Catch Up! (Catsup?) (Ketchup?)

September 23

The first day of class went well. I couldn’t get the computer to work and had to bullshit my way through A LOT of the class, but from what I hear about teaching, that’s just about par for the course.


Last night I got my first taste of STMJ. It may sound like a street drug, but it’s actually a mixture of milk, egg, honey and ginger. It’s amazingly delicious. It reminded me of really gingery eggnog. It was great drinking it sitting outside in the hustle and bustle and heat of Malang, but I couldn’t help letting my mind wander to icy cold memories and how nice it would be drinking it in the dead of winter. Well – that’s not going to happen any time soon!

Today was a much needed Al Pal hermit kind of day. Two of my roommates went down to Surabaya to attend a wedding, and my other roommate had to work, so I had the whole house all to myself. It was heaven. Who else would spend their whole Saturday in a new exotic town holed up being all quiet and alone and love it? I have my public moments but I sure do love being my loner self. As a result I don’t really have much to write about, but I will share with you the delight of sitting on the small patch of green in “the backyard” at dusk, playing guitar in the warm evening air. Lovely.



September 24, 2012

On Sunday I went to a Welshman’s wedding reception. Darren, the head teacher here got married in Surabaya on Saturday, and the bride and groom came up to Malang for a reception on Sunday. It was certainly a neat thing to attend, but as it was a Muslim wedding, it was, by far, the driest and therefore most tame wedding reception I have ever attended. I suppose we made up for it later that night when we had the goodbye party for one of the teachers. Luckily the party was at the other teacher house about a block and a half away, so it was easy to stumble home.
So I’m finally getting to live the college life I never did when I was actually in college. Dinner last night was instant noodles and carrot sticks, dinner two nights ago was peanuts, an apple, chips and salsa and whiskey. I am such a healthy eater but it’s been a huge challenge here, between my schedule (not getting out of school until 9pm), the limited kitchen at the house, and not having access to many of my “go to” healthy items at the grocery store, it’s a struggle to eat well. Especially when all the street stalls sell fried rice for a dollar and the biggest section in almost every grocery store is the cookie isle.

So the slight throat irritation that I was hoping was just a result of the dry air and burning trash has blossomed into a full-blown chest cold. Which is AWESOME for teaching (that’s the sarcasm font if any of you hadn’t noticed). Physically I feel fine, it’s just difficult to talk and take deep breaths. Again, AWESOME for teaching. Luckily I get out of class at 7:30 tonight, so it’s a shorter day than usual. And there’s no shortage of chicken soup, aka chicken-flavored ramen.

On a final note, completely unrelated to Indonesia, the new Mumford & Sons album is fantastic. Two of my most favorite musicians are M&S and Paul Simon, and their cover of The Boxer is pure, dead brilliant. The amazing things that music can do – this album has actually helped me settle into being here and appreciate my life right now for what it is and where I am, not just geographically but emotionally too.



September 27th, 2012



One of the nice things about working at EF is that the teachers have a lot of freedom to teach however they like. This can be a double-edged sword when you first start out though, because there are SO MANY resources available, and it’s a bit overwhelming to pick and choose through all of them. There is a big database of language games to play, and it’s often fun to play a game as a warm-up in class to get them focused and thinking in English. So for one of my classes yesterday I stumbled on a game where the teacher chooses a song, writes words from that song on pieces of paper, and tapes the pieces of paper to the board. Students break into two groups and form two lines, and the two students at the front of the lines listen for the words that are taped up on the board. When they hear the word, the run up and grab it, and then go to the back of the line. When all the words have been grabbed, the team with the most pieces of paper wins! So I looked through the giant database of songs, most of which are kids songs that weren’t going to work with my 17-19 year-olds. Playing games to the tune of Old MacDonald isn’t really what you want to be doing when you’re in high school. So imagine my joy when buried in the list of songs at EF was The Clash’s “Should I Stay Or Should I Go.” Not only is it a great song to use for the activity, but it’s The Clash. And I’m pleased to note that it worked fantastically and the students loved it!

My other news of note is that I now am proud, card-carrying owner of a shiny new bank account here! That’s right, my hard-earned teacher’s pay is now being deposited in some bank down the street that I can’t remember the name of. One of the women who works at EF (the one on charge of all the teacher stuff) took me to the bank yesterday and opened up an account for me. I have a pretty new debit card too (it’s got that new bank account smell to it!), and as all the instructions at the ATM machines are in Bahasa, we’ll see how long it takes me randomly poking at buttons on the ATM machine to break it or get arrested.