First, an apology for not blogging since January. ("Maaf!") Term 3 has come and gone in that time, and we have now finished two weeks of Term 4. More than 3/4ths done with the school year - hard to believe! I don't know if there is much to update about school. It continues to be a learning experience for me in multiple ways. There is so much to learn during your first year of teaching and I'm usually thinking of ways to make each term better than the one before.
I know how to work in the Asian-style school system now, but I am still learning new things and coming to understand the intricacies of it little at a time. One of the main differences between Western-style schools and Eastern-style schools (based on my limited experience here and talking to teachers from other Asian countries) is that here everyone must be on the same page at the same time. All students in a grade level go through their academic units at the same time. They might go at slightly different paces and each teacher may teach them in slightly different ways, but they will all complete the same worksheets and take the same tests on the same dates. Parents consider it to be of utmost importance that all students are given the same worksheets out of a sense of fairness. If a child in my class gets three practice worksheets, but another in a different class gets only two, how can that be fair? Because after all, they will all be compared to and ranked against each other. (The idea that "fair" might not be the same as "equal" doesn't really exist.) I understand it, but I still find it hard to wrap my head around sometimes, coming from a tradition of having personal and professional autonomy in the classroom. The good news is, the more familiar I become with how everything runs and what parents are expecting and what the end goals are, the better I am able to make things efficient.
But enough about school. You would rather know about my three-day weekend trip to the city of Yogyakarta during Chinese New Year. In any case, that's what I'm going to write about.
Before we get there, though, a word about Chinese New Year itself. CNY for me, before living in Asia, meant that there were some sort of celebrations going on in various Chinatowns around the US and maybe we can go out for Chinese food or any sort of Asian cuisine, and no more thought was given to it. I had no idea what a huge deal it is. I do believe that CNY is as big and important to many families as Christmas. For the Christian Chinese population here, I don't think it's that's an exaggeration. The traditions include giving money in red envelopes (ang pao) to your loved ones, eating lots of good food, and giving money to the lion during a lion dance (barongsai.) I had many students absent from school because they were visiting family on extended Chinese New Year celebrations.
On the Friday before the three day weekend, there was a celebration in school. Many students gave dance performances. Some teachers too, including me - I was wearing a red tunic and had my hair in pigtails! Then we all went down to the courtyard to see the lion dance. (Not to be confused with a
Sometime after that week, I went out to dinner with some friends. Mildred, my Singaporean friend of Chinese descent, taught us about eating a traditional salad. It's a huge, multi-person salad with lots of different ingredients and sauces, all of which have a symbolic meaning for a good upcoming year. You shout "Huat Ah!" and mix up the salad with your chopsticks altogether and enjoy. I notice that people here in Southeast Asia love food. Not just consuming it, as we tend to do in the States, but really enjoying and sharing it.
Now on to Yogyakarta. I had been wanting to visit this city from before I left the US last June. I had heard that it was the heart and soul of Java, and I think that might be true. (FYI, the name is pronounced like "Jogjakarta" and sometimes it's spelled that way too.)
Nicole, Kristina, Lynsey and I flew out of Jakarta on Friday night. On Saturday morning we woke up at 3:30 AM to meet our driver by 4. We had the car and driver from 4 AM until 10 PM and we used every minute of that time. Stepped out of the car and onto the pavement in front of our hostel at exactly 10 and by that time we had done so much.
First order of the day was Borobudur the largest Buddhist temple in the world, located northeast of Yogyakarta. There was some confusion with getting in, especially because our driver spoke not a word of English, but we were there when the gates opened and with our Indoensian work visas (KITAS) we got a discount price! I think we paid less than half the normal foreigner price.
You never mind the first time. "Sure," you reply.
"Jakarta."
Much giggling.
"We're from Jakarta."
"What is your nationality?"
"American,"
(On a side note, the usual response to "I'm from America," is: "Ah! America! ... Barack Obama!" The usual response to, "We live in Jakarta," is: "Jakarta banjir," which means, "Jakarta's flooded.")
"How long have you been here?"
"We're just here for the weekend,"
"What do you think of Indonesian people?"
"Oh, very friendly. Very nice."
Then you will be asked to sign a paper that confirms the student of English did in fact have a conversation with an real-life Westerner, and you go on your way. For one minute, and then... "Hello Miss. I'm in an English class. May I ask some questions?" And Indonesian people tend to be quite meek and cautious so this is usually accompanied by embarrassed smiles and/or giggles. You probably agree to do the survey a second time, even though you really just want to circum-ambulate and see the amazing largest-Buddhist temple in the world you've come all this way to see. But they just keep coming, and coming, and coming.
