Q&A with Julianne

One of my most devoted blog followers recently sent me a snail-mail letter enclosed in a Thanksgiving card that included a list of random things that she wanted to know more about. I decided to answer her questions here on my blog because, as every teacher knows, if one student asks a question, others are probably wondering the same thing. I encourage you to keep asking me questions!

1. What do you know about dangerous and poisonous wildlife where you are, things such as moray eels, sharks, scorpions, snakes, etc.?

Fortunately, there is no dangerous or poisonous wildlife on land that I am aware of. In the water, there are scorpionfish, stonefish, sea snakes, and stingrays. When diving, it is easy to avoid these creatures because you’re not walking along the bottom, where stingrays lurk, and you shouldn’t be sticking your hands in crevices where scorpionfish and stonefish hang out anyway. Sea snakes can sometimes approach, but it’s best to just keep your distance and give them plenty of room. Sharks are out there too, of course, but are only a threat if they are attracted by blood or flashy jewelry that they might mistake for prey.

2. Tell us about your experience grocery shopping and what meals you prepare for yourself and if you eat out often and where you go.

About once a week I go to the Galael supermarket to stock up on pasta, tomato sauce, processed cheese, eggs, cereal, milk, yogurt, and instant coffee (a sad but true fact is that even though Indonesia produces and exports some of the world’s finest coffees, the supermarket shelves are just lined with instant powders). Options are limited here and although I find my supermarket selections less than thrilling, they still give me the freedom to eat some Western foods at home.

The restaurants in Gorontalo are mostly either Indonesian or Chinese, with the exception of KFC, where I ate my Thanksgiving dinner. Unlike KFC in America, the one here doesn’t serve any biscuits or sides of mac n’cheese or veggies. It’s strictly fried chicken and rice, which, when you think about it, doesn’t really make it much different from all the other Indonesian restaurants selling fried chicken and rice.

During the week, I always eat lunch at a café at school – usually mie kuah dan telur (instant noodles with a hard-boiled egg) or tahu isi (fried tofu with a vegetable filling) with rice. In the evenings, I sometimes have a club sandwich or a “pizza” at the Quality Hotel or I’ll pop into Cafesera or Den Bagoes on the way home for some Indonesian fare like tempe (beancurd cake), tahu lontong (tofu with pressed rice in a peanut sauce), milu siram (Gorontalese corn soup) or gado-gado (vegetables with tofu in a peanut sauce).

I’m not crazy about any of these dishes and am always thrilled to get out of town to eat somewhere different. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I went to an Indian restaurant in Yogyakarta where the food tasted divine! Lack of culinary variety remains one of the hardest challenges for me here in Gorontalo, especially after two years in New York.

3. Is your generator up and running? How do you deal with power shortages? Ever have to get rid of food because it spoils?

Yes, my generator is up and running but I don’t actually use it that often even though my power normally goes off at least once a day. When the power goes out in the evenings, I generally use this time to make phone calls or listen to my iPod. Now that I have a new battery in my laptop (thanks to Maura’s boyfriend who bought me a new one in Jakarta), I can also draft a blog or watch a DVD during a power outage. I only power up the generator if I need to get school work done or if I have people over. The thing is horrifically loud! I don’t worry about food spoiling because I generally don’t buy food that spoils. Even my milk is UHT.

4. I think I recognized some of your new Indonesian tops, but are you wearing them with jeans? Did you get matching pants for any of the tops?

I just dropped off some material at the tailor’s the other day, so keep your eyes open for me wearing some new custom made tops! I pair all my tops with five pairs of long work pants that I had the tailor make for me as well – black, brown, tan, blue and gray stripped. I generally save my jeans for the weekends or evenings even though there’s no strict rule against wearing jeans at work.

5. Are you taking your malaria pills daily? Are there a lot of mosquitoes in the dry season? What will the rainy season be like?

I haven’t taken a single malaria pill. After arriving here, I learned that malaria is not a problem in Gorontalo. In fact, when people do show up at the hospitals with malaria, they are immediately questioned about what areas outside of Gorontalo they have recently visited. That said, it is possible to get Dengue fever here but there is no prophylactic for that. We’ve switched over to the rainy season now, but I haven’t noticed a change in the number of mosquitoes.

