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!