WEEKEND ADVENTURES

My weekdays are falling into a pattern, and I'm still getting used to the unusual setup of my schedule (it's the teachers who travel around to the classes and the students who stay in one classroom for the most part, and what and when I teach varies everyday.) However, I have been able to get out and explore some different areas around Jakarta on the weekends. Any sort of small adventure, even close to home, is fun because it's all new for me. So far I have visited Puncak, Taman Mini, Bandung, and Anyer. There's probably a lot I could write about each of them, but I was talking to Katie just now and she reminded me that it's probably better to just tell my stories in shorter versions, rather than waiting until I have time to write lengthy prose. (Which will never happen...) So that's what I'm going to do. (Or attempt to do anyway.)

Puncak was the first weekend trip. I was there with all of the other Bina Bangsa teachers for a two day retreat at the end of teacher induction. This was the 29th and 30th of June. It was a beautiful setting in the mountains just southeast of Jakarta, and it was wonderful to get out of the city. For those of us who are new, it was our first time outside of Jakarta and I think we all really enjoyed being able to see blue skies and greenery and breath the air. Our days were filled with unexciting lectures and classes so unfortunately we didn't get to go exploring outside of the area where we were staying (a hotel and small campus with other buildings.) Everyone was pretty tired, and many were sick. The night before (the last day of new-teacher induction) the school took everyone out for a seafood buffet. Not sure exactly which seafood the culprit was, but a lot of people suffered digestive mutinies the next couple of days. And not just the expats, but people who have lived in Indonesia for a long time too. So, as beautiful as Puncak was, we were happy to go home. However, there was one more obstacle we had to face before we got back to Jakarta.

We were meant to leave around noon according to our schedule, but

were dismissed at 12:30 with a verbal announcement that we could leave no later than 2pm. So everyone took their box lunch, boarded the buses and ate, ready to go. Everyone except a number of the leaders and veteran teachers, who sat down to eat. When we actually did leave, we only got to travel for about 20 or 30 minutes before we got stuck in a traffic jam. At least that's what I thought it was at first. We inched along, and then got stuck again in an unending line of vehicles down the mountain side. For four and half hours. Turns out they just close one side of the mountain road for about 5 hours or so on the weekends, then open up that side and close the other. And the worst part is that the school organizers knew this was going to happen! Grrr!  So, it was frustrating, but on the other hand... being stuck for nearly five hours, we climbed out of the bus and strated to explore. There were roadside stalls (warungs) all up and down the roadside. Their presence along the roadside and not in a town had been a mystery on our ride to Puncak, but now it was clear why they were

there. I had wonderful fried noodles (mie goreng) and corn cooked on coals out in the open. I also tried a popular sweet-tea drink called Teh Botol and encountered (and conquered!) a truly authentic pit toilet for the first time. I would be very happy not to get stuck in another 4 1/2 hour traffic jam again. Ever. But, it wasn't so bad because of the exploring it lead to.




The next weekend adventure to share is Taman Mini, which is in south Jakarta. "Taman" means "park," and the mini part refers to the theme of this park, which is to represent all the different regions of Indonesia. There are buildings and houses in traditional regional styles, and you can go in and see artifacts and clothing from the given region. There's even an artificial lake with little chunks of land that are a scale model of the major Indonesian islands. The best however were the traditional dances that we happened to come across when we first arrived at the park. They were beautiful and mesmerizing. We also went on a ride over the park in a slightly creaky sky trolley thing. Another interesting aspect of our day (I went with Lynsey and Kristina, who both teach at my particular school campus) was all the photographs people wanted to take with us. We felt like regular celebrities, which was both good and bad. Mostly it was 20-something year old guys who wanted pictures. One big group of guys asked us to hold up their favorite soccer team's scarf with them. They would take a couple pictures, then another friend would run and join the group and more pictures were snapped, and then a couple more would come over and decide they wanted a picture. Eventually we just had to say, thanks, we're moving on now. With another group I joked that the picture would cost them 5000 rupiah. I've decided that when this happens from now on (I count five or six times total this has happened in different places,) I'm going to ask for a picture on my camera too so I can start a collection of my friends and I with random Indonesians.

