Carol Walker is almost a professional expatriate. With roots in New England in the United Sates, she has a master's in public policy from Harvard and has worked in Indonesia, Micronesia, Egypt and Mozambique. But today she's back in her much-loved Jakarta, with her husband and son, and she says she couldn't be happier.
I've had three different incarnations in Indonesia. My first time here was to run the American Chamber of Commerce - I came out here first while my husband was finishing his PhD. It was late 1993 and we were here for three-and-a-half years. It was boom times in Indonesia.
The membership of the chamber grew enormously while I was there - the investment climate was improving daily and the economic outlook was very bright.
I was a DINK -- double income no kids -- at that time, and it was tremendously rewarding.
And it was exciting for me to be at the place that I had studied at university.
I took a history course and one of the periods we studied was Dutch colonialism in Indonesia. It was fascinating and thus became a love affair that still goes on.
I'm sure you can make the case for any country. Mozambique was radically different. And I knew people in Egypt who just adored the Middle East and wouldn't think of leaving - they lived there for 20 years and wanted to stay there for as long as they could.
It's about wherever you feel you can fit in.
There are all kinds of expats. There are the colonialists who are in it just for the money and for the pampered lifestyle.
Then there's another layer that's in it of the adventure. They are in it for learning more about the country they're in - they're not so concerned with the high income - and sometimes these people overlap.
They can come here on a good package but they like to go out and adventure - and I like to think I'm one of them.
In 1999, I came back in a totally different incarnation. I came back as a mother. And there's no better place to be with a child - because Indonesians love children.
And of course you do have all the perks of being an expatriate. We missed the riots - but we were here for September 11. And that was being here for history.
It was a very strange time.
Since then I've had a dual aspect to Indonesia.
I think it's a wonderful place but of course there will always be friends and family who tell me it's such a dangerous place. But frankly, I feel safer here than I do in Washington DC, where I would be worried about a terrorist attack on the subway.
Here, for me, this time, I'm seeing everything through a different lens, but it seems everybody I meet is fairly comfortable with the expatriate lifestyle.
They've been in Indo for years - or they've been to several countries and they can tell you funny stories about their shipment getting lost in Brazil when they moved, or the time they went fishing and got lost in Bulgaria.
Right now the people that are here are the people who are really devoted to the country.
Jakarta can be hard. Really hard. But once you get to know more about the place, you can appreciate all the layers.
I think that's what's part of the fun for Indonesia for me.
When you see a little old woman hobbling down the street in her batik sarong, when you see the guy wheeling his cart down the street - and you know that weird looking fruit in there is jambu and you know what it tastes like and you marvel at the fact that anyone would eat it because it's so dry.
When you know what a kaki lima is and why it's called that. Once you know all this it's like a beautiful movie going by on the street.
