Oh my goodness it has been awhile. There has been a LOT going on lately - more updates on that coming soon! I finally got my Indo pics on facebook last night and I figured tonight I would update on that trip :) Click on any picture to make it larger! :)
At the school where Tim and I teach, the high school and middle school each take one week (HS in the spring, MS in November) off of regular classes and go do something else. There are quite a few adventure trips (abroad and local) and service trips (abroad and local) to choose from. Students are required to participate in something for Week Without Walls (WWW). They are also required to do a service trip twice during their time here - once in middle school and once in high school. Teachers end up chaperoning the trips. :) At the beginning of the school year the principal asked all of the teachers who were not assigned a trip yet (I am based in the middle school) what they wanted to do. One of the options was going to Indonesia. Since my aunt and uncle lived in Indonesia and I thought it would be cool to see, I jumped at the chance to go.
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| The under the plane camera! :) |
There was a total of 24 students who went on the trip. The Indo trip is a service trip. We had two days where we worked in a village and the third day was spent teaching English lessons to the students at the school in the village. They only spoke VERY limited English and we had some translators to help us out for the week. Here is a recap of how the week went. It all started with one full day of travel:
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| Longboats in Indonesia |
On
Sunday I went downstairs at 3:30am to go check on the taxi that would go around and pick myself and the other three adults up and take us to the airport. It was EARLY and Tim was a trooper. He came downstairs to say goodbye :) We got to the airport by 5am and everyone was there within 15 minutes. It was AWESOME not having to run through the airport to catch the plane. The airlines let the 28 of us (24 students and 4 adults) get on the plane first. We were at the back of the plane and the flight ended up not being full at all. Everyone was able to spread out over the back and that was really nice :) After the flight to Singapore we took a bus about 45 minutes to get to the ferry terminal. Thankfully there was a mall with lots of stuff to look at while we waited for the ferry to Batam, Indonesia. After the 45 minute to an hour long boat ride (it was a fast ferry like the ones to Macau so it was really smooth) we got off the boat in Indonesia (but we were not done with travel yet). We piled our suitcases and ourselves into longboats and rode for almost two hours to get to where we were staying.
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| Telunas |
The place where we were based for the week is called Telunas Beach. It is a "resort" where you can either stay and sit on the beach all day, but the resort also works with villages to help them fill their communities needs such as prenatal care, education and more. They host groups year round and the groups go to work in about 20 different villages. Mike the guy in charge said that the village we visited only gets foreign visitors about two to three times a year!
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| The Welcome Drink at Telunas Beach |
When we arrived we were given a delicious welcome drink made from super fresh orange juice, pineapple juice, sprite and ice blended together. It was SO tasty!! It was then time for a delicious dinner and then on to the evening activity. We had a cultural briefing that night which included how to say hello in the local language (selmat pagi!), how NOT to react when going into a village and what is considered polite and impolite (eating with the right hand is good, pointing with your whole hand or thumb is good, eating with your left hand is bad, pointing with a finger is bad, etc). Everyone then went to bed wiped from a very full day of travel.
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| The group with some of the students :) |
Monday we headed to the village and we were greeted at the pier by all of the school children with hand drums and clapping. They led us up the hill to the school where some of them performed some martial arts moves before the welcoming ceremony began. The teachers welcomed us and then students brought us fresh doughnuts (the best I have EVER had) and some sweet tea that puts southern sweet tea to shame. It was absolutely delicious and so nice of them to do.
