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AI: Well, you wrote some in your book about some of your experiences in attending this school, which was international and had a number of kids from various places and, including quite a few from the United States. I was wondering if you'd tell a little bit about that.

PJ: Yeah, it was really interesting. We were, there were all these kids from all over the world, and so I never grew up... I grew up thinking that the world was a very big place, and there were a lot of countries around the world, but that it was very small in that we were all basically the same, you know, 'cause we were all together as kids, and you don't really think about the differences, necessarily. I know, you know, there was Fuad was from Egypt, and Elena was from Yugoslavia, and so there were kids from all over, and I had friends from everywhere. But the biggest number, percentage-wise, I think forty percent of the kids were from the United States. And there was always, I think, certainly in general, but for me specifically, this U.S. envy. Because they all were, they were mostly kids of embassy folks, who had a hell of a good life, really. [Laughs] I mean, and, same thing with the oil company. There, by that time, a lot of people from oil companies were coming. And Indonesia was like a gold mine for the oil companies. And so they sent over all these people who, when you're an expatriate, you're given a beautiful house and commissary privileges, which is the American club where you can go and buy peanut butter and other things that are from the United States that they ship in. And there's an American club that's, you have to be an American to go there. And there's the American embassy that shows movies, and you have to be an American to go there, or you can go as a guest, but you have to go through all these, you had to be signed in and can't be left by yourself and all these kinds of things. And so there was always this kind of sense that, boy, America was this amazing place, 'cause they had like peanut butter and all these... [laughs] I just remember also going to people's houses, and everything was so beautifully decorated, and the bedspreads matched the curtains, and just things like that, that seemed big to me at the time. And I think part of it was also the contrast to, to India, which I was navigating, and going through my own kind of rejection of everything Indian, and kind of wanting to be like my American friends. But the school was an amazing place because it really did have this remarkable diversity.

The majority of the teachers were American; I think that was the other piece of it, is that even though the kids were from all over, almost all the teachers were American. Probably eighty percent of the teachers were American. And so we had almost this influx of American culture, but not quite. And later on, I realized how different life was for them, because I went to -- I stayed in touch with, one of my teachers was a, was typing and home economics, I think it was called, or something. And I became friends with her and her husband, who was the track coach, and I went to visit them in Wisconsin. They lived outside of Madison somewhere, a tiny little town. And they were like the renegades, that they went to Indonesia. Nobody even knew where Indonesia was, and they were not particularly well-off, and when you go there and you get this beautiful house, it must have been completely discombobulating in a way, for them as well.

But it was a remarkable school. I mean, we had amazing arts, amazing music; we would put on these musicals every year that were full-fledged performances, I mean, beautiful. My Fair Lady, we had these incredible costumes, and, and then there were just these little bits of Americana that if I had been here, I'm not sure I would have gotten them. Just, I remember one of the songs we had to sing in our choir was a series of American commercials. [Sings] Like, "Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don't." And I just remember, people say, like, "How do you know these things?" And part of it is because we got a lot of that at school, for better or for worse. [Laughs]

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.