CRASH! (in Palem)BANG!

Only three more weeks to go? Is that even possible? I have no idea how to describe the way I’m feeling, but I’m sure I’ll be trying. I’ve resolved to blog a lot over the next 21 days, because I have some more things I want to tell you about, and I don’t want to turn into one of those people who writes a blog after I get home just to write a blog.

It’s a pretty bittersweet feeling to be so close to returning home. On one hand, I feel like this massive adventure—which I’ve anticipated and feared and loved—is days away from just… ending. On the other hand, some of the frustrations I’ve had over the last 8 ½ months seem to have been magnified lately.

My friend Vidhi said it well in her blog:

maybe the smell of fresh cut grass and summer lemonade is clouding my senses. maybe the thought of running into my parents arms at the airport is making these last few weeks particularly hard.

there are no schedules here. my classes are constantly cancelled. teachers get paid for extra-curricular activities they never lead. men get to smoke and judge women who do. cheating in school and on spouses is expected. money that could be going into education is used to buy snacks for meetings. my school has power outages every day, but the glitzy mall Sun Plaza is always air conditioned and glamorous.

im tired of all the stares i receive. i don't really understand why people here stare at me anyways. most indonesians think i am indonesian. im brown. i have black hair. and i dress appropriately for the culture. so why are you STILL glaring at me? if i was white, or pink, or green i would understand. im also tired of not fitting in, even when i look like i fit in...

Ok, I don’t have any glitzy malls or brown skin, but I can relate to the rest of that. And she goes on to explain how some other Americans she met at the airport were rude. The other two Americans in Palembang are really, really nice, but other than that, most expats here are notoriously unfriendly.

I think the biggest reason for my recent frustration was that Rajiv got into a motorcycle wreck.

I still say that if I could start this 9 months over, the first thing I would change would be to get an international driver’s license and rent a motorbike. My biggest complaint this year is how completely stranded I feel at times. I’m 45 minutes outside of the city, and I can’t even walk anywhere to buy dinner. Still, maybe it’s for the best that I don’t have a motorbike. A) Because I have absolutely no idea how to drive one, and B) Because my doctor friends tell me that motorcycle crashes and stabbings (many while on motorbikes) make up an overwhelming number of ER patients here.

Every Saturday we’re both in Palembang, Raj and I meet up and do a radio show at a local station through the US Embassy. [Another blog on that soon.] Then, we go to the mall, eat a delicious JCO doughnut (I swear they’re even better than Krispy Kremes), and eat dinner.

Raj rented a motorbike in February after getting his license when he went home for Christmas. So he drives himself home, and I call my buddy Ari, my ojek, to come pick me up. It’s such an important part of the week for both of us. It’s venting with someone who understands completely. The Raj dinner part, I mean. Not Ari, though he's nice.

But the last time we met, Raj got in an accident. And—get this—on the same road where my purse was stolen! (Indonesians would say there’s an evil spirit there, and they might be right.) He was turning right (with his signal on), and instead of slowing down or swerving around him, another motorbike with two men on it ran right into the back of his bike. Hard.

Raj was thrown over the front of his bike and onto the street while his bike skidded across the road. The other bike crashed, too, and it hit another bike with a couple on it. They lost control and crashed, too.

Raj is lucky he was wearing his helmet. He says after the impact, he only remembers laying in the middle of the road and seeing at least 200 cars and motorcycles drive by without stopping at all. Pieces of his bike had broken off, and he watched while someone even stole one and ran off. The two guys who caused the wreck immediately jumped on their bike and left, though Raj says pieces of their bike were laying in the road, too. His bike wouldn’t work.

He tried calling me, but of course the network was screwed up, and none of his five phone calls went through. I’m not sure what I would have done, anyway, and I think that’s another of my central frustrations: helplessness in times of need. Luckily, he was able to call a teacher at his school to come pick him up.

When my purse was stolen, I yelped and jumped around, and no one stopped to help me. There were at least 40 people just sitting on the side of the road eating from street vendors, and all of them just watched. But at least I wasn’t laying in the middle of the road. Not a single person helped him up or even stopped to see if he was ok.

