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Sunday, April 6, 2014

To old friends and new friends

There are very few things that are more rewarding to me than making someone smile. Sometimes it’s the more important the person is to me, the more rewarding making them smile is. Other times it’s the less they saw it coming that makes it more rewarding. Or the greater the effect it had on uplifting their mood. Or my personal favourite is when I can think of a way to make someone smile that only myself and the other person would understand, and that moment will always be unique to us.

One of the things that is more rewarding to me is when someone shows you that they recognize and appreciate something that you do for them, and they completely catch you off guard with it. One such moment happened in January on Teacher’s appreciation day.

The day started off like any regular Friday morning; pacing the assembly hall reminding students to tuck in their uniform, wishing others luck on the test they are cramming for last minute. And of course, just before the bell rings to begin the school day you have a few students baseball slide into line in order to avoid being late and receiving an after-school detention. As the Toronto Blue Jays have just kicked off their season I think they could take some pointers from my students about sliding into home plate.

But that was about all that was ordinary about that morning. After the announcements finished some music began and students began running to different positions in the gym and collecting all of the teachers and bringing us to the centre of the gym. What followed was a heavily practiced, entirely student organized, very well choreographed dance in a circle around us. To say that it wasn’t at least a little bit awkward at first would be a lie, but when the fear that we might be under attack subsided it was very enjoyable and touching. At one point there were two circles of students around us and the inner circle ran clockwise while the outer circle ran counterclockwise. I felt like I was in a centrifuge but fought the motion sickness so I wouldn’t have to look away from the dance the students had worked so hard to prepare for. At the end of the music the students presented all of the teachers with roses and one of the students said a few words of appreciation followed by a ground shaking round of applause from all the students. We left the assembly hall feeling very happy.

But the most thoughtful part was waiting on our desks for us when we arrived back in the teacher’s room.







15 months ago (wow time flies) when I was interviewing for international teaching jobs I was asked many times what I was like as a teacher and what my classroom would be like. I would make claims like I was extremely patient, caring and understanding. I was humourous and would make ever day a little bit more fun. And most of all that I would have an excellent rapport with my students. The only problem was I had never taught my own class before, I was just describing the teacher that I hoped to be.

Sitting down in my desk on teacher’s appreciation day and reading my card, it was the most incredible feeling that what stood out the most about me to my students was everything that I had hoped I would become as a teacher.

And hey, if none of those qualities are noticed by a few students, at least they can appreciate a nice slam-dunk when they see one. 





Another Winter Olympics, another pair of Canada hockey gold medals

Normally the Olympics are something I follow very closely and with extreme enthusiasm. Indonesia doesn’t quite share my passion for the Winter Olympics. Example, one of my students thought the Olympics were in Korea this year. I suppose Sochi could conceivably be the name of a city in Korea. But another student thought the Winter Olympics were in Myanmar, to which I cannot think of a reasonable defence for this confusion.

Indonesian television shares a similar disinterest for the Olympics but when Canada is in the gold medal game, all true Canadians will find a way to support their team. Fortunately for me my sister’s boyfriend was willing to Skype me during the game, and face the computer to the TV, so I could feel like I was watching the game on Canadian soil. 


A screen shot of how I watched Canada shut out the Swedes for the Gold




Physical Education and Health week

One week in early February marked physical activity and health week. Mostly this consisted of inter-grade sporting competitions, and a morning of aero kickboxing. But the highlight of the week was the healthy food competition. Students submitted their best efforts of a healthy food item that was easy to make, and one of the most important judging criteria was taste. This was an inter-house competition and as the housemaster of red house I was deemed to be in too biased a position to be on the judging panel. I disagree. I tried so hard to persuade, sweet talk, argue, more sweet talk and finally to beg my way onto the judging panel to no avail. Fortunately there was plenty of food for all and I got to experience first hand the masterpieces of all of the talented chefs that I teach.


Yellow house with their healthy shake, and last minute effort at a sandwich only a mother could love


Green house (the eventual champions of the competition) with their diverse array of submissions 

Red house (my house) with the winning dish for the individual challenge

A feast fit for a king! 



This food competition has revolutionized the way I assess my student’s knowledge of biology. Here is a glimpse at my unit plans for the next few chapters:

Unit: digestion
Topics: The alimentary canal, macromolecules, mechanical and chemical digestion
Final assessment: Make a delicious food item for Mr. Trevor and write a two page report explaining the steps involved in digestion when he eats it.

Unit: Infectious disease and immunity
Topics: prevention and control of infection disease, the immune system
Final assessment: Make a delicious food item for Mr. Trevor and write a one page report on how the safe food handling and cooking methods you used to make it for him will help to prevent the spread of harmful bacteria.

You get the gist, I will be eating very well until I retire from teaching.





Camp Rock, the musical

My school year is divided into four terms of 10 weeks and term three is by far the busiest. This is in large part due to the fact that close to 50% of our students are involved in the annual musical that our school puts on. Two years ago the school performed Mulan. I confess that this was one of the first things that caught my eye about Bina Bangsa School back at the job fair oh so long ago. Last year was the 10th anniversary of the school so they wrote their own musical called “This is our story”. This year they decided on Camp Rock. I think it’s a Jonas brother’s movie. To give an example of how legitimate these shows are the school actually purchased the rights to perform the show from a Broadway company in New York.

It would be an understatement to say that I was blown away by the acting, singing and performance the kids put on. It was incredible.



This is one of my wonderful secretary friends Cynthia and I in our Camp Rock Swag



 Did I mention every song in the musical was performed live by our band?



