the looooooove doctor

so my friend tiffany, who is studying language here, is moving soon.
that is a bummer, because right now she lives right across the road from me.
but starting monday, she will be living on the other side of town.
she and i spent most of wednesday and thursday painting her new room.
she's moving in with an indonesian family.
the dad is a pastor, and they have five boys ranging in age from 13 to 1.

i have to admit that both days i was kind of dreading going there.
i didn't want to have to think in indonesian.
i didn't want to have to process indonesian.
i didn't want to have to speak indonesian.
but despite all my pessimism, i was very blessed by the tri family.

first of all, i think i was smiling to myself almost the whole time we were painting because in the other rooms, i could hear the family noises.
i didn't realize how much i missed family.
and i don't even mean my family specifically (i mean, of COURSE i miss them), but rather just the feeling of family.
i miss things like smelling mom cooking something in the kitchen.
or the sound of kids running around, laughing and playing. or screaming their head off because someone stole their toy.
or seeing a guest come to the door and dad welcoming them in to sit and talk for awhile.
it made me really happy just to be in the middle of all that.

yesterday, after we finished painting, we sat and talked and drank tea with them for 2 hours straight.
granted, tiffany did most of the talking, given that she is lebih lancar (more fluent) than me.
but i was surprised to find that i understood about 99% of what was said in that 2 hours.

we talked about everything.
we talked about people we all knew.
we talked about the church in indonesia.
we talked about languages.
we talked about cultures of different countries.
we talked about kids.
we talked about math.
we talked about school.
we talked about our families.
we talked about indonesian tv programming.
we talked about kfc.
we talked about hometowns.
we talked about marriage.

somehow, pak tri and his wife decided that i will marry a javanese man.
so then pak gave us a pretty serious talk about marriage.
and it was really good for me to hear.
his biggest advice was to start praying now that God will send someone with whom we can share one vision and one mission for our lives.
and then when we think we've found that person, we have to pray WITH them for the same thing.
he told us about how he and his wife prayed a lot together before they got married and how they have had a very blessed marriage because of it.
this is the most important thing, he says.
if you marry someone who does not have the same heart as you, your life will be very difficult.
he also taught me some javanese.
now i can at least introduce myself to my future husband in his native tongue : )
baha.

real live

yesterday, i came up to my classroom to drop some stuff off in it.

often, geckos like to hide in the space between the door and the door frame.

so it's not uncommon for them to scurry away as i unlock and open the door.

the same thing happened yesterday.

one was in the space between the bottom of the door and the floor.

and as i opened the door, he scurried off into the corner of the classroom.

i saw just a flash of his tail out of the corner of my eye.

and i thought to myself, "that is a HUGE gecko!"

so i peeked under the desk to get a better look at it.

and what should i find but a very..... angry..... SNAKE!

so i took a picture.

then i went and told yohanes.
he came and looked at it too.
then he called one of the grounds guys over.
he ran off to get something to catch it with.
and he came back with a 10 inch piece of wood and an empty water bottle.
it seems that his method of taking care of the snake was to use the piece of wood to chase it into the water bottle.
not happening.
the snake got really angry and coiled and struck at him several times, mouth wide open and hissing.

i took more pictures.

after about 10 minutes of this, the guy must have decided that the best course of action was to at least get it out of the classroom.
so he chased it out, and continued trying to catch it outside.
shortly, a jaga walked by.
our jagas might not be the most well armed guards in the world, but they all carry some vicious looking daggers.
so mr jaga walked over, whipped out his knife, and in one fell swoop, that snake was history.

i took another picture.

the snake was not all that big.
but in a country where something like 98% of them are poisonous....
well, i was healthily wary.
this was, in fact, a landmark achievement for me.
it was the first time i have seen a live snake and not tried to catch it myself.

