Wanderlust

Wanderlust – a very strong, or irresistible impulse to travel

“Why do you want to teach internationally?”. This was a question asked at every interview at the Teachers Overseas Recruiting Fair. This is a question that every international teacher has asked themselves many times.  More so than any other interview question I’ve ever been asked this one had a feeling that there was a “correct” answer.  Many teacher's reasons range from experience a new culture, learn a new language, gain perspective and become a better educator through experiencing a new school system. But the one thing that all educators looking to teach abroad have in common is at least a little bit of wanderlust.

In the days leading up to my departure to Indonesia I was talking with my half brother Ian and his wife Jenny, both of whom are very well travelled. Jenny made a comment about her experience living in Whistler (British Columbia, Canada for my international readers who have not been fortunate enough to know anything about Canada). She said that it was an amazing experience but one day she realized that she goes to work everyday and comes home and does her laundry. And if that was what her life was, she would rather do it back home where her friends and family are.

I didn't understand the laundry comment at the time, but now I think I know what she meant. Once a new place has nothing else to offer you that outweighs the difficulties of living away from your friends and family, it is time to go back home.

3-7 weeks ago I had lost all of my wanderlust. Through my weeks of sickness, homesickness, and some frustrations and struggles with my teaching assignment I felt that there was nothing for me in Indonesia that could justify me being away from my friends and family back home for two years.

Then I went to Bali. . .

I realize now that there are so many opportunities and possibilities that exist for me in Indonesia that I would not have readily available to me if I were back in Canada. The opportunities to experience new cultures, the natural volcanoes, mountains, beaches, islands, surf waves, coral reef, temples, and diversity of wildlife that are available to me in Indonesia are astounding.

I left Bali with a much fuller suitcase than I came with, thanks to the 3 pairs of sunglasses, new flip flops, several paintings, and 5 new tank tops with names of the various islands I visited on them (bartering at the little shops for items you don’t really need is a LOT of fun). But I also left Bali with a much fuller heart than I arrived with. With all its incredible people and natural beauty, for the first time since I arrived, I started to love the country of Indonesia.

Now let’s go on a journey! Pack your bags, get your neon tank top and glo hat on and let's go!

Just a quick hour and 45 minutes plane ride. You can either a) do what I did and read The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein (pretty good read but I have to warn you it is narrated by a dog) or b) look out the window at this view the whole way:

Indonesia has so many mountains and volcanoes. And since I know someone was thinking it, the white stuff in the photo is clouds, not snow. No snow in this country. 

All teachers know that it is important to start off a lesson with a "hook", something that captures the audience's attention and will interest them in the topic. Just try to look at these next pictures and not keep reading ;)

Welcome to Kuta 

Welcome to Padang Padang

Welcome to Dream Land (I am not making up these names)

Gili Trawangan

More Gili T

Nusa Lembongan

Blue lagoon

Secret beach

I can't remember the name of the place where this photo was taken. Was it Paradise?

I arrived in Bali and met up with Jeremy, Kasandra and Aaron in Kuta. Kuta is the largest tourist destination in Bali and is overflowing with Australians. There is tons to do here but it is so busy that it is not where you want to spend your vacation, however it is conveniently close to the airport and you can catch transport (buses, taxis, ferries, even a helicopter) to anywhere else in Bali from Kuta.

The next 3 days were spent in Padang Padang, a much smaller place famous for its incredible surfing waves. In fact, overlapping with our time there was a world surfing competition. The surf was too flat for the competition while we were there so we didn't see any of it but I did attempt to surf for the first time in my life. I learned that trying to teach yourself how to surf based entirely on guessing is extremely difficult and I promised myself I would take lessons later in the trip.

On our first trip down to Padang Padang beach we were greeted by a bunch of monkeys. I put my stuff down to snap some photos and was robbed, oceans eleven style. It felt like one of those spaghetti western style films when the bandits hop on a train and steal all the bags with the dollar signs on them, and it isn't until the train conductor sees the dust being kicked up by the bandits' horses as they get away that he realizes the robbery he has just been made victim of. I felt like the conductor on one of those trains. 

While I was innocently taking pictures and minding my own business the stealthiest monkey of all time crept up and took my full 1.5L water bottle (the equivalent to my bags marked with dollar signs) . Noticing that I had spotted him he climbed up a wall and taunted me. He used his opposable thumbs and spun open the cap with one fluid motion. After rudely spilling about half of the water that didn't belong to him he used both his monkey hands and one of his monkey feet to tilt the bottle to his mouth and began to drink my delicious, cold water. I was too disgruntled and distracted to take a picture but Kasandra snapped a great photo which I will try to grab from her at a later date to a) show you all in a later blog post and b) help create the monkey wanted poster for the police so they can catch this thief. 

