Snake... Thanksgiving Dinner of Champions

As you might imagine they don't really celebrate Thanksgiving here. In fact turkey is considered unclean so you can't find it here (unless you buy it from the international grocery store where they import it for a pretty penny.) In fact we had a normal day of school on Thanksgiving and it could of easily come and gone without realizing it was Thanksgiving. A group of the singles decided to get together to celebrate this past Thursday since we were famililess. To make this Thanksgiving memorable we choose to do something different, something adventurous and go out for cobra. We got directions to a place where someone else had been before and took off Thursday around 6:30. For some reason I was expecting a hole in the wall place with snakes hanging all around and perhaps dingy and dark. But the restaurant was nice, open, and very clean without a snake in sight. We had many variations of snake to choose from: sweet and sour snake, spicy snake, snake soup, snake with vegetables, etc. and we choose to share and try some of them all. One of the few channels we get here is Travel and Living and I think too many of us have been watching the show "Bizarre Foods," because we then asked if we could see the snakes and watch them kill them. They led us back through the kitchen to a small room where they pulled out a cobra from a metal box. They carefully caught hold of the snake's head and placed it in this contraption that would keep the cobra from biting or moving while they took a large knife and chopped the head off. After this they drained all of the blood out. Meanwhile both the head and the body continued moving for quite some time. They washed and de-skinned it in one large piece. While all of this was going on eight of us were crammed in this small back room with our cameras ready. They indulged our touristness and let us take pictures of it all. We went back to our table and began trying some of the different varieties of snake we had ordered. I wouldn't say that it was particularly delicious or that I want to go back again for more. But it wasn't bad either. Most of the types we had chosen were fried and kind of tasted like chicken. The soup was different, kind of like egg drop soup with finely chopped snake and tiny pieces of bone that had found their way in. We finished up dinner and headed for home. To end out the evening we gathered at one of our houses for dessert of cookies and ice cream. Nothing about our evening was very Thanksgivingy, but I was thankful to be with friends and for the adventure we shared that definitely brought us closer.

The next night, Friday, we were invited over for a Thanksgiving feast at the Hegles, a school family. The husband teaches computer and the wife teaches English and ESL, and their three kids go to BAIS. They went all out and bought a turkey and everybody brought different Thanksgiving dishes like stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, and other such foods. For dessert we had a delicious pumpkin pie along with some other things to choose from. There was quite the spread of food and it felt more like a Thanksgiving celebration.

Some added pictures for those who need proof. :)

The name of the restaurant.

Cobra- my snake of choice. :) They sure knew how to handle these guys.

The delicious spread of various snake dishes. That stuff on the right is the snake soup.

Me and some of the girls at the normal Thanksgiving dinner.

"Dive-In" in the Rain

A couple weekends ago I acted as chaperon to Student Council's first official event. They planned a pool party or "dive-in," movie in the pool, event. 60 eighth through twelve graders planned to come have a night of fun. But the night started out a little rough. I showed up early along with the other adults to help set things up. Shortly after arriving at the pool they had rented out for the evening, it began pouring. We were running around in the rain trying to set things up, figure out where to put the projector for the movie, how to hook up sound, etc. Meanwhile the student council members were busy blowing up inner tubes and floating rafts to play with in the pool. Then it turned from downpour to thunder storm. It started thundering and lightning pretty strong. It was raining so hard the pool started overflowing. Some of the students were messing around in the pool and we had to get the students out for fear that they'd be struck by lightening. We were all soaking wet from running around in the rain. This went on for about an hour and we were worried that perhaps the whole event would flop. But slowly it began to lighten up and then finally stopped completely just as the event was supposed to start and students began showing up. Unfortunately we continued to have technical difficulties with the projector and sound equipment for the movie. The student council members planned some pool games like tossing a coconut through the floaty tubes or a belly flop contest. Or tying a rope across the pool with prizes tied to it that the students in the pool had to find ways to work together and reach the surprises. For a while the students pretty much entertained themselves by tying inner tubes together and other various activities with the rafts. Finally after a couple of hours we got the movie working and watched Monsters Inc. It was fun to see my students outside of class enjoying life and each other. Even students who didn't want to swim and showed up in their clothes somehow ended up in the pool.

