Dirgahayu Indonesia!

Yesterday was Indonesia’s independence day. We woke up early to attend a ceremony at BPS. Everyone looked good in their custom, civil service batiks (colorful, patterned shirts). Aris, Hari, Krycia and I then spent the day touring all of Indonesia, or at least a miniature version of it at Taman Mini, a park with traditional houses and museums from all of Indonesia’s provinces. We actually didn’t even tour all of miniature Indonesia. It was a big park! They need a Taman Mini Mini. We also went to a zoo that was surprisingly open to letting people into the cages with the animals. Here’s me with a Komodo dragon. That picture goes out to Tom Achoki, who highly recommended seeing the Komodo dragons of Indonesia.

After that, Krycia and I went looking for some independence day festivities. We found a lot of people milling around the Monas park, so we walked around there for a while, but couldn’t find anything. Finally, we asked some tourists if they knew of anything and they pointed us towards the Indonesian White House where they said we could watch some music and marching from a distance or on a few television screens. We went there at the perfect time. They opened the event up and started ushering people into an area with a few sets of bleachers facing the White House backyard. We watched the flag lowering, marching and dancing. By the end of the day, I felt like we had done a good job of honoring Indonesian independence.