The good news is he is ok, and a repair shop was able to fix his bike for only about $100.

I’m sorry this isn’t a happier post, but happier ones will follow, I assure you. I’ve been trying to think about what specifically I find so exasperating. I think it’s that my whole life right now is such an exercise in extremes.

On one hand, I have more independence than I’ve ever had in my life: I live alone, and I decide what I do, what I eat, and where I go. And yet, on the other hand, I feel so completely dependent on other people. I have to call for rides to get food, to go shopping, to get to school, etc. I have to walk and wait and pay each week just to have drinking water.

Same as with what I packed to bring: I managed to fit nearly everything I’ve needed for nine months into two suitcases and a bookbag. I have a little microcosm of my home, and yet… I have so little with me that it all fits into two suitcases and a bookbag! (Note: this does not include souvenirs. Oh my, no. It does not.)

And, most importantly, there’s the idea of being surrounded by people all the time. People are constantly stopping by my house unannounced, asking me for help with papers, and taking pictures of me when I walk by them. And yet, I wouldn't really fit in here permanently. I’ve talked to the other Fulbrights, and I think most of them feel the same way. There are so many people everywhere, and yet, aside from the other ETAs, you’re the only one who’s really like you.

But I promise—barring any more robberies or crashes—this is my last negative blog. There are so many exciting things happening right now, and I’m taking picures of all them.

Oh, and Raj has his bike back now. But this weekend while we were eating dinner, someone stole his helmet.

All Greek to me

My fellow teacher Rudi and I were having some communication issues last week. He picks me up for school on his way in in the morning, and he drives me home. I have 3.5 hour breaks between classes and English Clubs sometimes, so some days I ask Rudi to take me home.

I always say, “Rudi, would you mind taking me home now?”

And he was constantly getting this odd look on his face. He would pause a moment, and then say, “That would be fine.”

“You don’t have to!” I’d exclaim. But he would insist and say it was no trouble.

Finally, I found out what the problem was. “Katie, what do you expect me to say to that question?! It is one of the hardest things in English!”

Huh? Ooh. “Do you mind…”

He said, “Do you want me to say ‘yes’ or ‘no?’ I don’t know what is the right answer!”

So I explained that technically “no” is the right answer to a “do you mind” question, but he could always clarify what he meant. “No, I’d be happy to.” Or “No, it’s no problem!”

Rudi continues to test my knowledge on a daily basis with the English questions he’s thought of since the last time I saw him. Whew—on Mondays, he usually has a full two pages. They’re typically things like this:

Why is a lunch box not always a box and a trash can not always a can?

What is the difference between got and gotten and when should I use each?
(Most Indonesians use these interchangeably, but not my Rudi.)

Can you practice choir? Usually you just have choir practice.
But you can practice football? Yup.

What is the difference between “kind of” and “sort of?”

Why is the “i” in organize and organization pronounced differently?

You know the coolest thing about Indonesian? The verbs. They have verbs for everything. They have a verb that exclusively means “to have a moustache.” They have a verb that means “to take someone’s virginity.” They have a verb that means “to cook rice by boiling it.” All just one word. I mean, three separate words. That’d be weird if all those were all the same verb. Eww.

I really have always felt that one weakness of the English language is that we don’t have a way of asking “what kind of sick are you?” Someone says, “I’m sick.” And we say… where? Is it the flu? What’s wrong? (Those last two would work, I guess.) But Indonesians just say a direct translation of “What sick?” I like that.

I had no idea how much a language can affect the way people think. Do you know how many tenses we have in English? SIXTEEN! We have sixteen whole tenses! No wonder it’s hard for people. And we’re not talking Shakespeare’s English here: there are 16 common, everyday tenses for English speakers.

Indonesian has one tense. If you need to know that something happened in the past, you use context to figure it out. Obviously “I eat dinner yesterday” happened in the past, so it would be like “I ate dinner yesterday.”

But Rudi was explaining how English is so hard for Indonesians (and other foreign speakers, I would assume) because they literally have to change the way they think. For example, “If I’d known you were coming yesterday, I would have gone to the store.”

