while in Indonesia and there wasn't even so much as a fan. Having to be covered from head to toe makes it especially hard...even if you're wearing cotton or linen. The sweat drips down your back and you have to really work hard to keep the participants engaged....although they didn't appear to be as bothered by the heat as I was. The school house was quite noisy as the school children ran rampant just being kids. Many were interested in our workshop and would stand outside the door listening in. Christina and I would take turns going out to the school yard to get some photos. The kids were just adorable and soooo photogenic. They would smile and run in front of the camera to have their photo taken and then run up to me afterwards to see how the photo turned out.

After day 1, Muliadi our translator who works in Lamno took us to dinner at his favorite crab shack.....which literally is a shack with some crabs. Joseph and Muliadi picked out our crabs and while they cooked we headed to see the sunset. The lookout point for the sunset was right where a bridge had previously stood. The bridge was wiped out by the tsunami, which makes you realize just how powerful the water was. It used to take 3 hours to drive from Lamno to Meulaboh, the next larger town, but now takes around 8 hours because of the lack of roadways. I'm told that there used to be tons of houses in the areas that now appear desolate. Even though new houses have been rebuilt there is an eery quiet and calm in the area and it appears only half of the houses are currently occupied. The sunset was gorgeous, but as it begins to go dark the reality of what this area went through really sets in.

After the sunset we headed back to the crabshack for dinner. It was actually pretty good. I asked for my plain (no surprise), but they threw it in some soup (at least it wasn't spicy). The Indonesian people are so hospitable and I had a great time talking with our translators Muliadi and Nadya as well as Hadaya, one of the Lamno staff members. You think that they are so traditional and conservative because the women wear headscarves, no one drinks alcohol, and they live so far from major cities, but then you find out they listen to Metallica and Blink 182, download ringtones for their cell phone, and learn English from watching American movies. They're a lot more modern and similar to the west than you first think.

After dinner we headed back to our accomodations. One night in Lamno andyou feel super spoiled in Banda Aceh. Beds are mattresses on the floor (mosquito nets are a nice bonus), the water to bathe (bucket showers) with is green, and a fan attempts to cool you off enough to fall asleep. Luckily I'm exhausted from our first day of workshops and manage to pass out while watching my pirated DVD of the tv show Monk on my laptop.

The next day we headed to the school house in time for the kid's morning exercises. This is a practice that needs to be implemented in America. It may not be intense, but it gets them some activity and probably wears them out a little bit before class. Hmmm...smart teachers. While 99% of the students were Indonesian-looking, there were two European children and one African. I was told the Europeans were children of NGO workers, but I'm not sure about the African. It's not a whole lot of diversity, but it's a start. The Euro children and African boy seemed to hang out on the sidelines while the rest of the children played. I hope they're not being excluded for being different, but kids will be kids.

At today's workshops I improved my Indonesian vocabulary. I ask some of the participants how to say some of my most used English words so I feel like I'm speaking some Indonesian. When I'm checking their CVs and forms it usually goes like this:

Me: Habis? (finished?)

Them: Yes

Me: (I look over the form) Bagus! (Good!) Terima kasih! (Thank you!)

I know it's only three words, but when you have 20 participants and you are saying it over and over again you start to feel fluent : ) Occassionally they'll throw some Acehnese at me (the local dialect), which I think does me more harm than good as it's hard to keep the two straight. They seem to find my pronounciation amusing, but I think it makes them more comfortable that I am willing to make a fool of myself and they are more likely to give their English a shot.

Today I was a tour guide to Christina and Joseph as it's their first time in Banda Aceh. While I have learned some Indonesian, I do not know the names of the main sites in Banda Aceh so I had to resort to charades to explain to the driver where I wanted to go. Our driver would be a great charades teammate as he picked up on all our cues and got us to the right place each time. First we went to the big barge/boat and the wentto the boat on the top of the house that I saw last time I was in BA. I saw the Indonesian woman again who had told me her story about being saved on the boat. She was so friendly and rambles off in Indonesian regardless of whether you can understand her.

