This past May was one of my most memorable experiences at school – well, it wasn’t exactly at UBC, it was in Indonesia! Prior to hearing about an opportunity to study abroad, I had never really thought about studying in Indonesia. However, throughout my third year, I often heard about the study abroad opportunity in Indonesia hosted by a professor at UBC. I began to learn more about it and the more I learned, the more interested I became in actually attending the field study. Essentially, the study abroad opportunity was to be led by Professor Christopher Bennett, a food and resource professor at UBC who specialized in the monitoring and evaluation of development projects. Before I knew it, I had written up my application for the program. After what seemed like a long wait, I finally heard back from the program coordinators – I was accepted! Even as I was packing my bags to go to Indonesia late April, I still wasn’t exactly sure of everything I was getting myself into. I knew the general content of what we would be going through but I have had little experience in South East Asia, particularly in a lesser economically developed country. Regardless, I was extremely excited to go on a new adventure!
Upon the first few days of arrival in Jakarta, I was taking in as much as I could of the culture and my surroundings. I went site-seeing around the city with a classmate I came with, which was exciting and also a bit of a culture shock. Being a person of mixed background, Polish and Chinese, my looks definitely take after my Polish side, which basically means I look Caucasian to most people. In Indonesia, walking around the city or even just doing simple tasks like grocery shopping somehow became an event. This was because wherever I went, I managed to attract attention from locals, locals wanting to take photos of me, with me, or locals just outright calling me a foreigner, pointing and staring at me. Although I knew that the locals meant no harm and for the most part likely rarely encountered a foreigner, I always felt uncomfortable around the unwanted attention. I suppose for me, it felt as though I was an animal in the zoo, an exhibit, something for people to stare and pose with rather than a real person. Throughout the month I studied there, I never got used to it, I always felt out of place. Despite this, it was still so interesting exploring Jakarta, and later Bogor.
After a few days in Jakarta, we bussed to one of the more interior cities, Bogor, where we stayed for the majority of the trip. We lived in the dorm at one of local universities, which was conveniently located next to a variety of street markets. For me, this was a completely new experience since I had never lived on my own prior to that, I have always lived at home with my parents instead of on campus at UBC. At our dorm, we also had 3 meals 5 days a week catered to us, as well as a fleet of about 7 cars for groups of students use to get around campus and into the city – mainly for academic purposes of course. We were so spoiled!
On the same day we moved into our dorm, we got introduced to the local academic staff and students who we would be working with over the next few weeks. And so the next part of the adventure began, the academic adventure of monitoring and evaluation!
To be continued…! Stay tuned!