Work and play.

The trip to Manado was great! It really was a very different part of Indonesia...different climate (more beachy, tropical), different food (spicier!), different predominant religion (Christian). The things we got to do with work were really fascinating. We saw the steps involved in processing the recently collected data from the census. It's an unfathomable amount of work--personal data on 240 million people--I cannot imagining organizing that! We also went out with some surveyors collecting data for a household survey. It was interesting to see the interviews being conducted, but just as interesting was being in people's homes. That was my favorite part of these past few days--getting to spend a lot of time with people from here and having chances to talk with them about customs, cliches, college experiences, anything. Some of the staff from the office out there were around our age and on Friday, we all took a little boat over to Bunaken Island, where there was amazing snorkeling. I swam with fishes, ate a coconut, and loved it! That night, we went to dinner at a restaurant that had karaoke performance-style: anyone could get up onstage and sing a song with the keyboard player. Well, unfortunately, I was up there singing "From this Moment On", by Shania Twain. Fortunately, two of the other girls I was singing with were really good and I just held the mic far away from my mouth. (There will be no pics of this event!) Saturday, we did some more touring around, including a visit to a sulfurous river where the water temperature was so high that they boil corn on the cob in it. I was also introduced to tempura battered sliced banana. Yum!


Super interviewers
















View of the ocean floor from the glass bottom of the boat




Sulfurous river