EDIT: i showed this picture to an indonesian friend who says this is a cobra.

poisonous, but not highly.

sweet summer time

one more day of meetings!
and summer..... is..... HERE!

ashley left friday.
sabina leaves tomorrow.
mari leaves tuesday.
heather leaves saturday.
laurel leaves in a month.

but daniel comes tomorrow.
amanda's brothers are coming soon.
amber comes in 3 weeks.
and candy might come see me too!

one of the best words to describe this place is....
transient.

and someday, i will be one of them.
but i don't like to think about that.

the thorn

so if i were forced to choose just one student who comes closest to being the bane of my existence... it wouldn't be too hard.
the thing is that at heart, he's a great kid. he's just very.... umm..... well, i don't think words can even describe.
he exasperates me to no end. every day of my life. he is forever trying to distract me, he rarely does what i tell him to, he cannot stay in his seat.... even his mother has come to me to apologize for her son!
that being said, deep down, i love the kid to pieces. i see the way he lives and the way he loves, and i respect him. just not first thing in the morning.
anyways, anytime teachers are in the staff room complaining about students (which rarely happens, by the way), i ALWAYS have a good story to throw out about what this kid did on any given day.
today's story is different though.

i've been sick all week, and insanely busy too.
today was our last chapel, and we spent time together in song and praying for each other and saying goodbyes to seniors and students who are moving away.
i sat up in the upper section of the auditorium by myself, just watching and wanting some alone time to feel sick sitting down (finally!).
at one point, we were asked to pray for each other... so i began praying for certain students that i knew were struggling and other more generic things.
after a few minutes, i felt a THUMP against my side.
i looked up, annoyed, and as fate would have it, it was of course the aforementioned student.

him: miss, why are you all alone?
me: i don't feel good. i might leave early.
him: oh. don't you know you're supposed to be praying?
me: i WAS praying, until i was so rudely interrupted. *said with a bit of an edge*
him: yeah, well, then i'll just pray and i'll go, ok?
me: ...... uh, sure.... what do you want to pray for?
him: well, YOU...
me: really?
him: *sits down* yeah, let me pray for you.

so this boy spent the next few minutes just praying over me. he thanked God for sending me here and for all the work i do and he prayed that i wouldn't be stressed and that God would heal me. he prayed for lots of things. and as soon as he said "amen", he walked away quietly, before i could even thank him. i just sat there and cried, completely humbled and blessed.

it is so amazing to be in a place where my students are not ashamed to publicly lift their teachers up in prayer, where our students wash our feet, where they love to tell us that they love us...

every morning when i wake up, i thank God that He brought me here.... of all the places in the world....

highlights from grading math 7 papers on pythagoras and ancient greece....

*can you tell i saved all my paper grading until the very end?*

"I think some of the stuff was really stupid though like the fact that they couldn't eat beans or they couldn't look into a mirror with a light next to it. That's really stupid and I wonder who made that rule? That is my thought."

"The leader of them was pisistratos. He was taken down twice but yet he still built another settlement. He kept that till he died."

"There was a girl named Theano..... She was a Math Freak like many of them were."

"Now I shall talk about Acusilaus.... His thoughts didn't survive much."

"Pythagoras is a mathematician that is super smart and super awesome!"

"Pythagoras is one of the old mathematicians that had a society."

"They have an equation for this proof, but it is really long and it is confusing."

"Some interesting facts I learned about him are, for example, the striking birthmark on his thy."

"He dieded when he was nintey-nine."

maths

so a couple days ago, i had my algebra II classes do a trig project. they were divided into teams, then they had 3 tasks to complete. first, they had to find the diagonal of the classroom (which can actually be done without trig.) then, they had to go out to the soccer field and measure from one of its corners to something else not in the same plane (like to the top of a tree, for example). then they had to find the angle of elevation of that object. third, they had to find the angle of elevation of the sun (using someone's height and shadow), and then use that to measure the height of something they could not measure directly (the school building, perhaps). then, they could choose to write a 1 page summary of the process and their findings for some extra credit points. i just graded the papers. they are great.


joshua's ends with "I am grateful to have had this experience as it has helped me to further my love of trigonometry which I admire dearly."


carrie's is written in old english style as the quest of three servants trying to please their "benevolent dictator". her description of walking to the soccer field to measure things reads, "Without delay, we, her loyal citizens, set out on this second quest. We traveled the stony paths and the grassy paths in which lay vipers of countless number, and around the despised enemy's fortress which appeared to be unoccupied, but only because the enemy possesses the magic of the Coveted Imaginary Numbers, which is also why the fortress appears to have no walls."

who says math teachers shouldn't assign papers? this has been the highlight of my day.

yellow or green or orange or blue?

highlight number 1. i finally got observed a couple weeks ago by the superintendent, bill. a great guy, by the way. i couldn't ever ask for a better boss. i met with him at the end of last week to discuss the class he observed. he pointed out a couple things i could stand to work on, but that was mixed in with a lot of encouragement. he ended our meeting with, "it was hard to tell that i was observing a first year teacher." that made me feel really good. i feel pretty inadequate as a teacher a lot of days.