6. Is it too soon to tell if you will return to Indonesia next year, seek another ELF assignment, or seek a college teaching job?

At this point, I’m leaning more towards staying in Indonesia for another year. Despite all the challenges, this is an extraordinary experience.

7. Are you going to get a maid like one of the other ELFs did?

I have hired a cleaning lady and am very pleased with my decision. Having her come once a week to mop the floors, dust, scrub the toilets, and clean the windows saves me hours of time that I can put to better use grading papers or sightseeing. She asks for about $8 a week, which I gladly hand over. For me, this is an insignificant amount equivalent to maybe two grande lattes at Starbucks in New York. For her, it is a large sum of money that will enable her and her family to afford their basic necessities.

8. Why is the diving season only from November to April?

I asked myself the same question! It turns out that for the other six months of the year the seas are too rough for diving due to local weather conditions. My first scheduled dive on November 1^st was canceled because the waves were still too high.

A Day in Gorontalo (Part II)

Having gotten some positive feedback from you, my faithful blog followers, I have decided to write another “Day in Gorontalo” entry. Actually, I think I will try to do at least one a month for the rest of my fellowship. It’s a nice break from the theme based entries I usually write and it paints a pretty good picture of the highs and lows I experience on any given day.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

6:00 a.m. My alarm goes off early because I intend to mark some essays before breakfast. I then hit the snooze button repeatedly for an hour.

7:00 a.m. I am up and puttering around the house wondering when Nita will arrive with my tea. Yesterday she brought me tea and homemade cookies for breakfast. But today she doesn’t appear at all. So, I make a cup of instant Indocafe Cappuccino instead and sit down with my stack of essays from my Writing IV class.

8:00 a.m. Distracted by the sound of water coming from the front of my house, I tear myself away from my essays and angrily head towards the door. People are constantly helping themselves to my water supply because the gate that’s supposed to be in front of my house still hasn’t been finished yet. Prepared to confront the trespasser, I throw open the door and am stunned to find a young man washing his face and feet not with the hose connected to the house water supply, but with the waste water in the dirty old bucket left under the dripping air conditioner. My annoyance suddenly turns into pity for this young man who apparently has nowhere else to clean himself. I say good morning then go back inside.

9:00 a.m. Taking a break from the drudgery of marking my essays, I decide to make myself a pancake breakfast. These are absolutely delicious and I wonder why I haven’t been making these more often. Galael sells a Pancake & Crepe mix. All you have to do is all water and an egg. So simple, so good.

10:30 a.m. As I make my way through the stack of essays, I discover that an alarming number of students have turned in work that is clearly not their own. For this assignment, students had a choice of four possible topics, including describing interesting places in Gorontalo or Indonesia. One student’s essay had the following sentences about Kuta Beach, Bali: “Rapid development and an influx of visitors haven’t kept the surfers away and Kuta still remains one of Bali’s best surfing beaches and a great place to enjoy a beach lifestyle. While the surfers are still part of the Kuta scene, it’s the shopping, nightlife and party vibes that attract thousands of visitors.” Perhaps this student is quite gifted. Perhaps these sentences were not lifted directly from some tourist website. But then consider that the same essay opens with “Indonesia is a country that popular with beautiful scenery and also tourist attractions” and closes with “In conclusion, there are three tourist attractions in Indonesia. It is interesting to visit.” Nope, I don’t believe for one second that the body of the essay was the student’s own creation. What baffles me is that the students have the gall to submit such work. I had been warned that plagiarism was a big issue in Indonesia, particularly at my university, but it’s appalling and also a little bit devastating to see it done in my own classes.

10:45 a.m. Once again I am distracted by the sound of water coming from the front of my house. When I peek out of the window I see that someone is at work washing his car in my driveway. Honestly! Again, I throw open the door and prepare myself for a confrontation. I ask the man in English what he’s doing and point out that this is my house. He answers in English, “I know, I know. Sorry!” Then he laughs and drives off. I glare at him as he pulls out of the driveway. I just don’t get it. Why do people think it’s OK to come over and help themselves to my water supply?

