First week of teaching and a trip to Singapore

Many diets claim to work wonders but most are simply a fad diet and will almost certainly have little results. But let me tell you, if weight loss is your goal, and you don't mind a little diarrhea, the "Indonesian Ecoli Diet" is a must! Implications of the rapid weight loss include a severe reduction in alcohol tolerance as well as a decrease in the ability to keep yourself warm, as discovered when my swim quickly turned into a spastic bout of shivering. As alcohol in Indonesia is the one thing that is more expensive than back home, and this country can be ridiculously hot, my only question is why didn't I try this diet sooner?

Having completed my diet last Monday it was time to head to the classroom to try out this teaching gig. The number of policies and procedural differences compared to what I am use to in teaching back home was astounding. As a result I have never had such a busy few days of teaching in my life. Monday through Wednesday were between 11 and 12.5 hours from the time I left in the morning to the time I got home. It felt like the only thing I had less of in those 3 days than free time was guidance. Being the only Biology teacher at my school I felt like I had entered an impossible situation as a first year teacher and for the second time in the past 3 weeks I seriously started thinking out my action plan for how I was going to get out of my contract and get back to Canada. It was not that I felt that I wasn't up for the challenge of teaching four courses in an extremely different education system than I am use to, it was that everyone I talked to about the challenges of being a first year teacher with little guidance said things like "don't worry, it took me 6 months to figure out what was going on", or "in first semester most of my students did terribly on their mid year examinations, but I learned how the system worked and by the end of the year the students were doing well". As comforting as that is that other people have been in my position, i refuse to take 6 months to a year to learn how to be an effective teacher in this school system. My students don't have that time for me to learn and I wouldn't sleep well knowing that my students are being punished while I complete the long, slow learning process.

I sulked and ranted to just about anyone who would listen (there weren't too many) about how upsetting the situation was and finally for all my efforts I was able to set up a meeting with a department head at another campus who has taught biology at Bina Bangsa for 6 years. Meeting with him helped me gain a much clearer picture of how things work and what I can do to be effective as a teacher. I have set up an action plan with my principal including lesson observations, check ins and some professional development courses. I still have my strong disagreements with the test-driven education system that values test scores and university acceptance over almost anything else, but at least I finally feel confident teaching it. With this new understanding my teaching has already become more enjoyable and my high speed escape plans from Indonesia have been put on hold for now.

But its not all work and no play! In order to get my business visa processed to legally be allowed to teach in Indonesia the school flew me, along with 3 other first year teachers to Singapore for the day on Thursday. We flew in early in the morning, dropped our passports and visa papers at the Indonesian consulate, and had 8 hours to be tourists before it was time to pick up our passports and head back to Indo. Let me tell you, Singapore is a very beautiful place. Yes it is famous for fining. You can get fined in Singapore for some pretty bizarre things. As an up and coming blogger I feel like it might be good karma to help another blogger out. This one has 8 crazy laws in Singapore: http://www.hotelclub.com/blog/singapore-weird-laws/
One that they miss, and as our flight took off for Singapore a recording over the loud speaker informed us that "drugs are illegal in Singapore. Anyone caught trafficking will receive a mandatory death sentence".

But all these interesting laws have not deterred me in the slightest. Short of driving on a long, winding road through cottage country in Ontario I have never enjoyed the scenery of a highway drive as much as in Singapore:

This greenery persisted for the 20 km stretch of highway we drove on.

Randomly walking through a mall we found a nice little river where you could rent a little boat

We ended up going to the Marina Bay Sands, a hotel/casino/night club owned by a hotel/casino/night club owner from Las Vegas. . . Yeah, it was awesome. The first page of a google image search of Singapore is full of photos of this building, or the view from on top of this building. The 57th floor has a massive rooftop restaurant, bar and night club complete with a 150m infinity swimming pool. I recommend checking out Marina Bay Sands on wikipedia.