Showing Some School Spirit

Our school has three floors. On the first floor are 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades. On the second floor is 5th grade and mostly middle school classrooms and lockers. On the third floor is where the high school classrooms and lockers are, along with my office/home base classroom. Often times it seems like a completely different world up on the third floor. Perhaps because we have an incredible view out across the valley that you don't get on the bottom two floors. Or perhaps it's because the world of high school students is so drastically different from that of the elementary kids. I can go days without seeing some of the elementary teachers... we live in different worlds. Student Council is something they've started up again this year after going several years without one. As one of their first activities they decorated the school to raise school spirit and encourage the guys and girl soccer players before a big tournament a couple of weeks ago. Here are some pics of what they came up with. Pretty creative.

Signs on the lockers of all the players...

...with signs for people to write encouraging notes.

A wall of 2s crossed out in the shape of a giant one- cheering the guys on to win.

Torrential Downpour

Rainy season has definitely come. I don't particularly like rain. Probably because I'm not used to it. I grew up in Southern California where we see rain a few times a year. When it does start to sprinkle all the news channels start broadcasting "Storm Watch" with updates every 10 minutes from real people standing out in the rain. Let me tell you- that is not rain. I have a new definition of rain.

In the States you don't just wake up one day and decide that winter has begun, but it did seem like one day we woke up and rainy season had come. Rumor has it that they seeded the sky or the clouds or something to cause it to start raining and thus to bring rainy season. I'm not sure how this works or who decides this or if it is even true. "They" said dry season had gone on for too long. Some people didn't have water because of the drought.

It now rains not just a couple times a week, or even everyday, but several times a day. Torrential downpour. When I was at my training over the summer I heard people who had lived here talk about torrential downpour and I didn't really know what that meant. Now I do. I've never seen rain fall from the sky that hard and that much. I think I've already seen more rain in the past month or so then in my entire life. Often times it starts around noon and might rain for an hour, then starts again as school is ending and rains all afternoon. Then it usually stops for a while and starts up again in the evening and rains all night.

One day, at the beginning of rainy season, I was sitting at the staff table where all the teachers eat lunch. This eating area is outside but covered over the top. All of a sudden out of nowhere it started coming down. I sat there watching it rain harder than I had ever seen it rain. I was in awe of the power and amount of water coming out of the sky, feeling the mist from it all on my face, not wanting to move and step out into the pouring rain.

The worst is when it comes during 7th period. Because our school is out of space, I have to teach in different classrooms throughout the day. Seventh period I teach in what we call the upper house. I am in this little classroom which has a tin roof directly adjacent to it. On days when it starts pouring during 7th period it bangs on the tin roof so hard I can't hear myself think and my students can't hear me unless I scream over the noise of the rain. Rain is loud. Profound conclusion, I know. I guess I never knew that before: rain can be really quite loud. Anyway, today during 7th period the torrential downpour came and began making a ruckus. One of my students, shouting over the rain, asked if he could close the door. I agreed, knowing that this wasn't going to do any good. The door to our classroom isn't really a door but just a frame covered in screen, along with all the windows. Not too helpful in keeping out the noise. Another student just rolled their eyes at the ridiculousness of it all, unable to think because of the noise.

In the midst of all this rain I find myself without a rain jacket. For some reason I came to the tropics without proper protection, i.e. a rain jacket of any sort. As I was packing I was thinking I was going to be so hot that there would be no way I would need a jacket. Man, was I not thinking. It's actually cooled down quite a bit with the arrival of rainy season. Especially in our apartment which also has windows covered in screens so that they are open to the outside and the cool night air comes right on in. So I came to Indonesia without a jacket but surely that's no problem. I'll just go out and buy one. Except everywhere I look I can't find one. It's like they don't sell rain jackets here. So here I am living in the tropics without a rain jacket. That's my story about the rain.

