Twas the Weekend Before Christmas

A week ago, I wished I could celebrate Christmas in a big city. Because the big cities are more westernized and hence, more Christmas-y. Our little town is barely touched at all by the Christmas spirit. No lights on houses, no decorations in stores, no Christmas music on the radio, no trees in the shopping malls. No shopping malls...

But this weekend, I spent a lot of time with a lot of very dear people, and it reminded me that the place you spend Christmas isn't nearly as important as the people you spend it with. 

I spent Saturday with our entire national staff, past and present, at Pak Jono's retirement party. I thought the teachers were invited too, but as it turns out, I was the only white person he asked to come! I felt very honored, and since I don't know when I'll see Pak Jono again, I was glad to have that extra time to spend with him! The only sad part of the day was when I let myself think about how much Pak Gono would have loved that party and how much I wish I could have seen him there.

Here is an awfully washed out picture of me and retirement boy. Pak Jono took a lot more pictures of the two of us with his camera, but unfortunately, I don't have a way to get those pictures from him. So this beauty is the only one I have. And I love it. Kind of.

Here are our two retirees this year, Pak Slamet and Pak Jono. Pak Slamet has possibly worked for our school longer than anybody in the history of our school. I will miss his smile in the morning! I think it is really cute that he is looking at Pak Jono instead of looking at the camera. And I was also thankful that Pak Jono took a 2 second break from his dangdut karaoke to smile for me.

And this would be Pak Wahyudi enjoying said dangdut karaoke. He may have been the only one. It was SO loud, we could hardly talk to one another.

And here is a picture of Pak Jono's car! Almost a year ago, he asked me if I could have someone send some old license plates. A former teacher had given him one from America, and Pak Jono liked it so much he put it on his car - but then someone stole it! So that was something I had my sister bring when she came this summer. I gave three to Pak Jono - two really cool looking antique ones that mom found for him, and then a newer one off my dad's truck. Hopefully dad got new plates and mom didn't just steal it. Though I could see her doing that... Anyways, when I gave them to Pak Jono, he did and jig and gave me a massive bear hug. At the same time. He was THRILLED. It makes me happy that of the three plates, Pak Jono picked the Indiana one to put on his little hatchback!

Both of these men will definitely be missed in our little community! In fact, as I was talking to some of the women staff members, Pak Tri, who retired 4 years ago arrived. And the woman sitting closest to me saw him and said thoughtfully, "You know, that's why we love working here. No matter if we're retired or still working, we have a kinship with one another. That's why people stay 10, 20, 25 years or more. We have a big family here."

I love that about our school!

After the retirement party on Saturday, I spent almost all evening baking and decorating Christmas cookies with Melanie! Then on Sunday, we took them over the Pak Kur's house. We ended up sitting in his front room and just talking for about 4 hours. And eating too. There is never any shortage of food at his house. His wife even served us an entire meal at 2:30 in the afternoon!! Fried chicken, vegetable soup, cow stomach in hot sauce with pigeon eggs, rice, crackers, rambutan (fruit), and peanuts! Oh, and two glasses of coffee. Whew... I love conversations with Pak Kur because in one sitting you can talk about the weather, gun laws in various countries, Javanese culture, land prices on Sumatra, women with moustaches, how to tell by smell alone if a cow has delivered the afterbirth or not, and so much more. I always learn a lot when I go to his house.

It rained the whole time we were there, so he told us we should just spend the night instead of driving home in a storm. But we had another engagement that evening. We spent 4 MORE hours at our friend Atik's house eating fried rice and Christmas cookies and talking about life with all of our close friends. Dewi, Ayu, and Sani wanted to practice saying the names of cities and states in America correctly, so we were practicing. We were all laughing hysterically by the end, and they tried to convince me to open up an English pronunciation school. Maybe someday... When I got home, I made baggies of Christmas cookies (we made like 230478 dozen cookies, people) and delivered them to all of the jagas that were on campus. They kept me up talking until midnight. I love our jagas, and I appreciate them so, so much!

