You know what I love? Haiku! No matter what one’s English ability is, they turn out beautifully.

From my students:

Important Job
It’s an easy work
All people can do that job
That job is…breathing!

Palestine
We will not go down
Our spirit will never die
Care for Palestine

Eyes
White light in your eyes
Like a rainbow in my heart
And make me spellbound

Cloud
White cotton flowing
Blow with the wind in the sky
Makes me want to sleep

Gossip girls
She likes gossip me
But she still needs me for help
Is she embarrassed?????!!!

You
You come to my dream
Without you I have nothing
Cause you’re my spirit

Village
Nature’s beauty glows
Watch the farmer on rice field
River flow beauty

Life
We’re born in this world
We live and make some a sin
In the end we die

Tsunami
A gigantic wave
Swipes anyone who challenge him
Nothing can stop him

Miss Claire (the guys who wrote this one thought they were SO funny)
You came to our school
With your patience you teach us
And we hope you like

…how is it that I only get three more months with these awesome kids?

My record is a mere 79 views back in September.  Clearly, I should write more, just so I can break it.

Even more fascinating: it lets you see what terms people search for in Google lead them to your blog.  For instance, people looking for information about the following have all ended up here:

• Depok mango
• Bandung flower road 
• Long lonely night traffic jam nightmare (???)

I know that I should probably change my security settings to make this more private.  I mean, I get paid by the State Department and stuff, and I’d rather not have to abridge my thoughts. 

But damn.  The Google search thing!  It is just way too cool to give up on just yet.

Despite the fact that they inhibit intercultural communication, fuel misunderstanding, and have the power to make my life occasionally very frustrating, you’ve got to admit: language barriers can be pretty hilarious.

With Bu Indah, a teacher at my school…

Bu Indah: Miss Claire!!!  I want ask question!!!!

Me: Ok, sure.

Bu Indah:  Miss Claire!!!  I want to know…do you like meatball????!!!!!!

Me:  Yes, I do like meatballs (lie – Indonesian meatballs are made of something terrifying, spongy and gray that I will never touch).

Bu Indah:  Ok!  Thanks Miss Claire. Skips off

With Pak Sabta, another teacher…

Pak Sabta: Miss Claire, why do you cry?

Me: Um, I don’t think I’m crying.

Pak Sabta: You remember me?

Me: Of course I remember you.  I see you every day here at school.

Pak Sabta: You cry because you remember me!  Hysterical laughter

Me: I am definitely not crying.

Pak Sabta: (to all of the teachers) I ask, Miss Claire, why do you cry?  She says because she remember me!  Hahahahahahahahaha.

Me: Saya tidak mengerti? 

….later….

Pak Sabta: Are you sleeping?  Are you sleeping?

Me: Clearly not.

Pak Sabta: Brother John?  Brother John?  Morning bell a ringing.  Morning bell a ringing.

Me: OH MY GOSH.  All the English phrases you know come from songs!  EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE NOW.

With Pak Bibin, a street vendor/friend of mine in my neighborhood…

So, for a fun, low-key class activity I had my students play a “matchmaker” game.  I gave them each a card with a picture of a person on it, and they had to make up information about that person (name, age, occupation, hobbies, etc).  Then, they had to go around and find a prospective date for that person based on that information, and explain to the class why they thought the two were compatible.

When I made the cards, my internet was broken, so I just used pictures I happened to have on my computer.  As it turned out, using photos of my friends and family made the activity way more amusing for yours truly.

Like, way amusing.

Examples:

Harmony…

Name: Karen Collys

Age: 25

Occupation: Farmer

Hobbies: Riding horse

Likes: Many kinds of horse

Dislikes: Bad boys

Fears: Ghost

….was paired with Adam….

Name: Munin

Age: 15

Occupation: Dish washer

Hobbies: Collection t-shirt

Likes: praying, hot woman

Dislikes: sex

Fears: fleax

…because clearly, someone who dislikes sex is not a “bad boy.”  Thus, the two were compatible.

Also, fellow ETA Katie…

Name: Maemunah

Age: 35

Occupation: servant

Hobbies: reading, sleeping

Likes: shopping, cleaning, sweeping

Dislikes: clown

Fears: lizard

…was matched with, um, Karl Rove (sorry Katie)

Name: Vin Diesel

Age: 54

Occupation: Lawyer (I’m a professional ninja)

Hobbies: slap his forehead, shopping and watch a movie

Likes: ice cream, lollypop, a glass of juice

Dislikes: coffee, drugs, etc.

