ARRIVING IN JAKARTA

(Note: I wrote this on two different days, so the passage of time might sound weird.)

Well, I’m safe and sound and settled into my new apartment after about 42 hours of travel. My body and mind are completely messed up as to time. I don’t know if it’s been one day or three since I left home.

I left home at 8AM on Saturday, had a one hour flight to Chicago (which was delayed so I arrived at O’Hare at noon.) My original flight was supposed to leave around 3:15 from O’Hare, but a last minute flight change meant that we (Lynsey, my travel partner, and I) took a flight at 10:20PM instead on Turkish Airlines. It was a big flight, one with a row of two seats on each side and four seats in the middle. Lynsey and I were square in the middle of our row. That was a long flight, but since I was exhausted and it was around midnight before we were gliding through the air, I slept for a few hours. We also got a good meal and a big choice of things to entertain us on our personal “TV” screens.

We had about a 7 hour layover in Istanbul. I really enjoyed seeing what the currency looked like, picking up some new words, and hearing spoken Turkish while we were there. Then we got onto another Turkish Airlines flight. I mistakenly thought it would be a three hour flight, because I thought I had read that we would arrive at 6 AM. Nope. It was actually 6 PM and we had a 10 hour flight instead. I watched a movie and slept.

In the middle of all this, we flew over some Middle Eastern desert. The waves of pale sand and the thin ridges of sand dunes were endless and kind of beautiful. I thought at first it might be the Saudi desert, but looking at the map, I saw we didn’t go over Saudi Arabia at all. Instead we flew over Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think we went right over the mountainous Waziristan area. You know, where al-Qaida members live and train in caves and do nasty things to other human beings. Fortunately, we were okay so high up the sky, but it still made me nervous.

Next we arrived in Singapore. Lynsey and I were actually fairly worried for a while because nowhere was it written that we stopped in Singapore and we thought we might have gotten on the wrong plane. As it turns out, most of the people got off in Singapore and the rest were given plastic re-entry tickets.

We only had about 15 minutes before we reloaded. We stopped in the bathroom, which was appreciated after such a long flight. As I sat there, relieving myself in the women’s, I had a flashback to jr. high when I learned that you could be fined for not flushing a public toilet in Singapore. I apprehensively scanned the ceiling for a video camera, just in case there was some hidden authority somewhere watching to see who didn’t flush and slap them with a fine. I didn’t see anything except a little red light on the ceiling which I don’t believe was a camera. There was also a small anti-bacterial spray dispenser which instructed you to take some toilet paper, spray it with disinfectant, and wipe down the seat. I didn’t know if it was required, but I took time and really made sure to wipe the seat down well so that the imagined Singaporean authorities would know that not only did I flush the toilet, I left it better than I found it.

Finally we arrived in Jakarta around 6 or 7 PM. A man was waiting for us when we disembarked with a sign that read “Ms. Danna Rose, Ms. Lynsey Sue.” Our middles names always seem attached to our first names here, like lonely, little kids that just want to be included. He had obviously talked to customs beforehand, because he checked our visas, and seeing that I needed a Visa On Arrival, took me over to the VOA payment counter, told the man there we needed “satu” visas (which means the number 1 – one of the words I actually learned before arriving.) I handed over the required sum of 25 USD and was immediately handed back a VOA sticker for my passport. Easy as pie. We didn’t even go through immigration or customs.

After we got our luggage, we were left to wait for the Bina Bangsa people to come get us. We had just enough time to exchange some money, and then three women staff members picked us up, including Ms. Jane, who has been arranging all of the travel for us. The poor woman is the only person doing the arrangements for the 80 new expat teachers they hired this year!

The school has its own vans, and we got into a minivan and were taken to our apartment, the Royal Mediterania Apartments. Traffic was not so bad just then, we were told, although it still looked fairly bad to Lynsey and me. I found out then that Indonesian cars drive on the left side of the road, with steering wheels on the right! I never knew!

Our apartment is very nice and rather posh with a big swimming pool, workout room, and other amenities. We live on the 20th floor and our apartment is new, full of fresh white paint with the plastic still on the TV and stove burner. There were sheets, pillows, and blankets on the beds, but no towels, toilet paper, or kitchen things except for the burner and a set of tea cups, saucers, and plates with an ever-so-attractive Formula One logo on them. There is also a maid’s quarters, which consists of a tiny bedroom (literally just a space of room) and a bathroom with a pit toilet and bucket. Unfortunately, the bedrooms are not equal. One is larger, the other, more cozy. I ended up with the larger bedroom while Lynsey took the smaller one, and we decided we could switch after year one to make things fair.

After setting our stuff inside, Ms. Jane took us to meet another new teacher who had just arrived earlier in the day. Nicole is from Indiana, and just finished student teaching. The three of us went with Ms. Jane and Ms. Ira to the gigantic mall just across from Mediterania. It’s called Central Park and has seven stories chock-full of brand-name clothing, electronics, food, and everything else. It’s the Mall of America of Indonesia. Or one of them at least.

On the bottom floor, they took us to a casual Indonesian restaurant. I was very tired of course, but hungry too and had soto betawi: a soup of beef, coconut milk, and eggs. It was delicious! We also found there is a big Carrefour on that level. Carrefour is like a Super-Wal-Mart or Super-Target, but it’s a French company. We can find almost anything we need there. On the first night we bought toilet paper and towels.

After that we just went home and after a little unpacking, went to sleep.