So it appears that I have now been living in Indonesia for 2 months! It sounds like a lot like that. Two months. And it’s been a great experience thus far!
Today I was going to go for a walk up an active volcano! I say was, because I decided against it for now… I’ve had a terrible head cold and at the moment I get tired walking the 500m to the kitchen! Ha ha! I was going to see how I felt and push through – that was until I found out we’d be walking for about 8 hours total!! I thought I could make 2 hours or something, but 8… no way! I’ll just wait until the next team come through I think!
There’s another small group of people here at the moment too. Sandie – who some of you will know – has been here before and was instrumental in preparing me for this. She is a nurse and is working with the staff here and doing some training sessions etc. Dennis and Tessa are from Seattle and Dennis is a trainee doctor and Tessa is a nurse. They heard about us here from a friend of a friend and decided to spend 3 weeks up skilling and experiencing a different culture. Andrew is here for 2 weeks and his family took in one of our boys here who suffered horrific burns a few years back. Tison (the boy) went to America to get surgery and skin grafts and for the 2 year recouperation period Andrew’s family became Tison’s family. I am getting to see a myriad of people here, all with various skills and experience, but all with hearts of gold and a desire to spread love and hope!
Here’s a typical example of the Indonesian way. In the school holidays I arranged to go into town (about 50 mins away) with some friends, one of whom is getting married next week, to help her look at a wedding dress and to grab a few things while I was there. One of the other ladies had to go to the government house too while we were there. Unfortunately, the government house was closed because it was close to a public holiday or something, or maybe they just wanted to – who knows? At that time it was Idil Fitri (the end of Ramadan) but the public holidays were on Tues and Wed and we went on a Fri. So we progressed on to the house with the wedding dress. They don’t buy wedding dresses here – they hire them. And you don’t have to hire from a shop, most people know someone who knows someone who has a dress or dresses to rent. And you don’t just rent the dress, you rent the gloves, shoes, veil and jewellery from this person too!! And if the dress doesn’t fit – they will alter it for you (and then alter it for the next person too if need be!). Now, the lady wasn’t home when we got there, but we were invited in to her house and were able to sit in the lounge room for about half an hour before the lady arrived. Luckily for us she had couches. Many houses here don’t have lounge furniture – just chairs similar to our plastic outdoor settings in Aussie and NZ. During the dress trying on process, one of the ladies with us received a phone call to invite us all to lunch to celebrate Idil Fitri, and of course she accepted – on behalf of all 9 of us – and her house was another 50 mins away! Which didn’t bother me – but seemed like a lot of people and a long way for a spontaneous lunch!! The dress had a bit of a train, which on close inspection, was lined in clear plastic to that it would not catch dirt when the bride was walking. (That is probably one of the biggest shocks I’ve had here culture-wise, lol! A plastic lined wedding dress!!) But it’s gotta stay clean right, and with no dry cleaning – you do what you do, huh!
As we were leaving the dress fitting, Eka, she’s a nurse, thought it would be good to visit one of her patients on the way. But on the way there we stopped and said hi to one of the previous doctors that used to work here. When we got to the patient’s house, we were all invited in and they served us an abundance of cakes and biscuits! I felt very at home when they brought out the marble cake!! It tasted delicious! We probably stayed there about ½ an hour or so and when we left, they made us take all the left over biscuits and cakes. And I mean made. Eka was saying that they should keep them and she said they had heaps and practically threw them in our car window, lol! We were grateful for those on the way home!!
Straight from there we went to the friend’s house for lunch and sadly for me there was only spicy food and white rice, lol! (I’m really spoiled at the base because the kitchen ladies cook me egg if the fish is spicy – which it usually is – and sometimes they fry me a fish so it’s not spicy! They really look after me here!) But then my friends told our host that I can’t eat spicy so they washed a fish for me, ha! I wasn’t going to say anything, but it was already done! We stayed there for about an hour and then left. The group then decided to go to Duma, so we went there and walked down to the gorgeous lake, where, of course, everyone followed us because they wanted to see the white person. I have no desire to be famous and recognized by everyone because I’ve had a taste of it here and it’s not that cool. You pretty much can’t do anything without everyone seeing and noticing!! The kids are funny. Some of them are scared and some of them are excited. And sometimes they are really confused when you speak Indonesian to them!!
While we were at the lake we decided to go for a swim. Sure, why not?! I don’t have spare clothes, but what the heck, hey? Plus, two of the other ladies were swimming in jeans, so surely I could manage in shorts. The water was beautiful!! In Australia and NZ I rarely went swimming because it’s too cold, or I could swim but not for long. Here, the water is perfect for me! Although if you want to cool down you have to get out of the water and let the breeze cool you down. The water was crystal clear and we could see a volcano in the distance. While we were swimming a whole bunch of people came down and were unashamedly watching me. I’m not sure why – I was in t shirt and shorts, but it must have been something worth seeing. There were also these guys who were taking photos but doing that thing where you pretend to take a photo of your friend but really take a photo of what’s behind them. I clicked on when I realised that none of the photos were being taken in front of the beautiful scenery, but instead, were being taken in front of the dingy kitchen/pier thing, lol! Funny stuff!!
