Desa Volleyball be like…

I got invited to play volleyball with my students last week. I showed up wearing my teva sandals thinking we were gonna play a couple rounds of pepper and bump around for a while….I didn’t realize that I would end up looking like the biggest scrub on the court. One spike nearly grazing my head at what felt like 100 mph was enough to get me sitting on the sidelines to watch and support.

Witnessing my students (and some locals I barely met) so engaged in a sport they are clearly passionate about was real rewarding even though they’ll probs never invite me to play again.

I never know what’s going on

In Indonesia I am trying this new thing called being completely in the dark. I never ever know what’s going on here. Even when I think I know what’s going on… it usually turns out that I don’t. So I just learn to accept the fact that I haven’t got a clue and it makes it easier to go with the flow.

That’s been a reoccurring theme of Indo life… going with the flow. There’s a phrase called “rubber time” because you say to show up at 8 and you’re lucky if you get someone to show up at 8:20. This place fully operates by island life rules and even the stuff that’s actually a really big deal, probably only matters to a select few, the rest of us just show up for the food.

It’s proven a pleasant lesson though, despite the extreme planner and 5 different to-do list part of me. Learning to go with the flow. To me, that means lowering your expectations…or just plain having none. And I know, that sounds bad. How are you ever going to know where you stand if you haven’t any idea the expectations to set yourself against? But what the “go with the flow” attitude of Indonesia has taught me is that sometimes we stress out so much over absolutely nothing at all.

Today me and a couple teachers showed up 30 minutes late to a huge event at our school (blame rubber time) and I walked in feeling so guilty. Thinking “I need to stay here and pretend to be completely engaged in this speaker whom I don’t understand a lick of, because I was late”. Turns out, no one gave a damn that I was late and everyone was really trying to get through the speeches just to get to the delicious yellow rice dishes anyway.

The point is, we sometimes stress ourselves out so. damn. much. And by we I mean me! I am a ball of stress sometimes and it’s damn good I got placed in this country because learning how to go with the flow makes me a way cooler person in the long run (and significantly easier to deal with).