Third weekend adventure: Bandung! Lynsey (my flatmate,) Nicole and Kristina (who are also flatmates) and I went to the city of Bandung for a three day weekend from the 20th to the 22nd. Compared to Jakarta, Bandung feels like a small city, but it's still about 2.5 million strong. We tried especially hard to do nature-y things during our weekend because in Jakarta there are pretty much no trees and no greenery.  : (

The first day WE CLIMBED INTO A VOLCANIC CRATER!!! Granted this wasn't the crater with the smoking, belching, rumbling, sulfuric gases escaping from the ground - we walked around that one - but it the whole thing was beautiful and breathtaking. We also tried ziplining for 20,000 IRP ($2)! The next day we attempted to find hot springs with so-so success. We found them, but not exactly what we were looking for. Still, we got to stick our feet in a hot springs pool. We went to the hot springs north of Bandung, but if we go back we decided to try south of the city, where apparently there are also abundant strawberry fields.

On Saturday it was the first day of Ramadan and everything looked like it was closed because the warungs put sheets up in front their stalls, but really it's just to keep things quiet and to block out the sight and smell of food because everyone is fasting. We learned from our driver (yes, we hired a driver; odd as it still seems, it was very convenient) during the Ramadan fast (which lasts until 6pm each night) you are not even allowed to drink water. I don't know how people do it. On Saturday night we met up with a friend of a friend of Lynsey's and his girlfriend. They have been in Bandung for 6 months and are teaching English through the English First program, which sends them to local schools. They have their own house and invited us over after we ate dinner out. It was great to hear their insights and travel experiences so far. The next day they took us for one of their usual walks through the market. The weekend had various ups and downs (the downs were mostly frustrating moments when plans fell apart or got complicated) but overall it was really nice to take a break from Jakarta.

The last weekend adventure was just this past weekend. This one, I promise, I'll keep short. I went with two others (a teacher at my school and her husband) to check out the beaches on the west coast of Java. It was about a three hour drive (again, we hired a driver; it's just what you do) and part of the long trip was due to horrible roads and construction. We stopped at a couple of places in the town of Anyer and just south. I was wary that the resorts there might charge an entrance fee and be too touristy, but fortunately they were free and gave us great access to the ocean. I got to so swimming in the Java Sea! I tried to body surf but was unsuccessful because the waves were so small. But the water was warm and it was a lot of fun. I'm sure we'll go back again sometime. Another reason to go back to that area is that it's very close to Krakatoa and you can easily hire a boat to take you there for the day. I'm determined to do that before my time here is done.

I doubt there will be any weekend adventures in the next couple of weeks. Or if there are, they'll be small ones. In two weeks a big group of the North American teachers are going to Bali for our two-week Idul Fitri break at the end of Ramadan!

30 THINGS I HAVE LEARNED ABOUT INDONESIA IN (NEARLY) 30 DAYS

1.  Indonesian vehicles have steering wheels on the right side and they drive on the left side of the street.

2.  Traffic is absolutely atrocious, and it can take an hour to travel just a few miles in Jakarta, no matter what time of day. The only time I haven’t seen congestion on the highway is about 3AM or so. When we were going to the other Jakarta campus for induction, our daily commutes used to take about an hour, even though we were only going 4 or 5 miles. When it gets really bad, you might creep along for half a mile during half an hour. Part of the problem is an inefficient highway system. There are crazy one-way stretches and weird configurations so that you often have to backtrack or loop around or go out of your way to get where you are going.

3.  Also on the subject of traffic, driving through the near-constant rush hour can be scary because cars, taxis, motor bikes, and pedestrians all go at the same time. It’s a free-for-all with no rules and no right of way. Everybody squeezes by at the same time at very close proximity and usually honks their horns while doing so. How to drive in Indonesia: NEVER back down: go right on ahead, and if you have three inches of room to squeeze by, that’s plenty.

