Disclaimer: This post is REALLY long. Prepare yourself. Or just give up now. Also--I have not posted photos yet of the events described herein. But I will. I promise.
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It seems like the first two weeks of teaching at IAIN Sunan Ampel were quiet. I taught my classes, lesson-planned a lot (I tried to make up a schedule for the whole semester for each of my four classes), and came home and watched bootleg DVDs until 10pm.
But then last week, another Fellow, Jen, came to visit. We did a LOT. On Friday, we met the Public Affairs Officer and the director of the Information Resource Center at the Consulate. Then, from there, we met with the regional director of the Peace Corps. Then, we went to TP (Tunjungan Plaza, the biggest and oldest mall in Surabaya) to grab some quick sushi before rushing to an actual dinner with a Fulbright researcher (who is studying East Javanese traditional music! So cool!) from Michigan and his wife. More networking possibilities!
Saturday was a little less crazy. We had planned to visit the American Corner (an American cultural center) at a local university, but found out it was closed for repairs. So we went to TP and shopped some more before meeting up with a colleague of Jen's to shop some MORE at a different mall and then look at potential motorcycles to buy for her small town of Kamal. As a side note: I would never, ever, get a motorcycle in Surabaya because the traffic is crazy. Then, that night, we met up with the Fulbright researcher, Steve, and his wife, Sakti, again. Steve was playing gamelan in a performance in the village, and there were dancers and singers and comedians and even kind of a beauty pageant! It was really great to finally get to see something "cultural," but it went on pretty much all night, so we couldn't stay for the whole thing. We stayed from 10pm until about 12:30am, and by then, I could barely keep my eyes open.
On Sunday, we (gasp!) went back to TP and got lunch. Sushi, to be precise. Then we went to House of Sampoerna (a cultural center that is actually an old cigarette factory, which still functions today) to take the free bus tour of the city. The tour was OK--despite the guide speaking in English half the time, we didn't really catch what he said. And the bus didn't slow down at all for historical sites, such as the hotel where an Indonesian climbed the flagpole and ripped the bottom stripe off of the Dutch flag, thus declaring independence from the Dutch and creating the Indonesian flag. Pretty cool story right?
So anyway, the tour was short and fairly forgettable. But it was free, so we got our money's worth! Maybe I can find another tour sometime that discusses things in greater depth. Or if all else fails, just read a history book.
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So that was the weekend. This past week has suddenly gotten crazy too. Monday night, I went to a ludruk performance with Steve and Sakti. Ludruk is a type of traditional East Javanese musical performance with includes singers, dancers, and musicians. Because this was a live radio broadcast, there was of course no dancing, but the singers and some comedians performed between musical numbers. It was a lot of fun to just sit back and get a kind of private performance. Wednesday night, I attempted to live-stream a teacher-training webinar that steams out of Washington, D.C. About 30 future English teachers and current English teachers showed up. No luck streaming the video. After attempting to connect to the live stream for about 2 hours, my fears that the school's internet was just too slow were confirmed. But I had a backup plan, thankfully, which did not require internet. I used a CD of teacher training videos we'd received at orientation to guide the meeting. It was a little haphazard, since I hadn't really known how much to plan for, but I think it went OK. I asked the attendees if they'd like to make this a regular event for the next five weeks, and they seemed into the idea. So I'll be hosting another one next Wednesday.
Then Thursday, I had a meeting with the Sastra Inggris (English Letters) department, in which they asked all of the teachers, including me, to re-write the curriculum for our classes. They handed me a sample curriculum description, and it was approximately 20 pages long. For one course!! All in Bahasa Indonesia, too, by the way! I asked whether my curriculum description had to be that long, and they said no. Phew. The director of the program also asked me to review their next edition of the department's journal publication. Sure, why not? And then they asked me if I would publish an article in it, and submit the article by the end of the month. Sure, why not?
Then, the dean of the department stopped by and asked if I would be willing to come visit his pesantren (Muslim boarding school) that he owns sometime. I said, sure, why not? And tried to schedule a date when I would be free, sometime later in October. He seemed to agree with the date, but then a few minutes later, my counterpart came over and said, "He wants you to come today. Can you leave in two hours? And come back on Saturday?" It was Thursday. I was not too excited about the prospect of giving up half of my weekend visiting a school and essentially working, so I managed to get him to agree to just stay overnight Thursday. So I rushed back to my room, packed my bags, and took the 3-hour trip out to Nganjuk with another female English teacher from my department, Mbak Meria (Miss Meria). She came along as a translator and kind of intermediary, and I'm really glad she came, because I would have been really confused without her, and she was really kind and spoke a lot of English with me the whole trip.