Fears: ant, rat, cocroach, children, dark, fire

What made those two a good couple?  As the students explained: she likes to shop, and he is a lawyer, so he can pay for her shopping.  That’s some creative thinking, I guess?

Other good ones:

My dad…

Name: George W. Bud

Age: 67

Occupation: Eks president

Hobbies: swimming, reading comic

Likes: wig, spa and sauna, flowers

Dislikes: sports, newspaper

Fears: shark, chipmunk

My mom…

Name: Paginem

Age: 43

Occupation: actrees

Hobbies: kill a frog

Likes: mouse

Dislikes: frog

Fears: devil

Amy…

Name: Emma

Age: 23

Occupation: secret agent

Hobbies: undercover

Likes: sniper rifles, horse

Dislikes: nighthawk pistols, mouse

Fears: ghost

Bridget…

Name:  Aura Dizon

Age: 25

Occupation: Baby sitter

Hobbies: adventure, clubbing

Likes: goat, buffalo, cow and searching money

Dislikes:  sleeping, reading

Fears: sunlight, raining

Dan…

Name: Jatminko

Age: 68

Occupation: fruits seller

Hobbies: eat fruits, hanging out together

Likes: apple, orange juice

Dislikes: lizard, wait for someone

Fears: worm, cats, snake

My students thought the game was pretty funny, but I’m not sure they understood why I was laughing so hard.  

Bahaha, I am STILL laughing about it, actually.

Today I taught my last class of the semester – thanks to various holidays, tests, some kind of inter-class competition, and a two-week break, I won’t be teaching a normal class until after January 17.  This information came as quite a surprise to me a week ago, and now, along with being appalled by how quickly time passes, I’m feeling guilty that I’ve barely mentioned teaching in this barely-updated blog.

 “Postpone No More” suddenly seems like a very ironic title. Oops.

It has been a fun, bewildering, and educational first few months at SMA Negri 2.  Officially I teach all of grade 10, each class for 90 minutes a week. In reality, I each more classes than that, because seriously, when a group of adorable, jilbab-clad girls comes up to me and says (huge eyes, often emphasized by creepy blue or purple contacts, pleading), “Miss Claire, will you join our class today?” it is pretty hard to say no. 

High school here is three years, grades 10 through 12.  After grade 10, students are divided by subject of concentration – at my school we have science and social studies “tracks.”  It’s essentially based totally on test scores; the smarter students are pushed to do science, regardless of their actual interests or goals.

Unlike an American high school, where students move from classroom to classroom for each subject, students stay in the same room all day and the teachers come and go each period.  This means that by the time I teach the last period of the day, my students have been sitting in the same room for like 6 hours (for this reason, I adore my early morning classes).  Also, classes here are not of mixed ability; instead they are “ranked” by the scores they got on their high school admissions exams.  So in grade 10, class 10-1 has the “best” students, and class 10-6 has the poorest students.  This means I’ve had to learn to create activities that I can adjust for the level of each class, which was tough at first, but gets easier the more I get to know them. 

Based on comparing my experiences with my fellow ETAs, I think my school is a relatively good one, as far as Indonesian high schools go.  Here in Depok, public schools are considered much more prestigious than most private ones.  Unlike the vast majority of Indonesian SMA students, over half of mine will go onto college, and many to some of the best schools in the country (a few are even applying to universities in Singapore and Japan – and I have my eye on a few eleventh graders who I think could be competitive for scholarships to the US). 

Only about 60% of Indonesians graduate from high school, and only a little over 15% from university, so when I talk about my school, keep in mind that my students don’t necessarily represent what is “normal” in Indonesian education.   Public school is not free here; you have to be able to afford tuition to attend.