(Here’s where I want to start singing that song: If I’d knowwwwnn you were comin’ I’da baked a caaaake. Baked a caaaake.”)

Indonesians don’t have a way to say that in their language. They would break it down into two present tense sentences. “I do not know you come yesterday. I should go to store” would be a near-literal translation. Rudi said the ability to think one thought that means all of that at once is something he had to work hard to train himself to do. Isn’t that fascinating?

I really used to think that your brain was one thing unto itself, and language was just what comes out of your mouth, how to explain what you think. I guess that’s still true, but Rudi insists, and I’m starting to agree, that language can enable you to think more complex thoughts, faster. Hey, maybe there’s some uber-language out there that would force us all to go beyond English-language thinking…

Anyway.

Also, there are just so many more words to learn in English. I guess it’s nearly impossible to count the number of words in a language (Does dog count separately as a verb and a noun? Is hog-tied one new word or two old words joined together? Dig, dug, digging—one word in different tenses or three different words altogether? Etc.) Still, experts who know more about this sort of thing than I do estimate that the English language has somewhere around 750,000 words. An Indonesian dictionary from the ‘80s (yeah, it’s outdated, but go with it) contained 25,500 Indonesian words. So… there are a lot more words in English.

Ooh, and also according to the esteemed Dr. Wikipedia, here are some English words that come from Indonesian:

amok (as in “to run amok”)
gecko
gong
gingham
orangutan

Yeah, ok, so those are about the only ones, but still. The others I don’t count because you would directly associate them with Indonesia or Asia, like batik or rambutan.

PS- When I was looking up how many words were in the English language, I also learned that you’re pretty hot stuff if you know even 20% of that ¾ million. How enthralling. And riveting. And intriguing and exceptional and captivating. Eh, I probably wouldn’t even scratch the surface.

Oops, my apologies.

Like most really, really smart people around the world, one of my teachers sort of lacks a certain amount of people skills. He’s fine around the other teachers and me, but he really struggles in the classroom. All right, fine, it’s Rudi. The students make fun of him constantly, calling him a “ladyboy” (and to be honest, he is pretty effeminate). Rudi doesn’t handle this very well and responds by grabbing whatever blunt object is nearest him and hitting the student on the back of the head as hard as possible. (Which, as we covered before, isn’t all that hard for him.) It doesn’t matter what it is—whiteboard erasers, water bottles, books. Once he found a bottle of baby powder in the back of a classroom and poured it over a student’s head in a fit of anger. Sadly, just like bullies in the US, this sort of behavior only fuels them to tease more until Rudi’s tiny 4’10” body is shaking with fury. Finally, I have to ask him to sit down at the back of the classroom.

Rudi’s behavior isn’t uncommon at all, though. All of my teachers smack students when they talk out of turn or play with their Rubik’s Cubes instead of listening. After a particularly frustrating class, I came back to the teachers’ lounge and said I was having some serious trouble getting kids to pay attention. “You have to pinch them,” Sry says.

“Oh,” I responded. “I don’t really feel comfortable doing that. In America teachers never touch the students.”

“I am not talking about touching them,” Sry said. “Just a little twist on their arm until it hurts them.”

The thing is, it doesn’t work. The students don’t pay attention any better after someone “twists” them. Part if it, I’m sure, is just bad behavior. For some reason, my school is known for spoiled students who can’t behave; one of the teachers is even writing her thesis on it. They think it’s probably because the students are so wealthy.

After eight months here, I’m surprised at how many cultural differences still shock me. I wonder how long I’d have to live somewhere to totally adapt. It probably takes longer certain places than others, too, I’d imagine.

For me, one of the most frustrating differences is the idea of “jam karet,” or “rubber time,” meaning that time can be stretched around to your needs. A 12 o’clock lunch can start at 2 o’clock here, and that’s completely acceptable to everyone. Likewise, someone might say they’ll stop by at 10 o’clock in the morning, and they show up at 9 o’clock because they were in the neighborhood early.