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| Doughnuts and Tea!!! :) |
After the welcoming ceremony our students got to work painting and working on planting some flowers and trees to help make the school a more beautiful and welcoming place. It was pretty funny seeing the middle school students do some manual labor. I am glad that they kept going instead of giving up. There was a girl that came up to me towards the end of the day and taught me how to play the clapping game that she and her friends were doing. While neither one of us spoke the other's language the pattern of the rhythms and speech was enough to be able to do it together. :) I realized later on that it was the same girl that I was with in the group picture above that we took right before getting to work (so we didn't forget to take a group shot). We headed back with a few hours left in the day for free time and dinner. I was able to take a walk on the beach and I found a fully intact sand dollar :) The weather was not too hot and the sunset that night was absolutely beautiful :)
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| Baby Sand Dollar! |
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| :) |
On Tuesday we headed back to the village a little bit later (thanks to a crazy thunderstorm). It was the same work as the day before - finishing planting, working on stripping paint from a wall and then painting other sections of the school. We finished early and our students played in the yard with their students before we left :) It was another really nice day in the village :)
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| My friend and I |
On Wednesday we went to teach English lessons in the village. The students there were very willing to learn and were super well behaved and patient with our students and the process of our kids describing a task and the translator translating for them. It was fun to see my students transform from awkward teachers to pretty competent ones by the end of the morning. It was all pretty basic English - numbers, letters, simple words, but the students that my group had seemed to be engaged the entire time. Afterwards there was some play time and then there was a closing ceremony where the teachers presented my school with a boat which is a replica of the racing boats that they have at Teluk Bakau. It was a really cool thing. I hope that if a school comes to visit my school we can be just as hospitable to them!
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| The local students before being dismissed to their classrooms |
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| The boat for ICS |
After the closing ceremony there were lots of tears both by our students and their students. It was a really cool moment seeing our middle school students' lives be touched by the experience. My friend found me right before we left and we played the clapping game one more time before we boarded the boat. She was so sweet. I just wonder what her future holds for her - I hope she will get to be one of the kids who will get to go to middle school and high school (on another island).
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| :) |
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| One of the high school students (she attends classes on another island) |
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| Walking down the pier to leave the village |
We boarded the boats and lots of the students ran down to the houses by the pier to wave goodbye. I feel very lucky that they allowed us to come into their village with their customs and allowed us to see what their life is like. I hope we were not too much of a burden to them.
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| Saying Goodbye |
On Thursday we got to do a hike in the jungle! It was so awesome to move and get some walking in and just go. I tried to stay by our guide Mike and I got to hear all about the jungle. I tried jungle blueberries, watched kids eat termites, found the biggest nastiest spider ever, saw rubber being harvested from a tree, saw pitcher plants, wild boar tracks and wild monkeys. :) We hiked to a waterfall and got in the water which was sooo cool and refreshing :) Lots of students jumped in (with the supervision of the Telunas folks).
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| The Waterfall! |
While working on the village was awesome and an amazing experience, hiking in the jungle was another that was just as cool but in different ways. I don't know that I would get tired of that hike. It was such a neat way to experience the environment around us and see what is just beyond the mangroves :)
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| The path back to the boat |
We got back to the boats (you had to take a boat everywhere) and went back through the mangrove forest to get back to Telunas. The mangroves are so fascinating - its a place where plants must be able to handle both fresh water and salt water - its where the river meets the sea. When they picked us up they only had one longboat and one smaller fiberglass speed boat. It worked out that I was on the little speedboat and that was exhilarating! We went so fast and it was soooo fun!
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| The mangroves and a long boat |
One of the things I appreciated the most about being there was that the environment had such an impact on daily life. You were more connected to nature. Certain activities (piers to use, shrimping and where you could jump off of the deck) depended on the tides and we only used the boats when the thunderstorms died down (because we could delay going to the village - I am really thankful it didn't happen when we were on the way to the airport!!). It was so nice being able to be outside more during the day. It was sort of like camp and that made me smile :) I really appreciated the killer sunset on the last night. It was sooooo breathtaking - especially for about five minutes :)
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| Best Sunset on the Last Night :) |
On Friday we repeated the travel process, just in reverse order. We started with the longboats, went to the ferry, took the bus to the airport, and then got to the airport. Tim came to the airport to meet me and we hopped on the next bus that dropped off near home :)
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| One of the longboats on the final morning |
Overall it was a fantastic trip with super responsible students (they were always in the right places!) and other teachers who were very easy to be with and fun to be around. I loved getting to experience another culture and being able to see the jungle on the hike. It was just wonderful :) I am very thankful for the chance to go :)
There has been lots of other stuff going on - we will update on that and our Tokyo trip another night :) <3 Christine
