Getting in the Christmas spirit

It's been really hard for me to believe that Christmas is fast approaching when I sweat almost every time I walk outdoors. December just doesn't seem like December without gloves and scarves and waiting for snow. But yesterday we had our school Christmas pageant. We sang "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and "Joy to the World" and "Silent Night," and it started to feel like Christmas. I loved watching my kids up on stage--three of my goofballs playing the shepherds with comic flair, a girl who seemed shy in class as the angel Gabriel, and a kid whose incredible singing voice I never suspected playing Joseph. I was proud of them.

After the pageant, we had a reception in the cafeteria with an open stage where kids were singing "White Christmas" and "Feliz Navidad," which made me laugh since snow and people who speak Spanish are pretty much unknown to Indonesia. And then we were done for the year. I don't leave until next Saturday, so I'll do some Christmas shopping and wrapping this week. If you thought that living in the world's most populous Muslim country would protect me from the American commercialization of Christmas, you were wrong. I saw fake Christmas trees being sold at the mall in early November, lines are longer, and I hear classics like "All I Want for Christmas Is You" while shopping.

The "I'm-still-getting-used-to-being-a-teacher" moment of the day: I ran into a student at the gym. It could have been worse. I could have been sweating, out of breath, and red-faced, or it could have been an unfriendly student, but I was just getting on the treadmill when one of the sweet ones came up to say hello. I've forgotten how interesting it was to see teachers out of context. I couldn't have been much more out of context. At school, most days I wear a uniform--blue skirt, white blouse, dark shoes, makeup--but today I was wearing yoga pants, running shoes, and my high school gym class t-shirt. It shouldn't feel weird to see students outside of school, and it's happened before, but sometimes it still does.

If you're interested in knowing, I'm flying out of Jakarta on Saturday, December 20, and I'll be flying through Singapore and Hong Kong before I get to Chicago the next day. I'm meeting my family and driving from Chicago, so I'll be in Indianapolis from about the 21/22 of December to January 5.

Things I'm looking forward to when I go home: singing Christmas songs, snow (hopefully!), sweaters, Christmas lights, seeing friends, seeing family, being cold, cooking with my mother, Christmas services, my room, taking walks around my neighborhood, driving myself around, streets without traffic, drinking tap water, living with other people, using a washer and dryer instead of a bucket and a clothesline, making mincemeat pie, and having a fire in the fireplace.

God bless us, every one.

How to have a Happy Birthday in Indonesia

The Indonesian tradition for birthdays is that the birthday person treats. It's kind of like grade school, as one of my elementary education major friends pointed out. So I made chocolate chip cookies for the teachers at school today. It's a good feeling to be giving on your birthday and not just receiving. Plus, I got to enjoy some warm cookies and milk for breakfast. Another Indonesian birthday tradition is that everyone shakes your hand. Now this does seem like that big a deal, but it's warm and friendly, and I enjoyed it. I also ended up with some lovely orchids (from my parents via Karla), balloons, and far too many sweets.

The cool thing about having a birthday on this side of the world is that it seems like it last longer. My birthday started this morning for me, but I don't feel like it's really over until it's over in the U.S., which isn't until tomorrow afternoon. I even got my birthday started early here. I went out to dinner on Wednesday with a few friends from work. The Italian restaurant near my apartment was celebrating its first anniversary by having everything half off. It was good times. I didn't go out for my birthday tonight. I decided to stay in, finish the book I'm reading (That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis), talk to my family, finish off the cookie dough, and enjoy a quiet birthday evening.

It still feels strange to have 80 degree weather in December. In some ways, I feel like my sense of time passing is all wrapped up in seasonal weather changes, which means I'm a little discombobulated by Indonesian weather (and it sure doesn't feel like I'm been here almost five months). A good example would be rain. I'm used to Midwestern rain, which usually gives you some clues that it's coming: it gets colder or windier, or you hear thunder in the distance, or it's gets darker with that strange greenness right before a thunderstorm. Not so in Jakarta. Rain comes without any preliminaries, as if someone flicked a switch. I'm really looking forward to some weather variety when I go home for Christmas. It will be wonderful to have something besides hot hot hot, but I'm a little worried that I'll be a cold weather wimp. I think that I need to go ice-skating at the mall before I leave, just to practice.

