Sports day and more interesting cultural experiences

Today marked the last day of school before we get two weeks off for the Lebaran holiday. What made it even more exciting was that it was a half-day, and the half-day was sports day. So instead of heading to the school, all of the secondary students and teachers went to a sports stadium so the students could compete in various track and field events. Our school divides the students and teachers up into four different houses, very much like Harry Potter, and runs athletic and academic competitions throughout the year and will crown a winning house at the end of the year. I am the housemaster of the Red Rhinos. As well as the magical wizard powers that come with this position I am also in charge of organizing and coaching the red house at the various inter-house competitions. Obviously my house is Gryffindor and to prove it we have 7 siblings in Red house who all share very similar traits and athletic ability, which is essentially the closest thing I can think of to the existence of the Weasley family.  So after a quick warm up the kids prepared for a day of sprinting, relays, long jump, shot put, tug of war and of course Quidditch.

Red Rhinos!

Budhi, the Red house captain

There were a few mishaps with the timing and recording of winners for individual events, so they haven’t actually announced the winning house yet, but I am pretty sure I lead the Red House to victory and have solidified my status as one of the greatest wizards in Bina Bangsa School history.

On Thursday evening my Bandung crew (Alice the Aussie, and Kyle and Cassandra the Canadian couple) and I went to a really cool restaurant called magic oven before heading to the mall for groceries and a much needed backpack. I learned two interesting things at magic oven. I found out that there is very delicious pizza in Indonesia however the sophisticated technology that allows one to eat pizza without all of the toppings immediately falling off does not yet exist here. The knife and fork provided were not just a suggestion, it was the only option. Secondly, for the choose your own toppings option under "vegetables" they listed egg. Many of your first reactions might be "why do they consider egg a vegetable?" but the correct reaction is "why do they consider egg a pizza topping?".

One rule of thumb (as Indonesia has an incredibly high unemployment rate (I’ve read as high as 10%!)) is that many processes are designed to create as many jobs as possible. What I did not know at the time of purchasing my backpack is that in order to purchase things at this store you tell the lady at the counter which backpack you want, she fills out a form for you, then you go to a different counter and pay for the backpack and get the form signed, and then you go back to the first lady and give her the form in exchange for your backpack. Not overly complicated but this is how many, many things are sold and it seems much more complicated and inefficient than it needs to be. This backpack experience is where I learned another valuable lesson. I am a white person, who clearly comes from a far away land, speaks no Bahasa, and looks very confused. Which translates to they will kind of let me do what I want. The lady at the backpack store, after quickly failing to communicate to me that I can’t pay her for the back pack, took my money, went and grabbed her own purse and gave me change. It wasn’t until afterwards that Alice informed me I did it wrong and caused several Indonesians to be even more confused than I was. And trust me, I was very confused.

After sports day I was able to get to the bank and take out money for my two-week vacation in Bali, which I leave for on Saturday at 3pm (Woot woot!). I ended up having to wait almost 2 hours to exchange my American money to Rupiah so I told the other teacher who was showing me how to do everything that he could just leave and I would catch a cab. His reluctance to leave me alone, though kind of him, showed his lack of confidence in my ability to get around Bandung by myself. After the money exchanger I was walking down the street trying to find a taxi when all of a sudden it started to pour rain. As luck would have it I heard someone yell my name. I looked back to see one of my grade 11 students stick his head out the window of a car, and then the car pulled over. As it was raining I didn’t hesitate to take his ride offer and assumed it would be one of his parents who was driving. When I hoped in the car I found out the driver was another one of my grade 11 students. Now anyone who has every taught in Ontario can understand how I suddenly had a strong feeling that this situation was one that I could get fired for. The students asked me where I wanted to be dropped off so I read them the text message in my phone that has my address written in it. My address is Konstitusi 1, No 28. What does that mean? I wasn’t surprised that they didn’t know where my house was, and I clearly had no idea how to get back to my house, but luckily they were heading towards the school and I could catch a ride home from there with some of the teachers who stayed to prep after sports day.

I was trying to be a good conversationalist for my students and was really curious about how the driving licensing system works in Indonesia so I asked them how old you have to be to get your license. They said 17 or 18. Interesting that it is a range. I asked them if they had to pass a test in order to get their driver’s license. They looked surprised and said no. I asked my student how did he get his driver’s license. He said I’m not technically old enough to drive so I just slipped them some money and now I have a license. Oh, ok, that’s great. I am now in a vehicle with two of my students (which I’m still not sure if I can get fired for) who have bribed their way into a driver’s license, and have never taken any courses or written any tests in order to be able to drive. In Indonesia I always feel like I am rolling the dice any time I get into a vehicle with the traffic and non-existent rules of the road, but this was a particularly high-risk situation. I am happy to have two weeks off school before I have to face those two students again.

And with that, I will be away from blogging for two weeks until I am back from vacay, hopefully with some incredible pictures and stories to share with everyone.