When we were finished balling out at maybe the nicest building I have ever been to or will ever go to in my life, we took the extremely efficient and affordable public transit system to little India. One of the teachers we were with was vegetarian (and very much to the rest of our amusement she was little and Indian) so we went to an Indian vegetarian restaurant for dinner. Not gonna lie, the mock butter chicken and naan was superb.

At the airport duty free we were able to get some free samples of some of the alcohols. For some reason the wouldn't let us try the $10, 000 bottle of King Louis xiii Cognac but we were able to try a $100 Hennessy.

Flying back from Singapore to Jakarta my flight got delayed for an hour and so I missed the last Cipiganti (basically a 7-10 seater mini van that acts as a bus service between major cities) back to Bandung and had to spend the night in Jakarta, and miss half of the school day on Friday. After two weeks of teaching my attendance is a respectable 35%. I was pleased to learn on the 26th (pay day) that I was not docked pay for any of my absences.

After travelling to Singapore and Jakarta on Thursday and back to Bandung Friday morning, I headed back to Jakarta Friday evening for the weekend. I stayed with Jeremy and Kasandra in their guest bedroom and was able to visit many other teacher friends at the much bigger Jakarta campus who I know from Queen's, or met during induction week. I was also able to meet with the Biology department head for several hours and get a better grasp of how to flourish as a teacher at BBS. On Saturday we went for drinks at a really cool seafood restaurant. They had tons of different fish and sea life swimming in tanks just waiting to be chosen by a customer to be a meal (where was this option at the Indian vegetarian restaurant??). Some of the more interesting options are shown below (see if you can spot Jeremy and Kasandra in the shark infested water!):

On Sunday we ended up going to an arcade. I had my doubts about Jeremy's choice of pass time but it turned out to be a blast. There was one game where you continuously throw plastic balls at a screen from about 5 feet away trying to hit mosquitos, or monsters, or anything else as they move around the screen. We cheated and played three player and were able to set the high score on every level we played. The funnest thing we did was cherokee and for those of you who have never heard me sing, picture a bear with its head stuck in a tuba growling and you've pretty much got the gist of it. Perhaps the bear can keep tune better than I can.

This week has started out to be and will be another very busy one while I am working, but the long, tiring days are very worth it when you balance it with lots of fun activities. This Friday there are no classes as it is inter-house competition sports day and the students will be participating in sports for half the day and get the other half of the day off. Then, it is the Lebaran break, also called Eid al-Fitr, which is the muslim celebration for breaking the fast. In addition to it being an interesting cultural experience for me, it also means a two week break from school. I will be heading to the island of Bali, a very popular tourist destination for diving, surfing, beaches, massages, great food and pretty much anything you could ask for in a vacation. While we are planning to be in Padang Padang there is a world surfing competition happening so my next blog should feature a picture of me with a surf board and a very large trophy.

I'm back!

Sorry to my blog followers (possibly blog follower singular based on my lack of comments) for my unexplained leave of absence. The past few weeks have been a very unpleasant time in my life, one that has taken a huge toll on my body, mind and general trademark positive attitude.

Some background for my story: Ok it’s more just a rant.

Now that I am an expert, when living in a new country there is literally thousands of things that make you think, “There has got to be a better way to do this”. Usually the “better way” you are referring to is simply the way you are use to back home or more commonly referred to as “the correct way” to do something. This can be a dangerous mentality. When something happens that is different than back home and potentially frustrating I try to instead think, “Oh cool, what an interesting cultural experience”. For example when I arrived in my room in Bandung and went to put my fresh pillowcase on my new pillow. I was surprised when as I slid the pillow into one end of the pillowcase it kept on sliding right out the other end. It seems that in Indonesia pillowcases open at both ends. My first reaction was honestly, “what a stupid idea” but that wasn’t enough. I thought about how there are 250 million people in Indonesia and that 250 million of these double ended opening pillowcases exist and that pillows falling out of pillowcases must be a nationwide issue. The whole thing put me in a bad mood.