4.  Modes of transportation include: taxis, SUVs, questionable looking mini-vans and mini-buses, a big bus called the TransJakarta, and motor scooters, which are everywhere. I’m surprised by how few compact cars I see. The taxis are all compact cars, but people mostly drive SUVs or large cars for their personal vehicles. Maybe it’s a status symbol? Doesn’t make much sense given the tight roads and bad traffic.

5.  A layer of smog lays over the city at all times. If you look straight up, the sky might be blue, but if you look out, it’s only hazy gray. Each morning, when Lynsey and I walk to the elevator, we look out the big window there and see a dense layer of gray smog cloaking the city skyline. It’s depressing every single time. We call it “pixie dust,” although that doesn’t lessen how gross it is. I do worry about breathing sometimes.

6.  Homeless people live under the highway underpasses. There are small groups of people sleeping and hanging around there. At night it looks almost surreal in those dirty, shadowy places, sometimes dimly lit with a single florescent bulb on a movable street cart. The street carts are ubiquitous in the city and sell food, water, household goods, medicine, and other things on the street and at corners.

7.  Medicine is very accessible. No prescription needed to get your hands on it. You just get it from the store or street seller. They were handing out anti-diarrhea medicine like candy at Puncak. (Puncak will be its own blog entry; there’s plenty there.)

8.  National dish: nasi goreng, or fried rice. The majority of my vocab at this point consists of food words. “Nasi” means rice, “goreng” means “fried.” As a fun activity on the first day of school I asked the students to move to one corner of the room if they agreed with a given statement. When the question was “What would you choose if you could only have one food for the rest of your life?” there were about 6 boys who chose nasi goreng, a handful of girls who flocked to the sushi corner, and a few pizza and KFC loyalists.

   9. On the topic of KFC, it’s very popular here. Probably the most popular American fast food chain around.

   10. Also very popular in Jakarta: Angry Birds, SpongeBob, Korean pop music (K-Pop), nori-seaweed flavored Lay's, and Bintang beer. Cannot emphasize enough: ANGRY BIRDS IS EVERYWHERE!!!!!!!!!

   11.  Call to prayers happens regularly, but also for unexpectedly long stretches too. There are mosques everywhere, like churches and bars in small American towns, except that it’s a city of more than 10 million, so there are simply tons of them. We can’t hear it from our apartment because we face traffic and that drowns out everything else. But there are several mosques near our school. The loudspeakers point out in all directions from the minarets, making listening unavoidable. The other day I swear someone was reciting the entire Koran through a fuzzy microphone, because the chanting lasted the entire day at school – from before 7 am to 3 in the afternoon or so.

12. All Indonesian toilets (in modern buildings) come with a water hose or built-in jet to wash yourself (which is done instead of or in addition to wiping.) Lynsey and I couldn’t figure out why there was what looks like a very long kitchen sink hose next to our toilet in our apartment. We thought it might be for cleaning the bathroom; turns out it’s for cleaning yourself. The first time I used a public toilet here, there was a little diagram on the back of the lid showing how to use the water jet, by turning a knob on the side of the toilet bowl. I bent over the toilet, thinking I would test it to see what it was all about, and subsequently got a lovely, high-pressure spray of water all over my shirt, the floor, and all the walls of the bathroom stall. I wiped it all up as best as I could with t.p., but was still left with a big wet spot on my shirt. The cleaning lady who was standing there when I opened the door just laughed to herself as I emerged from the stall.

13. Toilet paper comes in tiny roles. When you take it out of the package, it looks more than half used already.

14. You can’t flush toilet paper; you throw it away instead. There is a wastepaper basket next to the toilet for this purpose… IF you are in a modern building. If you are not in a modern building, but say, a roadside warung waiting out a 4 ½ hour traffic jam, you needn’t worry about what to do with the toilet paper: there is none. After you have relieved yourself in the pit in the ground, you take some water from the bucket next to the toilet and use this to wash yourself. This is always done with the left hand. That’s why you do everything else with your right hand.