It was really nice that I didn't have to teach today. I didn't have a lot to do except plan for next semester since I'm done grading finals for my eighth grade students. I was sad to say goodbye to them last week. They gave me headaches, but they also made me laugh. My favorite answer on the final exam was in response to a question about the target audience of a Burger King ad for the Whopper. One student wrote that the ad was directed to almost everyone--families, teenagers, adults, children, etc, "except for people who can't eat solid food." Thank goodness for students like that who add a little spice to the bland monotony of grading.

Technically, this is a long weekend because of a Muslim holiday on Monday, but tomorrow there's a Christmas service for all the IPEKA teachers, so I have to get up early for that. It's kind of a bummer, but I'm going out to see Twilight afterward. To the shame and embarrassment of my sister, I have read the book by Stephanie Meyer. It has pretty much swept the school by storm, so I thought I'd better get on board. And I'm thrilled to see kids getting excited about reading, especially in English. I borrowed a copy from an eighth grade boy, and I was reading it in the library facing these big windows where students pass on their way to the chapel. You should have heard the squeals of excitment when some of my old 11th grade students passing by saw that I was reading Twilight. They loved it, and I'm pretty sure that I'll see some of them at the movie theater tomorrow.

15 days until I leave for home!

Happy Turkey Day!

Thanksgiving is coming early to Indonesia. Karla and I wanted to do Thanksgiving dinner together for some of our colleagues, but we decided that it would be easiest to do it today. It has to be a collaboration because Karla has a beautiful home for entertaining, but she has no oven big enough for a turkey. Which means that our bird's fragrances are wafting through my apartment right now, and in a couple of hours we'll put it in the car and take in over to Joseph and Karla's.

Jakarta's grocery stores are not exactly friendly to Thanksgiving needs. We have a turkey and stuffing, but Karla and I found no pumpkin, and I went to four different grocery stores looking for Crisco for making pie crust. I couldn't find any, so I tried making the crust without it. I don't recommend it. It's probably the ugliest apple pie that I've ever made, but I'm hopeful that it'll taste good.

Difficulties aside, it's really nice to have some way to celebrate my favorite holiday. It's a different Thanksgiving for sure (like I've never had a Thanksgiving where I don't have to wear a jacket), and I'm missing cooking and spending time with my family, but it's also fun to share Thanksgiving with people from around the world.

I will miss the pumpkin pie, though. So I've already made my mother promise I can have one at Christmas.

A little international news

Happy Election Day! I won't write much on the election because I know that most of you have been ten times more saturated with election news than I am and are consequently ten times more exhausted, but I thought you might be interested in an international perspective. Briefly, almost everyone wants Obama, some for political reasons, some because of Obama's connection to Indonesia, some (students) because McCain looks too old. When my boss Joseph put up on his door a "Who should I vote for?" survey for passers-by, Obama was the overwhelming winner. I voted a week and a half ago by email. I had no idea that the state of Indiana was so progressive, but after completing a couple of forms (including one that waived my right to voter privacy), I printed my ballot, filled it out, scanned it, and sent it back. One piece of interesting election-related news that you might not have heard is that Obama's former home in Jakarta has gotten a lot more attention recently. One Dutch man is offering to buy it and set up an Obama cafe. My favorite part is that it would feature "Obama blend" coffee made with beans from Kenya and Java.

I read about that in the Jakarta Post, and I've been trying to get my hands on a copy of it more often so that I can be better informed about current events in Indonesia. My favorite part is the letters to the editor section, where you can see a wide range of opinions on news and Indonesian issues. What I've noticed recently in some of the articles and comments is the struggle in Indonesia to maintain local culture and to create a unique national identity out of the incredible diversity that comes from being a nation of islands. Language plays a really interesting role as local languages are threatened by Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Indonesia is threatened by English.

