August 17--Indonesian Independence Day
The last few weeks the city has been putting up tons of Indonesian flags (red and white), banners, and signs. August 17th marks the 61st year since the country won independence from the Netherlands. We had the day off from orientation (thank god!) and Ony took us to Ancol Beach in West Jakarta to see some of the activities. It took a long time to get there because of the traffic, and it was very hot. We walked on a boardwalk by the water and watched people celebrating. There were a lot of boats sailing around, and they had ads on their sides as well as on the sails. People were packed into them like sardines, although I've noticed that that doesn't really bother anyone here.
Farther down the boardwalk, hundreds of people were swimming in the murky water. It didn't look to clean, but it was so hot I almost wanted to go in. Almost. People were having picnics on the beach and many of them called out to us when we walked by.
We finally reached the end of the boardwalk where the main event was going on--the greased pole game. Young men were climbing on top of their friends and trying to make their way up a greased pole to reach the prizes that were hanging on top, like bikes and t-shirts. Everyone was yelling as the top man on each human totem pole would jump off his friend's hands and grab onto the wooden structure on the top of the pole. It looked SO dangerous to us, but I didn't see anyone fall and break their back. I took lots of pictures--when they saw I had a camera, people ran over to me with their new bikes and friends and motioned frantically for me to take their photo. Then they usually tried to sell me their new bicycle haha.
Behind the greased poles was an Independence Day concert. The bands who were playing were pretty good, but then they had some technical difficulties and there was a long silence. I couldn't really take the heat anymore, so at that point me and a few other ETAs went back to the hotel.
That night, I went with Anne and Layne to Plaze Indonesia for our first Indonesian movie experience. We made the mistake of going to see My Super Ex-Girlfriend (terrible), but the theater itself was super nice. $6 gets you a huge, plush seat in front of a giant screen. Apparently there is another theater around our hotel where for $9, you get a ticket and a personal butler who brings who snacks throughout the movie. We definitely need to try and hit that up before we leave!
Orientation
For the last month, we've been going to AMINEF (American Indonesia Exchange Foundation) in Balai Pustaka to learn about culture, teaching, and as much Bahasa Indonesia as we can cram into four weeks. Bahasa isn't a difficult language, but there's lots of new vocab to memorize! There are no tenses, which make it a little easier--you say "I went to the store" and "I go to the store" exactly the same way. The words aren't too hard to pronounce and are actually pretty fun to say. My favorite word so far is perpustakaan--aka library.
For the first two weeks we also had culture sessions everyday. These ranged from lectures on health and how to avoid avian flu (a very scary one) to how to not offend Indonesians with our relationships (no one of the opposite sex is allowed in your house with the door shut). Indonesian communities are very tight knit and each one has a leader. As boles (the Indonesian word for white people) everyone will know what we are doing at all times. It's definitely like living in a fishbowl--if we meet with a friend and go to the movies, the next day people in our town will ask us about it. Some of the other ETAs seemed really surprised that they wouldn't be able to date Indonesians. I don't think they realized how extreme the Indonesian views on dating before marriage are. I was told before I got here what the expectations were, so I wasn't as shocked--but it IS strange to be 22 years and told that even another male ETA, if he visited me, couldn't sleep on my couch. It would look too questionable to the rest of the community.
The rest of the time during orientation is spent on teaching. The first few weeks we focused on speaking and using the white board correctly. The final days we're each doing individual teaching simulations where we stand in front of the other ETAs and present a thirty minute lesson that we would give to our kids in high school. It's a little nerve wracking to pretend to teach nouns to a bunch of kids with college degrees (and a few with their masters's!) but I really think it's helped to make us all a little more secure about standing in front of classes of our own in a few weeks.
Our instructors at AMINEF are really great. Our Bahasa teacher is named Ony. He won a Fulbright last year to go to Stanford and teach Indonesian there. He is really funny and sweet and an excellent teacher. He has a really endearing high laugh that makes us all burst into laughter when he does. Our teaching instructor is named Lusi. She teaches at the University and has really been very patient with us (we're not always the most serious in our presentations). She's worked all around Indonesia observing teachers and can tell us a lot about controlling a classroom of forty kids. It's going to be unbelievably different from what we experienced in our high schools--for example, even though these kids are fifteen years old, we're still expected to play games with them at the beginning of every class. They don't study English very seriously, and our job as native speakers is to spark an interest in them and try to get them to focus and have a goal when it comes to learning English. All I have to say is, thank god English is my first language--because it's so complicated to teach I don't think I ever would have learned it if it wasn't.
Jakarta: the journey here
I've been in Jakarta, Indonesia for almost exactly a month now. The trip over here took three days, from NY to San Fran, San Fran to Hong Kong, Hong Kong to Singapore, a night in a five star hotel, and then the one hour flight from Singapore to Jakarta on the third day of traveling.
Along the way I met up with the seventeen other English Teaching Assistants, or ETAs. We had never met before, so mostly I just approached people who looked like they were around 20-30 years old and asked if they were going to Indonesia. By the time we stayed in the hotel in Singapore, we had all met up.
The US government is not wasting any money when it comes to our accomodations! We were picked up at the Soekarno Airport in Jakarta by our coordinator, Nelly, and taken to the very nice Hotel Aryaduta in downtown Jakarta. We had all assumed we would have roommates, but no--for the entire month of August, we each get our own room in a five star hotel. Most of us had expected to be roughing it here, so that was even more of a shock than bad conditions would have been!
Jakarta is so different than any city I've ever been in--the majority of people who live here are Muslim, and there are five calls to prayer a day. Mosques throughout the city broadcast prayers and singing on speakers. You'll be walking down the street when suddenly the air will be filled with songs and the crackle of the microphones. It actually sounds very beautiful. The first call to prayer is at 4:30 am. It woke me up for the first week, but now I can sleep through it. The other calls are at noon (siang), 3 pm, 6 pm, and 7pm.
The people here have been overwhelmingly friendly so far. We're obviously foreigners with our light skin, so when we walk on the road people yell "Mister, mister" and any other English words they know. I always speak back, but "How are you?" is pretty much the extent of most people's vocabulary and then they just smile at me. The people at the hotel know a little more English, and they are always eager to talk to us and try to improve. They're all very nice and memorize our names and places where we go a lot, so that's been really fun.
Jakarta is very cheap compared to the US. They use the rupiah here, and there are about 9,500 rp per $1USD. A ten minute cab ride will usually cost about 12,000 rp, or just a little over a dollar. Split between four people, that isn't too bad! And it's a good thing taxis are cheap, because the traffic here is atrocious. The city was designed with series of one way streets with no turnabouts, so to get to an address on the other side of the road you have to travel all the way around a city block. The traffic from about 3 pm through 8 pm is slowed to a crawl everyday, and a ten minute taxi ride in the morning can take as long as 45 minutes in the afternoon.