highlight number 2. i understood almost all of the sermon on sunday. i go to bilingual church now, which is nice, because everything is in indonesian AND english. i learn a lot. and when i read the Bible these days, i usually do it in indonesian. i memorized the Lord's prayer in indonesian, and i'm working on memorizing all the books of the Bible also. baby steps....

highlight number 3. every morning in spanish (first period), ibu hendri, our indonesian secretary, calls each class to ask for attendance. philip sits closest to the phone, so he always answers it, and the conversation typically goes like this:
philip: hello.
hendri: attendance please.
philip: kelsey's not here.
hendri: thank you.
*hang up*
sometimes, philip spices things up a little bit, answering the phone with things like, "yes, i'd like to order some fried rice. with french fries please." or "welcome to kfc, may i take your order?" or "HENDRI! can you please do a fire drill, RIGHT NOW? we NEED to get out of this class!!" or sometimes he just answers in spanish. today beat them all though. he answered the phone with, "good moooorning, Bu, how are you? i hope you're feeling fine. i'd love to stay and talk, but it's almost 8 o'clock, and i haven't got the time." (in case you don't recognize this, it is a veggietales song. and he sang the whole thing. loudly.) the whole class - and ibu hendri - was cracking up so badly. it was great. hendri thanked philip for the song. we have to be her favorite class to get attendance from.

highlight number 4. no spirits in my house this week. incense is all gone.

highlight number 5. i get a TA (teacher's assistant) EVERY DAY next year! guess who is never grading a single homework? : )

highlight number 6. the 9th graders keep telling me how excited they are that i get to be their math teacher again next year, since i'll be teaching 10th grade geometry.

highlight number 7. i bought amber a plane ticket to come see me! and i had way more money than i thought i did, which was a total blessing. i don't have to worry.


the opposite of a highlight number 1. i think cat is pregnant. i'm sending her to a convent.

the opposite of a highlight number 2. i have to have 3 finals written. before tomorrow.

the opposite of a highlight number 3. i found out that glory can't be my TA next year. i'm gonna miss that kid. a lot.

the opposite of a highlight number 4. school ends next week. that means everyone moves away next week. : (

the opposite of a highlight number 5. it was raining and cloudy and really cold all day yesterday and it was miserable and now i am sick and my throat hurts and my nose will not stop running.

but as always.... the good outweighs the bad.

"I only need to get a 168% on the final to get an A in this class!!" - Michael

"Hannah, can I try your boots on?" (Kang, a boy, to Hannah, who wore go-go boots to school today.)

how plans change

so change of plans for next school year.
i WON'T be teaching AP calc. (a load of stress off my mind)
i WILL be teaching spanish still. (ugh)
i WON'T be teaching 7th grade. (HOOOOORAY!)
i WILL be teaching geometry. (an even bigger HOOOOORAY!)

i was ASKED to possibly teach a photography class.
i DECLINED to teach said photography class.
i MIGHT be mentoring 5 students in photography though.

this will be ok.

andong

i got up at 5 this morning to hike mount andong. it's not a big mountain. but the trail we took up was fairly steep in parts. it was drizzly, so the trail was wet. and it was windy, which never helps. mary estimated that by the time we got to the top, the wind was gusting at about 40 mph. i don't think she was too far off. it took about an hour and a half to get to the summit, which was more of a ridge. about halfway up, we had entered cloud cover, and so at the top, we were all wet from condensation sticking to us. with the wind as strong as it was and there being no view whatsoever, we didn't stick around too long. sid and i went over to another peak along the ridge to check out a grave he knew was up there. it was inside a little shack/cabin type thing beside some trees. as we walked into the building, i could feel a kind of darkness present there. i wouldn't even go in all the way. sid explained to me that people from the villages come up and spend a few days and nights sleeping in the shack beside the grave to get spirits. i think i spent a total of about 15 seconds under that roof. just long enough to take a picture. we don't know who is buried there, but it is most likely some sort of spiritual leader or someone of high status who lived nearby. after hiking that trail, i can't imagine doing it with a dead body in tow, for sure.

