May 10, 2011

Today was a good day. Nothing extraordinary, but pretty darn good. Sometime between stepping off the plane in Jakarta and crafting my day-to-day teaching life, Indonesia has become my home. It’s a pretty cool feeling to finally be familiar with a majority of the people on my walk home from school. To recognize Yaya, an 8-year-old boy living in a boarding house nearby and who sporadically sneaks into my 3-4 grade English Camp class instead of staying with the 1^st and 2^nd graders. To wave and smile at each of the shop owners along the way, and know that I finally have the ability and relationship to chat with them about something more substantial than the weather. I don’t smile and wave and stop to chat because I’m trying to portray a positive image of the American bule; I do it because I’ve actually formed relationships with these people. My people: my neighbors, my students, my people who sweep up the trash every morning or drive their beceks up and down the main road. I used to feel pressure to be on point all day, every day. Always smiling and hiding how internally frustrated I was/am most days. But today I soaked it all in. I was smiling because I was happy; it wasn’t a facade. Happy because I finally have a decent grasp on the names of the over 300 students that I teach in any given week, plus a respectable number of students outside of my teaching schedule. Happy because I can see my kids’ improvement and increase in motivation to study. Happy because the call to prayer is really beautiful and spiritual some days, especially considering I’m someone who’s not necessarily religious. Happy because my parents are coming out in just over a month and I can’t wait to share all of this with them.

Lately these good days have been pretty rare, but I have a feeling that they’ll become more regular as time goes on. I think I’m finally coming to terms with Diana leaving us- out on this great Asian adventure without us, but having an unforgettable time.

This is my life and my home, even though some days I feel like throwing in the towel.

May 21, 2011

I thought for sure I’d have millions of hours of time on my hands once I joined Peace Corps. In reality, it’s the complete opposite.

Oftentimes, I feel like I don’t have a say in the events of my day to day life. My schedule is built around the spontaneous chaos and irregularity that seems to embody Indonesian life. Peace Corps says that starting a routine is key to feeling at home and settling in, and I’ve tried. It seems that an unstructured schedule has become routine.

I eat what and when other people tell me to eat. Mandi, or am requested to wait to mandi (take a bucket bath), based on when other people feel they might need to use the bathroom. Am rarely, if ever, told about significant events taking place right outside my bedroom door: “surprise Maggie, there are 6 strange men sleeping here tonight because we’re building a new garage.” So now, even the glimpse of a routine I thought I once had has been thrown into a whirl wind spiral. The laundry line was mysteriously moved to the other side of the street then disappeared all together; my host parents made promises to their friends on behalf of me (without informing me) saying I’d give their kids private lessons every Saturday. Seemingly trivial events to someone on the other side of the world, but fairly significant to someone whose life this has inevitably become. I feel like I’m living with college roommates again, but this time I didn’t get to choose. And I’m not allowed to have boys over.

I relish in the fact that I can occasionally (a total of about 7 times in the past 15 months) cook for myself. I live for the mornings I can walk out of my bedroom in a tank top because my host father and brother have already left for the day. Living with a homestay family has probably been my least favorite, and most difficult, part of my PC experience; but to be fair, it’s gotten slightly easier to cope with over the past few months.

May 29, 2011

Not sure if life is getting monotonous or if I’m just getting used to the things I used to consider out of the ordinary. Are they mutually exclusive? I love that my life has taken me halfway around the world, but I am ready for something different; but different has taken on a whole new meaning since being here.

This week I brought my camera around to document a routine yet simultaneously random week at site. Somewhere along the line disorder became routine, and what I used to consider irresponsible chaos rarely astonishes me now. I just roll with it…most of the time anyway. So this is my week in a nutshell, through pictures and short blurbs.

Sunday: Our Sunday morning bike ride took Bu S and I to one of my most devoted English Club student’s homes where we met his entire extended family including his 90+ year-old grandfather who reminisced about the time of Dutch colonial rule and commented on each of the subsequent Indonesian presidents’ strengths and flaws.

Rosyid (far right) and his Immediate Family

On our way home we rode through the Sunday chicken marketplace. Lots of plucking and clucking and neck breaking and chicken baking. The motorcycle-packed market teeming with caged birds and loose feathers didn’t faze me the same way it would have a year ago. Such is life in Indonesia.

The Motorcycle-Filled Chicken Market

Plucking Some Chickens

This was also our last English Kids Camp of the year. Bittersweet, but knowing that it will undoubtedly resume in July once school starts again made it easier to say goodbye. I love that I see and recognize these kids out in the community and that they no longer call me bule (foreigner), but light up and call me Ms. Maggie as I ride by on my bicycle.

Ika and Nurliana with Grades 1 and 2

All the Volunteers and Kids Together for One Last Picture

Monday: Mr. Jonathan, a current PC trainee, came to observe my site. What it’s like to team-teach in an Indonesian school, take public transportation to a new location, and have daily interaction in a permanent community. Logically (Indonesian logic), half the students and teachers thought he was my secret boyfriend coming to visit, and the other half wanted him to immediately take my place at school- most of the time those halves overlapped.