Still, a lot about my school seems (from my American perspective) disorganized and confusing.  Classes are big, most about 40 students, so its impossible for teachers to make sure they’re all actually paying attention and doing their own work.  There is also no such thing as substitute teachers.  If teachers are sick or have to miss school (which some do a lot), they just don’t show up and the students sit there for 90 minutes with no teacher.  Can you guess who ends up getting to substitute a lot? J

The English curriculum isn’t as bad as I’d been warned it might be – I’d heard horror stories of English teachers who couldn’t speak English at all – but it is kind of bizarre. I really want to work my lessons into what the teachers are doing for the week, but it’s hard when their curriculum is so incredibly random.  One day they might learn about “expressing happiness,” the next about advertisements, and the next about weather reports.  There is little review of previous lessons or any kind of syllabus to provide the students with a structure for what they are learning.  My counterpart claims they Indonesian teachers don’t understand the curriculum either, and have to go to special workshops that try to explain it to them (because it is so weird).  Woo-hoo.

I’d say most of my students understand English well enough to follow my instructions and “enjoy” (who knows if they really do?) my lessons.  There is a very clear correlation between students whose families can afford to send them to English classes outside of school (these are the ones who speak good English) and those who can’t (they are the ones who just copy others’ papers). 

The English ability of the teachers is pretty varied.  There are four English teachers at my school, and I’d say two speak really good English, one speaks decent English (and also does the most creative stuff with her students) and one who, um, kind of speaks her own version of English that I’ve had to learn to understand.  The latter is the teacher I teach with the most.  

This, I think, is the biggest problem with the way English is taught at my school.  Even the best teachers just don’t have anything near a mastery of the language, which really hinders their ability to do anything creative or engaging with their lessons.  They blindly follow the textbooks (which are full of mistakes) and give the students really dull assignments.  Pretty much every day they do some sort of listening comprehension activity in which they have to fill the in blanks by listening to a passage being read.  This would be fine, except the teachers themselves don’t understand the meanings of a lot of the words the students have to identify.  So no one can ask questions about the language, and the teachers are afraid to really “teach” anything, simply because they don’t understand the answers.

Of course, most of this isn’t their fault at all – all the English teachers at SMA 2 work really, really hard and are very dedicated to teaching.  

What am I doing in the middle all of this, you may ask?  Well, a lot of being confused and probably failing to get my students to truly understand what I am trying to teach them, but whatever.  I am getting better at it.  More than anything else, if by the time I leave I can get all of them to 1) not be ridiculously shy about speaking English out loud and 2) think critically and creatively instead of copying each other or freaking out when I tell them there is no “right” answer, I’ll consider myself successful.

Most importantly: my students are utterly, fantastically wonderful.  Even when they are being crazy and immature and making fun of my accent (they can do a pretty good imitation of an American drawl by now) instead of paying attention, I adore them.  They are just so happy all the time.  Nothing about this entire Indonesian experience makes me happier than arriving at school to be greeted by choruses of “Meeess Claire!” wherever I go. 

It’s usually either that or a chorus of “Umbrella, ella, ella, ella,” because, yes, it turns out Rihanna makes a pretty great teaching tool.  Though after singing “Umbrella” with 11 different classes, my god, I never want to hear that song again.

Here’s what I did instead:

• Spent a weekend celebrating fellow ETA Missy’s birthday in Malang, East Java.  Where I learned that the Indonesian definition of “zoo” is a lot more, uh, hands-on than what I am accustomed to in America.

Oops, don’t hit that tiger.

And, um, keep the windows closed.

Baby orangutan: both cute and creepy.  Evolution, apparently, is real and stuff.

• Visited the remote Karimunjawa Islands, somewhere north of Java.  Home to most incredible beach I’ve ever seen, lovely coral reefs, “shark island” (a tourist attraction that showed true, um, ingenuity), and a lot of jungle-y nothingness.

Tip: when Lonely Planet describes somewhere as “one of the last untouched corners of Java,” they mean it.  BRING FOOD.  We’d cleaned the entire island out of beer, bread, and watermelon by the time we left.  Good thing I love nasi goring.

While in Central Java, I stopped by Yogyakarta with Courtney, the ETA who is posted there.  I finally got to Borobudur, the world’s largest Buddhist temple.  It was constructed in the ninth century but lay hidden under volcanic ash until the 1800’s.

Don’t worry, I’m spending all of November in Depok, making up for lost teaching time.  Stories about that to follow…really.

Last Wednesday, I arrived in at school in a mess of nerves, certain that the act of wearing my new Barack Obama t-shirt under my teaching clothes had fully succeeded in jinxing the election.  As my friends already know, I am the ultimate political pessimist.  

