The week ain't over yet

But it's been a pretty great one so far.

Starting Monday night, November 5, all of the English Language Fellows converged on my little (OK, not so little) town of Surabaya to attend the 59th Annual TEFLIN Conference (TEFLIN = Teaching English as a Foreign Language INdonesia). We were all required to do a presentation, and to just generally show State Department support for the conference.

Although the purpose for the ELF gathering is professional, we have been having a blast hanging out together again, for the first time since Bandung back in August. We all get to stay at the Sheraton, which is a pretty freakin' awesome hotel (central air conditioning? Water pressure in the shower? King size bed??), and the Sheraton happens to be connected to the largest mall in Surabaya, Tunjungan Plaza, so we can all easily go out and get dinner together and socialize and just generally bask in the glow of spending time with other cool Americans.

On the first night, everyone came out to this sushi restaurant. It got a little rowdy.

Imitating how our students always pose.

We ordered one round of Bintang beers for everyone, and then the restaurant was sold out. As I have probably mentioned before, pretty much no one drinks alcohol in Indonesia. So we probably drank a week's supply of beer in one round! 

We also got to attend the "election party" at the Consulate in Surabaya. What better way to watch the results come in? They had a coffee barista on hand to make lots of fancy coffee drinks, cake, and some speakers spoke briefly about the electoral college and the history behind the donkey and elephant mascots.

 I got interviewed by some local news reporters. They initially began to interview Jessica, another Fellow, but she grabbed me and kindly pushed me in front of them, while she not-so-sneakily backed away and left the room. But I didn't really mind; I still kind of have some fun being interviewed (I don't doubt it gets old after a while--this is Jessica's second year in the country). The reporters asked me about Obama's and Romney's stances on foreign policy and the economy, and which candidate I preferred and why. I tried to give them super-super-simplified explanations. Which are about the only explanations I could provide anyway. 

Talking with some local university students while waiting for the coffee barista to make our cappuccinos. 

Me, Jackie and Jess posing with some local students and Consulate employees. 

It's been good times. But it's also been some work. On Wednesday afternoon, after making sure that Obama really was going to be our president for FOUR MORE YEARS!!!! I had to go straight to the conference to present a workshop on poetry (thankfully I was able to recycle my NYS TESOL presentation from last year). I think it went pretty well. The number of attendees was small because the workshop was held so late in the day (4:50pm), but the people who attended seemed to really want to be there to learn.

Anna (another Fellow who presented after me) introduces me. 

Monitoring attendees as they write haiku. 

I also had to organize my first official teacher-training workshop at my university, IAIN Sunan Ampel, for Friday (today). Four Fellows, including me, came out to my school to present on communicative teaching and project-based learning. We spoke to about 35 elementary, middle school, and high school English teachers from the community. We might have overwhelmed some with a little too much information packed into 2 hours, but I think most of the attendees got something out of it, or at least were pushed to reflect on their teaching style and how it might be improved or adapted.

Anna talks about the importance of  showing, not telling.

After our workshop. Gotta allow lots of time for photos! 

After our presentation, we were all starving, so I took the Fellows to a popular tourist destination (and pretty decent restaurant), called House of Sampoerna. It's an old cigarette factory. You can actually still watch the workers through a glass wall as they're rolling and cutting cigarettes. You can also pose inside of a "kaki lima" (food stall) as if you're selling cigarettes. That's my favorite part. Great for kids!

And that takes me up until now.  Because all I did after coming back from House of Sampoerna this afternoon was take a 3-hour nap. The best nap in recent memory. And then I had a bowl of tofu for dinner at the mall. 

I only have one more full day to spend with all the other Fellows, so I have to make it count! I'm not looking forward to saying goodbye, again since we won't ever all be together like this again. Thankfully, a decent-sized group of us are meeting up in Jogjakarta for Thanksgiving weekend. But I think we're all doing our best to enjoy our time together now, while we have it.

Wow, that last sentence could apply to life in general. Deep thoughts. And that is all for now.