Next we headed to the port area where the tsunami hit the hardest. I walked up to the rockwall to look out into the ocean and was just thinking to myself how incomprehensible it was to imagine a wall of water water coming at me when a big wave crashed down against the rockwall below, spewing water high up over the wall, soaking me, Joseph who was on his way up the rocks to join me, and even got Christina who was five feet away. The locals fishing further down the rockwall found us amusing and even our driver got out to check on us and get a good laugh in at our expense. Stupid tourists. We headed straight home to shower and change.

Our set up for the workshops in Lhoong are interesting. We have a big living room of a house where a pile of mattresses are stacked up in the corner and a family of kitty cats has taken refuge. The cats occassionally disturb our presentations with a meow or a run across the floor. One clearly sick cat was leaking fluids and we had to remove him despite being utterly adorable. Seeing as though the house is a 'no shoes allowed' zone we can't be stepping in any surprises. It's bad enough we have to go to the bathroom without shoes.

The fan in the corner is the only thing that offers any sort of refuge...at least the muggy weather doesn't bother the participants.

We had our first day of the Indonesian workshops yesterday and it was long. It takes a while to get used to the lack of AC, desks, western food, shoes in the office, and English. We were happy to head home around 7pm to take a hot shower and wash away the hardship. That was until the electricity went out and our hardship got harder. We ate pizza we got from a shop with generators by candlelight at home and swapped stories from our first day. The lack of electricity meant no running water, but at least some of us had tanks of water in our bathrooms and were able to substitute it with cold buckets of water. The hot weather makes you sleepy and so it wasn't long before I passed out in my room. By morning the electricity still wasn't on so we settled for peanut butter on bread instead of toast for breakfast.

You wouldn't know today was different from any other day, being in Indonesia, but it is for me and most other Americans. Not that I can imagine every forgetting the atrocities that occured five years ago today, but I force myself to read and listen to the stories online and on television around 9-11 until I am thoroughly depressed, to ensure that I have not lost touch with the shock, sadness, and fear I felt the day America was attacked. I talk to foreigners as well as other Americans about where they were when it happened, their intial thoughts, and how they remember that day, today. I won't go into a rant today about September 11th as I feel my thoughts are somewhat personal and are better discussed in person, but I'd just like take this moment to give respects to those who have lost their lives to terrorism.

Today we returned to Banda Aceh to do some workshops at the different Aceh zones. We didn't know what to expect for accomodations this time around given there were five of us that needed a place to stay. Our driver took us to a house that had a family in it and somehow we just didn't think this could be right. We had him take us back to the office where we found out that that was indeed our house and the family was renting the house to World Vision for 10 days and that they were probably still in there packing. We decided to take the afternoon to sightsee around BA while the family moved out. We hit all the usual BA hotspots...Caswells for a western lunch.....the DVD shop for some cheap entertainment buyers....the market just to show our guests that there's really nothing to buy in BA besides DVDs, but you can sweat out a good five pounds due to the heat and humidity.

After getting some groceries to tide us over for the week we headed back to the house. It took another half hour before the family finally left for good and we had their house all to ourselves. It was a nice house...five bedrooms and five bathrooms....a big screen tv...AC...and even hot water!

We went to dinner and returned around 9pm ready to head to bed since we had a long week ahead of us. However not 15 minutes after we entered the house we heard someone trying to get in....and they did....they had keys! We all stopped what we were doing and stared at the guy who entered the house. Can we help you? He said he didn't speak English and then proceeded to one of the bedrooms. He didn't seemed concerned at all that we were there, but he acted as if he was ready to open up a can of soda and watch the soccer game on TV. We called someone who spoke Indonesian to speak with him and found out he was a friend of the family. Soon after one of his friends showed up and they laughed and talked on the phone while we waited for a call from the family to tell him to go away. Before we heard back from the family the guy and his friend left...and they even were nice enough to lock the doors behind them. Great--at least we have keys to our lock our rooms! We rigged all the doors in the house with brooms and chairs so we'd know if we got any more unwanted visitors and as far as we know no one else came in while we slept.