sid said the way down was the hardest part. i have to disagree. yeah, by the time we were halfway down, all the muscles from my hips to my toes were quivering uncontrollably, but at least i wasn't having to hoist my body step after step up the clifflike side of a slippery, wet mountain trail. (note of interest - the dirt here is kind of claylike. and it is slippery. when it is dry. and flat. add a little moisture and an incline, and you've got a broken neck waiting to happen. it is literally like trying to walk on ice.) (another note of interest - i made it ALL THE WAY to the bottom before i wiped out and landed on my butt in the mud. i was walking on FLAT GROUND! i just sat there moaning about my sorry luck while sid laughed at me.)

i'm glad i did it once. i probably won't be doing it again anytime soon.

so now i'm sitting in my classroom trying to ignore my throbbing body while thinking over plans for next year. students here plan ahead. so far, i've been asked to do a career mentorship program with 2 students, possibly 4, i am already the teacher sponsor of next year's hip hop worship dance team, i have a team for the fall 3-on-3 basketball tournament, it looks like i'll be teaching an AP course (calculus), and i have students asking if they can be my TA. i'm usually pretty good at saying no when i'm in danger of overextending myself.... but here, i really don't like to. i feel like since i'm only going to be here 3 years, i need to do EVERYTHING. yeah, that means traveling around and going on painful hikes and learning new languages and eating strange foods. but even more importantly, it means being willing to help out and serve in any way i can. but i'm starting to think that as much as i hate to, i might need to say "no" a little more often.

oh, yeah....

so i have this high school indonesian friend named aya.  she smsed me this week and asked me to help her out with her english homework, so we met at the coffeeshop this afternoon.  she gave me a written conversation and asked me to proofread it. i'm still unclear as to whether or not she and a partner actually have to perform the conversation or if she just had to write it, but at any rate, i checked it for her and made a few corrections here and there.  for this project, she had to research about borobudur, a famous ancient buddhist temple about an hour from here.  in the conversation, one person was asking questions about the temple and the other person was explaining it in great detail. the conversation included the word "circumambulating".  i thought that was great.

but the best was yet to come.... toward the end of the conversation, one of the people was explaining something about the temple. the other person asked a clarifying question, the reply to which was "smack that."

WHAT?! smack that??! in the middle of a conversation about the panels of reliefs in a sacred temple? no WAY! i was trying my hardest not to burst out laughing, but i'm sure that watching my performance was comparable to watching an old sitcom being aired live. i kept having to turn around a pretend to cough or put my head down on the table between us for a few seconds. i finally managed to ask aya, "so, um, what does 'smack that' mean, exactly?"  she looked at me completely seriously and said, "it means like 'yes'".  hmmmm..... no, no, not quite.

she asked what it really meant, and then i was in big trouble. how do you politely explain to an indonesian girl who barely speaks english what a vulgar american slang expression actually means?  luckily, one of my students was there who speaks fluent indonesian. and she explained it as delicately as she could. in indonesian. so at least i was off the hook. and aya immediately crossed it out of her conversation, thankfully.

but that is now my new favorite phrase.  so if you ever come to indonesia and wonder why all the teenagers are saying "smack that" when you ask them a question..... well, you can thank me later.

ya

"kamu sibuk, ya?"

even the school cleaning lady - who i see a total of 15 minutes a day - has noticed how crazy busy i am.

aish.

dukun, dukun, on the wall...

i've been wanting to talk to my friend, marie, for a few days now about the demons in my house. she's married to an indonesian, so she understands a lot of the culture behind what happens, and i know that she's also had to rid her house of the powers of darkness before. i finally got a chance to talk to her last night.

while i was over there, a couple of their javanese neighbors happened to be there, and marie asked them if there's a dukun (witch doctor) locally who hates orang orang asing (foreigners), since so many of us whiteys have had this problem in our homes. they said that this kampung (part of town) doesn't have a dukun.

BUT, from the parts of the conversation i understood, i caught this.... there is a river that runs during rainy season down in a gorge just down the hill behind my house. before the school was here, a man killed himself down there, and his spirit is still there. this fits with stories i've heard before. often at night, our guards say they see ghosts and spirits on campus

before i go any further into this, i need to stop right now and say that yes, i realize that this sounds unbelievable. in the western world, we are taught that there is no such thing as ghosts. places can't be haunted. things don't make noise or move around on their own. there are no monsters under our beds. and i am here to tell you that all the things we like to believe to make us feel safe at night are a load of crap. i just got an email from my friend, em, and i like the way her dad puts it - in america, satan wears a three piece suit, but in the rest of the world, he shows his face. satan knows us. and i would wager that he knows us intimately.

