A Weekend of Cross-Culturing and Sistering

Last weekend (March 22 - 23), I went to Malang, a town two-hours' drive from Surabaya, to speak at a conference on cross-cultural understanding. The conference was organized and hosted by another Fellow, Iris, so a lot of other Fellows were also participating. About eight in all, actually (Ron, Josh, Jon, Jess, Holly, Deirdre, Me, Autumn). It was a great excuse for all of us to hang out for the weekend (even though some of us had already seen each other the weekend before in Singapore!).

Everyone got in on Friday, checked into our cute hotel, Enny's Guest House, and then met up for dinner at a pretty fancy place picked out by Iris.

Jess enjoys her ginger-young-coconut drink. (The same drink I ordered too, incidentally.)

Jon, some of Iris's friends, and Jess.

Everyone at the other end of the table. 

We didn't get too crazy the first night, since everyone had to be AT the conference the next morning by 7:30am.

Jess, Deirdre, and Holly wait for the opening ceremony. Front row! 

That's me! In Parallel Session 1!

I was thankful to get my presentation over the first day. I gave a "Cross Cultural Training for Indonesian Students" three times, to three groups of approximately fifty students. I basically explained cultural differences between what's expected in university classrooms in the U.S. versus in Indonesia. The obvious main difference is time; Indonesians have what they call "rubber time," meaning that time is flexible. If you arrive to something 15 - 30 minutes late, it's not a big deal.

Making the students stand up for an activity. 

As part of my presentation, I also showed a YouTube clip that I found, depicting good habits to keep outside of the classroom (get 8 hours of sleep, exercise regularly, don't procrastinate on homework, etc.). The funny thing was, after showing this clip to the students and asking them to discuss what they noticed about it, the topic of bathing came up twice. In the video clip, the "good" student doesn't take a shower before class; she just gets up, puts on a sweatshirt, and goes out the door. This is because it's a re-enactment, so the actor didn't perform all of the typical morning activities. But a lot of the students latched on to this, and were pretty shocked that she didn't bathe before class! I did say that some students don't shower before class if they have early class (I certainly didn't) and instead shower at night, but nevertheless, I think I may have perpetuated the idea that Americans never bathe. Oops. At least it's a fairly innocuous misconception, right? 

At the end of the first day, the final presenter, a native Indonesian woman, discussed cross-cultural relationships between Javanese people (on the island of Java, for example the cities of Malang and Surabaya) and the Maluccan people (from Ambon and the other original Spice Islands). The best part was that a group of Maluccan dancers and singers came out and performed three traditional songs for us!

Singers filing in. 

Dancing. (Yeah, this photo is the best I got.)

That night, we went out to another fun restaurant with all of us. Then we went BOWLING! First time I've done that in Indonesia. We were kind of curious to see what an Indonesian bowling alley looked like. Turns out, it looks a lot like the ones in the States. Except no one was there. On a Saturday night. So we had all the lanes to ourselves!

Autumn, me, Dustin (Iris's friend), Iris, Deirdre, Holly, and Josh and Esteban's backs

Almost-final scores on our game. My name is the second from the top. As you can see, I failed...pretty miserably. 

Also, we all ended up bowling barefoot because we'd all forgotten to bring socks, and the shoes were REALLY old and beat up. As in, my toe stuck out the side of my shoes. We had a blast. 

The next morning, I got up at 5am to catch a flight to JAKARTA. Why, you ask? To see my beloved sister, who works for Emirates Airlines, and had 24 hours to spend in the city. How could I pass that up?! 

So I left the conference early, and got in to the Sheraton (where Leah had spent the night) by 10:30am, which gave us almost 12 hours to hang out together before she had to leave for a midnight flight at 10pm. 

We did pretty much nothing besides talk. Having not seen each other for eight months, we didn't mind. We sat and talked in her hotel room. Then we took a taxi to the closest mall, decided we weren't hungry and didn't want to spend any money except on donuts, and talked some more. Then we came back, Leah took a quick nap, we ate dinner and talked even more. Then she had to leave! But it was definitely worth the trip. 

Eating donuts at J. Co.

Trying on Leah's Emirates hat. 

Making a Leah face. 

Taking photos outside the hotel. It looks like I don't want to get close to her; it's just because I was really sweaty. 

Right before Leah had to jump on the crew bus back to the airport. Doesn't she look pruh-fesh-uh-nal? 

On Sunday night, I stayed over at Jess's apartment in Jakarta, and then caught a 7:30am flight back to Surabaya just in time to teach my 10am class. Whew!

With any luck, I'll see Leah again when I get back to the States in July. You hear that Leah?! No moving to London/Paris/Europe yet, OK??? 

And that was my pretty great weekend.