Salam Indonesia!

...that means Hello Indonesia for all you non-native Bahasa Indonesia speakers ;)

We have finally made it to our destination and we are all quite tired, but a blog post you do deserve. Here's a quick overview of today...

Our flight left Narita, Japan at 12:00 p.m. on December 12, 2010 (which is today for y'all). I believe we arrived in Jakarta sometime around 6:00 p.m., but there's a two-hour time difference, so the 5-hour flight we thought we had was actually 7 hours. However, I'm pretty sure we all thought it was worth it for two main reasons:

1. We are FINALLY in Jakarta and were greeted by our good friends Diah and Sidra - what a pleasant welcome to see their smiling faces - just as excited to see us and we were them.
2. We discovered PRETZ in Japan and I'm pretty sure we are all addicted, and can't wait to get to Osaka to get a ton of these yummy treats. If you're really bored, go to YouTube and type in PRETZ commercials...they are interesting, to say the least. Some website compared PRETZ to Pringles Stix in the US, but I haven't had those before, so I couldn't tell you if they taste the same or not.

After picking us up at the airport in a nice air-conditioned bus (it was 29 C when we landed, so mid-80's) they took us to Senayan, an Indonesian restaurant well-liked by Americans. It was DELICIOUS! (check out the photos page for pics of some of our food). The best part??? THE BILL!! About $45 for 8 people for dinner...e-i-g-h-t people!!! WOW!

After dinner we went to the hotel, where we are all looking forward to getting some needed rest (which means this blog is ending soon...). We will start our day off tomorrow with a meeting with Mr. Marzuki Alie, Chairman of the House of Representatives.

As today ends, I wanted to leave you with this...I am confident that I speak for my fellow delegates when I say how thankful we all are to have this opportunity to travel abroad to experience such a unique professional and personal opportunity. We all thank ACYPL for choosing each one of us to represent and participate in the Legislative Fellows Program as well as our employers, families, friends and colleagues who are supporting us during this journey.

Until Tomorrow...

Kimberly
Washington State