Thursday, August 18, 2011

Wait... what grade is this?

Your average American would describe the Indonesian classroom as unruly. I began my first real day at school being shuttled from class to class, making 3 minute introductions about myself, drawing the United States & Kentucky on the whiteboard, and answering the questions of the few students outgoing enough to ask. It turns out that Indonesian students operate with a group mentality, and very few of them are willing to call attention to theirselves by raising a hand. The question I got asked most was about my hobbies, which include writing and rattling off the names of bands that few, if any, people in this country have ever heard of. You know: Cut Copy, Datarock Datarock, Of Montreal, etc. At least everyone here knows the Beatles. One kid tried to call me out by asking, "Do you like to sing? Will you sing for us?" And then giggling profusely. So I laid the smackdown on him and sang a few lines of Hey Jude. Stunned silence, good or bad I'm not sure. At least they seemed to approve when I told them I wanted to learn to surf while I was here.

The next most asked question pertained to my marital status. It's actually pretty common for strangers to ask if you're married (at least to white people). Of course, replying "single" was met with a round of giggles (especially from the girls in class). In fact, it seems that giggling was the appropriate response for almost any question I answered, even when the answer was pretty tame. At least a few more people in the world know that cornbread exists. Now if only I knew where to find a skillet and some cornmeal...

I think the hardest part of my introductions was keeping my English together. Half of any conversation I got involved in consisted of one conversant talking and asking questions in sometimes-more-sometimes-less broken English. By the end of the rounds, what was coming out of my mouth was a mix of bad English and a few Indonesian words. I'm going to have to keep an ear on that if I hope to teach these kids anything worthwhile.

To give you an idea of the average classroom at my school: Imagine a sparsely decorated room with a few pictures of important imams (Muslim religious leaders) or the current president. Fill that room with around 30 kids sitting at at two person table-desks, then group the boys together and the girls together to the point that you can see a physical gender division, usually with the boys in the back. This is the still shot of the Indonesian classroom. Animate this picture and you will see lots of giggling and whispering in the ears of deskmates (especially among the girls). The boys would make any American teacher cringe; during class one will see playful shoving, light smacking, and other forms of horseplay. On occasion, one boy will jump out of his seat and rush to an empty chair by a fellow (fellow being specifically male) classmate, and every once in a while, some of the more unruly boys will straight up yell something at the teacher. I don't like using the word something in my writing, but since I don't understand Indonesian, something will have to suffice. Not all students fit these descriptions though. At least a third of students sit quietly in their seats, listening and sometimes even taking notes (but they'll still whisper a quick sentence or two to their neighbor, albeit more covertly than some). This isn't to say that these kids are bad. Its just that they didn't grow up in an educational system organized around complete obedience to a teacher. For me, it just means that instead of expecting the children to behave and do immediately as they're told, I'll have to work with them. I'll have to play their games and teach them to play mine. Sometimes I'll have to wait for them to be quiet, and other times I'll have to take a more active role. I'm thinking the "clap once if you can hear me!" *clap* route might work well.

Each English Teaching Assistant is paired with a full-time teacher at the school, called our counterpart; I finally got to meet mine today. He's a slight man in his early thirties who maintains pretty tight control over his classroom (or as tight as an Indonesian classroom can get). His name is Pak Googy. (I'm not sure I mentioned this in any of my previous posts, but Pak means Mr. while Bu means Mrs.) I hadn't met him before today because he has been ill and hence absent from school since I got here. I observed him in class today and was half amused half shocked at the way he introduced himself to the class. He said, "My name is Pak Googy, and please be sure to pronounce the 'y' at the end of my name." All the kids giggled. If you don't get it, Pak Googy has a very gaunt face and almond shaped eyes. Remember that I'm in Asia and many people in my area pronounce g's and k's almost identically. Think WWII. Anyway, his English is pretty excellent and he seems like a pretty cheerful fellow. Plus, he approved of the fact that I tend to roll my own cigarettes. I think we're going to get along swimmingly.