In other international news, the financial crisis in the United States has actually been really good news for me, since I get paid in dollars. The Indonesian rupiah (with other Asian currencies) has dropped significantly against the dollar over the last month. When I first got here, one dollar was about 9200 or 9300 rupiah, but yesterday one of my co-workers got more than 10,000 Rp to the dollar at the bank.

Bandung was interesting this weekend. I went on Sunday with Yuli, one of my co-workers, whom I didn't know very well before, so it was a great time to get to know her better. We went to drop off a student for a computer design training camp, but we stayed just to have fun. It rained a lot in Bandung (streets-flooded rain), so we didn't get to go to see a volcano like we had hoped, but we did some shopping and ate some good food, so it was a good trip. Bandung is at a higher elevation than Jakarta, so it was blessedly cooler. The bad part was the rain made traffic nasty on the way back, so it took about an hour longer to get home. But Yuli and I talked about our college experiences, and it turns out that college students in the United States and in Indonesia do some of the same kinds of crazy, spontaneous things. Good times.

TGIF

It's Friday!
Today was a particularly long Friday because beside teaching 8 periods of eighth graders, I had professional development for two of my free periods, I planned with my co-teacher Douglas for Monday's lesson during my lunch period, and I stayed after school until 6:00 to talk to parents at the report card distribution for my old year 11 students.

Funny/frustrating moment at IPEKA today. I haven't talked too much about how IPEKA's administration can be difficult to deal with at times, but today is a good example. We got a notice on the school message board at 2:23pm which announced that we will be having a school service/gathering on Monday to plant trees as a follow-up to the "I go green!" seminar some teachers and administrators attended today. Between some unclear communication and the short notice, there were some irritated teachers. In general, expatriate teachers are better at complaining than the Indonesian teachers, so sarcastic comments popped up on the message board almost immediately. We all want this school to be a better learning environment for students, and it's frustrating when that doesn't happen.

We're getting into rainy season now (it rains every other day or so), and while I've heard that it can get kind of miserable later on in January and February, right now I like it. It's much cooler (I don't start sweating immediately when I go outside), and the rain clears up some of the smog. I've seen seen the mountains to the south of Jakarta twice in the last two weeks, and I didn't even know that there were mountains to look for!

I'm going to Bandung this weekend. A teacher who's accompanying a student to a competition invited me to keep her company. I'll let you know how it goes.

I realized recently that in the last three months I have taught 119 tenth graders, 120 eighth graders, 108 eleventh graders, and about 40 seventh graders, which comes to a total of approximately 387 students. And 387 names that I should have learned. Actually, I count it a mark of progress that I thought I was on the wrong floor today because I saw students whose names I know.

Finally! A long juicy post to catch you up

So this will be a long entry with lots of pictures to make up for almost a month of non-entries. The last time I wrote, I was in the middle of our Ramadhan break. I stayed at home for most of it, but stayed busy. Things I did during break:

1. Watched the national finals for Australian rules football (which is different from soccer and rugby and American football, but looks a little like all of them). Imagine a lot of men on the field kicking and throwing the ball around and tackling each other.

2. Baked brownies with two 15 year old girls, both daughters of coworkers. Baked is actually the wrong term since the brownies were cooked in a steamer. Weird, huh? They tasted delicious, but we had to wait until the next day to eat them because they took forever to steam, and we had already pigged out on chocolate fondue by the time they were done. It was a perfect girls night, something that I've been missing in Jakarta.

3. Went to Taman Safari with Tim and Karla. It's this place up in the hills outside of Jakarta (my first time outside of the city) where you drive through different animal exhibits of bears and lions and tigers and zebras and cows and elephants and deer and hippos and monkeys and apes and you feed them carrots and then you can park and walk through other exhibits (like the Komodo dragon) or see some animal shows. You can also hold some baby animals. It's the kind of place that is a bit of a guilty pleasure because you know that this probably isn't the best way to take care of animals, but it's definitely a unique experience.


When you drive through the lion and tiger territory, they tell you to roll up your windows for safety.
Here's Tim feeding the elephants.

Yes, we were that close to the hippos. Yes, it made me a bit nervous. Yes, he liked the carrots we tossed in his mouth.