11:00 a.m. Fed up with my plagiarizing students and my water-stealing neighbors, I decide to calm myself down by taking a shower and getting ready to head to campus for my afternoon class. Since the water in my shower is usually on the cold side, I turn it off while I lather up. When I go to turn the water back on to rinse off, just a trickle comes out. And then it completely dries up. I feel that the water karma gods are getting back at me for denying my neighbor the water to wash his car. Either that or he used it all up. In any event, I need to get rid of all this soap. Dripping in sudsy water, I tramp over to my other bathroom and try my luck with that faucet. Luckily, there is just enough water in the pipe for me to splash off the suds.

1:30 p.m. Having finished my lesson planning for my CCU class at 2:10, I head off to the café down the street for a quick lunch of instant noodles and a hard-boiled egg. On the way, I stop to buy a bottle of MiZone to drink during class. While I’m making my purchase, a student approaches me and asks if I can pray for him. Taken aback, I ask him to repeat himself. Turns out he isn’t saying “pray” but “buy”. He wants me to buy some him some lunch because he’s hungry and has no money. Is this true? Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t but I know that I can’t go around providing free lunches for everyone who asks. So, I regretfully tell him that I can’t but suggest that he ask his friends to help him out.

2:10 Time for CCU! I love teaching this class - I get to learn all sorts of interesting things about Indonesia from my students. Today’s topic is classroom behaviors. We start off with a little situational quiz about what to do in certain classroom situations in the US. To extend the activity, I ask the students to get into groups and make a list of some of the differences they have noticed between Indonesian and American classroom behavior. I learn that my students have a lot of criticisms of Indonesian teaching styles. They find most of their Indonesian teachers to be very serious and authoritative in the classroom. Punctuality, on the teacher’s side, is also a problem. Classes might start late because a teacher sends a student out to make photocopies and then everyone just sits around waiting for that student to come back with the copies. Sometimes the teachers just write an assignment on the board and tell the students to have it finished by the following week. If students are late or don’t have an assignment they are sometimes punished by being forced to sing a song or recite a poem in front of the class. They even admit that they are afraid of their teachers most of the time. In contrast, my students seem to really like the American teaching style. They like that American teachers are friendly, informal, interactive and non-threatening. They also appreciate our punctuality, organization and use of body language to make difficult ideas understandable. I wish I could spend more time on this topic. I feel we are just scratching the surface of things we could talk about - things like plagiarism, sharing among students, saving face in the group, how students and teachers address each other, who asks questions, what topics are appropriate for discussion or writing assignments, the amount of experiential learning vs. rote learning, speech acts like greetings and how to start and end a class, social distance between students and teachers, etc. I think classroom behavior is a fascinating subject to study cross culturally.

4:00 p.m. Since the Internet isn’t working for the 7^th day in a row in my office, I plug in my USB modem and wait a painful 20 minutes for something to happen. For some reason, the connection is being ridiculously slow and I consider shutting everything down and going home but then the rain comes. Rainy season in Gorontalo has officially arrived. So, I do like the Indonesians do and decide to just stay put until it passes.

5:30 p.m. On the way home I stop by my counterpart’s office to pick up some package notification slips that he texted had arrived for me. Packages!! Few things thrill an expat’s heart more than packages from home. I wonder who they’re from. Probably from my mom, as I know she’s shipped several packages of reading material, vitamins, dental floss and other essentials. Or they could be from one of my friends who responded to my Facebook plea to please send Annie’s Mac & Cheese. Oh what excitement! I’ll have to go to the post office tomorrow right away after work. I love having things to look forward to.

6:00 p.m. Back home, I decide I need to resume my paper grading work. The plagiarism issue is really bugging me because I have now identified 6 out of 18 essays read so far that clearly have something fishy going on. So I send a text to my fellow ELFs asking for advice on how to handle the situation. Suggestions and support pour in instantly; Maura reminds me that plagiarism is culturally acceptable here, Amber promises to send me some great paraphrase citation exercises tomorrow, Stephanie recommends underlining the text I’m suspicious of and then asking the students where they got it from, Courtney advises me to speak with each student individually, and Mark says he’ll read my book when I figure it all out. Ahhh…what would I do without the other ELFs? They are a constant source of support and their humor helps keep me laughing too.

6:23 p.m. I finally get to work on the next essay in my stack. I tell myself that I will mark essays for an hour or so and then take a dinner break.