After school was all said and done, I opted to ride around with the school's driver and the Japanese teacher, Pak Bagus, to deliver some Ramadan care packages to a few teachers' houses. Pak Bagus is about the same age as Pak Googy and is very proficient in English. Among other things, we talked about dating in Indonesia. It seems that once people reach my age and graduate from university, they start dating seriously, as in marriage track. So it seems that I won't be dating during my grant period. He also asked about premarital relations, and I had to tell him that American Pie is not representative of America at large. As far as the intimate side of dating is concerned, I told him it depends on where you live, what you believe, how you were raised, and what you're looking for. "Yeah, pretty much the same here in Indonesia," he said, "except the women are more conservative."

I don't know when I'll be writing to you all next. I'm off to Surabaya tomorrow then taking a plane to Jakarta on Friday morning. I can't imagine that an 8 hour car ride will be terribly eventful. I'll keep you all in the loop if anything cool happens though.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Not the last best day yet.

Happy Indonesian Independence Day!

I just finished sitting on the front porch chatting in broken Indonesian with some of the neighborhood kids. If anyone ever tells you that children are the best people to practice a new language with, they are telling the truth. With a few rounds of "What's this?" ("Apa ini?") I managed to put together a few sentences, and if nothing else there were lots of giggles from everyone involved. I feel like I'm setting a bad example for them though. At one point they called me Mister Merokok (Mister Smoker) because they walked up on me while sitting outside for an after dinner cigarette. I should start smoking inside. It's my house after all.

Today started out with a great improvement on my quality of life: I figured out the hot water heater. However, it seems to have only two settings: tepid and scalding. So I'm now mixing hot and cool water in a ladle for my baths, but at least the water's bearable.

At 7:30 AM, Pak Safuan picked me up for the Indonesian Independence Day flag ceremony. Yesterday, he asked if I had any formal clothes, and I told him that I had the collared shirt I wore to school on Monday.
"No, no, this is not formal. What about trousers?"
"Pants? No, all my nice pants and shirts are with AMINEF in Jakarta."
"And tie?"
"In Jakarta."
"What about a jacket?"
"A blazer? It's too hot for a jacket."
"No. This is a formal formal occasion. You will borrow clothes from Pak Wasid"

August 17th is more or less Indonesia's 4th of July, but the occasion was a bit more solemn than what I saw over the summer. For starters, Muslims are not big drinkers with that whole alcohol-being-forbidden thing. But, they usually do the too-much-food-please-tell-me-there's-no-more thing; however, this month is the fasting month of Ramadan, wherein Muslims must go without food, drink, (and I didn't know this one) or cigarettes between sunrise and sunset. As far as I know, the flag ceremony was the only festivity that happened today. Upon arrival, I saw close to 200 children dressed in their school uniforms standing around the perimeter of a soccer field. It was a colorful affair to say the least. Pak Safuan and Pak Nuwarchid (sp?), the headmaster, ushered me and my borrowed clothes towards a tent where a group of well dressed men were seated, and had me sit with them in the 2nd row. I quickly realized that all these men were the headmasters and top administrators of their schools, except for the 1st row of men comprised of military and government officials.

Now, I'm fully aware that the Fulbright is a prestigious grant, but I'm not sure it's so prestigious as to merit a seat of honor at the flag ceremony. The other exception to the school/military/government men was another white guy about my age sitting in the row behind me. He didn't believe that there was another American here in Genteng, and I wouldn't have believed it either if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. His name is Jay, and he's here studying volcanology and teaching English through the Peace Corps as part of his Master's degree. We exchanged numbers so we can meet up once I get back from my 3-week orientation in Bandung. It will be good to have another American around to hang out with, especially since he knows the volcanoes pretty intimately: they make for great day hikes.

"So we're sitting up here pretty much because we're white, yeah?" I remarked.
"Pretty much," he agreed, "part of the job is getting called a tourist at the market even though I'm wearing my teacher's uniform. I hate it."
Looking around, it was obvious the role that the color of my skin was playing in where we were seated and the respect that others were showing for the two of us.
"Yeah, winning the genetic lottery makes for some pretty awkward situations. Awkward if you recognize it for what it is, I guess."

