About my Year

(UPDATE:  This post is from June when I first started my blog on Tumblr.  I have posted it here so any new viewers can catch up on why I am living in Bali)

My name is Jeremy Pivor and I graduated in May 2013 from Washington University in St. Louis.  I am incredibly fortunate to be spending the next year as a 2013-2014 Henry Luce Foundation Scholar.  During this fellowship I will be living and working in Indonesia.  

When trying to decide what to focus on this year, my love for the ocean naturally drew my attention to the coral triangle (pictured below), which is the most biologically diverse marine system in the world. 

Indonesia sits at the heart of the coral triangle, so this year I will be spending July and August in Yogyakarta studying Bahasa Indonesia.  Yogyakarta, also called Yogya or Jogja,(which is how its pronounced), is located near the center of Java.  

In September I will move to Sanur, Bali where I will be working with the Coral Triangle Center (CTC).  CTC works to build capacity for marine conservation throughout the Coral Triangle by providing training for marine practitioners.    

As a general overview, here is my schedule throughout the year:

July-August:  Language study in Jojga

September:  Move to Bali to start work at the CTC

Mid-October:  Mid-year meeting with all of the Luce Scholars in Bangkok, Thailand

End of June:  Finish work with CTC

Mid-July:  Wrap-up meeting and end of Luce program in Myanmar     

This year is sure to be filled with tons of new and hopefully life-changing experiences.  Realistically there will be too much to share and not enough time to write, so it is my goal to make this blog more of a photo-journal, so you can see through my eyes (or camera lens) what I experience here in Indonesia.  It is my hope that through this blog I can share with you my journey as I live and travel throughout this amazingly diverse country for a year.