Jonah's Gap Year Journal

Hello everyone! Well, I made it to India. I arrived on Sunday the 17th of December late at night. I took a taxi from the airport to Hotel Sadha Siva in the suburb of Nangallanur, in the southwestern part of Chennai. I realized quickly that I had caught some kind of cold right before leaving Bali, and I've spent the last week recovering in isolation. Originally, I had booked the small hotel in an effort to save money. The plan was to spend a week alone to look for a job online so that by the time I moved out I would have some extra spending money to explore the city. Surely, a week straight of job searching would yield some kind of result. I've learned that things rarely go as planned. Sick, culture shocked, and jobless, I was hit hard by reality last week. I'm such a social creature that the time alone was hard on my motivation, and I really only left the hotel room to gather food and water before sulking back in to my cave. When I couldn't be bothered to leave the ...

What an adventure Bali has been. Almost a month since my last post, I feel just as happy here as I have since the day I arrived, and even more at home. I leave for India on December 17. Until then, I will spend the weekend here at camp finishing all my various creative projects and then celebrating the end of a life changing volunteering experience with 4 days back on Gili T. Before I fly out, I'll come back to the organization for one night and say goodbye to what friends haven't left already. This is the time of year when the number of volunteers drops significantly, so most of the people I mentioned in my last post have already left. Elias, Etienne, Maya, and Yael remain. The main task I have to complete over this weekend at home is my handmade Catan board. For over 3 weeks I've been riding my scooter hours to buy materials, sawing and sanding wooden hexagons, cutting colored pencils in half, painting, collecting rocks on the beach, and designing cards on my computer. E...