But by the time I called Adam from school at 10 am for an update, it was already over.  Who knew they could call Ohio that quickly?

A week later, I am finally adjusting to the shock (my superstitions/negativity about politics do not allow me to do things like, um, believe polls).  About a year ago this week I was telling my roommate that despite my excitement about caucusing for Obama, there was no way Americans would ever, ever elect a black guy with the middle name Hussien. 

It is incredible to me that this is real, that it truly happened, and that it cannot be undone. 

I keep being stuck by random jolts of relief and amazement.  Not having to worry about the Supreme Court?  A president-elect talking about alternative energy and closing Guantanamo Bay?  I don’t even know how to handle this.  

Actually, I’ll probably handle it by finding plenty of things to criticize about Obama, but right now I’m letting myself enjoy it.  Having come of voting age in an era in which elections never seemed to turn out how I wanted (hell, the one time voted for a Republican, even he lost), I think I deserve to revel in the moment for a little bit.

In all seriousness, though, I hope my fellow liberals/Democrats will not forget too quickly what it is like to be part of 49% of Americans who voted against the president.  If there’s one thing I’d really like to happen in an Obama administration, it’s for him to make decisions as the smart, pragmatic (ie, non-hyper-partisan) guy I truly think he is.  I’d totally be down with some party realignment right about now.  

 Indonesia, as you may have guessed, was possibly one of the coolest places on the planet to celebrate an Obama victory (perhaps surpassed only by Chicago, IL and maybe Kenya – though I hear Iowa City was quite a party, too).  According to the Economist’s “Global Electoral College,” something like 95% of Indonesians wanted Obama to win, which makes sense because 1) he lived here for a while and 2) he opposes the Iraq war (which many Muslims here find particularly offensive). 

Even though that’s just about all many Indonesians know about Obama, it was still fun to have co-workers and neighbors come shake my hand, and strangers on the angkot wish me “selamat Obama menang” (happy Obama win). 

The dudes who hang out in my street now shout “Obama!” at me every time I walk by, which is a definite improvement on their previous greetings of “mau ke mana?” (where are you going?) and “bule!!” (white person!!). 

Also, in order to make good on a dramatic promise I made in a fit of rare optimism a few weeks ago, I threw an Obama party in my house for my teacher friends.  The “tradition American food” – spaghetti – I cooked for them was surprisingly met with much praise, proving that I can indeed cook just about anything in wok. 

My camera sadly was out of batteries that day, but here’s a picture of me and some teachers celebrating the day of the election.  I was forced to eat bakso – really sketchy, gray meatballs that everyone for some reason adores.  See, I knew it was all too good to be true.

Interestingly, even though one knows one should, it is kind of hard to worry about these things when one is busy visiting places like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

In sum, Bali was fantastic, and Lombok was even better.  During the time off we got for the end of Ramadhan and Idul Firtri, I spent nine days island-hopping with a bunch of other ETAs.

I now understand why people find the tropics so darn appealing.  I went snorkeling with giant sea turtles; watched a lot of sunsets from remote, white sand beaches  (pina colada in hand); slept under mosquito nets and bathed in outdoor showers in private, honeymoon bungalows.  Basically, it was the most romantic vacation I’ve had in my entire life – spent in the company of, err, six other women.  

Getting to Bali in the first place involved a Claire-is-incredibly-stupid near-disaster, however.  My flight was to leave Jakarta at 6:30 in the morning, which Bu Tati deemed too early for me to go on my own.  ”My husband can drive you,” she generously offered.  However, “my husband” turned out to actually mean “me and my entire family will show up at your house at 3:30 in the morning to see you off at the airport.”

In the rush to get out the door with five people milling about my living room, “helping” me put things in the car, I brilliantly managed to forget both my plane tickets AND my copy of my passport on my coffee table.  Which I even more brilliantly didn’t manage to realize until we were pulling up at the airport two hours later.  

What followed was a lot of me freaking out in front of my counterpart’s poor family, a frantic drive back to my house, an absolute miracle that occurred when I found a ticket I could book online for a flight 4 hours later, and then a flurry of “Thank Allah!”s from Bu Tati and about eight thousand apologies from me for inconveniencing her so much.  Despite rush hour traffic my taxi got me back the airport in time, and I was in Bali by 1:00.  All without a single tear shed, I am proud to report.