The point of my story is that when living in another country, you cannot go a minute without encountering something that is different than what you are use to back home. And your attitude towards all of these endless daily situations can literally make or break your experience in the country. So now every morning I wake up, I grab my pillow, I search for my pillowcase on the floor since it has fallen off in the night, and as I am reassembling it I smile and think to myself, “oh cool, what an interesting cultural experience”. And it keeps me happy.

On the evening of July 5^th I took a bus from Jakarta to my new home in Bandung. On the way we stopped at a rest stop for dinner. While all the other teachers were eating at KFC, I persuaded one of the teachers to take me to a different restaurant for more of an Indonesian cuisine, somewhere I could guess what might taste good by pointing at a picture on a menu and hoping for the best. It turned out to be a decision that would change my life (for a couple weeks anyways). In the middle of the night I woke to two troubling surprises, 1) my pillowcase had escaped and 2) my stomach was in incredible pain and I spent the rest of the night with diarrhea and vomiting. I have had food poisoning before, usually lasts about a day and then you get better so I thought I could shake it myself. On the third day I realized I had become very dehydrated when my toes, feet, calves and thighs would cramp up frequently due to the huge electrolyte loss over the past few days. I went to the hospital and was informed I had Ecoli poisoning which is a bacterium that causes diarrhea. What a mean single-celled organism. My hemoglobin levels were way off and I was extremely low on many crucial ions. Long story short I spent the next 48 hours in the hospital taking various antibiotics, a near constant flow of intravenous water and ion solution and slowly losing all my patience and motivation to be in Indonesia. After about 5 days of being sick I had lost over 25 pounds and had not eaten a thing. As much as my body had lost, it was nothing compared to how much of my adventurous spirit had disappeared. I realized I had to get out of the hospital when I asked the nurse when I would be able to go home and the medical prognosis was “when you have less than 2 poopy diarrhea in a day you can go home the next day”.

Nooo way! Despite not quite knowing what that means, and feeling slightly icky for hearing it, i understood enough that if I hadn't eaten in 5 days it was going to be a long time before anything solid was excreted from my body and I was allowed to go home. I was able to text the school and they helped me convince the hospital it was time for me to go home and recover on my own. I spent the next 10 days sleeping about 11 hours a night and napping for several hours through out the day. Simple tasks like eating were exhausting and almost always required a nap immediately after. My stomach felt fine and it was a very painless 10 days but the massive amount of water, food and mass that my body had lost had left me feeling incredibly weak and exhausted at all times. What was worse was that in the back of my mind the thought was looming that if I just stayed sick long enough I might be able to go home forever. And nothing seemed sweeter than the thought of going home. My spirit had been broken.

I knew that my recovery could not start until I found the motivation to want to get better. I forced myself to go to the first day of school just long enough to get introduced to the students at morning assembly and meet my homeroom class for about 30 minutes. The warm welcome from the students and seeing their eagerness to learn, and mostly just laugh, smile and have fun was a thought I could take with me for the next few days until I was strong enough to return to teaching. I was given the whole first week off school to recover. Two of the teachers, one Canadian and one Australian, had started sending me home cooked food every day. My Filipino housemates were more than willing to pick up groceries for me and cook their favourite dishes from home for me. Several of my friends from back home started to depart for their own international adventures (Leah has been in Australia as long as I've been in Indo, Caitlin and Mike arrived in Thailand last week, Sarah and Eric leave for Colombia tomorrow, Katie to Colombia on Thursday and Kim and Jared to China in August – I wish you all the best team!) and since I consider myself a trend setter in the group I had to start setting a better example of being a teacher abroad. And the final piece of motivation came from my first visitor from back home booking their flight for October. How can I find all the cool places to take them if I am too busy being sick right?

With many reminders of why I went on this stupid, crazy international adventure in the first place, and a fresh batch of motivation, I have finally mentally committed to recovering so I can start enjoying every minute of my time in Indonesia. In no time at all I will look back on this past two weeks and laugh and say “Oh cool, what an interesting cultural experience!”. At the very least when I am an old and bitter teacher I will win many a staff room competition for "worst first teaching experience".  