When we reached the school at about 6pm (we'd stopped for dinner on the way), I met with just the girls from the school, and attempted to get them to talk to me. They were really shy (ages 11-14), but I did eventually get them to sing me an arabic song, in exchange for singing "My Heart Will Go On" for them. Yes! Titanic! A success, this time!
Then we met with all of the students (about 50 or more) at the mosque, which was kind of odd, because I sat at the front, facing the girls and boys, who were separated from each other by a curtain. Because the meeting was held in a mosque, the girls and boys couldn't look at each other. Then I was asked to speak about Muslims in America. I didn't have a whole lot to say about this--I spent about 5 minutes max explaining what I knew, and then we invited the students to ask questions. They were all very shy, again, so there were a lot of long silences. But I did get a few good questions about the American school system and how it differs from the Indonesian school system. I then tried to ask them questions about their school. Then we kind of ran out of things to talk about...so the dean asked me to just "tell a love story." Haha. He said he just wanted me to speak so that the students could hear a native speaker. So I told them the story of how Ari and I met. Which I think went over OK. Indonesian students in general seem to be really excited to hear I have a boyfriend, so they generally are really interested in that kind of story. I'm not sure if the explanation of how we met on a cruise ship really translated clearly, but...they got the gist.
So after that talk, Meria and I went to sleep, sharing a bed in one of the rooms of the Dean's house. We then woke up at 6 to eat breakfast, bathe (my first authentic Indonesian bath!), and walk around the premises a little. Nganjuk is a really tiny town, so it was quite rustic. The people living nearby seemed to be farmers, with lots of cows (I couldn't resist pictures of the cows!) and ducks and chickens and goats. Then I met with the teachers of the school (about 8 of them, not of all of whom were English teachers), and gave a short talk about "The newest teaching methodology in America." I chose to focus on Communicative Language Teaching (for any teachers who care who are reading my blog). I think it went over fairly well, although the teachers took some convincing (did I actually convince anyone?) that this type of methodology could work in their classrooms. Then we jumped in the car and took the 3-hour trip home. Phew! Again!
That was yesterday. Today, I had another busy day recording my voice for a TOEFL-like listening test that another school is putting together. Well, originally the plan had been to record my voice. Then they decided the day before that they wanted to FILM me too. So I had to look presentable! (Although they didn't give me any guidelines about how to dress.) I chose to wear a batik--can't go wrong with batik--and hair pulled back. Oh yes, and that morning I went jogging, got really sweaty and red in the face, and came home to find that the water and electricity had been turned off, for who knew how long. So I was unable to shower between jogging and being filmed for this project! Just a little deodorant and scented lotion to cover it up....
So I got picked up at 9am, and the first stop we made was to buy me fruit! I told them they weren't allowed to pay me (part of the Fellowship agreement), so they offered to buy me lots of fruit instead, since I mentioned that I was really into all the cool new fruits in Indonesia. I picked out durian (yes, durian), guava, soursop, starfruit, mango, and a couple other fruits I don't even know the name of. Then we went to the school and recorded me standing in front of a blue screen pretending to give lectures on all sorts of random topics, including: Linux, types of lighting in photography, managerial accounting, the island of Bukanon (? Can't remember the actual name), and how steel is made. As you may be able to tell, the content skewed towards the...technical. I definitely guessed on the pronunciation of a few words.
We managed to finish all of the lectures in one day (there were 10 of them! Each one about 3 - 4 minutes long), and as another gift to me, the director offered to buy me a batik shirt for me to wear for the next recording session (I have one more to do, with dialogues this time). So they drove me to this awesome batik store that I hadn't discovered yet, and I got to enjoy the pleasure of shopping for a batik with two Indonesian men hovering nearby politely waiting for you to pick something. I managed to narrow it down fairly quickly, though, and picked out an elegant olive green one.
Then they brought me home, where I was pleased to discover that my power and my water were back on. Hooray!
Which catches me up to today. Yikes, that was a long post. And now I'm late to go see Wayang Kulit, a shadow puppet show! Thankfully, those shows also continue until the sun comes up, so if I get there a little after it's started, I don't think it's a big deal. And I won't be staying for the whole performance--I get to actually sleep in tomorrow!
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