My Night in the Planetarium

When I was seven, I got to spend the night in a planetarium. This is a true story. Do you want to hear it?

I was born in Indonesia. Only three countries in the world have more people than Indonesia. Do you know what they are? China, India. The United States. Then comes Indonesia.

Indonesia is an ARCHIPELAGO, which means it’s made up of lots of islands. There are SEVENTEEN THOUSAND islands in Indonesia. There are 300 different ethnic groups. People speak 750 different languages and dialects.

Fruit from the trees. And spices. Ooh, the spices. Indonesia is where the Spice Islands are. When you learn about Columbus, you will learn that he was looking for the Spice Islands when he got lost and was shipwrecked in Haiti. But that’s another story.

Let’s get back to Indonesia. People from all over the world came to Indonesia to buy spices. Some of them, like the Dutch, decided to stay. We Indonesians are really nice, so we let them stay. They stayed for 350 years.

Finally, Indonesians decided it was time for the Dutch to go home. They hadn’t been very good guests. They stole our spices. They took over our government. And they put people in jail if they complained. So people from all across the Indonesian islands decided to UNITE and kick them out.

We called this The Indonesian Revolution.