One day, when I was returning from a trip, a friend of mine said he would pick me up from the airport. I texted him (they say SMSed here) when I landed, and he said he’d be there soon. I waited. A half hour later, I called. He said he was actually just leaving his office then, and he’d be there in another half hour. It was fine; I had a book. (If you want to talk about how I’ve changed, just look at that: I was willing to wait an extra hour to save the equivalent of $2 for a ride home.) Still, 45 minutes went by, and still no friend. I called him again. He said actually he was just then leaving the office, and he’d be there in a half hour.

So I said thanks, but he could just meet me at my house and we’d go to dinner like we’d planned. I caught an ojek home and took a $2 loss. My friend (the boyfriend of a teacher at my school) finally showed up an hour and a half later. I got in his car and we immediately drove to the mosque, because he hadn’t prayed yet. So I sat for another half hour, this time in the car and without my book. I asked why he didn’t just come 3 hours late and pray before picking me up, and he said he wanted to show me how important his religion is to him. Hmm, ok… point taken. Then we listened to the Koran in Arabic all the way to and from dinner.

While I was waiting in the car, I passed the time by talking to Christine on the phone. It was now completely dark outside and there were a lot of people filing around. And I’ve been jumpy since the purse incident.

Suddenly, someone touched my shoulder. I screamed like a large rodent had just been dropped into my lap. Apparently, my friend had silently creeped over to the car window—which was rolled down about two inches—and stuck his nose in through the opening to greet me with “Hellooooo, how are youuuuuuuu.” He said it in that slightly terrifying monotone of people who have memorized words but don’t really know what they mean. So I screamed. (I was, in hindsight, perhaps already not the best version of myself that night.)

The friend was immediately apologetic. This is another trademark of Indonesian people who mean well: unending apologies for some things they did but most things that are completely beyond their control. (Although, in this case, it was his fault.)

This is common: “Miss, I am so sorry for the condition of the roads!”

“It’s fine,” I say.

“Miss, please forgive me for this road. I am so sorry.”

Apologies, in fact, are an integral part of Indonesian life. When saying a formal goodbye, for example, a person here should begin by issuing a grand blanket apology for anything they might have done to offend anyone. Similarly, they expect apologies to fix anything, too.

Teachers are paid to run English Club at my school. I nearly always do it alone though, because it’s just easier that way. But at least they’re sports and they stick around.

Once, though, during EC, I ran back to my desk in the teachers’ lounge to get something I’d forgotten and found Rudi and Sry rooting through my desk. Without shame, mind you. That week, I’d had the students write personal letters, and they were opening the sealed envelopes sitting on my desk and reading the private notes. They were also using my coveted antibacterial wipes I thought I was keeping hidden in the depths of my desk.

I was pretty upset. Not only were they going through my desk while getting paid for the job I was doing, they were using my things and reading letters my students trusted me to keep between us. Both Rudi and Sry dropped my things when they saw me and returned to their own desks.

I asked, “Why were you going through my things?”

Sry’s face immediately crumbled, and she nearly started to cry. “Please do not be angry with us!” she said.

Rudi continued, “Yes, we did not find anything bad, anyway.”

This sort of feeling extends to many sectors of Indonesia. Once, a computer tech woman started crying because she thought I’d be mad at her for not being able to fix my internet. (This was back at the beginning of my grant, when my dreams for worldwide connectivity were young and full of hope.) I’m not sure if people here really have a crippling fear of someone being angry with them or if it’s considered polite to assume an apologetic response.

Still, I really am getting the hang of it more. I know know my part. If you go into any situation in Palembang and begin by apologizing, you’re getting somewhere.

Selamat Hari Kartini!

Quick Bahasa Indonesia lesson: “Hari” means “day.” So obviously, “Hari Kartini” means “Kartini Day.”

“Hari ini” literally means “this day” and means “today.” This all reminds me of the sign that was hanging up in the police station where I sat for three hours after my purse was stolen in March. In an uncommon display of ornamentation, someone had painted the words, “Hari ini lebih baik dari kemarin” on the wall, which means “Today is better than yesterday.” Having just had all of my possessions ripped from my grasp, I was unable to embrace the spirit behind the sentiment. And I have to wonder how many people who walk through the doors of that police station really think that day is in fact an improvement over the day before, when they were not entering the lair of Indonesia’s Finest.

