Today’s post was written by Brenton Pham. He is currently doing his service portion in Kupang on the island of Timor. It just so happened that, in the first week of service, the University Nusa Cendana in Kupang would be hosting one of their graduation ceremonies on Wednesday (2/28). They…
Friends, I have never led SST before, so I do not know how unusual our experience in Yogyakarta was, but I have been astounded at every turn with the kindness and generosity of our host families, our teachers, the international offices at the two universities that we partnered with, our…
To the east of Yogya is the Hindu temple of Prambanan and to the northwest of Yogya is the Buddhist temple of Borobudur. Borobudur is slightly older (build in 8th Century, while Prambanan was built in the 9th Century; both took many, many years to complete). Possibly because of volcanic…
Friends, I will first confess that I am behind on blogging, but I fully intend to catch up in the next 24 hours. Watch for blogs on our visits to Prambanan and Borobudur Temples, as well as our final farewell at UKDW! They are coming soon! But for this post…
While our theme for the 2024 Indonesia SST unity is “unity in diversity,” with a particular focus on inter-religious work, we have participated in a number of arts in Indonesia as well. Having these creative outlets over the last 5 weeks (our gamelan weekend, eco-printing, and now batik-making) has felt…
We journeyed forth on our environmental field trip this past week. Our destination was a traditional village that is working to address environmental and economic issues by reforestation with productive trees (mango and avocado) and development of environmental tourism to bring additional funds in. We discovered that being in a…
This week we were privileged to see several new sides of Indonesian culture. Last Monday was opening day of the new semester of classes at the university in which we study (UKDW, here in Yogyakarta). We were invited to the opening day ceremony, which included a celebration of the Lunar…
Our first day with Ibu Kitsie and Pak Wakidi was so amazing, and there was more in store for us. They had arranged for our Goshen group to play the song that we had just learned in an actual wayang (shadow puppet) performance on Thursday night. The wayang was held…
On Wednesday after class, students traveled by commuter train up to Solo: Quite the trip–standing room only! Luckily the train ride was just an hour, and everyone emerged (relatively) unscathed. The Setiawan family actually was on our way to Semarang for visa purposes, so our local coordinator, Ibu…
It’s been a little too long since we updated the blog. We’ve been busy with language classes and becoming acquainted with the city of Yogyakarta. Students continue to amaze us with their willingness to be brave and try new things in this completely new culture. They are riding buses and…
