So this is my last full day in Indonesia. I arrived in Jakarta Sunday afternoon and presented my research to the Ministry of Agriculture yesterday. Just a short presentation in front of a few people, so not too bad. I did it after I got to Jakarta (eh, sort of last minute) and got some good comments from people, so I can definitely put together a better one for Research Day. My mentor has suggested submitting an abstract for another research day in October (though Boston, not the one in Grafton), which is centered around the theme of global health and [View Full Entry]

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So I am preparing to leave Yogya on Sunday. Today and tomorrow are my final days to really work on my paper before leaving for Jakarta, since I am heading off to Sundak beach again on Saturday (coming back Sunday morning, just in time to check out of my hotel and head off to the airport… thankfully an afternoon flight). It’s going to be a much bigger group this time, since my friend Budi is volunteering to show a bunch of exchange students from Austria around Yogya and that includes the beach trip. I am hoping to get some sort of [View Full Entry]

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I returned from my trip to Bali and Gili! (I decided that it was only fair to take a week off from my research, since I still need to finish up with looking at my data and start writing my paper) Here goes… I went to Bali with my friend Tom, who I lived with first year of vet school but then moved to China to work at his family’s business. He was only able to take a long weekend (Thursday through Sunday), and since he was coming all the way from Hong Kong, we really only had 2 full days. [View Full Entry]

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I finished my data collection! All together, it only took 7 days (:D), and I was able to get 20 market interviews and 30 village interviews. Stacie (project adviser) told me that the data analysis will take a while though (because you’re not looking at p values or anything, but rather descriptive data), so I’m glad I have about 3 weeks until I leave Yogya to be able to work on that and write my paper. I’ve been here for 4 weeks and have had 4 FAO translators (Wanty, Shela, Efa, and Nadia, who is here until Saturday) - it’s been [View Full Entry]

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Shela invited me out to hang out with some of her friends from Yogya this weekend - on Saturday, we had our second visit to the birds markets, but afterwards she and her friends were going to meet up for dinner at a place called The House of Raminten. It’s owned by a really famous guy, one of the richest in Yogya, who owns a big store and various other things here. He’s also gay and pretty much requires all of the (very cute) male waiters to be gay…. all the girls in our group were quite happy, looking at them. [View Full Entry]

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I’ve pretty much settled into my new place in Yogya, where I’ll be living for the rest of my time here (6 weeks). It’s a hotel/dorm complex, mainly for international students. I met with my UGM faculty adviser, Dr. Widagdo, on Tuesday to discuss my project and hopefully head out to the field. Once I got there with Shela (my new FAO translator), Dr. Widagdo invited us out to lunch with him and the rest of the veterinary public health department at UGM. We went to a fairly nice restaurant and ordered a ton of dishes for us all to share [View Full Entry]

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I got to Yogya early Tuesday afternoon and already have fallen in love with it! I love big cities like Jakarta, but Yogya is a nice change - smaller but still full of energy. Wanty, my FAO translator, has been amazing too! It helped so much traveling to Yogya with her, since Stacie couldn’t join us until that night. We’re staying at Hotel Bladok, which seems like the place to stay for Westerners and backpackers. We’ve come across a few restaurants that offer “European food,” but I’m still interested in trying Indonesian/Asian food. I’m so excited to be [View Full Entry]

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So I figured I should start writing a few things before I forget something - I got to Jakarta Saturday afternoon after essentially a 40 hour trip from Boston to Jakarta, including stops in Newark and Hong Kong. My favorite part was the 16 hour long trip from Newark to HK (and obviously, by "favorite," I mean least favorite). I mean, having tons of movies and TV shows to watch is awesome, but even that gets old quickly... though I still liked getting airline food. But yeah, I did enjoy having a layover in HK because it's a pretty awesome airport... [View Full Entry]

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