Indonesia: Life In The Islands

Who's Afraid of Public Speaking?

I haven’t felt this nervous for the first day of school since ninth grade. I woke up around 5:15 this morning to steel my nerves and mandi. It was honest-to-god chilly in my house this morning—American-below-70 chilly, not Indonesian-below-90 chilly. Every time I poured a bucket of cold water over my head an uncontrollable huge shiver ran though my body.

By the time I finally warmed up and got dressed, it was almost time for my neighbors to come get me. I could hear Made saying “excuse me…excuse me” through my locked gate as I slathered on eye liner and grabbed my bag. Not being totally prepared made my stomach crunch into an even tighter ball.

Once we reached school, Made and Eka escorted me to the principle’s office and then the 13 and 15 year old left the nervous 22 year old alone on her first day. This morning was the school wide flag ceremony. All of the teachers and students arranged themselves into formations on the basketball court—about 30 teachers and 850 students. There was a marching/military group that made their way around the court at the start of the ceremony. It was interesting yet slightly creepy to see these young boys and the girls in Muslim head scarves marching so seriously and reverently in front of their peers. They raised the Indonesian flag as a choir of sorts sang what I assumed was the national anthem. There was a series of commands and statements read by members of the marching group, and then Principle Tri stepped up to the mike. He said a number of things I couldn’t catch, and then he motioned toward me and said my name. Everyone cheered! I waved and debated curtseying in my long pleated skirt, but fortunately decided against it.

THEN next thing I knew, everyone was motioning to me to go out to the stage. Suharyadi whispered that I had to make a speech. Um, how about a warning?? Fortunately I didn’t have time for my fear of public speaking to come raging back full force, and I just walked to the stage in my little white shirt, black skirt, and high heels (I mention what I was wearing because everyone else, including all of the teachers and maintenance workers, were wearing uniforms) and just freestyled. I’ve learned from going to other classrooms that you should always say that you are happy to be in a country as beautiful as Indonesia. That elicited a giant cheer. I said I was American. Another cheer. I said I wanted to help everyone learn English as long as they would help me learn Bahasa Indonesia. I said I was so happy to be at SMA 3 for nine months and then giggled nervously into the microphone. 850 huge cheers. Apparently at that point I was supposed to stay on the stage while someone led a military salute in my honor, but since we didn’t drill at my middle school I got confused and skipped off. There was a lot of motioning and Indonesian-speaking trying to get me back onto the platform, but I escaped to the side.

After my early morning embarrassment, I worked out my schedule with Suharyadi and Moedinari, another English teacher. I’m teaching about 18 hours a week, with some extra hours scheduled to help the teachers with their English. Indonesian teachers of course have to use the English terms to teach Biology and Physics, so the subject teachers were desperate for me to teach them some phrases. Lots of them came up to me just to talk and try to improve their grammar. I spoke to them and helped them for about four hours, and then I went and watched my first class. Ibu Moedinari showed me into a room of about 38 tenth graders who all cheered when they found out I would be their teacher. I sat in the back row and chatted with one of them during class, his name was Rizky and he was extremely shy. I told him Rizky meant dangerous in America and he had the coolest name I had ever heard. He blushed uncontrollably and smiled—I don’t actually know how much English he understood because he never spoke to me haha. All of the kids kept turning to look at me and there was an air of excitement in the room at the thought of a change, maybe less work! Bu Moedinari used mostly ditto worksheets to have them speak and write, and my job is to get them to focus on conversation. I want to start with games and move toward working together in teams to try and spark some excitement for learning English. My Indonesian has improved 200% just from the three days I’ve been in Malang and the more I learn, the more I’m anxious to know. I need to get them to feel the same way about English.

I went home around 1:30, 7 hours after I had gotten there. This week I’m just observing my classes, feeling what level they’re at and seeing the topics they have to cover for their national exams. They take the exams in year eleven, so I have to aim some of my lessons toward that.

Tonight Johanna, Layne and I went to the famous Tugu Hotel Malang. Every time we mentioned Malang at AMINEF the Executive Director, Mike McCoy, would tell us to go to Tugu. Now I know why! The hotel is partially an antique store, with beautiful pieces from China, Hindu, and Buddhist religions. We took a tour that led us through the Persian room, the French room, Indian, and various Asian themes. The walls are mostly painted red which seems a little extreme, but it worked because of the soft lighting and decorative wall art. They had some fabulous paintings that I would love to get prints of for my (as of yet) barren walls. We ate a great dinner in the French/Italian restaurant, and I carbo-loaded to make it through the next few days on fruit and water.

I had a breakthrough in Indonesian today. I’m forced to use it at school to try and make teachers understand English, and suddenly everything I’ve learned came flowing back to me. I learned some more key phrases like “saya pikir” (I think) and really started to be able to compose more complex sentences. Then, the ultimate validation: I had a heated discussion with a cab driver and two men at the Tugu Hotel in Indonesian, insisting my house was close to the hotel and that the driver should know where it was. In the car on the way back we spoke a little, and he told me I spoke very good Bahasa Indonesia! Excellent ending to the day.

posted by Caitlin @ 10:10 PM