This beast is massive. Ok, maybe not quite as big as the hippos, but they can inflict some serious damage. I learned that Komodo dragons have some nasty bacteria in their mouths that will kill their prey if those jaws don't.

Me, Karla, and Tim with our tiger friend.

This little guy made me laugh because he was ticklish. And he had a cute potbelly.

4. Went to Taman Mini. Taman Mini is kind of like a world's fair just for Indonesia. You can go there and see architecture and dance and artifacts from different parts of Indonesia. Unfortunately, when Karla and I went, it was extremely hot and kind of crowded and people were staring at us, which made the experience less than pleasant. We left without seeing a lot, but we did take a gondola ride over the lake which has a model of Indonesia's islands (which are upside-down in my picture). I'm pretty sure the big one is Kalimantan/Borneo, but I'm not positive. They're hard to see in my picture, but there are some little white dots that are miniature volcanoes on the islands.

5. Got ready for my parents and Megan to come. Remember my locked bedroom? Because my apartment has two bedrooms and the school only pays for me to have a studio, one of my bedrooms is locked, but they let me open it so that Megan could stay there. I got to see a whole new part of my apartment.

6. Welcomed my parents and Megan at the airport! It was so good to see some familiar faces.

7. Went to Yogyajakarta and Solo in Central Java with them. We had such a good time. We visited a couple of incredible ancient temples (Prambanan and Borobudur), a batik factory and a silver-making factory, and two interesting palaces of the local monarchs. And after living on an island for three months, I finally saw the ocean. We waded in the Indian Ocean on the south side of Java. Awesome waves! We also drove through a lot of countryside, which is very different from American countryside.

At the batik factory: this is a woman putting the wax by hand on the fabric before it's dyed. Batik-making a very complicated and time-consuming process. In the background you can see a little more of the kind of thing she's working on here.

The Buddhist temple/pilgrimage site: Borobudur.

Taken from the top of Borobudur.

This is the Hindu temple Prambanan. The scaffolding and the stones that you see in the foreground are part of the reconstruction efforts, which have been complicated by extensive damage from an earthquake in 2006. Imagine it as the world's largest puzzle. It ties my brain in a knot just to think about it.

The Indian Ocean and Indonesian beach-goers.

8. Got back to Jakarta.

Megan and my parents spent about a week in Jakarta with me after we got back from central Java. My apartment was a lot busier with four people living in it, and it was really nice to have some one to come home to. They kept busy with finding their way to the mall and swimming in the pool at my apartment complex. Over the weekend, we went to a wedding of one of my coworkers (the groom is Australian and the bride is Chinese-Indonesian). I learned that it's not impolite in Indonesia to skip the ceremony and just come to the reception. We were among about 30 people at the ceremony, while more like 350-400 appeared for the reception.

Keep this a secret, but I played hooky from school on Tuesday (when I don't teach any classes anyway), so that I could spend their last day with them. We went to the Dutch district of Jakarta, which wasn't quite as interesting as I hope it would be, partly because it hasn't been very well maintained and partly because it was really, really hot while we were walking around. We managed to find a very nice restaurant for lunch, though, and we finished the afternoon at Monas, Indonesia's national monument. Up at the top, it was clear enough for us to get a great view of the city.
Mom and Dad and Megan left the next day (two weeks ago), and I've been missing them a lot. I really enjoyed introducing them to the people and places that I'm growing to love here. If anyone else wants to come visit, feel free. It makes me very happy.

Since then, I've been getting used to teaching eighth grade. They are so funny! They give me a little more of a headache than the 10th and 11th graders do, but they have so much energy and creativity. I got some great results when I had them write a fractured fairy tale, and I saw some interesting Powerpoint presentations yesterday on war posters. Two of my favorite quotes from eighth grade:
One male student to a group of giggly female students: "Stop acting like a bunch of howler monkeys!"
One student to another: "You're speaking unproper English!"

My tutoring student also cracks me up. When he doesn't want to do something I've asked him to do, he simple says, "No need. No need." How can you argue with that?