Anyway, Kartini Day celebrates an Indonesian woman who spent her short life pushing for education for women. Born in 1879, she was allowed to go to school until she was 12. After that, she was kept in her home to prepare for marriage, but she continued to teach herself. She had many Dutch pen pals and eventually begged to be allowed to teach in Jakarta. She argued against traditional religious practices (many still in place today). For example, she didn’t believe people should have to memorize the Koran without having to understand its meaning. After a few years, she was finally allowed to go to Jakarta, but she then turned the offer down because she had decided to get married and continuing living in her hometown. She hoped she and her husband would together be able to organize schools for young women, but she died at 25.

I know women’s rights in Indonesia is something completely different than women’s rights in America, but there’s a sort of strange sort of oxymoronic feminism that exists in many women I’ve met here. As one of my teachers said last week, “I will complete my master’s degree and become a professor before having my arranged marriage and raising as many children as possible. I hope I have many sons.”

For some reason, one of my unattached Indonesian friends had a near life crisis and spent a week surveying women and asking, “Would you rather be divorced or an old maid?” I saw one woman shudder and say, “Both of those would be terrible.” My friend nodded solemnly.

Then there’s the jilbab. During orientation, an Indonesian Fulbright scholar spoke to our group and identified herself as a Muslim feminist. Ok, I can understand that. She supports equal rights for men and women. But I still can’t wrap my head around the idea that a person can believe men and women are equal, and still believe that women should cover their heads and men should not.

I know that sentiment puts me gravely in danger of sounding ignorant. I understand that wearing a jilbab is completely a choice. I understand that you can be smart and capable and independent and want to wear one. I understand that you can believe in the fair treatment of men and women and wear one. But when a person believes that women should cover their heads and men should not, that is not equal.

I know some people say the point isn’t really to be equal or the same, and I say, good, because it’s not.

Out of the 50 or so female teachers at my school, there is only one who doesn’t cover her head. She’s Muslim, married, and, interestingly enough, teaches World Culture. I asked her why she doesn’t wear a jilbab, and she said because she doesn’t want to and her mother never did.

I have another friend who refuses to wear the jilbab. She says God doesn’t care whether she covers her head or not. She says most women wear jilbabs less because of their personal relationship with God and moreso because of the way they’re treated in their community. I think that’s probably very true. Jilbabbed (verb?) women are at least initially almost always treated with more respect.

One male friend told me he would respect me more if I wore a head covering. I asked if that was true even though he knew I’m not Muslim and it would be an empty gesture, and he said yes.

Were I a better (or maybe just a more bitter) woman, I might have raised my eyebrows a bit at my school’s celebration. To honor women’s rights, IGM sponsored a fashion show, a cooking contest, and a singing competition. “Things women love!” they said.

Usually, my school has an unbelievable amount of food set out for holidays. I always end up eating the equivalent of about four full meals before 10:00am. So I tried to beat them at their own game and skipped breakfast. Hari Kartini is the one day when the men have to do all the cooking. But when I got to school, there were no sweet little cake rolls. No layered coconut snacks. No strangely-jiggly florescent gelatins.

“But I thought the men were cooking today!” I exclaimed as my belly rumbled. They laughed.

“Ahh, Ketty! That is a joke we tell! Men are supposed to cook, but they do not know how! So we do not have snacks on this day!”

In case you’re keeping track, the score is now Miss Ketty 3; Indonesia 1,289.

Everyone dresses up in traditional formal clothes for Kartini Day. For men, that’s dress pants and a batik-patterned shirt. For women, it’s usually a batik skirt with a kabaya for a top. Kabayas are bright and beautiful, usually incorporating a lot of lace and sequins. They can be really expensive (up to around $250 each), but the women can wear them many times. One of the teachers loaned me her mother’s kabaya. The teachers looove it when we all dress up, and it really was a lot of fun. We took somewhere around two million pictures.