An hour after we had arrived and enjoyed the place to ourselves, soaking in the amazing ancient site, the place was inundated with English students and school kids travelling in packs and assaulting us from all sides. Not just kids either, but adults too. A middle-aged woman practically pushed me into a photo with her and her friend. We must have been asked for our photo about 30 times or more that morning. You will usually agree at first if people ask you politely, but it gets real old, real fast. Many Indonesians, especially those outside of Jakarta or Bali, have never seen Westerners so there are loud shouts of "Turis!" ("Tourist!") and "Bule!" ("Westerner!" - although the term deserves a little more explanation than that.)You try to be understanding. Many of those kids have only seen Westerners in movies and television, so it must be exciting to see real-life white people, but the way they just mercilessly swarm on you and shamelessly yell at you and ask for photo after photo is downright annoying, not to mention rather disrespectful. To be fair, most Indonesians still act true to the stereotype and are quite polite, but others are not. So when people ask for photos, there's usually two caveats: "Just one photo, and if you're going to take a photo, I want one too." So I actually have quite a collection of pictures of me and my friends with all sorts of Indonesians.
We couldn't stay there too long, it was too overwhelming. Which was sad. That being said, the site of Borobudur itself was amazing and beautiful and I do recommend it to anyone who gets to Indonesia But on a weekday. As early in the morning as possible.
After Borobudur, we went to a pottery village that was recommended in the guide book. (We travel with a minimum of two or three Lonely Planet guides it seems.) We stopped along a street with lots of splendid pottery and other art and craftwork. I couldn't resist a beautiful didgeridoo and brought it home with me for the grand price of 30,000 rupiah. ($3!)
The neatest thing about Mt Merapi was the lava flow we found. After hiking up quite a steep grade on the road and then down another little hill, we came across a blackened area that had been literally incincerated, a path cleared from the forest in the last eruption, which was only a few years ago. It was pretty awesome to stand in the middle of where the lava flow had once swept through.Finally headed back to Yogya to a restaurant recommended by Mildred, where we ordered an entire fried chicken (and again, I mean "entire" in a very literal sense, as in it came with the head and neck. I don't remember if the feet were still on.) All this in one day. (And I think we only got lost once. At one point our driver stopped outside a random house on a random street. We think he got lost, but couldn't tell us, not speaking English, so we theorize we stopped at his house!)
The next day we stayed in Yogya and explored the city. We went to the market in the morning and went to find the Kraton, which is the palace complex of the Sultan who still rules a part of Yogya. To be clear, it's not a palace in the sense of Versailles, but a bunch of nice buildings and courtyards. The Sultan and his family still live there and have some governing power over the walled area of the Kraton, and also some adjacent neighborhoods.
On our way, we stopped in a store to buy water, and the owner told us that the regular music and dance performances at the Kraton would be later than usual that day due to a visit from some important person. Instead he suggested we go to a particular art gallery. En route to said gallery we ran into a man who told us about a batik workshop and we decided to follow him there instead. The people in Yogya were very friendly and lots of people gave us directions and talked with us. Like in Bali, being able to speak any Indonesian seemed to impress the locals. There are a lot more tourists there than in Jakarta so the residents are more used to speaking English. You say "terima kasih," ("thanks") and people will say, "Oh! You speak Bahasa!" "Er, no, not really," and you look sheepish as you pinch your fingers within an an inch of each other to indicate that your Bahasa skills are in fact minimal.
The batik workshop was great. Local artists work on splendid, beautiful batik artwork and train in new artists. Everything there is local, small-scale, and authentic. Tried out some batik-making techniques ourselves on a sample cloth and bought batik artwork there. Later on, when we did go back to the Kraton, we found out we had missed the performances after all. We still walked around though and another random man on the street told us about a wayang kulit workshop we could visit. So we did. Wayang kulit are "skin puppets" that are used for shadow plays. They are made from leather and usually feature people in traditional clothing with exaggerated features so that they don't look like any one group of people or another. The workshop was a cooperative that works for the Sultan.
That afternoon was also busy. We went to a bird market with all kinds of bird and other animals for sale in cages (which was actually pretty bizarre after a while) and went walking around some ruins of a bathhouse. That evening, we went to see a Ramayana ballet. We took two of the becaks that are everywhere in the city to an outdoor dinner theater so see that traditional play about gods and goddesses and kidnappings and love triangles and monkey gods and fight scenes up in the heavens. Most of the other people there were middle aged European tourists. 
The next day we did make it to see the gamalan music performances at the Kraton, which was very nice. I think we sat and listened and enjoyed for a solid hour. We ended our time in Yogya by seeking out the southern courtyard of the Kraton where there are two huge banyan trees. Tradition dictates that if you can walk blindfolded between the trees and make it from one side of the square to the other, you will have good luck. I tried twice and failed twice. The guide who gave us the blindfolds had to nudge me in the correct direction so I wouldn't run into the tree on the right! I asked him if this meant I would have bad luck or just neutral luck, but I didn't get a clear answer.
In any case, it was a busy, but utterly awesome trip to Yogyakarta. Hopefully I'll be taking Mom and Dad there in June when they come to visit!
Once again, sorry for my tardiness in blogging. Now that I've written about Yogya, next time I can tell you about our term break trip to Malaysia!