6:25 p.m. Mati lampu!! Plans to grade papers are foiled by another of Gorontalo’s infamous random power outages. I need to get these papers done tonight so I debate between firing up the generator and relocating to the Quality Hotel for a couple of hours. I opt for the generator.

6:30 p.m. I drag it out of one of the spare bedrooms and hook it up to the power source outside. I’m about to go through my start up checklist when Sarah calls. Sarah always has perfect timing. Some strange sixth sense leads her to call me just at a moment when I’m dying to complain about the latest Indo curveball. As per our standard routine, we update each other on the craziness of the day and talk about how we’re looking forward to seeing all the other ELFs for our early Thanksgiving in Yogya this weekend. I treasure these conversations with her; I think we help each other stay sane in a very challenging country.

The rest of the evening is filled with making a pasta dinner, finishing my grading, and writing this blog post. And now I’m off to bed. Another day in Indo is done.

Things no one told me about teaching in Indonesia

My first full week of teaching at UNG was riddled with surprises. On Monday morning I took a bentor to campus as usual, fully expecting the driver to pull up to the front door of my building like all other drivers had done previously. But that day we made it no farther than the front gate of the university. There, we were greeted with a big sign saying no bentors past that point. As I sat there wondering if I should cover the remaining distance on foot (about half a kilometer), some men in uniform gestured to me that I should get on the back of some guy’s motorbike. I had never ridden a motorbike before and was a bit hesitant at first, especially since I had my heavy laptop slung over one shoulder. Would that throw me off balance? With a shrug, I got on the bike. There was no way I wanted to walk that distance in the hot 10 am sun and arrive at work dripping in sweat. We covered the short distance quickly and I discovered that it was actually quite fun to zip along on the back of a bike. Later I found out that bentors are not allowed down that particular street past 9 am while classes are in session. I suppose this is an effort to keep the noise level down. Starting Tuesday, I learned how to instruct my bentor driver to take me to the back entrance of the university, “Lewat belakang UNG”. This way the driver can take me almost the whole way to my building.

The second huge surprise was the noise level in some of the classrooms. Two of the classrooms that I am supposed to teach in are on the street side of the building and the noise level is ridiculous. Even despite the ban on bentors, there is still a never-ending parade of motorbikes. It makes me wonder if there really is any point to banning the bentors since the motorbikes are actually louder. And of course, I teach with all the windows open because there is no AC in the classroom and we would suffocate otherwise. Anyway, it’s so loud that I found myself shouting at my students. Or sometimes I would just stop midsentence and wait for the noise to die down a bit. What a nightmare for my students to have to attend a class in a foreign language and strain to hear their teacher and classmates against the competing background noise of extremely loud motorbikes.

The next big group of surprises concerns the unspoken rules about what classroom to use, when to arrive and when to leave. One day I went to my assigned room early to set up my things on my desk while I waited for my students to trickle in. Fifteen minutes later I was still sitting there alone. Out of a class of 30 students, how could everybody be late? Wondering if I had gotten the room number wrong, I poked my head outside the door and asked another lecturer if he knew where my students were. He said they were probably waiting for me downstairs and sent one of his students to check. Sure enough, they had all been waiting for me downstairs and then came upstairs en masse. Who knew that we were supposed to all walk over to the classroom together? For my previous two classes, I had met some of my students at the bottom of the stairs and we walked to the classroom together but I thought at the time that it was just a coincidence.

The next day I purposely left my office right on time, met my students at the bottom of the stairs and followed them up to the second floor. The feeling that I was finally starting to understand how things worked disappeared as my students filed right past the assigned room and into another room. I had no choice but to follow them. As they took their seats in this new classroom, I consulted my timetable and was satisfied to see we were supposed to be in the other room, as I had thought. I announced that we were in the wrong room and made everyone stand up and change rooms. Once everyone had taken their seats again, the chairman of the class protested, “But Miss, this room is too dirty! I cleaned the other room for us.” He gestured towards the white board, which was covered in writing from another class. With a sigh of resignation, I agreed that we could go back to the first room the class had entered.

