Belum. It is the Indonesian word for not yet. When someone asks kamu punya pacar? (do you have a girlfriend/boyfriend?) or kamu pernah ke Sulawesi? (have you been to Sulawesi?), you are expected to respond not with bukan (no), but with belum.  ......Read More

On August 28, eight bright-eyed Princeton students boarded a plane to halfway across the world with a lot of hope, a little bit of fear, and a sense of adventure. Today, six months later, we have somehow made it two thirds of the way through......Read More

Hi everyone! This is a repost of an article I wrote for my internship at the NGO Mitra Wacana Women’s Resource Center trying to challenge the assumptions we hold — that I held before this program — about what women and......Read More

There is so much I loved about Langa that it is hard for me to pinpoint what experience I want to write about: the charm of the village, the supportiveness of the community, the beauty of being up in the mountains… There was so much going on......Read More

While we’re busy in Langa, we wanted to share a bit about the boat trip we went on last week. We left port in the early morning. The ocean was eerily calm, broken only by sharp, scattered mountain slopes on small islands. It looked almost like......Read More

Hi friends and families! As difficult as it is to believe (and trust us, when it’s over 90 degrees everyday you have a hard time remembering that it’s already December), our winter travels are nearly upon us! We wanted to share a rough......Read More

Now that our group has settled into life in Jogja, we’ve began to explore the city and surrounding area a bit more. Last weekend, our group took a 3-day trip to Dieng Plateau. Each week, two students research and present about some facet of......Read More

As I sit with my homestay parents and eat my dinner of bakmi goreng (fried noodles), the Call to Prayer echoes throughout the kitchen. I stop what I was saying to them, and we exchange the same familiar smile that we give each other every night,......Read More

On Day 1 at EngageMedia, an NGO harnessing video, internet, and technology as mechanisms for change, I cautiously walked through the door. In Jogja, Engage operates out of a large rental house, complete with numerous bedrooms, a full kitchen, and a......Read More

Is my house burning? I’m trying to decide whether the universe is cruel or just humorous for this second post to also be about burning. What’s next? Is my third yak going to be about me spontaneously combusting?   October 12-13, I went......Read More

DARUAT IKLIM. (CLIMATE EMERGENCY) OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE. TIDAK ADA BUMI 2.0 (THERE IS NO EARTH 2.0) Cardboard signs littered the floor. We mixed paints in old plastic water bottles that had been given to us on the bus ride over to Survive! Garage, a......Read More

After three weeks of travel, we settled into Jogja this week. Switching from being cocooned in nature to sleeping inside the walls of a bustling city is a big transition, yet as I gradually form a first mental picture of Indonesia, I can’t......Read More

I counted to three then, after a moment of hesitation, jumped into the water. I closed my eyes as I hit the surface out of routine, forgetting I was wearing a mask. I found my bearings quickly and opened my eyes to the deep blue of the Banyuwangi......Read More

If you’ve spent your entire life on the east coast of the United States, it feels pretty surreal to find yourself looking off the top of a mountaintop in South East Asia, with (what seems like) all of Indonesia spread out before you. That......Read More