15. There are no tampons for sale in Indonesia. Fortunately, they do sell them in Singapore, which is where I will need to go soon to renew my visa.

16. The majority of health and beauty products for your skin (lotion, face wash, sunscreen, body wash, etc.) come in skin-whitening versions. Having light skin is sought after, just like having tan skin is sought after in the West. But since I don’t know what sort of chemicals are in those, and I don’t really want to be any whiter than I already am, I carefully avoid them.

17. Having maids, nannies, and drivers is the norm. Our apartment has a tiny maid’s quarters (just big enough for a bed and there’s a tiny bathroom with a pit toilet and bucket for water.) We use the area for storage, but we wish we had larger bedrooms or living area instead of the maid’s area.

18. Few people speak English fluently. Many have some key vocab they can use, but most don’t speak English well, which gives me an excellent opportunity to practice speaking Indonesian.

19. We usually just call Indonesian “Bahasa” because “Bahasa Indonesia” is what you call Indonesian in Indonesian. “Bahasa” means language. “Bahasa Ingriss” = English.

20. How you greet people depends on the time of day. Not so very different from other places, but there isn’t really a generic “hello” that you use all the time. “Selamat pagi” is good morning; “Selamat siang,” is good afternoon, “Selamat sore,” is good late afternoon / early evening, and “Selamat malam,” is good evening / night.

21. The word for “water” in Indonesian is “air.” Bizarre.

22. The Dutch colonized Indonesia, and when they got here, they did what they did back home: build canals. Consequently, Jakarta is filled with canals. And those canals are filled with rubbish. They are absolutely disgusting. “Cesspool” is probably a better way to describe them.

23. Indonesia has a large Chinese population, but is not always well received. Apparently some Chinese did dirty work for colonizers in the past, leading to grudges and mistrust. Also, Communism was ferociously shunned in the past and as a result, Chinese language and culture were banned. A whole generation of Chinese Indonesians grew up with Indonesian names, and were/are unable to speak their ancestral language. Part of Bina Bangsa’s mission is to reteach Chinese language and culture to kids. The Chinese business class is very wealthy and circulates most of the money in Jakarta. And most of the money circulating in Jakarta represents the majority of money circulating in Indonesia.

24. The slums are very slummy. The fancy areas very fancy. There is no in-between, or at least not very much. 

25. There is no avoiding litter on the ground or pollution in the air. The worst air is probably in the parking garage. It’s a little less noxious out in the open. We sometimes wash underwear or socks by hand and hang them out to try on the tiny little balcony; when we bring them back in they have a scent we have dubbed “Jakarta Fresh.” It’s not so bad.

26. Going out to eat is very cheap. I will probably have trouble readjusting to US prices, when you can get a heaping plate of fried noodles and beef, a bottle of water, and a bottle of tea for 33,000 rupiah (about $3.30 USD) as I did just the other day.

27. When you’re out to eat with friends at a restaurant, don’t expect the food to come all at once. All the meals come one at a time and it’s often a long wait for the last one to arrive, so you can’t really wait until everyone has their food to start eating.

28. Smoking in restaurants is a-ok. It’s okay indoors and there are no smoking and non-smoking sections. The best advice is to avoid a table where people are chain smoking Marlboros.

29. Service is cheap. Gratuity is included in restaurant bills. At buildings there are lots of guards. In stores there are tons people waiting to help you. We get our laundry washed for 6000 rupiah per kilo. I got two weeks' worth of laundry washed for the equivalent of $1.25. It comes back wrapped in plastic and labeled with your name on a small tag on each piece of clothing. At our school, we employ two people all the time to run the copy and laminating machine. Because you don’t do something if you could hire someone to do it for you. It’s frustrating at first, and it’s still frustrating later, but it helps to remember that there are a ton of people living here and they all need jobs.

