May 2012
12 posts
A Blogging Break
Hello all! I am in the middle of a quick blogging break due to a visitor (my sister!), a trip (Bali!), and a poor to non-existant internet connection. I’ll be back with updates soon!
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I'm a biker! I can bike!
I have newly acquired a Honda motorbike that is a source of much joy and terror.
The streets of Bandung are filled with motorbikes. Every store and restaurant has specially designated motorbike parking, helmets are for sale on every corner, it would be impossible to overstate just how many motorbikes there are in this city. Women, children, entire families perched precariously on a small Vespa –...
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Enormous Life Changing Improvement #2
This is not quite as life changing as being able to make coffee, but definitely a close second: today I took a hot shower in my own home for the first time in months. As I’m sure you can imagine, it was glorious. Glorious!
The purchase, transport, and installation process was hot, stressful, and confusing, but the end result is so, so worth it.
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Water, water everywhere
When I got up this morning, I stepped down from my slightly elevated bedroom into the living room and found myself standing in several inches of water. Surprise! Further investigation proved that the source of the water was the bathroom, and that there was a small river running from the bathroom, through the living room, into the kitchen, and finally into the yard.
I called my landlord and began...
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Another amazing joke (if I do say so myself)
I had my little kids classes again this morning at it was glorious. I have really tapped into the 3-year-old sense of humor, and it is very satisfying. With the older kids I sometimes veer too subtle or too silly, but with 3-year-olds, I am golden.
Today, at the end of the class when they were putting their shoes on and pausing to show me the butterflies or Angry Birds on their crocs, I took one...
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Morning in the Kampung
I woke up early this morning to loud footsteps on my tin roof. I ran outside to see what was going on and learned that Koko had decided that the part of my roof that extended over his property was interfering with his construction project. So, of course, they jumped up on my roof and sawed part of it off.
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Auntie Kallyn is here!
Once a week, I teach three hours of preschool classes, starting with 3 to 4-year-olds, then 4 to 5, then 5 to 6. The classes are held offsite at the preschool, so the school sends a car to pick me up and drop me off, which invariably makes me feel very fancy and important. It’s completely exhausting and takes a ton of planning, especially for the youngest kids, since an activity will only hold...
April 2012
32 posts
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Monday Night
I had an early class this morning, so I got to finish work early and arrived home just as it started to rain. Ibu-Lilis was still here, so we chatted for a while, and after she left, I fixed myself an absurdly decadent snack of brie, crackers, and an unbelievably good mango chutney I found that is made from mangoes picked “in the hills of Bandung” the label says. It was still raining, so I sat out...
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I am Full of Jokes!
The longer I live here, the more in tune I become with the Indonesian sense of humor, which seems to veer toward slapstick and silliness. I am building a repertoire of jokes to use in class, and let me tell you, 4-year-olds love my jokes.
Joke #1: In Indonesian pre-schools, the teachers are referred to as Aunties and Uncles. So, if you’re doing any kind of activity where you start and then you...
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Ibu-Lilis
Most foreigners in Bandung hire someone to come clean and do laundry. These people are called pembantus, which translates to “helper.” My pembantu is named Ibu-Lilis and she is kind and lovely. She usually comes when I’m at school, but I ran into her yesterday and she very sweetly asked me, “Ibu-Lilis requests money for new broom?” I have recently learned that Indonesians sometimes speak in 3rd...
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What is going on with all these birds?
There is a lot of bird transport and activity in my neighborhood, and I find it all deeply confusing. It reminds me of the It’s Always Sunny episode when the gang goes to a Chinatown fish market and watches the men quickly and industriously exchanging fish for no apparent reason. (“They’re just trading fish for other fish. They just passed that same fish back and forth!”). I do not...
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Bandung has a small but vibrant and diverse expat community that I’m thoroughly enjoying. One of the best places to find them is at Earla’s, a small bar at the entrance to Dago Pojok, my street. It’s awesome and the kind of place where you just show up, settle in at a table, and see who turns up. Last night, I popped in to grab a beer to bring home, and to my delight, found a table of...
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I am one with Nature
Most mornings, I gently shoo a flock of chickens out of my yard. They seem to enjoy beginning each day by pecking at my door in a determined fashion. This usually begins around 6 am.
I also check on the enormous spider that lives outside the living room. We have established a tentative truce, whereby he gets to live on the property so long as he doesn’t come inside my house. I figure that as long...
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I Have Discovered the Secret to Teaching Kids*
And it is coloring. Wow, is it coloring. Ask the kids to do something like fill in their family tree with pictures and only give them plain pencils to use, they will finish in 5 minutes. Add colored pencils to the mix and you will be begging them to stop after 20 minutes.
Yesterday, after a quiz, I gave my 7 and 8-year-olds a picture of an empty skillet and asked them to draw their breakfast (I...
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I just want to let everyone know that where I live has not been affected by the earthquake and I am fine. Thank you for the concern!
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Things I Never Used to Say When I Taught Adults
-Let’s sing the hello song!
-Sit on your bottoms, please.
-If you’re listening, touch your nose.
-No kicking!
-Where did you guys hide my stuff?
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I taught a class of three-year-olds this morning. They were sweet, and rambunctious, and called me Auntie Kallyn, although one poor boy cried the entire time because he was scared of me.
And by “taught,” I really mean that we worked on some words that start with the letter B, sang a song about lollipops, and hopped around like we were bunnies.
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Koko (the village chief) invited me over for...
Which quickly devolved into me filling out paperwork and him telling me I need to give him $20 for… registration? Of what, I do not know. On the slightly plus side, I peeked into his living room and saw at least seven bird cages filled with little yellow birds. Almost no furniture, but a lot of bird cages.
In other news, and this is actually quite disappointing, he is adding a story to his...
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The Wicked D Catches you and you Fall Down
My Singapore trip was marred by food poisoning from some weird chicken and noodles I ate at the Jakarta airport. Ugh. I was finally able to drag myself out of bed the afternoon of my second day, and moved through the city in a haze. So, unfortunately, I didn’t have the Singapore experience that I wanted and I’m sure that skewed my perspective quite a bit.
A highlight of the trip was...
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“Take the green angkot south. You’ll cross some train tracks, and then eventually...”
– -A co-worker’s directions. In the absence of a bus schedule or route map, people get creative.
Tonight I took my normal angkot home that I take most nights, and I have absolutely no idea where we went. I am pretty sure that we drove to the driver’s friend’s house, picked him up,...
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March 2012
29 posts
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