The Volcano's Not Here, but Thanks for Asking

Earlier this week, a volcano erupted in North Sumatra after being dormant for 400 years.  Many people were displaced and are now living in refugee camps and shelters, but some have been relocated to Medan - that means I'll be safe.  Right now I am not at all affected because I am currently on the island of Java and nowhere near the volcano.

In other news . . .

It has been a rather boring few days.  I don't want to give any gory details, so all I'm going to say is this:  Montezuma gets his revenge in more places than Mexico.  AND I have become quite familiar with the flushing mechanisms of Western-style toilets in Indonesia.  AND it gets expensive to hydrate in a country where you can't drink the fluids, and you're trying to replace the fluids you're losing.

I am really enjoying the breathing time we get here in Bandung to acclimate ourselves to the food (see above), the culture, and the language, but I must admit that I'm tired of it, too.  It's exhausting trying to find places to eat out all the time, and it's frustrating to come back to my hotel room and remember that I have to pack everything for a third time in two and a half more weeks.  I'm ready to get settled in, but I have to bide my time.  I'm sure, though, that in three months I will look back over this post and think, "What was I thinking!  I would kill to go back there!"  I'm hoping, though, that since I'll be in a huge city, the kinds of creature comforts I might crave won't be so far out of reach.

In spite of this, I am really enjoying myself.  The Bahasa Indonesia lessons are a slap in the face - I never have liked learning languages.  I was hoping that I could do this with just the motivation I get from not being able to communicate with people on the street, but it's not as driving a force as I first anticipated.  We went to visit an English class at a pesantran yesterday (that's a Muslim boarding school), and one of the first questions the students asked us was how to stay motivated to study.  HA!  If only they knew . . .

The good news is that I'm getting through.  I'm discovering that I can learn the language best once I understand the logic behind it.  Once I know the pattern, I can piece it together.  Today's lesson took much better than yesterday's because we learned how to use pronouns.  Basically, I can string simple sentences together.  What I love most about this language is that there is no conjugation, so I don't have to learn a billion different ways to say "to be" (am, is, are, were, was, will be, etc) and remember which goes with what tense and which pronoun.  I can just say be - (I be, he be, we be, etc).  The most FUN part of Bahasa Indonesia, however, is that plural words are just repeats.  In English when there is more than one, you typically add an "s" to the end of the word (with many many many confusing exceptions).  In Bahasa, you just say it twice.  So say I am referring to one child.  That's anuk.  But if I'm referring to more than one (aka children), I say anuk-anuk.  How cool is that!  It gets really hard to keep a straight face when you get into words like babi-babi (pigs), hari-hari (days), or koki-koki (cooks).

I'm guessing that the mention of the pesantran visit is probably bringing up some questions, so I gueeessss I can talk about it!  As part of our teacher training, we got to observe some English classes at local schools.  We were divided up into three groups.  The school that my group went to is about a 45 minute drive from the hotel (the farthest away), so we got to see even more of the city and the surrounding suburbs.

Everything here is so lush and green.  The old cars in the third picture are actually out of place.  Almost all of the cars in the city are brand new, shiny Toyotas, Hondas, Isuzus, Suzukis, and the occasional Ford.

At the pesantran, I observed a class of 12th grade girls.  It was so much fun!

The man on the right is the teacher.  I can't remember his name, but he is really nice!  He's thirty years old and teaches English (duh!).  The incredible thing is that he is almost entirely self-taught.  He learned English mostly through following American pop culture - music, movies, TV - and reading, and his English is really good!  As we're starting to find, though, English teachers are not always as fluent as we might assume.  Especially if they've never had formal training in school, they might not always use correct grammar, or the words that they use are extremely outdated.  Although this can be a setback, the students and teachers we met at the school were far more proficient at English than I had anticipated. Their pronunciation was excellent, and really all they needed was practice.  After this experience, it really hit home how important native English speakers are in the learning process.  Actually, it makes me wonder a bit about my Spanish - did I learn Spanish like these girls learned English?  Thank goodness I've forgotten most of it, just in case!

Before ending, I have to show you my favorite part about the school.  Below is a picture of the auditorium:

Now look at the place where the headmaster sits during assemblies:

It's a plush club chair!  Like a throne!  So funny!  This is where the headmaster gives news, announcements, etc.  And finally, some of the beautiful girls at this school:

They were so funny.  As soon as we pulled out our cameras, they would flock together in groups like this just hoping to get in the photo.  Afterwards, I shook their hands and spoke with them in English.  The experience was like this odd combination of paparazzi/celebrity status - I could definitely get used to it!