Emily's Adventures at Sea!!!

I have been living in Samarinda for a little over a month now, and it feels like I’m starting to develop a regular life and a routine. “Regular life” here does include strange activities like trips to crocodile farms and a visit to a under-construction housing development where I toured some model homes, but I really enjoy that I can consider experiences like that part of my daily routine.

I go to school Monday thru Friday and I teach ten classes a week to the 10^th grade students. I see the entire 10^th grade class each week, so that means about 400 students and 40 students in each class. It is a lot of students, so I do feel worried that I won’t be able to really get to know each and every one. Luckily, they are pretty well behaved; they talk to each other in class, but they tend to hush up when I glare at them. Of course sometimes they are supposed to talk in class, and the students are shy so it is a bit difficult to have them raise their hands to answer questions as individuals. I’m betting that shyness will fade as the weeks go by.

When I teach, I’m focusing mostly on listening and speaking activities. So far that has meant mini-presentations about me and my life in America and lots of basic conversation practice (this past week we talked about invitations). It is fun, and while my school gives me the conversation topic they want me to focus on each week, I have a lot of freedom in how I actually teach.

My recent adventures have included a trip to a crocodile farm where they raise crocs for eating and for medicinal purposes (I was told that crocodile penis tea makes men virile, and then I wasn’t allowed to try any for myself). I went on a short trip to another city about 3 hours away, that is actually very similar to my city, but it has a beach and a starbucks, so that was reason enough to go there. I’ve been fingerprinted by the police, and they also have a record of my teeth, hair color, eye color, and ear shape, so the entire province would be able to identify me if necessary. Last week I went to watch two of the students at a speech competition at the local anti-corruption festival, and was roped into being a judge as soon as they saw my native English-speaking bule face. It was actually an interesting chance to hear students talk about a very important issue, but between the fact that it is a complicated issue and they were speaking in a second language, nobody said anything that seemed too radical, or even practical.

I still don’t speak or understand as much bahasa as I would like, but I suppose I’m making a little progress (mostly I know the words for my favorite foods). I try to talk to my neighbors and the teachers at my school, and I lot of it ends it me tilting my head and squinting at them in confusion. But I tell my students the only way to get better at a new language is to try and keep trying and even make lots of silly mistakes, so if that lesson is true for them, its probably true for me too.

These are a couple pictures from my day in Balikpapan