At one point in the musical the actors were asked to point to their favourite teacher. . . 
Now you know where my seat was :P



A very, very relieved cast after the show

 Our male and female leads speaking to the media





Grade 10 and 12 pre-exam camp

The school system I teach in is very exam intensive. It is difficult to count but I think the grade 10s will write 22 exams in May and June. Which means they will also write all of these preliminary exams in April, and have been taking all of these practice exams throughout March. The grade 12 students don’t have it any easier. One thing that our school does right before the term break is put on an overnight camp for the grade 10s and 12s. The goal is for the students to have some fun, bond with each other and their teachers, and hopefully if all goes well they will leave the camp motivated to study hard for their upcoming exams and believing that together we can succeed.

A strange thing happened in the week leading up to the camp. About 50% of our teachers, including our principal, and about 40% of our students got sick. Some sort of bug causing a nasty cough and fever was going around. I was a little worried they were all being turned into zombies. Since when teachers are absent other teachers who aren’t sick cover their classes, I estimated we were about 2 or 3 teachers away from having to cancel school for a few days. I had a very good reason not to get sick so through shear determination and a daily dose of about 6000% of my daily recommended vitamin C I was able to escape the zombie plague unaffected.

As a consequence of being one of the few healthy teachers remaining I was able to make all of the decisions about the itinerary of the camp. And as a result there was evidence throughout the camp that I was the decision maker . . .


For the biology portion of the camp we made homemade ice cream


 Students got creative with ways to shake the bag without getting their hands too cold

Some of the girls were able to trick the boys into shaking their bags for them so their hands wouldn't get cold at all. 
It seems I have a few things I still need to teach these boys


For the movie portion we watched my favourite movie




For dinner we had an awesome BBQ




And in the evening we played my favourite game.




I think everyone had a great time?




Now, on to the reason I was able to will away the Zombie disease that was infecting the school.

Since November I had flights booked to Thailand on March 22nd to visit a couple of my best friends for the weeklong term break. On a side note, if you are under the impression that best friend is a person that is incorrect. Best friend is a tier and my use of the plural is correct. Many things in life don’t always go as planned, and in Indonesia, things never go as planned. Due to visa issues I was told I was unable to leave the country at this time. Despite my best attempts at it, sulking and complaining wasn’t helping my situation so I finally sucked it up and emailed my friends to inform them I would be unable to join them in Thailand. Within 30 minutes of sending the email I was on Skype with one of my friends, and by the next day all flights had been redirected to Indonesia. That is why these guys belong on that best friend tier I talked about.


Meet Lucas, my partner in crime. 


Everyone has that one friend or sibling with whom they can finish each other’s thoughts. Lucas and I have an eerie ability to read each other and think what the other person is thinking with such subtlety that most people wouldn’t notice the exchange of information that has taken place. At one point on this Bali trip (at Soma Soma, the Reggae bar I mentioned back in August) Lucas and I intuitively and instinctively did an improv synchronized dance routine. Not only did we both spontaneously decide we would do this, but I’d like to believe we put on a pretty good performance. Although, in fairness it may have been absolutely awful from an outside observer, but I am basing its quality on how much fun we had doing it.

Meet Cole, my partner in travel. 


Cole and I have visited a whopping seven countries together (I’ve only been to nine) including Canada, US, Dominican, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and now Indonesia. Eight countries if you count Montreal. Cole and I have shared a number of cultural/language barrier experiences that are so confusing that we could never begin to explain them to someone else. Most memorable was our 36-hour transit by boat, bus, car, minivan, and more boats from Belize, through Guatemala and onto Honduras, through three currencies of unknown value to us, and almost entirely in Spanish and the universal language of charades. At one point we accidentally crossed the Guatemalan border without going through customs, and it wasn’t until we got on the bus on the other side when someone overheard us saying “I thought we would have needed to talk to customs or get our passport stamped” before we realized we needed to run back and enter Guatemala the much more legal (and slower) way of entering a country.

These are my best friends. There are 3 more of them out there currently in Toronto, British Columbia, and Colombia (real Colombia). Lucas and Cole are in Australia and Calgary respectively so we are nice and spread out across 3 provinces and 4 continents. But I’ve learned that the strength of a friendship is not determined by proximity, and our current living situations gives us all a reason to travel the world.



I can’t share too much about my Bali trip because 1) None of us took any photos and 2) Let’s just say my students and grandparents read this.

This photo should give a reasonable picture of how great a time we had

The highly fashionable, paten pending shirt hat 


Cole and Lucas both had one of their friends from high school join us for our trip. Both girls and both had so much to bring to the table. Both also had cameras, which serves as the only evidence that any of us were even in Bali.



The blonde with the shades on is Ali from Calgary. Ali made the excellent life decision of getting her scuba certification while in Bali. She also performed one of the least graceful back roll entries off a boat in the history of diving. She has permanently left her legacy on Gili Trawangan by breaking the girl’s record for a challenge that one of the bars had. For comparison I scored 3rd for the boys and she shattered my time.

Directly on my right is Kaitlyn from New York. Like Ali, a very cool girl, with impressive sports knowledge and a strong passion for travel and culture. She’s been living in Australia since November and is currently travelling through much of Asia. Its always interesting for me to find out what motivates other people to travel and Kaitlyn and I spent lots of time sharing travel stories of our favourite countries, where you can find the most beautiful sunsets, the best food and what our dream destination is. Not bad considering she’s American.




I think I would like to share in every blog post what my current top next destination is. After October I was certain I would visit Canada in June and Australia in August or visa versa. In November I was without a doubt going to India and the Maldives in August. After December I was eagerly awaiting my trip to Thailand in March (visa issues *shaking fist). Currently in 2014 I plan to visit Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar and Laos. The only part that seems uncertain to me is who I will be able to convince to join me. (Direct shout out to Adonis - See you in Thailand in June)

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