I start my first full day of school tomorrow and promise the blog posts from here on out will be much more positive and enjoyable to read. I can finally join the rest of the people in this photo as a teacher for 2013-14 at Bina Bangsa School, Bandung campus.

Canada Day, Independence Day, and more induction

Tuesday after the conference we had an organized sports day for all of the teachers.  Teachers could choose from basketball, soccer, badminton, table tennis, swimming or team games. Naturally I chose basketball. And after basketball swimming chose me. Sweaty clothes and all.  Despite having rained most of the afternoon on the outdoor court, and having to mop the court first, we were able to get some pretty competitive games of 4-on-4 pick up. One teacher played a year of US college basketball and proved to be quite the challenge to guard. Having been cut from the Queen’s team in first year I tend to play my best against players who I feel are a benchmark to compare whether or not I should have made the team. I’m not going to post whose team won because no one likes a show off, but as my buddy Jeff Letchford once told me "I'm just a big play kinda guy" ;)

Watch out Miami Heat, this team is coming for ya!

On the left is Jerome (teacher at Bandung) and directly on my right is Ralphie (the phys. Ed teacher at Bandung, who will also give me a hand coaching bball). Directly on top of my head (while slightly to the back because it doesn’t quite fit) is a glo hat (my prediction is every student at Bandung will own at least two within the first month of me teaching, if they hope to pass that is).

The Induction conference for new teachers ended on Wednesday and below is a photo of all the new Bandung teachers, including the principals and heads of department.

This photo largely demonstrates my flexibility and nimbleness, two of my greatest strengths. In my class photo from Kindergarten I look almost equally awkward.

With the conclusion of the new teacher induction conference all 150 teachers were taken out for dinner. This was our first experience with the legendary Jakarta traffic. A commute into downtown Toronto seems like you could get a speeding ticket compared to Jakarta traffic. According to Google maps we were 11 minutes from the hotel to the restaurant. Our ride home took 35-45 minutes. Our ride to the restaurant took 2.5 hours. Luckily I had music although my country music library could use some updating (Leah Macpherson). I was told recently that during the Muslim holiday coming up in August an 8-hour drive through Jakarta takes 36 hours. People literally sleep in their cars because traffic stands still for hours. Java Island has about 180 million people and is a little bigger than Florida.

When we arrived at the restaurant I immediately forgot the long drive. The food was spectacular and plentiful. I am being fed very well here Mom so don’t worry. (Belinda Kruis)

Some sort of fish

I lost count of how many dishes they brought out to us.

With the conclusion of the new teacher conference yesterday, today marked the beginning of the welcome conference for all staff. This will run until tomorrow afternoon before I hit the road to head to my new home in Bandung. By this time the long days are starting to catch up with me and I’m starting to feel exhausted.

Luckily while I was trying to nap one of the teaching wives decided that this would be a good idea:

 

I’m probably going to need to get a teaching wife for massage purposes. Unrelated fun fact: Indonesia has a law against pornography. Who’s idea was that?? (Cole Maclean)

Tonight the school is taking out the American and Canadian teachers for dinner to celebrate Independence Day and Canada Day. As much as I love free dinners, I’m not sure how ready I am to listen to all the Americans comment on the way I say “out and about”.

Here is a photo of myself and Jeremy, a biology teacher from California teaching at the Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) campus of BBS. I mentioned earlier he’s a dive master so we’ll be doing some dive trips soon for sure

Couple a beauts

Last Sunday at our massage Jeremy was complaining that his massage lady would belch every two minutes. Understandably he found it incredibly off putting. He described it as “its like she slammed back a two liter of coke before my massage. I thought I had a bull frog massaging me”.

Today at dinner we were chatting with a few returning teachers from Canada and one of them was telling us about the spas here. He said one thing you need to be aware of is that in Indonesia they believe that sometimes too much air gets trapped under your skin. This is supposedly a similar feeling to when we would feel bloated after a large meal or too much carbonation. As the masseuse is massaging you and she feels an area of your body where there is “too much air” she will burp to signal to you that there is too much air in your body and she is helping you release it. This is such a widely believed phenomenon that we are told we will often have students calling in sick complaining that they have too much air under their skin and they need to go get a massage to treat it. It was incredibly interesting to get to the bottom of the mysterious massage belching, and next time Jeremy will know to have less air when he goes for a massage.

