I doubt I’ll ever lose my amazement at how quickly and how far we can travel so easily. Partly my historian roots and understanding that until the last century (and less!) travel was very expensive, very time-consuming, and very dangerous. Now, with just a ‘mere’ 25 hours of travel time we can be on the other side of the planet.
Literally.
And we are.
Our first sign we were back in Southeast Asia? The windows on our flight to Jakarta fogged up and were full of condensation as we descended. 🙂 But after a short time for some of us in Houston, and my journeys through the Arizona and Nevada desert it doesn’t seem too oppressive. Maybe we really are adjusting!
Our flights from Phoenix to San Francisco to Narita (Tokyo) and Jakarta went beautifully smoothly and now we’re here on a Sunday morning waking up and getting started once again. In a few hours we’ll return to the airport to take Covid tests that are now required before traveling domestically within Indonesia. Assuming those come back all negative (none of us appears ill) we’ll fly tomorrow afternoon (Monday Indonesia time, about midnight America-time) to Medan. The just-over-two-hour flight will seem like a piece of cake after our 7-hour flight from Tokyo to Jakarta and our 10-hour flight from San Francisco to Tokyo.
It’s a little surreal to be back, even though our visit home was short. But we swap our US currency for IDR and begin to use our bahasa Indonesia again. We swap the SIM cards out in our phone and get back to work. Grateful for our family’s flexibility and for the prayers of partners like you! Please keep them coming!
The Nelson Family Indonesia 