The entrance to Padang Padang beach involves a one-lane, narrow, winding staircase/cave that is made more complicated when people are carrying surfboards

This is a picture of me, on a rock. (Trevor, why would you include this photo, its a terrible photo and its boring). I would like the more keen observers to appreciate the tan I accumulate over this trip and this was day one when people would pull their sunglasses over their eyes when I walked past

On the day we left Padang Padang there was a huge ceremony on the beach. It was a Hindu ceremony. It was difficult to get all the details and piece together exactly what was happening but to my best understanding they were honouring those who died over the past several years and might have been wishing them well on their journey to their next life, as reincarnation is a big part of Hindu religion. 

The head ornaments, instruments, and many other decorations made for a beautiful ceremony. I actually sort of got invited to the ceremony and was sitting in the sand with the people in the photo below for quite some time listening to the drums play and wondering what was going on. Also, remember the winding tunnel in the photo above to get to the beach? Getting all these people down there was very interesting

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population of any country in the world. With a population of nearly 250 million and about 90% Muslim, I am no rain man or anything, but that is about 225 million Muslims. After all, this two week holiday was the Muslim Leberan holiday to celebrate the breaking of the Ramadan fast. I wish that more westerners had the opportunity to live so closely to 225 million Muslims and maybe their skewed perspective about the portrayal of Muslim extremists, or terrorists, by our western media may finally change.

Although the most prevalent religion in Indonesia is Muslim, in Bali it is almost entirely Hindu. Someone (or maybe I read it somewhere) once told me that every Island you go to in Indonesia (and there are over a thousand of them) is like going to an entirely new country in terms of the differences in culture. I finally understand what they meant. I find the Hindu culture to be absolutely beautiful and fascinating. There are hundreds of deities, and each deity rides some sort of animal. Ganesh is the most popular of these deities and is the remover of obstacles. There is also a god of education and almost anything else you can think of. Because Hindus believe in reincarnation, one cannot convert to Hinduism, they must be born into it in another life. 

I literally have no idea what these statues are of but they are really cool

Everywhere in Bali there was beautifully sculpted statues of various deities

You cannot come to bali without getting handed hundreds of flyers for massages. If you are like me and the people I was travelling with you will take advantages of these massages. Prices range from $6 for a one hour massage to $13 for an hour and a half massage. Here is a photo with a couple of the massage ladies from our relaxing massage in Kuta.

The reoccurring theme of the trip for massages was that whichever girl massaged Aaron immediately fell in love with him. I don't think he minded too much

Nice little group shot at dream beach

As beautiful as the beaches are during the bright sunny day, their beauty reached a next level when it came time for the sun to set

I was approached by a representative from Sports Illustrated to be featured in the month of December for the 2014 Swimsuit Calendar. Poor Kate Upton will have to settle for November next year

This next story is tough to gage what the reaction will be like so I'll make it quick, and please keep in mind that Kopi Luwak is a delicacy on Bali and I was doing it for the cultural experience:

These are Civets

These cute little animals eat coffee beens. Then they excrete them. In the olden days, people would search through forests to find Civet droppings, now they just take it from their cage. Then they wash the coffee beans. . . really really well I hope

Then coffee gets brewed

 Then tourists are tricked not only into drinking the Civet poop coffee, but also paying $5 a cup for it. 

 Some tourists can't handle the Civet poop and go crazy

Honestly it was cool to try but I prefer Timmies

I told my sister Emma about the Civet coffee and she said "no wonder you got ecoli poisoning". At the end of our conversation I told her I was off to visit a place called elephant caves and she said "have fun but please don't eat any elephant poop"

This photo was at the Kopi Luwak place and I just love the diversity of plants and highly exaggerated flower colouration found in tropical countries

The longer we spent time in Bali, the more locals we met, and the more locals we met that were named Katuk. I thought to myself that Katuk must be to Bali what Katie is to Canada where there are a ridiculous number of girls with that name. Jeremy explained to me, and I had to research it a little more, the very traditional and interesting way that names work in Bali.

Step one:

The first-born child (boy or girl) in every family is named Wayan. The second child is named Made (pronounced ma day). The third child is named Nyoman and the fourth child is named Katuk. If a fifth child is born they are named Wayan, the sixth is named Made, the seventh Nyoman and eighth Katuk. A ninth child, you guessed it would be the third child in the family to be named Wayan.

Step two: Women receive the honorific “Ni” in front of their name as in Ni Katuk and Men receive “I” as in I Wayan, similar to Mrs. and Mr.

I found out that not surprisingly most Balinese people go by either nicknames that they acquire in the same way that we would acquire a nickname (through personality traits, or hobbies etc.) or by their family names, however when they introduce themselves to tourists they use their first name.