On Saturday, we had an all school social gathering at hotel restaurant. It was an all-you-can-eat buffet with Indonesian, Chinese, Indian, Japanese and Western food. It felt like Thanksgiving. My favorite part was the cheeseboard right around the corner from the breadbasket. I haven't had such good bread and cheese since I came here. It was a communal gorging on delicious food, so a good time was had by all.

I'm approaching my four month anniversary in Jakarta. It seems a little strange that I've been here that long because I still feel so new here and I still have moments where I think with disbelief: I'm in INDONESIA. But I'm learning a lot. God is good. All the time.

Thoughts on Ramadan and other recent news

So I promised that this post would be about Ramadan (which started October 2 and ends today, I think), but as I’ve been thinking about it, the fact that it’s Ramadan isn’t that apparent, at least not to my untrained eye. There are a few things that stick out. People get up early to eat so I sometimes heard an air rifle being shot off at about 5:15am and I saw a few fireworks at night as the fast was being broken. Right now, some one’s setting off a lot of fireworks in the neighborhood, and they’re getting just high enough that I can see them bursting over the rooftops out my living room window. When I was tutoring late at my private student’s house, I would have to wait a few minutes until the family’s driver had broken the fast so that he could take me home.

I have been learning more about Ramadan, though. I’ve learned that it’s a time of purification, generosity, and forgiveness for Muslims. At the end of Ramadan, Muslims celebrate Idul Filtri (known as Lebaran in Indonesia). Giving money is an important part of the celebrating. The wealthy give to the poor. Employers (though not mine) give to their employees. Parents give to their children. What’s interesting to me is the culture conflict that happens in that arena. Many of us gladly contributed to funds for the security guards at my apartment and for the cleaning and security staff at school, but I overheard an Australian coworker complaining about how his paper boy came begging for a Lebaran donation. Walking the line between generosity and handouts is difficult here.

In some ways, the Indonesian celebration of Lebaran resembles the Christmas season in the United States with the emphasis on generosity and family (and increased consumer spending). There’s a mass exodus out of Jakarta for Lebaran as people go home to their towns and villages to celebrate with family. Even though IPEKA is a Christian school, we get a week and a half off for Lebaran, so I’m enjoying easy transit around the city and sleeping past five o’clock until....

My parents and my roommate Megan get here on Sunday! I’m beyond excited. We’re going to Yogyakarta for a couple of days and then they’ll spend a week with me in Jakarta. I’ve been delightfully busy with figuring out details like groceries and linens and who’ll sleep where. Which means that I haven’t been doing as much grading as I should be. I got slammed with 11^th grade papers and then 10^th grade tests and then 11^th grade finals, and I’m still not done. The hard part about giving out an assignment is that I know I’ll have to grade more than a hundred of them. But with my family coming, I’m really motivated to get it all done.

In other teaching news, I’ve been easing into eighth grade, where we’ve started a unit on war. My first class with them kind of devolved into shouting matches of their opinions on war, which was fun, even though it was a little chaotic. They’re definitely different from my 10^th and 11^th grade students, and they have lots of energy. Here’s one thing that’s been cracking me up. One of the problems that we have as English teachers at IPEKA is that students don’t always speak English in class. IPEKA is supposed to be a 100% English school, but it certainly doesn’t work out that way. So, we English teachers try to discourage Bahasa Indonesia in our classes as much as we can. About a month ago, I was thinking about how my high school French teacher made us sing a song in class if we made a certain verb mistake in past tense. Inspired by Mrs. Lattimer, I wrote the following lyrics for Indonesian-speaking infractions.

(Sung to the tune of Alouette)
This is English class where we speak English,
We speak English no matter what the task:
In our groups and to our friendsies
Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, Wednesdays
Fridays, too, yes that’s true. Ohhh.
This is English class where we speak English,
We speak English no matter what the task.

Since it was a little late to start it with my 10^th or 11^th graders, I decided that my ditty would have to wait until January, but then eighth grade fell into my lap, and I thought I’d see how it worked. Well, I taught it to them on my first day with them (Monday), and when I saw them again on Friday, I heard little choruses of “This is English class” erupting as I walked down the halls. It made me laugh. I hope it works.

I did something really exciting today, but I want to tell the story with the pictures I took.