After all that back and forth, we finally got class underway and had a great lesson. Then it was time to leave. Ashleigh, my friend and fellow ELF in Banjarmasin, had posted on her blog that she noticed her students would stay seated at the end of class out of respect until she left the room first. I hadn’t seen this in action yet, but that day, as I lingered at the teacher’s desk putting students’ papers in my folders, I saw that this was definitely true. It’s really quite a weird feeling to have all eyes on me as I get myself packed up. At the end of a class I usually like to take my time to erase the board, sort my papers, jot down any notes I have about the lesson and answer questions students might have as they file out. But here the tables are turned. I leave first to retreat to my office and the students linger in the classroom to chat with their friends. Hopefully, they will come to my office hours if they have any questions…

And finally, no first week of teaching in Indonesia would be complete without a power outage. Now, electricity is generally not something I depend on having in the classroom. In fact, we don’t even use the lights in most of the classrooms I teach in because the open windows provide enough natural light. But on this day, we happened to be in a classroom that did depend on the overhead lights. There were windows but they were small enough and high enough to not really provide that much light. Plus, it was raining that day so the light from outside was dark and gray. The power went out just as we started going over the answers to a worksheet the students had spent the past 15 minutes or so working on with their partners. The classroom was suddenly very, very dark. Not wanting to leave the students without the answers, I instructed everyone to take out their cell phones and use the light of their screens for the next few minutes as we went over the answers. This worked just fine. For the last 15 minutes of class, I had planned to have the students do some journal writing, but I knew that activity would be futile under these conditions. In the end, I told them to do it for homework and dismissed class early.

Getting a handle on things…sort of

I had a really good day yesterday. I was cruising the comfortably cool evening streets of Gorontalo in a bentor on my way home from the office thinking about how things are finally starting to come together – I have a LAN internet connection at work, new batteries in my work clock, new lights in the office, new locks on the desk, and new pillows and bedding for my bed at home. I think I also found a new friend in another young lecturer here named Tia, who studied for her BA in Florida and is going back to the US in February to do her master’s in Ohio. I stopped to pick up some dinner at KFC and was sitting in the bentor clutching my laptop, my handbag, my backpack full of newly tailored clothes, and my KFC takeout, thinking how nice it would be to go home, watch some random movie on HBO in English (with Indonesian subtitles) and just relax. I was feeling very upbeat.

But my euphoria was short lived. When I got home I realized that the power was out. It was about 6:30 in the evening and already pitch dark outside. Since we’re so near the equator, it gets dark here very early. So much for my night of eating KFC in front the TV. I used my cell phone light to locate one of my big suitcases and then I rummaged around for a flashlight. My mom, with amazing foresight, had given me an LL Bean wind-up LED flashlight for Christmas last year. I’d never used it before, but there’s no time like the present, right? I wound the flashlight up for a minute and then turned on the power button. It worked like a charm. My entire kitchen and living room area was illuminated and not only that, but I also discovered that I could prop it up on the table at a variety of angles. Satisfied with my new set up, I sat down to eat my KFC meal by the light of my LL Bean flashlight. I was thinking about how ironic it was that just when I was thinking I was getting a handle on Gorontalo life it throws me a curveball.

The power apparently goes out here on a regular basis because the electric company can’t supply everyone with enough energy. So, entire sections of the town get their power cut off for a night or so at a time. These outages are announced in the local paper and on the radio, but since I can neither read the local paper nor understand the announcements on the radio, I will have to rely on my neighbors to tell me when there is a scheduled outage. Actually, as part of my “settling in” allowance from the State Department, I have funds to buy a generator. My counterpart said we could wait until after Ramadan to buy one though, since the power company isn’t supposed to start these scheduled outages until after the month of fasting is over. But as I sat there in the darkness last night, I sent him a text message to ask if we couldn’t go shopping for one a bit sooner…

After I had taken a few bites of my chicken, I heard a knock at the door and the cry of “Hello, Miss Julianne!”. I opened the door to find Inka standing there with two candles and a box of matches. Bless her heart. Not only that, but she also said it was her little brother’s birthday and asked if I would like to join the family for a dinner out at a restaurant. I was delighted to escape my dark house and have some company. So I put my KFC dinner in the fridge thinking it would make a good lunch for tomorrow and then we all piled into their car and headed off. Guess where we went for dinner? Yep, back to KFC!