The fashion show was delightfully fun. Each class chose two students to represent them, and they strutted their stuff on a makeshift catwalk. The singing contest was great, too. The middle school even let student bands accompany the contestants. And the cooking contest—oh my.

The students had the contest, but all of the male teachers were supposed to prepare fried rice for all the female teachers. In an effort to throw them off, however, the female teachers purchased all the ingredients, along with about six or seven items they were not supposed to put in. The women laughed and laughed as the men stood struggling over the baskets trying to decide what to use. I laughed heartily, though I was secretly glad no one put me to the test—how should I know what to use?!

Since we cancelled classes (shocking, no?), the day just centered around having fun and enjoying the contests. About women’s rights, little Sry writes, “we are kartini in new generation,,,,keep struggling womans' emancipation...”

Also, Sry asked me yesterday if it was appropriate to say “untfloeeeeezveezeeteeng” when your period starts. (I swear my teachers are obsessed with menstruation.) So I said that phrase I’ve said so many times since arriving in Palembang, “I’m not sure I understand. Can you write that down?” Apparently her book taught her that most American women have a secret idiom code used for proclaiming the start of one’s period. “Aunt Flo is visiting.” I discouraged her from using the phrase.

I guess I feel the day was less a celebration of women’s rights and more a day to appreciate women and say, “Gosh, what would we all do in a world without ladies?” But there’s quite a bit of value in that, too.

Feminine hygiene

On any given day, I walk into school at 6:30am not having any idea what the day holds. Will students boycott and leave school because a power outage made their classroom too hot? Is it a national holiday I’ve never heard of? Will four of the five English teachers be out sick with pinkeye? That’s all happened in the last few months.

Will some company shut down the school to hock their products for an afternoon? Awesome. I think we’re all pleasantly surprised to march our way up three flights of stairs only to see a vendor stand waiting at the top.

It doesn’t matter if there’s a test scheduled for the day or not. The students cheer and the teachers glare at them until they get inside the teachers’ lounge, and then they cheer, too.

We’ve cancelled classes for shampoo, face wash, and, once, a tax rally. Normally, I’m more than happy to accept t-shirts and free products. They usually send English-speaking salespeople, too. I smile widely for pictures the company says they take for future advertisements. I won’t be the least bit surprised if someone traveling in Indonesia in another decade sends me an email saying something like, “Did you know you’re the poster child for dandruff-eliminating shampoo and conditioner in Sumatra?”

Once we cancelled classes while vendors passed around a weird-looking drink only to women who claimed to be menstruating. Not understanding this was a sort of trick demonstration, I wasn’t paying attention until he came to me.

“Yes, miss? Do you want this drink? Is it special time for you?”

“Yes, it’s…. uh… definitely a special time for me. Thank you for the drink.”

And all the teachers exploded into giggles. “You are menstruating!”

“Oh, eww! I didn’t know that’s what he meant!” I said.

I think my response is a pretty accurate representation of my maturity.

If there’s one thing that’s completely a private issue in America that is definitely not here (and there are many), it’s that. Women here proclaim the arrival of their periods like visiting friends.

“I cannot pray this week! I am menstruating!” It does raise a few issues of honesty and mathematics, since I know at least a handful of women who apparently menstruate half their lives. They don’t have to pray or fast when they’re on their periods, though they’re supposed to make up the fasting days they miss.

All of my experiences with tomato-based (not kidding), cramps-relieving energy drinks pale in comparison to the morning the feminine hygiene team waltzed into my life.

Immediately, classes were cancelled. Then we decided to have classes for the boys, since the presentations were aimed only at the girls. Then the teachers decided they didn’t want to teach the boys, so we cancelled all classes again and forced the boys to sit through hours of discussing exactly the right way to clean female genitalia and why their product was the best to use. I can only imagine what that must be like for a hundred 16-year-old boys.

I say I can only imagine because I opted out of the presentation. All of the teachers did, in fact, until they found out the company had brought in the 2008 winner of Indonesian Idol to perform. Somehow, this was not a great motivating factor for me.