Places we visited:

Kuta – the seedy, touristy, crowded part of Bali.  One (very long, very drunken) night there was plenty for me.

Senggigi, Lombok – this is supposedly the main tourist town of Lombok (the island next to Bali), but apart from one street of very chill, very back-packer friendly restaurants and resorts, there isn’t that much there.  Which was WONDERFUL.  Here I finally swam in the ocean, and ate Mexican food (very exciting).

Gili Meno, Lombok – one of the three tiny, gorgeous Gili Islands off the west coast of Lombok.  Gili Meno is supposedly the “quiet” Gili, and that was definitely the case.  We had beaches all to ourselves, ate meals in lovely little beach bungalows, and survived a walk half-way around the island in pitch-black darkness on the way home from dinner.  I got very nerdily excited about new, southern hemisphere constellations.

Gili Tragawan – the “party Gili.”  Not as nice as Gili Meno (more people), but still fun.  Kind of like the Amsterdam of Indonesia, with plenty of signs advertising “magic mushrooms,” and all-night parties at the infamous “Irish Bar” (which were very much toned-town when we were there, due to Ramadhan).  Despite the bed bug bites I got in our sketchy hotel (mental reminder: don’t blindly trust Lonely Planet), there was plenty of snorkeling, bike-riding, and crab/couscous/pesto-eating to be enjoyed here.  

Ubud, Bali – OK, despite what Elizabeth Gilbert claims this is not a remote artist colony in the mountains with traditional medicine men popping up everywhere.  It is super yuppy and touristy.  BUT also fantastic.  We went to an awesome traditional Balinese fire dance performance, encountered scary, half-tame monkies at the Sacred Monkey Forest, and saw more Hindu temples than I could count.  Bali felt so non-Indonesian to me, because the Indonesia I am used to is very Muslim and very urban.  With its Hindu shrines on every corner; offerings of incense, food, and flowers outside of every store (even little shops in the airport); and laid-back “island” culture, I can definitely understand why some people don’t realize that Bali is actually part of Indonesia.  

Ugh, that last sentence was super cheesy.  Trying to write “catch-up” blog entries is horrible.  Apologies for this jumbled summary!

By the way, if you haven’t noticed (which you probably haven’t if you don’t live anywhere near the Muslim world), it’s Ramadhan. 

I was warned that during Ramadhan life would get frustrating, because of weird schedules and cancellations and closings, but I’m actually enjoying it.  I love the things that people feed me when the sun goes down, I love watching my entire neighborhood pick up and head to the mosque at night, and I love learning about what the holy month means to my friends.

I’ve had dinner with my teaching counterpart’s family a couple of times during the holiday (once I even accepted her offer to spend the night, which should tell you how much my definition of a “normal” social life has changed).  Let’s just say this: if the US were a predominantly Muslim country, they would acknowledge the holy month in the exact same way.

At Chez Bu Tati, it works like this:

Everyone lays around whining about how hungry they are.  All of the food sits ready in the kitchen.  Around 5:45, the call to prayer goes off – on television.  Every program is interrupted by a slightly trippy montoge of sarong and jilbab-clad families processing into a mosque, with images of swirling galaxies and planets in the background.  And readings from the Qur’an.  Sometimes performed by famous pop stars.

At this point, everyone dashes to the kitchen, piles a plate with food, and runs back to the TV.  For the rest of the night, they sit in front of the television, gorging on tempe and pickled fish and rice crackers, while watching Ramadhan TV specials.  The night I was there, it was Muslim-themed, SNL-like sketch comedy.  Commercials are Ramadhan-themed as well.  Even if they’re for things like Glade air fresheners or Dove shower gel (with skin-whitening ingredients, of course!), everybody is wearing a headscarf or a sarong. 

Eventually, everyone does take a break to go to the mosque.  The time I was there, my counterpart couldn’t go because she was having her period.  Because you can’t pray or fast while menstruating, basically everyone knows when it is, err, that time of the month.  As always, my Western notions of privacy are blown out of the water.

At 3:30 in the morning, we all got up and drowsily munched on all of the leftover food.  Then we went back to bed, not to eat or drink until the next evening.  Fasting just isn’t a big deal for most people I know, because they’ve done it every year since they were children.

