My Life is An Adventure

Okay, I know it’s been awhile and I apologize. My life plans changed in a matter of days I haven’t really had the time to write for myself since then.

As you all may know by now, I ended up taking the internship. Anna, the owner of Paradise Interns, approached me two days before the next training started and said she had a last minute opening in Komodo if I wanted it. The month of training would be in Bali with Crossfit and healthy meals. I was already sold with those two things because my body was not exactly enjoying all the fried rice and lack of veggies out here. So I said yes. I packed up my things and flew out the next day! Craziness but I knew I couldn’t be in this little town if I wasn’t diving.

So what exactly is Paradise Interns and what am I doing? It is an internship where I am the social media marketer for a dive shop. That means I handle Facebook, Instagram, Trip Advisor, and any email marketing that comes along with it. In turn, I will receive my divemaster. Now I pretty much knew NOTHING about social media before this. I posted every once in a while but didn’t even know that the hashtags I was using didn’t matter because my profile was on private. I have learned a lot since then. More than I probably ever wanted to know. But this is how information is spreading these days and is important for companies if they want to grow bigger and target the right audiences. Also, knowing this stuff forces me to belong to my age group rather than acting like the 70 year old that I am at heart.

So much has happened in the last two months so I will just try to highlight it for you, otherwise this blog would be incredibly long. First off, my intern group was very small compared to the last one. There were only ten of us in the course (seven that are actual interns) rather than the twenty in the January group. I prefer smaller groups especially with all of the questions I knew I would have. Smaller groups also usually means less cliques. And that was definitely the case. We all got along really well and all hung out together, whether it was in our room watching movies or going on weekend trips. None of us are crazy partiers so we had our own fun that didn’t involve hangovers ruining the next day.

Although there was one day…it was Nyepi. It is a celebration of the new year in Hindu culture that is a day of silence, which means nothing is open, no lights are allowed on, and nobody is allowed outside. So we sat in the pool, during a rainstorm (very good day to have a massive storm) and had some drinks. We are convinced that drinking on Nyepi cursed us for the rest of the time because bad things kept happening to us- including me losing YES ANOTHER debit card, everybody getting in scooter accidents, and many other things. Oh a monkey also stole my phone. That was totally my fault and I let my guard down for one second. Surprisingly the man who worked there got it back for me. I was waiting for him to just throw it off the cliff behind him.

There was one really bad accident. Lawrence, who I travelled to Indonesia with, had a friend coming to visit in Komodo. Alecs stayed in Bali for a couple days before his flight so he came and hung out with us for one of our weekend trips to Canggu. After we parted our ways, I told him to send me a text to let me know he got back safe. We had a longer ride so by the time we got home I figured I should have a text sometime soon. I didn’t and I started feeling uneasy about it. I then got a text from Lawrence, who was still in Komodo, saying Alecs got in a crash and was in the hospital with a broken collar bone. The day before, two of our girls had gotten in a crash as well, but on a much smaller scale. I immediately hopped on a scooter, was very careful not to crash, and found him in a very local hospital. It started raining cats and dogs so by the time I got to him, I was absolutely drenched and very thankful to not be spending the night in the hospital. Nobody could really speak English and tell him anything other than he needed surgery and he could get it in the morning. So Indonesian style, he got on my scooter and I took him, very slowly, to his hostel.

After a long night and morning waiting to see if the surgery was going to happen, he decided against it because it would have been ridiculously expensive and it wasn’t guaranteed that insurance would cover it. I took him back to our villa for a couple days and he decided it would be best to go back home and see what the doctors there say. I can only imagine how terribly uncomfortable that 24 hours was but he took it all like a champ. Turns out surgery wasn’t needed after all so it was a really good idea not to have that done in a developing country!

That was just one weekend. The others were spent back in Nusa Lembongan (because I love that place) snorkeling, hiking, and taking a freediving course, exploring Jimbaran the town we were living in, and taking a 2.5 hour scooter ride to the beautiful village of Sidemen. We were completely surrounded by rice terraces and everything was green. It was a much needed relaxing weekend after taking in so much information from the internship and before we jumped in at our shops.

Oh and for everyone who hated them….I finally took out my dreads. With the much needed help of my friends. Thank you for helping me undo the actual real dreads that had formed, enduring me yelling at you because it hurt, and sitting in the bathtub helping me brush out each individual piece with an entire bottle of conditioner <–no lie.
We also think that my dreads were holding all the secrets and negative energies so those needed to come out as well.

I’ve been back in Labuan Bajo now for almost a month now. Things are getting easier social media wise and I get to dive at least 3 times a week. I really enjoy the people at my shop and am excited to be spending the next couple months with them. They are all from Spain so I get to work on my Spanish and will hopefully be able to have a conversation and be semi-fluent by the time I leave. *Comes to Indonesia and learns Spanish instead of Bahasa* It is a very small company that has a goal to make everyone feel like they are at home. I would say that it is a perfect match for me, even down to the company colors. The blue that is their logo is basically my favorite color and I already represent it in the five different clothing items that I have with me.

Next week I will be starting my Rescue course and soon after, my divemaster. I have more than doubled my dives in the small amount of time that I have been here and will probably have close to 200 before I leave. I’m beginning to learn the dive sites, and how to navigate them. I’ve had incredibly close encounters with manta rays. We’ve seen Short-finned pilot whales and Bottlenose dolphins on the way to our dive sites. And I have also seen the famous Komodo dragons, which are native to Indonesia and can’t really be found anywhere else in the world.

Last weekend, we took a much needed trip to a town east of Bajo. Ruteng is about four hours away by scooter. Have you ever sat on a scooter for that long? Definitely not the most comfortable ride but the views made it worth it. We drove through little villages that were farming rice and through the mountains up 4,000 feet in elevation. And it was cold! For most of you 69 F (20 C) is not cold at all but when it is usually 30 degrees warmer and very very humid, that is freezing. And of course we were very unprepared, with only shorts and t-shirts. It was Easter weekend and the town is very Catholic so everything was closed. Totally fine because I didn’t bring my laptop on purpose so that I could have a day of chill. Our lovely host, a friend of a friend, showed us around her town.

She took us to her family’s rice fields, to the top of the mountain where you can see the entire town, and even invited us to share dinner with her and her family. This is my absolute favorite way to see a place. To be taken around by a local who can tell you about living in the area and their culture. I think there is so much more meaning behind it then seeing all the tourist attractions of a place. She also has the CUTEST baby! Hopefully they will make their way to Bajo or I can go back before I leave because I would love to spend more time with her and her family.