Nicola, my awesome (apparently this is an American word) co-worker decided to treat me to a secret event this morning as my going away present. I was ready at 8am in my bathing suit and flip flops not knowing what was in store for me. Turns out she arranged to have us swim with dolphins! Singapore dolphins of course have to be special...because it's Sinagpore. These dolphins were pink! They are actually born grey, but over time they turn pink...so the older they are...the more pink they are. The dolphin lagoon actually had the only pink-turning dolphin ever born in captivity. They said that shows the dolphins are happy because they wouldn't be breeding if they weren't.

We learned dolphin signs, watched the dolphin paint a picture, pet them, and swam with them. We even got to ride one (hold onto the fin) into the beach area. The dolphins were such gentle creatures and so friendly and fun.

After swimming with dolphins we headed over to the aquarium. There I got to see a cousin of my favorite animal, the manatee. It's called a dugong or sea cow and the Singapore aquarium has one that munches on seaweed all day long. The aquarium also has this underwater tunnel with a moving walkway and you just stand on it and stare all around you as the fish and sharks and stingrays swim all around you.It's so cool!

After the aquarium our last stop was a one way cable car back tothe mainland. Unfortunately Singapore was smoggy and the cable car takes you over the 'industrial' area of Singapore so it's not the best of views, but was still a fun experience.

Kudos to Nicola for planning such a fun day!

The World Bank/IMF meetings are going on in Singapore next week. We've been told to be aware of an increase in traffic at the airport and around town. I lived in Washington, DC when the World Bank/IMF meetings took place there, a block from campus. Our University would shut down and it was declared national protest day by hippies who would crowd the streets with sit-ins, signs, chants, and costumes, often banging pots and pans to the dismay of college students sleeping on Saturday morning. It was a great time to be in DC and I really enjoyed being out and about amongst the craziness despite my mom's pleas for her only child to stay indoors. I expected that the meetings in Singapore would bring about the same chaos. That was...until I found out that protests are illegal in Singapore. First I thought maybe my taxi driver was being dramatic when he said the media was controlled by the government and that people who protest, even if it's peaceful are arrested. The election districts are changed each election in order to ensure the current government stays in control. He even agreed with the restrictions on protests saying that they disturb those who are just trying to make a living. Turns out all this isn't just a dirty rumor from a cab driver, but exactly how Singapore maintains its utopian facade. I always wondered how Singapore made it work when the western world still struggled with dirty city streets, homelessness, and expensive health coverage....and I knew it wasn't caning those who sold chewing gum on their pristine streets. Turns out that freedom of speech and freedom of the press aren't things that the Singaporean government has high on its list. As much as I have enjoyed my time in Singapore and think it's truly an amazing city to live in....I appreciate that in the US I can protest if I wish and vote in elections not suspect to fraud (ok maybe just the protesting part).

Update: Check out this article as it relates to the ban of protesting in Singapore

Tonight Nicola, Christina, Lynda (WV India), and I went to Singapore Night Safari. Now I knew that a zoo, no matter how they named it would never be the same for me after having been on a real African safari, but the Singapore city guide said this was the #1 activity to do while in Singapore. And while the Night Safari isn't even close to the real thing, it was 10 times better than any zoo I've ever been to. I got to see hippos out of the water and up close, which I didn't in Kenya...a definite bonus. All the animals seem to be up and walking right in front of the floodlights as you walk around what feels like a jungle with walkways. There are no big fences or glass that you can see between you and the animals....but I'm sure there's something that keeps the hyenas from jumping across to the gazelles and the lions from attacking the tourists. The night safari also had the best lamb burger I've ever had....of course I've never had a lamb burger before, but I've even go so far as to say it was better than any hamburger I've ever had. This was a zoo unlike any other and a definite must see for anyone venturing to Singapore.

The photo is unrelated to the night safari, but is so funny I had to throw it up on my rant page. Nicola and I danced to American Pie at a outdoor restaurant/bar next to a beach in East Singapore. Christina and Jeff wouldn't join us which I understand better now when I see how silly we look!