I keep dreaming of landing the propeller plane myself. Tumbling out and seeing chickens everywhere, chickens who will calmly and perfectly explain to me the value of the rupiah. I've seen the airport in my dreams. It is always giant and metal with slow elevators, things written in Chinese, and Subway chains everywhere - I know this is not the case, but this is what I dream anyway. I dream about a nine-computer room instead of the nine-bedroom house that it is purported to be. I dream that I can't find the ocean. That is the most reoccurring theme of all: that I can't find the ocean. The ocean has been a lie. We are landlocked. Often, we are in suburbia. My American brain is revolting. The American part of me is rearing only the ugliest parts of its head.

It is angry that I suppress it, that I don't eat at Subway, don't appreciate giant modern airports, and do know exactly where things are on maps. It must feed, and it feeds on dreams.

Since we are at less than a month now from our departure date, things are getting (regrettably) more real. Real enough to start this blog. Real enough to have a burning left shoulder from the hepatitis A/typhoid shots, and a burning brain from the nurse's warnings: Japanese encephalitis, malaria. Rabies. Dengue fever. How many shots can a shoulder take? How many diseases can my language center hold? Enough, I'm sure, for me to be even more hypochondriacal than usual - another American brain's ugly-part-rearing festival. Native Indonesians deal. I can deal. We're all the same human. We're all the same human.

But the nurse - Nurse 'my friend had diarrhea so bad she called me bawling, long-distance, so you'd better buy a diarrhea kit', Nurse 'rabies is 100% fatal and I knew a guy who was just sitting on the beach and this dog came up and bit him on the butt', Nurse 'Encephalitis makes you retarded' - okay! Okay! Shoot me up. There are dormant diseases made from preserved dead rat and pig brain in my muscles right now - right now as I type this! - but I suppose... no, I can't say it's okay, because it's not, but it's the more preferable option, I suppose.