Indonesia!

I'm going to Indonesia this summer! I don't think the reality has sunk in yet. But I think it will as soon as I start booking flights. I'm going through Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW). The ESW chapter at Stanford has been working on vertical tsunami evacuation structures for Padang, Indonesia. Basically tall things that people can go to when there is a tsunami warning because high ground can be too far away. We have 4 teams working on different projects and 2 people are going there during the summer to present our work to various groups. Hopefully we can get lucky and see some actions taken during the summer. This project is definitely a lot less directed than working directly with an NGO. We're partners with Geohazards International and an university in Padang. There's a ton of people involved and I'm not even sure I know exactly who's who. So this blog will see some action again!

Time to learn Indonesian for real. I've been trying to learn a bit of the language before applying for this internship. But the effort has been minimal even though I bought a book and everything. Now I really need to ramp up my efforts if I hope to communicate anything during the summer. The goal is to speak in complete sentences by the time I leave the States.