30. Last but not least: Just stop expecting things to make sense, and you'll have a much better time of things.

HOME AND WORK

Hello family and friends. First of all, happy 4th of July! Although it's the 5th here, I know it's still the 4th back home, so that counts right? We were given a few hearty handshakes at school, with wishes for a Happy Independence Day! And last evening, some of the principals took the North American teachers out to eat at Chili's to celebrate. All but two were there I believe, bringing the total to 14 Americans and 2 Canadians, because, you know, we couldn't exclude them.  Their independence day was on Sunday (or so they tell me.)

Anyway… I have so much blogging to do, so much to write about! And so very little time. Actually having a job keeps me busy most the day, and we have also been working on Saturdays, and still busy with other things on Sundays. Very little time to sit down and write. But, I’ll need to make a habit of it if I’m going to get anything written at all. Once the new semester starts, I’ll be even busier.

I will attempt bring you up to date on my accommodations, the new-teacher-induction, and what consists of my daily life in the two + weeks I’ve been here. I’m not writing about everything in a strictly chronological order. I think this blog will end up with a topical focus instead of a chronological one, although I will still try to post once a week or twice a month at the least.

Where to start… How about with where I live? I live in a big, towering apartment. It’s part of a complex with several buildings: Mediterranean 1, Mediterranean 2, and Royal Mediterranean, which is the newest, and is where I live. Specifically, in Tower Lavender, which stands opposite Tower Marigold, across the pool.  As I wrote in my previous blog entry, when we first arrived we didn’t have anything except the teacups and saucers with the Formula One racing logo. Some school people soon brought over some things for us, including two pots and a pan, two glasses, two teacups, two saucers, two plates, two bowls, silverware, a cutting board, two ladles, a broom, a mop, and some other things. They also gave us a rice cooker. A single burner stove unit was already installed. I think it’s good that we only have two of everything, because we have to wash our dishes right away, and we don’t need any more than that. Most importantly, we have a water dispenser, which is essential as you never drink tap water here. (Although I have been using the tap water to rinse my toothbrush and I’ve been fine.) We’ve made many trips to Carrefour (only takes about 5 minutes to get there – if that) to get various essentials and other apartment stuff. Of course, my most vital purchase so far would have to be the mini French press I bought, which I use to make my morning cup of Java java. I guess if I’m going to be grammatically correct, it would be Javanese java. But for once in my life I’m truly drinking local coffee, because I live on the island of Java. Perfect for a coffee lover such as myself!

We live in small bubble of upscale commercialism. The Lavender tower lobby has escalator that leads directly to a tunnel walkway to the mega-mall next door, called Central Park. There is another huge mall next to that one which we sometimes walk to because it has a good grocery store, a department store with good prices, and some other clothing stores with larger sizes, because all the sizes are scaled way down and usually aren’t meant for people taller than, say, 5’6” or so. (At least three of the new North American guys are over six feet tall and find it difficult to find anything that fits.) Outside of the shopping malls and apartments, the streets immediately dissolve into residential areas with houses and shops of varying niceness and cleanliness, and the streets are always busy.  Unlike the States, there is no neat grid-like pattern to the streets, or uniform look to the buildings. They are all unique and seem to organically meld into one another. There are little to no middle-class boutiques, no mid-size businesses. There are just mega-malls and street-side vendors, or at least that’s the impression you get looking around. Also, I can’t quite seem to find the center of Jakarta, and I’m starting to think there might not be one. The closest you get would be the national monument (Monas,) which I glimpsed just briefly, but which is rumored to be at the city-center. There are clusters of skyscrapers here and there, but no one definite cosmopolitan nexus so far as I can see. But what do I know? I’ve been here just over two weeks.