I would like to point out that all of the presenters were male. Just a note. Anyway, I was happily typing emails until two of the teachers—young, a little weird—came to get me.

“Miss Ketty, I think… I think you should listen to the presentation. They say it is very important for everyone to know how to clean their vagina. This is a lesson we are not taught anywhere else.”

Dear GOD. I can’t even write the word without flinching, and she said this with a very straight face. She was genuinely concerned.

I said that I was fine, thank you. Since many of the other teachers were also not there and the presentation was in Indonesian, I thought it was all right that I miss out. They left.

Only to come back in five minutes.

“Miss Ketty, I really think that you should listen. They said everyone must know about it.”

I tried another tactic. “Actually, my stomach kind of hurts.”

“Oh!” she said. “Are you menstruating?”

“Ack! No!”

“Are you pregnant with a baby?!” She started laughing. Then she said, “No, I am only telling a joke. I know you would not be the kind of girl to do that.”

Ooh, not even going to touch that one.

So I surrendered and walked over to the presentation. All of my students were sitting inside the room, alternating between giggling and blushing. Of course, they made me sit in the front, but not before handing me a small card with a mirror on it.

“This is for looking while you clean.”

Oh, God! I do not do well in embarrassing situations. And the potential for an Extremely Embarrassing Moment was quickly mounting.

Someone must have been punishing me for lying about the stomachache.

Of course, because the color of my skin makes me a b-list celebrity, the announcer had to call me to the stand at the front of the room. “Did I seeeeee a buuuuuleeee?!” he shouted.

I couldn’t help but thinking that this man’s English fluency was being wasted selling a feminine cleansing product when he could be working for the embassy or something.

My students love me. I like to pretend it’s because I’m just so darn fun and motivating, but more likely, it’s because I play a lot of games and they know they won’t have a test when I’m in their classroom. So as I was forced to take the microphone in front of the whole school, they started to cheer.

He asked my name. Katie, I said.

“Kehhhh-teeee! If you can answer a couple questions correctly, I’ll give you a free t-shirt.”

Oh, joy. I could hardly wait.

“Ketty, we’re here talking about vaginas.”

This was not off to a good start. I immediately turned the color of a tomato in front of more than 200 students. I also know that 80% of my students definitely couldn’t understand what this guy was saying, but I guess I can understand the word “vagina” is pretty funny on its own.

“Ketty… what is this product for?” He holds up this little bottle that I don’t feel completely comfortable having in my line of vision. “Do you think it’s for cleaning… your vagina… or your knees?”

Your knees?!

He says it “fah-HEE-nuh.”

I say, “The first one.”

He says, “Say it.”

I say, “Say what?”

He says, “Say what it cleans.”

I’m at a crossroads. Tell the guy he’s being inappropriate and make it a big deal in front of everyone in my school or just get through it?

I swallow and say “vagina” very clearly into the microphone.

The students absolutely erupt with laughter.

I die inside and try to walk away.

The guy pulls me back.

“Ok, one more question. Do you think… that when you wash your fah-HEE-nuh… it gets bigger… or it stays the same size?”

This one caught me off guard. Then again, I figure it might actually be a concern for young Indonesian girls. Grin and bear it, right?

“I think it stays the same size.”

“What does?”

Oh, we’re done here. “The vagina does.”

They laughed and laughed and clapped and clapped. Then we stopped the presentation and took about a billion photographs of me holding my new free t-shirt that I will never, ever wear. Then the Indonesian Idol sang a song for me. It sounded really pretty, but I have no idea what it was about, as I was still trying to get my breathing under control.

And I sincerely hope that’s the last time I ever type the word fah-hee-nuh.

Indonesian Idol, some of the teachers,

and me without my new t-shirt

Gending Sriwijaya

Uploading videos takes forever here, so please accept this 30-second clip of Septia's performance to "Gending Sriwiwaya." Thanks to Chris for shooting it for me. If you look closely, you can see my head in the left hand corner snapping pictures like she's my own child.