Sitting up front for the ceremony was pretty awesome considering the proceedings. There was plenty of saluting and flag waving, but the most fun came from watching the mock Battle of Surabaya. It started with a bunch of school aged children in costume pantomiming the role of farmers, doctors, families, etc. Then, a jeep of military men bearing the dutch flag came and "massacred" the townsfolk. Remember when you played bad guys and good guys in kindergarten and shouted "BANG! BANG!" at the other kids? Yeah. It was like that, except the soldiers had guns (without ammo) and the townsfolk actually played along with kung-fu-movie death sequences. Lots of jumps interrupted with a BANG to the face. Let's just say I wasn't the only one chuckling. Then, a few guys dressed as guerillas came armed with bamboo poles overtook the dutch imperialists! One of them managed to pin a soldier to the front of his jeep with a bamboo pole, twisting it while the soldier spazzed out like he was getting gored. I got a picture of it.

If you don't know what the Dutch flag looks like, it's made of three horizontal bars: red on top, white in the middle, blue on the bottom. The Indonesian flag is two horizontal bars: red on top, white on the bottom. After all was said and done (actually, the guys on the jeep were still having at it), one of the guerillas runs over to the Dutch flag and rips the bottom blue bar off, making it into an Indonesian flag, and after all the buildup, it was righteous. The rest of the ceremony was military marching, a speech, some saluting, a flag raising, more saluting, more marching, a final speech, then pictures. Somehow, I was ushered into a bunch of group photos, even as I was about to get into the school's car to head home. I'm the kind of guy who sometimes likes to keep his mouth shut and just watch what's happening. All this attention is getting to be exhausting.

When I got home I decided to make lunch, and as I was cutting apples my neighbor from across the street knocks on my door and asks me if I want to buy some tofu. I was thinking she meant go to the market with me and pick up some tofu. No. I walk outside and there's a woman with a cart selling tofu door to door. Yes, I want to buy some tofu! I only picked up a little since I'm here for only a few days, and it was obscenely cheap. What I bought came to 1,000 Rupiah (about 12¢). The same amount in the states would have run around 3 or 4 dollars. Honestly, there hasn't been much variety in my diet since arriving because I don't have the linguistic skills to go to the market, so some tofu is a welcome change of pace. I danced in my kitchen. It's a good thing I brought multivitamins.

This afternoon and evening consisted of a very pleasant bike ride with Pak Safuan (he's becoming such a good friend to me). We biked around town and into the countryside a bit. It's Spain all over again. Everywhere I go, I'm reminded of what a beautiful country I'm in. The roads are lined with palm trees and rice paddies, the houses are quaint and brightly colored, and mountaintops poke their peaks out from the clouds in the distance. Pictures will be coming as soon as I figure out how to make a slide show to post on this blog. While we were out riding, we stopped at the house of a friend of Safuan's. Their son was visiting from Bali, and it turns out that he's a professional surfer. Bali is a bit further away than I want to go for lessons, but he said he might know some people from around here that can make a few trips down to the beach with me. I gave him my facebook. It's all about networking.

Tomorrow, I'm observing English classes. Get ready for the wacky (or more likely not-so-wacky) hijinks of the Indonesian classroom.


Tuesday, August 16, 2011

My First Blog Post

Hey everyone!