Here I am with Bu Tati and her 15-year old daughter Tyara, who I LOVE.  She asks me for advice about how to get over breakups with boys (me: screw them!  You can do so much better!).  And I help her translate lyrics to Rihanna songs.  And we watch anime together.  We are totally pals.  

Of course, there is more to the holiday than eating/not eating.  It’s an important time to conduct acts of charity.

Such as: getting up at 2:30 am to give sahur (pre-sunrise meal) to homeless people!

…which is what I semi-unintentionally ended up doing with my students last weekend.  We motorbiked up and down Depok’s main drag “looking for homeless people,” which proved a little difficult because it was hard to tell who was homeless and who was just a tired warung-owner taking a nap by his food stand.

We fed about 15 people, and then gave up (sunrise was fast approaching!) and ate the rest of the food ourselves.  On the side of the road.  Like every event I’ve attended with these wily teenagers, the night concluded with about 20 solid minutes of posing and cell phone picture-taking:

Later the same day I joined different students in visiting a pesantren (Islamic boarding school, or madrassa) for orphans.  We took them food and gifts, and the students did some activities with the children.  

The visit was actually the best experience I’ve had during my two months in this country.  I was incredibly impressed by my students’ motivation to organize an event like that, which they did totally on their own.  It was also very cool to be welcomed into the pesantren’s mosque, and even mentioned in what was possibly the sweetest prayer ever: a teacher from the school had us all pray for success for the students at SMA 2, that “Miss Claire” would be very happy in Indonesia, and that all of the students at our school – Muslim, Christian, and Buddhist – would get along “like one family.”  I think my students were kind of bored by the speech, but I was all giddy about how touching it was (at least, the parts that I begged the girl sitting next to me to translate for me).  

It was also when I finally had the “moment” that I’d been waiting to have since I got here.  I really am in Indonesia, and my God, I am really, really, really, really lucky to be doing this.

This is blog entry is ridiculously long.  To finish, one more picture, of us and our pesantren friends:

Example:

A few weeks ago, I was on the bus home from Jakarta.  I was having a lucky day, and the bus ride was actually a pleasant one instead of the maddening, tear-inducing, three and a half-hour traffic jam nightmare in which I sometimes find myself.  As always, a bunch of street musicians got on right before we got on the expressway.  This is something that happens all the time here, in this apparently incredibly musical culture (I am like the only person at my school who can’t sing or play guitar or at least keep up with a karaoke machine).  

That day, it was an entire band – guitars, bongo drums, even a violin.  They played a bunch of Indonesian songs, and then moved on to songs in English.  At some point, they started up on John Lennon’s “Imagine.”  Totally incredibly, everyone on the bus – Jakarta businessmen on their evening commute, families on their way home from shopping, street vendors lugging all of their wares along with them –  SPONTANEOUSLY STARTED SINGING ALONG TOGETHER.  

Let me tell you, joining a bunch of Indonesians in an off-key, heavily accented (OK, barely intelligible) chorus of “imagine all the people, living for today…” while speeding through the slummy outskirts of Jakarta, on the freaking island of Java, on the far side of the planet, is nothing short of profound.  

I may not live on an idyllic white-sand beach or in hut in some exotic jungle (as I, err, may or may not have envisioned my doing when I applied for this thing), but Indonesia still finds ways to be magical.  Obviously, in my Indonesia-movie-life, this was the voice-over conclusion that I came to as my fellow passengers sang on in the background.

Things like this really do happen to me all the time.  Despite the name I gave this blog, I have indeed been postponing actually writing in it, and that is bad, because then I forget about all of these things.

Confession: I’ve been more homesick than I expected to be.  When I am out and about and doing things (especially at my school) I am happier, more content, and more motivated than I can remember being years. It’s being alone in my house that does me in.  It is a very weird and very sudden personality shift.  Back home in America I loved being alone; it was my way of re-energizing.  Here, leave me by myself in my living room for more than an hour, and suddenly I’m a wreck of homesickness and loneliness and neuroses.  I always thought I was so adventurous and so good at living abroad, so it is a little embarrassing. 

Solution: I write in blog.  You (mystery internet lurkers) read blog.  It gives me something fulfilling to do in my (luckily very infrequent) spare time, and in return, you get to actually hear about what I am doing. 

Baik?