Part VIII:
Right on schedule, the girls arrived at my door.
“Hello Miss!” “Good morning miss!”
I had set my alarm for 5am but at 4:15, the call to prayer went off and I awoke. I nodded off to sleep until 5 and then decided I should get up – if they come this morning I want to be ready!
I check my phone and see a number of notifications but one stands out, from my momma – a Happy Birthday text and a picture 🙂 I smile, scroll through facebook and decide that the first thing I’m doing on my birthday is making coffee.
2 year old Mackenzie on her birthday!
I make coffee and turn on the fan to air the living space of the haze that seems to descend inside my house every night. I realize its 5:15am and not knowing when I may have morning visitors, I race to get ready. I decide a hot pink v-neck shirt is birthday appropriate, although I don’t know if it is school appropriate. But it’s my birthday so I’m wearing what I want. I pull on a long blue and white strip skirt and smile, today will be great whatever it may bring!
I finish getting ready and decide to sweep the carcasses of the bugs I killed last night out the door. As I’m sweeping, the girls arrive and off we go to breakfast!
The other students are lining up in their military style rows but we walk past them and get to the dining hall first. I laugh and ask whether they get to skip the line by coming to get me J They say “yes! We escape” and giggle.
Breakfast consists of a small slice of cooked eggplant, a fried egg, and rice. I’m getting the hang of the dining hall and I think the girls are impressed. The girls ask me my major and I tell them “international studies and women’s studies”. I wonder what door I’ve cracked open now…
“Women’s studies? What is that?”
“Well, in America men are often higher than women but many people think women and men should be equal. So I study how to make women more equal.”
“Ahhh! Yes! Equal to men! What you do with that? Teacher?”
“Maybe! Or go to government and help change laws (they struggle to understand “laws” so we settle on “government rules” instead). In America, men and women not paid the same for the same job. Men get $1 and women get $.75.”
“Ahhhh” (I think that went over their heads).
“How old are you Miss?”
I smile, “23! Today… today is my birthday!”
Gasps all around. “Today?!” “Miss, sorry we didn’t know!” “Happy birthday!!”
One of them starts singing happy birthday quietly (the students mostly eat in silence so we are by far the loudest table). They giggle and laugh and struggle to pronounce “twenty third birthday”. But they aren’t shy in trying and asking me questions and I love it!
The meal is almost over and the girls start speaking excitedly in Indonesian.
“Jalan” “ulang tahun” I hear. I know those words, walk (kind of like go) and birthday. I have an idea of what they may be planning…
The head student stands up to end the meal. Keke walks up to him and whispers to him. It’s unusual for a student to interrupt him so I know now what they are up to. He nods and she whispers to a few of the other tables. Then, Keke says whatever it is that ends the meal. And then says in English, “And today we celebrate Miss Mackenzie’s 23rd birthday!” and all the students clap and smile at me.
I laugh and say thank you. The meal ends and we go to wash our spoons. Other students come up to me and say happy birthday – they are so shy but so cute. I tell them I will see them at school later and they head one direction and I walk back to my house.
The boys are lining up and a few say, “good morning miss!”
I smile back, “good morning!”
“Good Morning” they all chant back to me.
With a huge smile on my face, I unlock my door, set me bag down, and think, gosh, it’s only 6:15 and this is already a great day.
Part IX:
After my birthday breakfast, I wait for Ibu Tisia (the 11th grade English teacher) to come pick me up. She arrives 25 minutes late, 15 minutes after class had officially started but I wasn’t worried… I’m operating on Indonesian time. I jump on the back of her motor bike and ride the short distance through the asrama (dorms) to the classrooms. She checks in with the teachers and we walk to her class.
As I don’t have my official work visa yet, I can’t technically teach – and apparently if I do, and the immigration official finds out, then he might not give me my limited stay work visa :/ So in this first week, we’re here to settle in and observe classes.
I’ll be working with both Ibu Tisia (10th grade) and Ibu Juniar (11th grade). Each grade is divided into 4 or 5 classes (11-1, 11-2, etc) and each class has about 25-30 students in it. Each class is assigned a classroom and the teachers move from room to room, rather than the students. From what I can tell, teachers see the students once a week – at least that’s how the English classes go. So on Monday, 11-1 meets with Ibu Tisia at 9 am and 11-2 at 11am. Then 11-3 on Wednesday and 11-4 on Friday (or something like that… trust me, I’m confused about most everything still). I think I’ll have around nine classes between grades 10 and 11 that each meet once a week. Then, I’ll run the English club for two hours a week to round out my 20/hr/week limit.
Enough about the details… Tisia and I walk into class on Thursday morning (20 minutes late by now) and all the students stop chattering and stare (at me) intently. I smile, and not knowing what I’m supposed to do yet, follow Tisia to the teacher’s desk at the front of the room. She introduces me to the students and asks me to say a few things about myself. I tell them my name, that I’m from Seattle and that I’m so excited to be their teacher this year. They all smile hugely at me and clap excitedly.
One of the students gets a chair for me and I sit in the corner and watch. I quickly realize that this is Tisia’s first time with this class (although school started a few weeks ago? Still not sure about that one). I smile as I watch her explain her expectations and her rules for the classroom – it wasn’t that long ago that I was in their position, listening to a prof explain her expectations! Even on the other side of the world, education looks remarkably similar 😀
Tisia then begins her lesson on “Suggestions and offers.” It’s different from what I expected… more advanced, but also taught very quick. There is a projector in the classroom so she has a powerpoint but I know half of the students don’t understand what she is talking. Most can read the words on the screen, but do they understand?
Sitting in my corner, I’m remembering the brief teaching lessons we had at our pre-departure orientation in DC. At least five activities come to mind immediately, of ways to practice and help make sense of the concepts she is teaching. I’m excited to begin helping and to see what I can do with these students.
Later, I observe Ibu Juniar’s 10th grade class. This class is taught far differently. There is no projector in the 10th grade classrooms so all we have is the whiteboard. Ibu Juniar has the students write on the board the answers to their homework about the main ideas and details of an example Pen Pal letter. The letter is long and their answers are long as well. We spend the whole two hours rewriting the homework they had previously done. It’s not the most productive use of class time but its enlightening and I’m looking forward to working with Ibu Juniar and coming up with lots of activities for class.
After class, the teachers excitedly tell me that we’re going to lunch at 2pm to celebrate my birthday 🙂 Class ended at 11:30 so all the teachers disperse with the plan to meet at school at 2, once school is over. I go home and without quite meaning to, collapse on my bed and fall fast asleep.
I wake up at 1:30 and get ready to leave. They pick me up and drive me across town to a restaurant on the river. I’ve heard a lot about this place, it’s one of their favorite “hangout spots”. We sit by the river, take selfies, and eat delicious fish with our hands. It was certainly a memorable celebration 😛
Birthday lunch! My coteachers are on either side of me (Ibu Tisia – counterpart and 11th grade co-teacher) on the left and Ibu Juniar (10th grade coteacher) on the right.
We ate out there… it was beautiful – right on the river.
I spend the rest of the afternoon reading. I eat dinner with my students in the dining hall and then go back to my house. I’ve got a lot of alone time at the moment, especially since I’m too dependent on others to leave the school. I spent a quiet evening in my house, chatted with my mom before she went to work, and then drifted off to sleep 🙂
