What I do while not in school

Living in Bali until end of November, taking things one step at a time.

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this one too:

http://thoughtcatalog.com/rachel-rae/2013/11/10-things-about-living-abroad-no-turning-back/

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I often write emails to myself in the future just to make sure I'm still on the right path

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Current life concerns/thoughts:

America seems like some weird alien planet that doesn't actually exist

I feel like I've lived all 19 years of my life as a 19-year-old in Bali

my family/friends back home feel like imaginary friends that I made up

Questions that have yet to be answered:

what is the right side of the road?

what is cold?

what is a knife?

how old do you have to be to buy booze in the US?

can I bribe my way out of violating traffic laws?

what does it feel like to not be a minority?

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November 2013 Bali

This past month in Bali has been the most incredible of my life. In 40 hours when I'm back in America there will be no way to respond when people ask how Bali was. There is nothing that I can say, or show anyone who hasn't been here how incredible this little island is. For me, this is heartbreaking, that I can't share this adventure with the people I love. 

Honestly, I am terribly afraid to go back to America. I don't want to lose the memories and the feelings that I've experienced here. For the last month I have never been so filled with joy or felt so at peace. Stress is now a foreign emotion that I've experienced only a handful of times here. Every day I find myself smiling, thinking about how lucky I am to be living this life. How lucky I am to have fallen in love with this country, these people, myself, a certain individual and all the friends I've made. 

This has been the most life changing experience of my life thus far and I'm thrilled to see what comes next. 

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looking forward to coming home to this nonsense. featured is my brother, my kitty, and one of my dogs trying to play fetch with a boulder

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Six more weeks...eek!

Today I had a great day at work. After being sick last week and being awkward on Tuesday, it was nice to see everyone again and be back. Carol, a Northeastern Alum, taught me how to manually take blood pressure and it was a lot easier than I thought! Chloe also gave me some tips on how to make my own peanut sauce and pasta, and how to improve my peanut butter. 

I just made eggplant burgers for my roommates Ryan and Lauren and I think maybe now Ryan will stop making fun of my weird cooking, since he loved the burgers. To be fair though, the buns I made were basically cookies and Ryan probably will keeping giving me crap for that. 

Unfortunately, my boss, who I absolutely love and adore, is leaving for America on Monday and won't be back until mid-November so I'm not sure if I'll see her again before I leave but we're meeting up on Sunday to hang out. 

There are still so many things I need to do before I leave! Hopefully, Lauren and I can make it out to the Gili Islands either next week or the week after. 

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Things I would never eat in America but eat here

Chicken feet

lobster puff balls

meat chips

fried crickets

to be continued..

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According to the Balinese calendar, I am 34 years old.

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Carpe Noctem

Seize the night

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Sorry for the poor lighting but these are just some of the foods that I have made entirely from scratch (except for the noodles in the mie goreng). The pizza dough was even from scratch. The above meals are mie goreng (fried noodle) with a fried egg, veggie pizza, bananegg pancakes and tonight I just made zucchini noodles with eggplant "meat"balls and tomato sauce that was also made entirely from scratch. I don't know why all the sudden I have found it in me to cook but let me tell you cooking from scratch-scratch is literally the best thing ever. I have all the time in the world here to just do whatever I want so why not spend some of that time making delicious healthy foods? Not only have I made the above meals but today I made peanut butter from scratch and it's so amazing. Lauren and I have also made hummus from dried chickpeas and I've made pita bread too. And later this weekend we are making babaganoush. 

It's way cheaper and pretty easy to make just about anything from scratch. I don't think I'll ever buy processed peanut butter again. 

I'm also realizing that if I ever wanted to go vegetarian it's actually pretty easy. I'm just on this vegetable craze right now where they're all the best tasting thing ever. I'm a little weirded out that with tonight's meal I ate 1.5 eggplants and a zucchini. Seems like a lot of eggplant but considering it's only about 30 calories per eggplant I guess it can't be bad. 

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And in exactly 8 short weeks I'll be waiting anxiously for the driver to come to take me to the airport to fly back to America

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my new perspective on volunteering

A lot of people come to Bali to volunteer and they come on these week or month long trips usually through an organization or placement agency. Being on the ground here and learning about the actual organizations that volunteers are placed at and listening to what they have to say is quite eye-opening. Basically, what I've learned through first and second hand experiences is that here in Ubud, where everyone wants to volunteer (because it's relatively Westernized), they're sort of in the way. Volunteering sounds like a great idea but in reality a lot of the volunteers I've met are here to be catered to and aren't making that much of an impact- they're really just more of a burden to the organization. Teaching English, for example, sounds easy enough and something everyone can do, but is it? Teaching is difficult and requires a practiced, educated individual, especially when teaching a language to students whose native language you don't speak. You can't make a lot of progress or an impact in a few weeks. Volunteerism, how it exists in Ubud, seems more to me like a way you can feel good about yourself without actually putting a ton of energy into people that need it. Because if these volunteers really wanted to help why wouldn't they go to the rural areas where artisans might need help reaching a consumer market, or helping physically build the new building that the orphanage needs to house all the children? 

It's a problem that I don't really know what the solution would be for it, but I always thought about volunteering differently before this and now I see that people need to be more hands on, in the field, getting real work done, and not just sucking out all the energy of the organization hosting them. 

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Sanur Festival! It's all about the Fun Zone