This is my first blog post from Indonesia, and I hope that many of you all will enjoy reading about my experiences throughout these ten months. First, I should get all of the complaining about travel out of my system. My itinerary was as follows: Louisville -> Chicago -> Hong Kong -> Singapore -> Jakarta -> Surabaya -(car)> Genteng
-American Airlines: can you make your seats smaller and food worse? Thx.
-SIXTEEN hour flight from Chicago O'Hare to Hong Kong -> Cabin Fever
-Two days in airports and I'm not sure how much sleep I got.
-Passed through Hong Kong and Singapore, but didn't get to see anything in either of these majorly cool cities
-An eight hour car ride from Surabaya to Genteng was the last thing I wanted after getting out of the airport, especially when you get stuck behind a car wreck on the way.
-Jet lag still makes me want to go to sleep at 4:00PM

Baiklah. Okay. Now that's out of the way. Sunday night, when I got to my house in Genteng (as of now almost a home), everyone wanted to make sure that I was welcome. Three teachers from the school rode with me from Surabaya, and the school's headmaster along with his niece, nephew, and a few neighbors were there to greet me. Indonesians are big on community, and being alone and independent is seen as somewhat odd, so they brought along a guy about my age to stay with me for a few nights in case I felt lonely. I politely declined. I also got to meet my neighbors across the street, who are already proving themselves to be wonderful people; just now (today is Tuesday) they invited in to chat and eat Kelengkeng (dragonfruit). After everyone (sat in my living room and tried to chat me up, then) finally left, I couldn't sleep, so I tried to unpack. When I say unpack, I mean wander aimlessly to and fro in my house checking everything out. At about 11:30 or so, I finally settled into bed and straight up KO'ed.

My house is pretty excellent. I was willing to settle for a tiny 1-bed-1-bath apartment, but instead I get a 3-bed-1-bath-huge-kitchen with a very nice entryway/living room. I guess I should say though that the two bedrooms not occupied by me currently stand empty. I have no idea what I'll use them for... The first thing that Pak Safuan (an English teacher at my school) showed me was a bike that belonged to the two previous ETA's. After seeing Indonesian driving, including two wrecks, I think it will serve me much better than a motorbike could. Bathing is a strange experience; there's a showerhead, but no shower per se. The entire bathroom is like a big tiled bathtub. I can shower or ladle tepid water over my head from the big reservoir in the corner. I like my showers very hot, and considering that the temperature of the water already makes every muscle in my body seize up, and that spraying the water through the air will cool it further, I'm going to stick with the ladle. Even though I'm worried about mosquitos, I've decided to keep the reservoir filled with water because a returning ETA says that sometimes the water cuts out. By the way, what's the incubation period for those little bloodsuckers? Actually, I thought that my water cut out all day yesterday, but flicking the wrong light switch in my kitchen serendipitously demonstrated that I have to turn on the water pump in my house for there to be running water. Life in Indonesia is going to take some getting used to. Oh! I already have pets in my house! There are geckos (cecak, sounds like "checha") EVERYWHERE! They're great to keep around since they eat mosquitos. Like I said, my house is pretty excellent.

Yesterday, I visited my school and met some of the teachers and administrators. Tomorrow is Indonesia's Independence Day, and I'll be watching a flag raising ceremony at the school in the morning, so I'll talk about my workplace and all the characters there once I have more to say.

Most of today and yesterday has been traveling back and forth from Genteng to Jember (about an hour, hour.5 in the car) dealing with immigration. I have to get my KITAS, which is kindof like a temporary green card, so I'm filling out a fair amount of paperwork and doing alot of waiting. Yesterday was 4 hours of waiting and today was another 4. From what I've seen so far, it seems that paperwork is not Indonesia's strong suit. It's all done now, except for picking it up when I'm finished, which I may not even need to be present for. Keep your fingers crossed. The "fun" part of all this was learning Indonesian and one sentence of Javanese (which I've already forgotten). Pak Safuan tried to teach me how to say "I can speak Javanese" in Javanese, which involved alot of moving my mouth in ways it never thought to move in. However, when I tried to get him to tell me how to say "I cannot speak Javanese," he thought it more prudent to teach me a different sentence. I was more successful at his other lessons: numbers, time, days of the week, and asking "How much for X?" I can now count to 999,999 if I can remember the words for hundred (seripu) and thousand (seratu), which I keep mixing up. There's nothing like learning your numbers to make you feel like a child. I'll get them down eventually, especially since 100,000+ Rupiah is not an uncommon price for some common household items.

That's all for now.