Our next destination was Ubud, which is the cultural capital of Bali. The one downside is that it is not on the ocean, but there is so much to do and learn that there is no time for the beach anyways. We had massages here once a day, there are yoga retreats if that's what you're in to, there is such a diversity of restaurants and there are so many rice fields and temples to see. Compared to the more popular places like Kuta and Gili Trawangon it is very cheap.

These were our digs in Ubud. Cheap, clean, swimming pool, breakfast delivered to your room every morning, this is where I will stay again next time I am in Ubud

We visited the Monkey Jungle which has many Hindu temples, and many monkeys. But don't worry, I was prepared after my previous monkey encounter and kept a good eye on all of them for any sign of thievery. You could purchase bananas just outside the entrance and the monkeys would climb on you, take them from your hands and eat them on you long enough to snap a few pics

We ventured over to the cremation temple and to our surprise there was an actual cremation happening. I thought it was just a demonstration or something so I was taking pictures like the rest of the tourists but definitely decided it was time to move on when we found out it was a real person being cremated

In order to enter the area that the next temple was in we were required to dress in some of the traditional Hindu dress including a sarong and scarf. Had there actually been a prayer happening at that time we would have been required to wear much more.  

At elephant caves we were required to wear sarongs again and the gentleman issuing them thought it was the funniest thing in the history of the world to give me a pink one

After making sure to go to a "babi guling", also known as a roast suckling pig for lunch we headed to Gili Trawangan. The Gili islands is a group of three islands technically in Lombak, which are a short boat ride from Bali. The Gilis, with its amazing food, night life, snorkling, diving, beaches and sunsets was my favourite destination of the trip. 

We met up with a group of 7 other teachers for our time on the Gilis and it was great to catch up with them and do some snorkelling, fine dining, some dancing, and just enjoying life.

Top from the left: Moi, Amy, Aaron, Matt

Bottom from the left: Kavita, Corey, Brad, Eli, Nate

One of my favourite parts of Gili T, is every day around 5pm everyone would head over to South Tip to a restaurant/bar and lounge around with some dinner or a beer and wait for the sun to set. The sounds of the waves crashing, the sand between your toes, the view of the mountains of Bali on one side, the view of the volcanoes of Lambok on the other side and the way the setting sun just decorated the sky with a sea of colours was one of the most relaxing and enjoyable moments I can ever think of. These pictures do not even begin to capture the experience and I cannot wait to take a beautiful girl to South Tip, Gili Trawangan to watch the sunset. 

When the sun goes down on Gili T, that does not mark the end of the night, in fact it is only the beginning. At South Tip, lanterns are set up and a bonfire is lit on the beach and there are fire performances every night. After watching some of that we would head over to one of many, many restaurant options. We had seafood, sushi, bbq, thai, indian, italian, you name it. There is even a night market on the island where you can buy some local foods including many of the fresh catches of the day from the sea. After a slow, relaxing dinner and a few Bintangs (the popular beer in Bali) we would head over to Soma Soma (roughly translates to no worries), which is the reggae bar where they have a live band every night. When that band starts playing it casts a spell on everyone in the bar and hips and bodies start moving as everyone dances to the live music. Soma Soma cannot last forever but even around 1 or 2 in the morning when that closes the night is still not over. The crowd moves to surf bar where there is a bonfire and the sound of the ocean waves and star lit sky make a perfect setting as the beach is turned into a dance floor.

Take me back to Gili T. . .


Other highlights of my time on the island include a snorkel tour around the gilis, a dive in which I saw a sting ray, a turtle, and a two sharks (I have a video of the sharks but again it is on Kasandra's camera).

Reluctantly we did leave the Gilis, and we took a boat directly to Nusa Lembongan. It was a wonderful place to wind down and relax and cap off our vacation. By wind down and relax I mean I fulfilled my promise to myself earlier in the trip and took some surfing lessons, went for two dives (saw two Mola Mola, which is a gigantic sunfish and is officially the largest fish I have ever seen in my diving career), and rented motorcycles and toured the island and neighbouring island Ceningan for lots of snorkelling and some cliff jumping.

Learning to surf definitely was one of the highlights of my trip. Such a cool feeling to have the wave take control of your board, stand up, and then ride the wave until it dies down. Then its time to paddle back and catch the next one. 

As with everywhere in Bali the sunset is just spectacular and Nusa Lembongan did not disappoint. My surf lesson on our last day was from 4-6pm so it was just finishing up as the sun was setting. After the lesson I was able to sit out on my board on the water and watch the sunset.

 Me and my surf instructor Khadil

On the very last day, we visited a beach resort called secret beach. It honestly felt like we snuck into a billionaire's pool.

At blue lagoon we jumped off a 15 meter (50 foot) cliff. I feel like this is an appropriate picture to finish up this blog entry because its epic and I would like to think it is symbolic of how ready I am to get out there and explore more of this beautiful country. 

 Until next time Bali

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.

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.