Questionable

My friend Jennie loves adventure and trying new things (she's an extreme P... if that means anything to you). We were going to grab a bite to eat one night and ended up going to Indonesian food at a place one of the high schoolers highly recommended. After being taken up two flights of stairs and through various rooms, we ended up on the balcony of this restaurant, where we were offered prime seating right in front of a group playing the xylophone or some traditional bamboo instrument like it. We opted to not be in the spotlight and chose a table more off to the side. The menu had a wide variety of fish that they'd serve to you freshly barbequed and whole. We chose some more common Indonesian dishes like nasi goreng (fried rice) with some sea food. But for dessert Jennie's high school friend raved about this thing... not sure what it's called. It's a banana wrapped in a gelatinous coconut mixture, floating in ice sweetened condensed milk and pink stuff. Tastes about like it looks! You just never know. Needless to say, by the time we were done with all that we were ready to go and leave the xylophone players behind. We both kind of had a headache.

Indonesian Culture Day

On Friday we had a school wide celebration of our host culture, Indonesia. All students and staff were encouraged to come dressed in traditional Indonesian clothing. One of my student's parents donated batik fabric to all the new teachers to be made into a sarong (traditional Indonesian skirt) and I bought my top, called a kabaya, at a local shop.

A group of Indonesian moms from the school helped the committee who was in charge to plan the day and worked hard to decorate our school gym.

We started the day with a whole school assembly, including many parents who chose to join us for the day. As part of the performance some local musicians came to sing and play traditional instruments.

At one point they invited people up to dance with them, which turned into an all out dance party.

Also some middle school students did a wonderful job performing traditional Indonesian dances. Many of the younger grades performed songs or dances they had learned in Indonesian class.

We ended the assembly with a contest to see who had the best Indonesian costume. We picked two winners, a guy and a girl, from elementary, two from secondary, and two teachers. Here you see all of the staff up for a group shot before they announced the winners.

Next we gathered into our teams for the rest of the day. I led the Papua team along with the art teacher. They had put us into mixed groups so we had students from Kindergarten all the way through Twelfth grade in each group. We buddied up the little ones with the big kids so no one would get left behind. It was neat all throughout the day to observe all different ages of students interacting and helping each other. I was so impressed with how the big kids took on and cared for the little ones. Next we began the fun part. As a group we rotated to nine different stations for 15 minutes each. Each station was named for a different part of Indonesia, such as Java, Bali, Siluwasi, etc. The stations were various games and activities indigenous to Indonesia. At some stations we got to try food like sate, nasi goreng, and other traditional foods. At one station a guy was chopping open coconut and we drank some of the milk straight from the coconut. Then they let us scoop out some of the meat and taste it. At another station our students watched a man make batik and a few of them even got a chance to try it.

At different station we decorated kites and then tried to fly them. At another station our students attempted to climb a greased pole (the same event we had seen grown men struggle to do at Indonesian Independence Day).

At a different station the students attempted to walk in wooden sandals, two long boards that hold four people who have to use team work and coordination to walk around in them.

It was so neat to see the high school kids working together with the first and second graders, despite some frustration.

Lastly, at another station we got to take a becak ride. A becak is a form of transportation in Indonesia with a bike in the back where someone peddles and a carriage in the front where you ride. Here I ride with one of my 9th grade students.

Before we started the rotations each student got a map of Indonesia, as we went to each station they got a sticker that represented that place to add to that specific location on their map. Here one group takes a moment to put on their stickers and sample an Indonesian noodle dish.

By the time we were done with all of this the half-day was over and it was time to go home. It was a crazy and chaotic day, but so much fun.
The committee worked so hard planning the day and did a wonderful job.

To see all the fun pictures from the day visit this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/emilyinbandung/IndonesianCultureDay