paying lots of $ to sleep on the floor
To not be such a lump during my 4-month trip, I signed up for a volunteer workcamp for 10 dys in Indonesia (http://www.geocities.com/IIWC3/IIWC.html through http://www.sci-ivs.org/). International volunteers are placed around the country at different organizations working on various issues. Its main purpose is cultural exchange. So my site is in Semarang, a big city east of Jakarta, at a clinic that provides free STD testing & HIV/AIDS info in the largest concentration of sex workers in Central Java. Our camp has 4 volunteers (me, sis, guy from Belgium, gal from Indonesia) Interestingly, most vols they get are from the Netherlands & Japan. Plus 2 staff, and a whole slew of their friends and other local vols. For 10 days, this clinic is where we'll be sleeping, eating, planning, & getting to know each other, the sex workers, & the other people who live in the community.

We sleep on the floor of the clinic & have a very rudimentary bathroom & the dress code is strict for such hot weather, but I can tell I'm gonna like it. The atmosphere is laid-back and communal. Medical staff, outreach staff, sex workers, children who live in the area, & friends come in & out all day. Javanese culture seems pretty conservative, but I think I'm hanging out with some of the most open-minded, sexually explicit, liberal people in town. Activism still seems pretty new, especially about these issues, so it's nice to see people get all excited about their work, instead of jaded like me. :)