End-of-Year Conference

On May 16 - 19, the English Language Fellows got to gather all together one last time for an end-of-year conference in Makassar (South Sulawesi Island--the same city I visited before the Tana Toraja trip).

On the first day, we had to do outreach (ie teacher training workshops at different sites). But before we headed off in our different groups, we managed to take a group photo with (almost) everyone in it. IRIS! Why were you late for breakfast???

I love this picture because most of us look genuinely happy. This is because were amused by the photographer, who apparently had no idea how to use a camera.

For the outreach, I was in Jackie and Josh's group. The Dream Team! No really, those two guys are pretty impressive cohorts. Anyway, we ended up being taken on a two-hour drive (slightly longer than we were expecting due to a local carnival blocking the streets), to a smaller town outside of Makassar, called Gowah. We presented ideas for teaching "Beyond the Textbook" (catchy, eh?) for a middle school English teachers association. When we arrived at the school, the students were done with their lessons for the day, but they all stayed at school, to crowd around us when we arrived. They didn't want to talk to us! But they did want to see the bules.

Jackie and some of the students. 

The students also crowded in the doorway to watch some of our presentation.

Josh presents to the teachers...and the students. 

We weren't really sure how much of what we said was really absorbed by the teachers, but we did our best. And then when we got back to the hotel, we jumped in the pool!

Jackie looking like Miami Vice. 

Deirdre having a blast. 

My hotel room had a pretty great view of the ocean (bay?) and the "floating mosque" of Makassar.

Watching the sunset. 

During day one of our actual conference, we had to brainstorm and write down all of what we'd accomplished over the past nine months. It was pretty impressive once we'd put together everyone's activities and outreach.

Autumn and Tabitha add their activities to the lists. 

We put post-it notes over all the places we'd visited in Indonesia--color coded for our site, travel for work, and travel for pleasure. 

At the end of the day on Friday, Deirdre and I formally presented gifts that we'd bought (and everyone had paid for) to our wonderful boss Eran (he got a fancy pen and an Amazon gift card) and his awesome assistants Dian and Ayunda (they each got fancy leather purses). Then Eran brought out a fancy bottle of Scotch (courtesy of the Embassy) and we had a happy hour hangout time.

On Saturday, day two of the conference, we talked about our plans for the future (blaahhhh who wants to talk about that???). Thankfully we finished early, by 1:30, so Ron (who lives in Makassar) chartered a boat for all of us to go out to a tiny island and snorkel. 

Fellows on the boat. 

Jess and me on the boat. 

It was actually some surprisingly good snorkeling. Pretty coral, bright yellow and blue fish. I even saw an eel! (My first eel seen in the wild!)

Esteban, Jon, Holly, Iris, Autumn, Christy, Jess, Jackie, me 

We also saw the mangiest, saddest-looking cat I have ever seen. This scrawny little thing followed us around and just wanted to be pet. We named it Struggles and gave it some water (it was super thirsty) and thought about taking it back to the mainland with us on the boat. Ultimately, we decided to leave Struggles on the island, since there were other cats there, and we didn't want to stress it out too much. Poor thing.

I let him sleep on my (hotel) towel. 

After we took the boat to the mainland, we had trouble getting a taxi to pick us up. There were about 25 of us, so Jess and I got impatient and decided to take a becak (pedicab) back to the hotel. It was a bit of a trek (about 40 mins?And the driver had to pedal two 6' tall bules!) but really refreshing and fun to take that way back. 

Me and Jess on the becak. We could barely fit both of us on the seat. 

For dinner on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night, we had all gone out to eat together as a group. But on Saturday night, some people wanted Italian food, some people wanted to eat local traditional seafood dishes, and some people wanted to go clubbing (namely, the boys). So we split up for dinner and met up later for dessert.

I was in the group that wanted to eat the local seafood dishes. We went to this great restaurant called Lae Lae, where you choose the fish you want out of these coolers, and they fry it up right there for you.

I think we just asked one of the restaurant people to choose for us. Too difficult!

DELICIOUS fish and some tasty side dishes too. All of this added up to $5 per person. 

Jess (we hung out a lot on this trip!) and me about to dig in. 

After the fish, we met up at a local gelato place, and I had a mint and chocolate gelato dessert.

On Sunday morning, we all had breakfast together to say our goodbyes. It actually wasn't goodbye for most people, since we made plans to meet up in Bali in June before everyone leaves. But Autumn wasn't going to Bali, so we all gave her a group hug. 

Autumn in the middle. Jackie, Holly, me, Deirdre, and Jess on the outside. 

This wasn't really a sad time yet, because I didn't feel like it was done yet. I still had 3 more weeks to teach, and I was going to see most of the people in Bali again. But this weekend was basically the beginning of the realization that this Fellowship is almost over. How do I feel about that? Um, how about I talk about that in another post, okay?