PART 5:
The moment our passports were returned to us
25 Things I Learned From Being Trapped in Jakarta for 100 Days
1. If you’re still breathing, you have something to be grateful for. Gratitude is the key to everything.
2. Stop resisting what is. Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance.
3. You can find joy in the most unexpected places. Like homemade chia seed pudding every day forever.
4. Activated charcoal tablets can be your best friend. (Or—foreign bacteria will crush your spirit as well as your digestive well-being.)
5. Spend 30 minutes a day on Duolingo studying Spanish for 3 months straight and hot damn you can really learn a lot of Spanish. (Spend a month back at home struggling with mild PTSD and reveling in your newfound freedom and you can forget absolutely everything you learned.)
6. Sop Buntut. Mie Dok Dok Jawa. Ayam Goreng. (Let’s hear it for Indonesian food.)
7. You really do burst into tears when a judge slams a gavel and you find out you’re not going to jail.
8. Cakalang Bakar is a fun phrase to work into your everyday conversation. (Who cares that it means Skipjack Tuna.)
9. The perfect time to grow out your pixie cut so no one in the world can see all the awkward stages is when you’re held against your will for 100 days and aren’t allowed to post videos on YouTube and also have nothing better to do.
10. Your friends and family and health is all that matters. Never take these things for granted.
11. Getting to exist at all is something to be grateful for, and being alive is the greatest adventure.
12. Mash a banana with a tablespoon of peanut butter and then die a million deaths because tell me that isn’t the best thing you’ve ever tasted.
13. You don’t know traffic until you’ve sat in a cab in Jakarta for 3 hours to travel all of 5 miles.
14. Do one thing that makes you proud each day and you’re setting yourself up to feel pretty darn ok with yourself.
15. Meditation can do a lot for a heavy heart.
16. The first granny square you ever crochet looks a lot different from what a granny square is supposed to look like.
17. There are real life angels in the world.
18. Start every day with an hour-long walk and you’ve already won.
19. When your whole world exists within the walls of a hotel room, reading can be a beautiful escape.
20. A healthy body begets a healthy mind begets a healthy body begets… you get it. It’s all connected. You need to take care of yourself.
21. Appreciate every second with the people you love because you never know when or how they could be taken from you.
22. Water is life. Drink it all.
23. If you live in a hotel with a buffet, at some point you have to stop treating meal-time like you’ll never eat again or you might die. Or gain a bazillion pounds. (Or both.)
24. Never mind the threat of being imprisoned in a foreign land, if you put a bird in my hand, I’m good. (I’m talking about an actual bird, not the expression—shout out to the bird park at Mini Indonesia!)
25. You have to choose happiness. Every day. Over and over again. Don’t wait for it to find you.
26. (I know I said 25 things, but this is one takeaway I can’t risk not being hammered in.) If you are a touring performer, please, I beg of you, check, double check, triple check that you have a proper work visa in your passport before you step foot on stage.
The moment our passports were returned to us25 Things I Learned From Being Trapped in Jakarta for 100 Days
1. If you’re still breathing, you have something to be grateful for. Gratitude is the key to everything.
2. Stop resisting what is. Acceptance. Acceptance. Acceptance.
3. You can find joy in the most unexpected places. Like homemade chia seed pudding every day forever.
4. Activated charcoal tablets can be your best friend. (Or—foreign bacteria will crush your spirit as well as your digestive well-being.)
5. Spend 30 minutes a day on Duolingo studying Spanish for 3 months straight and hot damn you can really learn a lot of Spanish. (Spend a month back at home struggling with mild PTSD and reveling in your newfound freedom and you can forget absolutely everything you learned.)
6. Sop Buntut. Mie Dok Dok Jawa. Ayam Goreng. (Let’s hear it for Indonesian food.)
7. You really do burst into tears when a judge slams a gavel and you find out you’re not going to jail.
8. Cakalang Bakar is a fun phrase to work into your everyday conversation. (Who cares that it means Skipjack Tuna.)
9. The perfect time to grow out your pixie cut so no one in the world can see all the awkward stages is when you’re held against your will for 100 days and aren’t allowed to post videos on YouTube and also have nothing better to do.
10. Your friends and family and health is all that matters. Never take these things for granted.
11. Getting to exist at all is something to be grateful for, and being alive is the greatest adventure.
12. Mash a banana with a tablespoon of peanut butter and then die a million deaths because tell me that isn’t the best thing you’ve ever tasted.
13. You don’t know traffic until you’ve sat in a cab in Jakarta for 3 hours to travel all of 5 miles.
14. Do one thing that makes you proud each day and you’re setting yourself up to feel pretty darn ok with yourself.
15. Meditation can do a lot for a heavy heart.
16. The first granny square you ever crochet looks a lot different from what a granny square is supposed to look like.
17. There are real life angels in the world.
18. Start every day with an hour-long walk and you’ve already won.
19. When your whole world exists within the walls of a hotel room, reading can be a beautiful escape.
20. A healthy body begets a healthy mind begets a healthy body begets… you get it. It’s all connected. You need to take care of yourself.
21. Appreciate every second with the people you love because you never know when or how they could be taken from you.
22. Water is life. Drink it all.
23. If you live in a hotel with a buffet, at some point you have to stop treating meal-time like you’ll never eat again or you might die. Or gain a bazillion pounds. (Or both.)
24. Never mind the threat of being imprisoned in a foreign land, if you put a bird in my hand, I’m good. (I’m talking about an actual bird, not the expression—shout out to the bird park at Mini Indonesia!)
25. You have to choose happiness. Every day. Over and over again. Don’t wait for it to find you.
26. (I know I said 25 things, but this is one takeaway I can’t risk not being hammered in.) If you are a touring performer, please, I beg of you, check, double check, triple check that you have a proper work visa in your passport before you step foot on stage.
