Indonesia Preparation

Hello and Welcome to my travel Blog. I will be leaving in exactly one week for Yogyakarta, Indonesia for a four-week study abroad. The focus of the trip will be "Indonesian Development," and each week will be focused on a different aspect of international development. The themes are as follows: (1) Tourism and Development, (2) Democracy and Development, (3) Market, State, and Community Development, and (4) Gender and Religion in Development.

We will be staying in a dorm for most of the time. We will also do a two-night home stay and are planning to spend three nights in Bali (probably another home stay or a hostel).

I am extremely excited to leave next Thursday. The other nine students that are going are great, and I know that we will have a blast together. The professor that is going with us is amazing as well. He is an expert in Indonesian politics and economics and has been studying the country for roughly forty years. We call him Pak Bill, which means Mr. Bill in Indonesian. He bought us all Indonesian-English dictionaries as a gift, but I have not had a chance to look at mine.

It seems so surreal that I am leaving in just one week. I haven't started packing and probably won't for a few more days. I have been so busy with classes that I have hardly had time to think about the trip.

Since we are staying on a campus there will be internet access, so I will try to post on here once or twice a week. That way everyone will know that I am ok and how I am feeling about my experiences and what I have experienced. I will try to put some pictures on here too.

Hopefully, I will be able to keep this blog up for all of my future travels (which implies that there will be more).

:)