Jamie Griffiths
Exchange Student to District 3400 Indonesia

Hi, my name is James Griffiths and I was the Rotary Club of Balmoral's

Outbound Exchange student during the January'97 - January'98 period. I

was sponsored by the Rotary Club of Medan, D.3400, Indonesia. I spent my

year in the city of Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia, northwest of

Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Like most Exchange Students I had an

amazing, incredible, adventurous, eye opening, and altogether fantastic

year abroad full of strange and obscure experiences not all of which can

be described adequately.

Indonesia is an incredible nation of amazing people. So close in terms

of distance, anyone who has been there will undoubtedly agree that in

terms of culture, Indonesia could not be much farther away. My

adaptation to the Indonesian way of life took a number of months, but

once I could speak the language, predict peoples reactions and had

surrounded myself by good friends I felt that Indonesia had become my

home and I was loath to leave it all behind when the time came to return

to Australia.

Perhaps the most visually spectacular moment during 1997 was when Rotary

D.3400 took all their Inbounds on a month long safari that started on

the far western tip of Java and ended in Bali. During this month we

tracked the Javanese one horned rhinoceros, climbed volcanoes, visited

sacred burial sites, slept in remote villages, played with baby lions,

leopards and orangutans (even jumped in the cage with a monster Komodo

Dragon!), attended a fiery farewell on a beach in northern Bali, swam

with the most colourful fish on the planet (well, that I have seen

anyway), and sat awestruck near the waves on one of Lombok's triplet

islands depicted in the photo here.

The sites didn't end there though. Indonesia's diverse nature ensured

that wherever I traveled I found a different way of doing things, a

different language (although almost everyone speaks Indonesian),

different traditional clothing, food and customs. Medan and Denpasar (in

Bali) may be in the same country, but their traditions are as alien to

each other as if they were a world apart. This was the magic I found in

Indonesia. Added to this is the great number of Indian and Chinese

people in Indonesia. I lived in North Sumatra (generally thought of as a

Christian area), with a family from the highly Islamic West Sumatra, on

the border of the Buddhist Kampung Cina (China Town), and the Hindu

Kampung Keling (Indian section of the city).

I know that I will not be able to stay away from this incredible country

for long, and I would like to thank Rotary International, the Club of

Balmoral and the Club of Medan, as well as all my family and friends

(both host and real) for their support.

See also District 3400 Youth Exchange

Last modified 28 February 1998