when demons enter a house, in every case i've heard of, they were called there by someone or something. in some cases, someone goes and pays the dukun 50 cents to have him send demons to a certain person's house. in other cases, there is something already in the house that summons them. often, if a new family is having trouble with demons in their house, upon searching their house, they will find black magic things hidden in the corners, in the rafters, etc. and as soon as they are rid of those, the demons are no more.

since there is no dukun, it means that one didn't send the demons to me. since my house is brand new and on campus, there's no chance that someone planted black magic stuff inside it somewhere. so the javanese men last night started questioning me. do i have any tribal art in my house? no. do i have anything from bali in my house? yes, but it's been there for months without incident. do i have any indonesian knives in my house? no. have i bought anything at mirota batik (a hindu store in jogja) lately? yes, i was there 2 weeks ago. what did i buy? incense.

they freaked out. they told me to get rid of it all and never to burn incense in my house again. apparently, burning incense here is strongly linked with satanic practices. and as i thought back over the events of the past couple weeks, i realized - the first two times they were there, i had burnt the incense as i was going to bed.

the first night, when i heard the tapping on my window, it was the window right next to where the incense was burning on my desk. i had a fan on, so most of the smoke was blowing out of that window. the second night, the incense had burned all the way down before i turned the lights out, but when i heard the scratching on the wall, it was coming from behind the shelf that i keep the incense on.

but i'm conflicted now. i haven't had this problem when i've burnt incense from other places, and i do burn incense fairly often. and i see the wisdom in removing all the incense from mirota from my house. i mean, obviously, it is calling demons to my house. but a part of me feels like that is like giving in. like saying, "alright, i'm scared to burn my incense now. you win." and i refuse to give satan the victory of the power of fear over me.

so, like, whoa...

1. sunrise hikes - i went on a sunrise hike yesterday. it was a pretty short hike. so i did it in flipflops. naturally. we made it to the top before the sunrise. we could see the whole valley and all the surrounding mountains and the lights from all the cities around us and the entire milky way, just about. and then the sun burst forth in all its glory. and i was amazed. then i ate a blueberry muffin and hiked back down. then we drove all around the valley and took pictures of men and water buffaloes plowing the rice paddies. but my computer is broke so i can't upload pictures. later i will. promise. i am pumped.

2. motorcycles - tiffany taught me how to drive an automatic motor yesterday. she is an excellent teacher. i went about 15 meters down the road, decided this was easy enough, turned around, and came back. but she had more to teach me. she jumped on the back and said, "go". whoa. so different with an extra 120 pounds on the back. and i never practiced turning while moving by myself, much less with a passenger. and i didn't really foresee how difficult that was. actually, it was very near impossible. at first T intersection we came to, i definitely drove off the road on the opposite side. luckily, there was no cross traffic and i managed to stop the bike before we both died. and i had my helmet on. we're gonna go to a soccer field and practice turning later. then i'll be an old pro.

3. demons - i have demons in my house i think. they wake me up at night. it is rough. they've been there for about the last week. at first, i thought i was just being paranoid because of all the stories i've heard of demons in people's houses. but now i think it's real. this is what happens.
a. the first night, i woke up to something tapping on my bedroom window. it sounded like there was a person out there or a tree branch. but all that is behind my house is a cement wall. so i just held real still until i fell back asleep, like when i was a kid and a tree tapped my window and i got scared that someone out there was looking for me to kidnap me and if i didn't move an inch they would think that i was not there and they would go away unless they had infrared goggles too in which case i was screwed. but it happened about 5 or 6 times. everytime i just held real still until it finally stopped.
b. two nights later, something was in my room making loud scratching and scraping noises against the wall across from my bed. i wrote that one off as a rat or something in my room and decided that cat would sleep with me from now on.
c. two nights after that, i woke up to the sound of something dropping on my bed right by my head. at first, in my barely awake state, i somehow managed to convince myself it was just cat. but the third or fourth time it happened, it finally whooshed and thumped loud enough to wake me completely up, and i realized that nothing was there, and cat was asleep by my feet. i got really scared and i prayed about it, and it didn't happen again.
d. last night i prayed over my room before i went to bed and nothing happened.

pigs

what a great place to live during the swine flu... uh... situation.
in a country where 99% of the population doesn't eat pork.