Mr. Jonathan and His Sweet 1950s Ride

Tuesday: After school and my weekly study group with students from a neighboring high school, Mr. J., Bu S and I, took a bike ride around Mojosari. We stopped at the balai desa when we saw a group of little girls practicing traditional Javanese dance (the equivalent of an elementary school ballet class in the States), and naturally jumped in to try a few of the moves ourselves. Unremitting laughter from the observing parents ensued for the duration of our performance, but we had a great time. Well I did at least, not sure how 6’ 4” Mr. Jonathan felt being spontaneously subjected to dancing with a bunch of 8 year-old girls.

Not Quite as Limber as the Kids

Trying to Keep Up

With the Scarf

Group Shot

Fatigued after 2 dances, we hopped back on our bikes and cruised around for awhile longer, checking out the pasar, or market, at night. Inquiring then mentally compiling a list of food prices, we ventured through the market fruit by fruit, veggie by veggie: 1 kilo of small potatoes: 6,000 Rp (about 60 US cents); 1 kilo of melon: 4,000Rp (40 cents); the list of fresh produce, endless.

Fruit Stall at the Night Market

Weighing a Kilo of Wortel (Carrots)

Wednesday: Jonathan’s Last Day- school suddenly, yet not entirely unpredicted, ended early so that the teachers could have their government-issued ID pictures taken in Mojokerto. With only a few people at school, I helped with new student enrollment for the upcoming semester. Came home, prepared a sweet review game for grade 11, went on a brief, yet enjoyable wildlife adventure with my host bro and his friends (catching crabs and these cool golden bugs) and spent the remainder of the evening watching Batman (Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, circa 1989) on my modest computer.

Pam (host bro) With His Caught Crab

Catching Kepek Emas (Golden Bugs)

Thursday: I officially survived an entire year of teaching. I taught my last two classes of the semester and felt a huge, previously-ignored weight lift off my shoulders. I reflected on my own last days of high school and everything that’s happened between my 2003 graduation and May 2011. A lot. Took time to enjoy the little things on my walk home, like the two goats which I’ve fondly, yet secretly, named Daisy and Sunflower in tribute to the goats at a camp I worked at one summer; the neighbor kids walking back from mengaji (Al Quran study group) in their adorable ngaji outfits; the sound of the afternoon call to prayer; freshly laundered clothes drying in the ever-so-slight, but nonetheless present, breeze in cohorts with the unrelenting sun.

Daisy the Goat

Ngaji Girls

Friday: Since Friday is only a half day of school due to Jumatan or Friday prayer, and I don’t teach, I decided to stay home, work on plans for my parents’ visit next month, and do my weekly laundry. Regardless of how long I live in Indonesia, I will neither get used to nor enjoy washing my sheets by hand. I unequivocally despise it. The space my family usually uses to dry our laundry is currently under construction in an attempt to build a garage, so the temporary makeshift bamboo beams which have taken over have become our new drying locale. As I previously mentioned, we have some semi-permanent house guests. For the past two weeks I’ve been sharing the already hectic mandi, mealtime area, and my sandals with 4 extended family construction workers. They’re really nice guys, but the house gets a bit congested from time to time.

I had to go to school late in the afternoon anyway for graduation rehearsal, so I didn’t feel too guilty about taking some time to myself earlier in the day.

Drying Laundry

Saturday: Wisuda 2011! Another early morning (3:30 am) endeavor to be dressed in traditional kebaya in support of my school’s graduation ceremony scheduled to start at 8:00. From the three times I’ve worn kebaya (the Batu mayor’s house for wayang kulit, the wedding last December, and the recent graduation) I think I’ve worn more make-up and used more hairspray than I have collectively during my previous 25 years of life. I played a special role in the ceremony: leading the headmistress and other important school officials to the stage with a slow, very precise walk alongside Mas Manan, a friend from school. The scheme was kept a secret until the moment of, and the entire audience- students, parents and teachers alike- were in a state of complete astonishment. I had fun with it all, but I think I met my kebaya quota for the year.

Kebaya for Graduation

Sunday: As ritual insists, Bu S and I went on our Sunday morning bike ride, this time to her former Middle School a few miles away. We stopped briefly to chat with some passing students, again to gossip with four women who were planting kacang hijau (a type of long green bean), and once more to discuss the predicament that some of the surrounding elementary schools are presently facing: students coming late to school because their parents work odd hours in the factories and don’t have the capacity to take their kids to school any earlier. A tiring ride up hill the way there, which meant a refreshing downhill cruise on the way home- sun on my face, wind in my hair. Embraced every moment of it.

Planting Kacang Hijau

Early Morning Planting

Hung out the rest of the day with a few minor, familiar interruptions: English Club being cancelled because the school is preparing for semester exams, so we weren’t allowed to enter the classrooms; a random man stopping by my house to ask if I could come to his home to teach him English and additionally requesting that I teach the army stationed in Mojosari “when I have time”; my host brother wanting to show me an “anaconda” at a neighbor’s house, swearing that it’s 9 meters in length was something to be reckoned with- I had just finished my afternoon mandi, so I decided to pass this time. It was a lazy, but much needed relaxing day, and it ended perfectly with a phone call from my brother.

Maybe to an outsider’s eye this seems less than monotonous and routine, but as I mentioned before, it’s just another unsystematic week at site.