WORDS Competition

Every year, AMINEF holds an English competition for one student from each of the ETAs’ high schools. Ideally, they hold their own competition within their schools, and then the winner gets an all-expenses paid trip to the country’s capital with their American teacher.

At our schools, we were supposed to narrow our entries down to three finalists, which was quite easy for me since I only had three entries at all. At first, I really tried recruiting students who I knew were better English speakers, but most of them dismissed me with an “If-God-wills-it-I-will-enter.” Unfortunately for me, I guess God didn’t will any of them to enter.

After a while I stopped pushing them, because I felt bad forcing them to write poems and essays knowing I would only choose one in the end. It worked out wonderfully anyway.

My winner was Septia Sastika Angelina. She sang and danced to Palembang’s traditional song “Gending Sriwijaya.” You’re allowed to sing and dance to an Indonesian song at an English competition? Well, yes. She just had to include a one-minute introduction explaining how her performance was related to the theme “The Changing World outside my Window.”

Septia’s introduction was beautiful, though I think it might have been overlooked a bit in the midst of all her singing and dancing. She explained how understanding a traditional dance is reflective of her changing world, because while her country and culture are always evolving, she knows how important it is to value the past.

My school—bless their hearts—which doesn’t have a scanner or functioning printer, does have an official school traditional costume and a bag of official school make-up. Septia was obviously distressed that no one would be around to put on her make-up. I offered to do it, and my teachers seemed shocked that I knew how.

I was slightly offended at first. Sure, I might not always wear make-up to school, but I understand the concept of applying blush. Oh, no. Not in Indonesia, I don’t. They spread out the hundreds of pieces of make-up in front of me the day before we left, and it was about the equivalent of telling me to reassemble some giant military weapon. No way could I handle eyelash glue, facial whitener, etc.

Septia and her devoted family

who arrived at 5am to get her ready in time

Luckily for me, Septia lives with her aunt’s family in Palembang, and her immediate family lives in Jakarta. They wanted to come see her dressed up anyway and volunteered to do the make-up. Whew!

These were my favorite part of the costume.

They did, however, result in her fingers often sticking together.

Miss Katie to the rescue!

Septia was so intimidated at first by all the English speakers. She’s in Level 2 at my school (out of 5), so she’s not the highest level at IGM and was worried she wouldn’t be able to keep up. I think she was even nervous at the idea of being alone with me. But as soon as our adventure began, she completely transformed and became this social creature I’d never seen at school. For many of the students, it was the first time they'd been on an airplane or visited Jakarta.

All of the students

We traveled with Rajiv and his student, Brigitta. The girls were so excited and had spent the weeks before talking over facebook and texting.

Septia did a wonderful job. I was like a proud parent, snapping pictures and taking video. Sadly, she didn’t win (none of the performance pieces did cough cough), but Brigitta won Best Use of English for her poem “Smile.”

Brigitta wins!

I felt like the weekend was a sort of fast-forwarded commercial on child-rearing. On Friday morning, I was asking her if she was hungry or thirsty every fifteen minutes. By Saturday night, when I asked what she wanted to do with our free time, she looked at me shyly and said, “Miss, would it be ok if maybe instead I went to a movie with my new friends?”

The next morning AMINEF scheduled a visit for all of us to Monas, the national monument. Septia and Brigitta were happy, but exhausted. I asked how late they’d stayed up the night before. “Miss, please do not be angry, but I did not sleep until midnight,” Septia said. I assured her that I wasn’t in the least angry.

Monas in the background.

Palembangers in front.

Our return was smooth, but little Septia decided to skip school the Monday after we were back. On Tuesday, I asked her if she was actually ill or just really tired, and she said, “Sick and tired, Miss Ketty. Sick and tired. You teach me that.”

It broke my heart as one-by-one, the teachers at school asked her if she won and she had to tell each of them no. But once we got through that, Septia was happy again. Now, though, she says, “Miss Ketty, I miss my new friends so much, and I don’t know if I’ll ever see them again.” The good news is, because we’re in Indonesia, she texts all of her favorites about a billion times a day to reminisce.