Last photo of the day:

This is Mr. Anba from Singapore, the principal of PIK secondary school in Jakarta. This is the guy I interviewed with and afterwards I knew I wanted to teach at his school. So far he has not disappointed!

Hello Jakarta!

On Sunday all the teachers had a day off from the induction conference. Several teachers have become ill with various common travelling ailments including fever, food poisoning, and the unfortunate traveller's diarrhea. I took advantage of the day off and grabbed a cab into Jakarta with some of the other teachers. 

From Left to right we have Aaron (A first year teacher from Tennessee who in addition to teaching grade 7-8 will be helping to coach the national water skiing team in Jakarta), Cindy (A classmate at Queen's who will be teaching chemistry here at BBS), and Jeremy and his non-teaching wife Kasandra (From the US and Venezuela respectively. Jeremy is teaching high school biology at the Jakarta campus and is a dive master and huge into body boarding. Some dive trips to the various islands here will be happening in the near future.).

Squeezing five people in a cab is no big deal, and so far from my keen observations of Jakarta driving laws I believe the only rule to the road is "yield when absolutely necessary" and anything else goes. The most interesting and scariest part is that there are at least as many motor cycles on the road as cars and they are constantly weaving around the vehicles. Crossing the streets is a nightmare and much like a game of frogger but Aaron and I have a theory that if you walk in a predictable trajectory and don't change pace or direction the "yield when absolutely necessary" law will be easier for cars to follow and therefore we will not get hit.

Our 30 minute cab ride cost 50 000 rupiah, which translates to about $5. So we happily paid $1 each for a 30 minute ride. Our plan for the day was to get a massage. At the massage place they also had several japanese restaurants so we got some sushi.

I don't know what most of this stuff was but it was phenomenal. In the top right of the bento box there is some octopus and the sneaky white one in the middle of the bottom right corner was the chewiest thing I have ever eaten in my life. This made me miss the Jina Sushi crew in Kingston (Sarah, Eric, Kim, Jared, Laura, Thea, Rachael, Caitlin, Katie, Taylor Swiftee E).

After lunch we spent the next couple hours relaxing and getting body scrub massages. For 1.5 hours it was only $22. I will definitely be returning there once the stress of teaching starts but perhaps will choose a different option than "body scrub" because although my massage was fantastic, a few of the others found their massages to be a little abrasive. Also mid way through the massage Aaron got a sketchy whisper about money. And although it was lost in translation we can't quite decide if it was her encouraging him to tip well, or her negotiating a price for a "special" massage.

Fed and relaxed we went for a walk around the city. Just by chance we stumbled onto the busiest street corner I have ever seen and everyone was waiting for something. This is what we saw next:

The pictures don't do justice to the beauty of the costumes and there was tons of musical instruments being played throughout the parade including some really cool drum circles (Lynsey Yates). It wasn't until later that we found out the parade was celebrating the anniversary of Jakarta (not sure how many years). 

Funniest experience of the day however; the hundreds of photos that were taken of us. It ranged from people sneakily taking photos, to openly taking photos, to asking us if they could take a photo of us, to asking them if their friend could take a photo of them standing with us. Everyone who took a photo was always very thankful and extremely thrilled which made it very fun. My favourite time was when the five of us stopped and posed near a particularly flashy float to take a group shot and tens of locals swooped in and took their own photos of our group shot. It felt like we could have stood there all day and the inflow of cameras never would have stopped. Think about how extravagant and picture worthy all of those costumes and floats are, but all the locals wanted to take photos of were us. Which logic tells me that we look as far fetched to them as anything in the parade looks to us. My second theory, which is consistent with what I get told a lot in Canada, is that everyone in this country takes photos of us because they think I am Matt Damon.