I hope you now have an idea of where I live. Let me fill you in a little on what I’ve been doing. In a nutshell: preparing for the new school year. We can’t drive and or take public transportation, but the school basically buses us everywhere we need to go (including church services on Sunday if you sign up.) All new recruits attended seven days of new teacher induction at the PIK Jakarta campus, from June 21^st to the 28^th. A word about the school: Bina Bangsa School (hereafter BBS) has a few different campuses. The one in PIK (which is an abbreviation for a neighborhood in north Jakarta) is both primary and secondary. There is also the Kebon Jeruk campus, which is where I work. The KJ campus, as it’s usually called, is in west Jakarta, and the name translates to “Orange Grove” or “Garden” – it’s another neighborhood. The primary and secondary are in two separate buildings, quite close to each other. Outside of Jakarta, there are campuses in Bandung, in Malang, and in Semarang, all cities in Java. All the new teachers who work at the KJ campus live in the Mediterranean apartments and we travel together and more often than not go out to eat together too.

Here’s something I wrote a while back, but didn’t post as of yet:

“June 21 2012

Today was our first day of new teacher induction. Everyone in the Mediterania apartments got onto one of the school’s mini coach buses and we were whisked away to the PIK campus, also in Jakarta. It was nice to get out of our apartment-mall area, where we have been living exclusively for the past three days. The streets are not very clean and there is quite a bit of rubbish on the ground. The canals in particular are littered and pretty bad looking in places. We went by shops and residential streets and houses with open porches and doors and corrugated steel roofs. But even with all the people and traffic and litter on the ground, I felt invigorated more than intimidated by travelling through the city. I might just be in the “honeymoon” phase of my cultural adaptation, but that’s okay with me for now.”

What can I say about the rest of induction…? There were lots of corny getting-to-know-you and ice breaker games, a plethora of mild-mannered PowerPoints, boxed lunch, usually noodles or rice, two tea breaks per day, more PowerPoints, and meetings with principals and heads-of-department. I think you get the idea. Typical stuff. It’s amazing how you can travel halfway across the world to teach and Kagan Cooperative Learning groups and Bloom’s Taxonomy will still follow you there. By the end of the seven day induction we were all pretty worn out. We have to write three weeks’ worth of lesson plans, although since I teach three subjects, I’m only writing lessons for the first five days of school. I'm sure the lessons will change once I actually meet my students. (Also, we keep getting new information, even in the last few days before school starts! That's kind of frustrating.) During induction, we also had to demonstrate a lesson. I did one about reading an informational report on sloths. Did you know that sloths are extremely lazy and never clean their fur; in fact, green algae grows in their fur. Also, they give birth hanging upside down. C’est fou, ça.

Last Friday we went for a retreat / more PowerPoints in an area called Puncak in the mountains, but that’s its own blog entry. You’ll see why…

At the moment, we have moved from the PIK campus to our regular campus, KJ Primary. All the teachers have their desks in one big room, which is actually kind of nice. You get a sense of community that way and don’t feel isolated. Also, once the school year starts, it’s not going to be full of people all the time. I also saw “my” classroom for the first time. I put “my” in parentheses, because it’s just barely my classroom. More properly, it belongs to the class of P5 Hope (i.e. primary grade 5, class name “Hope” – all the classes have virtue names; we’re a Christian school in case I forgot to mention it.) This is my form, or homeroom, class. I see them a little bit for homeroom time and I am also their English teacher. They stay in their classroom, I move to my other classes, which are P4 English and P4 Science. Although I teach more English than science, I am somehow under the science department, and in fact am level rep. for 4^th grade science, which means that I set all of our unit tests, prepare the practice-test activities, and write the weekly schedules for 4^th grade science. I also teach a class of remedial English for both 4^th and 5^th grade, and will coach an after-school (co-curricular) activity (or CCA,) as of yet to be determined. Every teacher coaches one. I’m hoping for some sort of debate, art, book, or music club. It might seem like a lot of hodge-podge teaching, and it kind of is, but once I get my schedule down, I think it will be manageable.

Right now I’m in the process of preparing my classroom, preparing lessons, requesting materials, and making sure the first day of school will go smoothly. I'm nervous, but excited.

I hope my accounts of home and work weren’t too boring. At least you have a sketch of where I am and what I’m doing. Soon I shall regale you with more amusing stories about toilets and traffic jams.