I've
been in Indonesia for about two and a half weeks now. So far so good.
We are
staying at an unbelievably beautiful hotel. I have the nicest
bathroom that I'll probably have for many years to come, along with
people who clean my room for me and do my laundry, so I'm feeling
very spoiled and very lucky.
My
training program has been a Monday thru Saturday experience of
intensive Bahasa Indonesia classes, teacher training, and all sorts
of useful cultural training. We've had some amazing lectures about
the diverse topics of Indonesian history, politics, and culture; how
the education system works here; general healthcare; and lots of
conversations about general safety (avoiding motorbikes, surviving
earthquakes, etc.). I feel like it is giving me a good background of
information that will tie into many aspects of trying to live and
work in Indonesia. It has been fun to feel a bit like a college
student again, sitting down to an interesting lecture and trying to
take notes.
Along
with all the important educational aspects of the past couple weeks,
this has been a wonderful chance to meet incredible people. There are
50 ETAs in Indonesia this year (the program has been hugely expanded)
and we're all together for this training program. We hang out between
sessions and go out to dinner in the evenings. We've had time for
some small adventures outside the hotel. I went hiking to see some
local caves and waterfalls the first weekend here. We saw an amazing
performance of wayang puppetry, dance, and angklung music (bamboo
tubes of different sizes, that the musicians shake to make different
notes) this past weekend.
All in
all, I'm feeling very happy and so excited to move to Samarinda next
week. It feels a bit like I'm living in a bubble, surrounded by
English-speaking Americans and a wonderful hotel staff who feed us
every couple hours and let me practice my childlike bahasa skills on
them without laughing (at least, without laughing directly at me).
I'm sure
that moving to my site will be a big change. I'll have to navigate
thru the first moments of meeting my neighbors and the people who
work at my school. I'll have to teach my first classes (and I'm not
sure how effective the tricks of teaching 3 yr olds or playing
Camouflage in the woods are going to be). I suppose I'll even have to
figure out where on earth I can get a good cup of coffee.
But, I
am incredibly excited.
