Swingin' Abroad

I blinked and now I'm staring at the second half of my fellowship. Holy crap. Before I can look ahead, though, let me back up and cover some stuff that happened since Pontianak. 

First off, I had a visitor. My boyfriend, Lo, was able to come out for three weeks in January. We trekked around Lombok and Bali for a week, took cooking classes, committed random acts of dancing, and brought in the new year with didgeridoos.  Poor guy had to spend the following two weeks hanging out in or near my apartment while I worked. A bonus to this, however, was that he had time to record all of our adventures on his own travel blog. So, with his permission, I invite you to check out our trip from his perspective: Lombok and Gili Islands and Bali. I couldn't have said it better myself.

The day before Lo had to leave was by far the most memorable. I had arranged for us to teach a swing dancing lesson with the same group of high school students Jules and I visited for Thanksgiving. If you remember, back in August I listed bringing swing dancing to Indonesia as one of my goals. This was one goal I would have been happy to let slip, but with Lo coming and my connection to an eager bunch of high school students, the opportunity couldn't be passed up.

The result was better than I could have imagined. Okay, okay, so maybe they didn't learn a whole lot about English, as we mostly taught them uber useful swingspeak like, yehoodi, shorty George, and boogie back, but they did get a window into a piece of American culture that they won't find on MTV or facebook. And, they/we had a blast doing it. We ended up teaching them a popular swing line dance called "The Jitterbug Stroll" because they are already familiar with line dancing (poco poco - Indonesian electric slide), and I wasn't sure how receptive they would be to holding hands with the opposite sex (they weren't at all receptive to it). I was super impressed with how quickly they picked up the moves. But, don't take my word for it, check out the video here.

It was incredible to be able to share a piece of my life and American culture and, at the same time, give these kids a memorable experience that they couldn't find anywhere else. Check that one off the list.