Following that we went to go back home via town to buy some groceries etc but when we got there, the main supermarket was still shut from the religious holiday. It was also shut on the following Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I can’t imagine any large shop shutting for that long in Australia!! I since found out that the owner’s son is in my class, and their family decided to go on a holiday to Jakarta. And while they were away – the shop was shut. Ha! How awesome is that! The boss wants a holiday, so he shuts up shop. No worries mate.
Anyway, we got home at around 7pm after leaving at 9am! I was wrecked! Especially after initially thinking we’d be gone for 1-2 hours… ha! But it was a good day.
I’m so proud of my school kids. After 2 months they are progressing well and their comprehension of English is ever increasing! It’s difficult for them to remember words, though, because many of them can’t write or read Indonesian still. We’re trying to remedy that with targeted reading groups – but without Indonesian readers, that’s really difficult. Most of our children who can’t read should be able to in terms of their age. But many of them didn’t go to school, or if they did – no remedial reading was done with them and now they’re severely behind. I’m hoping that it won’t take long and that words will start to make sense to them and then they will be away! Some of my older students who have been to school before are learning English words and are remembering quite a few. Some of the work I have them do is translating English songs into Indonesian sentences. So they translate the words they know and then try to piece them together to make sense. It’s pretty cool to see them work. They are understanding more and more English, and I have to remind myself that they don’t understand it all!! For my day to day teaching, I don’t need a translator, but if I’m explaining work, or a new concept, then Amy is my right hand girl! Other than that I have an Indonesian teacher Aide in the class, and Amy, who is Australian but fluent in Indonesian.
At the beginning of the term, children rarely put their hand up to answer a question – even when it was translated, and this puzzled me until I found out that children can get punished here for an incorrect answer!! No wonder no one volunteered themselves! But after a few weeks, once they found out that there was no punishment for incorrect answers – many children put their hands up and have a go! That’s good news!! The other cool thing is seeing the children playing games outside of school that I taught them in school – and they’re English language games! Yay! It’s things like that that are so encouraging for me! And now that we have a small selection of English readers (courtesy of Andrew from America and his mum!), we can start teaching children to read English as well. Although we still can’t access the Victorian curriculum so it’s still a bit difficult!
My Indonesian is improving and I can generally make myself understood in the language if need be. It may be riddled with mistakes, but I am generally understood! Having lessons 4 times a weeks has made a huge difference! Also, it’s taking a shorter amount of time to remember new words, so that’s cool! But still, the Indonesian people speak really fast and I have to ask them to repeat themselves quite often! Words often run into each other and I can’t separate them!! But I’m understanding more and more! They say 3 months is when you start understanding most things. If I read children’s books then I can pretty much translate the story – but books for adults use more official language and bigger words – although it’s nothing compared to English!! Through teaching it I have come to realize how seriously hard learning English is!! I am grateful that I grew up speaking it, because learning it is a pain in the butt! I just tell the people here that many people who speak English can’t spell correctly either, so don’t get discouraged if you get words wrong, lol!
Last Sunday we caught a boat out to an island where we brought a picnic lunch and celebrated Christania’s 3rd birthday! It was a cute island, but littered with rubbish, and we set up our base, ate and then went swimming. This time I was prepared and brought a change of clothes!! The ocean water is so warm – but sooo salty! My eyes aren’t used to it! But I got to use my camera underwater for the first time!! That was exciting! When I buy some goggles or a mask then I’ll be able to take some cool shots because at the moment the salt water is too strong for my eyes – so I can’t see where I’m shooting! Not long after we had been there it started to pour with rain! It rained so hard that we couldn’t see the coast line of the island we can from which was only a 5 minute boat trip!!! The thunder and lightning were chronic, but everyone stayed in the water because it was warmer! If the lightning/thunder test is reliable, then we were right in the middle of the storm because there was hardly any gap between the lightning and thunder!! After a bit everyone got out and huddled under the massive shelter, ate a bit more food, tried to keep warm – but wearing so much wet clothing made it difficult to stay warm. I was freezing and it amused many people that I was cold. They said that because I am bule (foreigner) that I’m supposed to be warm (because I come from a cold country!). As all my friends and family know – I’m often cold even in summer!! After a bit I thought we would start heading home so I changed into dry clothes (it was still pouring down at this stage!) but didn’t have any long sleeves so huddled up trying to get warm! Then the others went for another swim – but it was too much effort to change again so I hung out under the shelter thinking warm thoughts! Then this group of kids arrived and after about 5 mins of nervous glances and blatant stares, they finally worked up enough courage to come over and talk to me – about 12 girls under 13 years old. They tried out their English on me and were surprised to hear that I am living quite local. Then the cameras came out and they all wanted pictures, lol! It was sooo funny! Some of the boys came over too and said, “Hi Mister!” This is not unusual!! In the market place people call out that all the time! I get “Hi Princess”, “Hi Mrs” and “Hi Mr” all the time!! I informed them that mister is for boys only!!
Well, congratulations if you made it this far – it was a long one! But I thought I’d put a little more detail into this one and a few of my outings were more interesting than previous ones!
Much love!
Xoxo Aimee
(I'm sorry!! For some reason I can't upload any photos!!)
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