Today I'm making up for all that time I spent hanging out and being relational. I'm going to be gone all day tomorrow going to different Christmas parties in Semarang, then we leave for Bali at 2:30 in the morning the day after that. So today, I'm doing laundry, cleaning, packing, Christmas shopping, wrapping presents, and tying up all those loose ends one needs to tie up before going out of town. I kind of feel like a crazed woman. But I wouldn't trade the time I got to spend with friends this weekend for anything. I am very, very blessed.

Soto Kalkun

Soto is a delicious Indonesian soup that is pretty much like chicken noodle soup, except that instead of noodles, they use rice. And usually you put hot sauce and lime juice in it. Deliciousness in a bowl. Anyways, Hotjaga told me awhile ago that there is a place near his house that sells turkey soto (soto kalkun). That is weird, since Indonesians don't generally eat turkey. Hot knows how much I love turkey, so he's invited me a few times to go try it. The stars all aligned properly this week so that Hot is working afternoons, Nav (his wife) is on break and I am also. So we decided that Friday morning (today), Melanie and I would drive over to the next town, Ambarawa (about 30 minutes away), to try this turkey soto we'd heard so much about!

The day did not go as expected. AT ALL.

I meant to go into town at 8:30 this morning to pick up ingredients for baking Christmas cookies and to get a new battery for my phone, which is regularly freaking out lately. I needed to go to three different places (it is so complicated when ONE STORE can't sell both butter AND brown sugar) before picking Mel up at 9:30. But the jaga at the back gate was Pak Kur. So I didn't actually end up leaving until 9. But I now know all his family updates, what he is doing for Christmas, and I am invited over on Sunday to help cook for the out of town guests they will have for the holidays. Pak Kur informed me that at school, he is not berani (brave) to treat me like family, but in his own home he is berani, and he WILL put me to work. I said OK! Anyways, by the time I got a new phone battery and a kilo of butter, I didn't have time for the brown sugar, so I just headed to Mel's house. The whole house was still dark, but Mel's roommate let me in and told me that Mel had JUST gotten up. So by 10 o'clock we headed back to my house to drop off the butter and pick up my raincoat, because by now it was sprinkling.

Right as we were getting ready to leave my house, I got an SMS from Navita saying that she had very bad news - the turkey soto place was randomly closed FOREVER. We decided to go anyways and make the best of it.  We raced (and BEAT) the rain, and since we were all hungry, we decided to go out for normal soto. After eating until we were full, Navita said she wanted to take us to the train station. The Ambarawa station was built by the Dutch and is now a museum. Lots of old steam engines are parked all around, and a lot of equipment that was used in the original station is on display. So we went there. And it was closed. For renovations. So we snuck in a back gate and looked at everything anyways!

After that, we decided to go to the war museum. With our luck, we figured it had probably burned down during the night or something, but as it turns out, it was the ONE place that was open! So we got to see lots of old German and Japanese weapons from WWII along with unexploded ordnance. That seems very safe. Then we found an American airplane - a Mustang - that had the Dutch flag painted on its tail! Mel and I both climbed up on it and explored the cockpit. Because this is Indonesia and there are really no rules about climbing all over antique aircraft. It was fun locating the "Drop right bomb" and "Drop left bomb" levers and reading the warning signs for ejecting the seat.

After hanging out at Hotjaga and Navita's house (where Hotjaga cooked and served us French Fries and flavored water), we drove back home. In the now POURING rain. Hotjaga had to come to work at the same time, so I kind of felt like we had a police escort. It was nice to drive with someone watching over us though, because the road we took home is very winding and FULL of nasty potholes, but it has NO drainage, so when it rains hard, the road turns into a river of running water that pulls your motorbike all different directions and prevents you from seeing the asphalt and knowing where dangerous holes are. It just makes the challenge of driving that much more exciting, I guess. The funniest part was when we passed a minibus going the opposite direction - it was going FAST and spraying water everywhere, but right as the bus got even with us, I think it hit a particularly deep patch of water, because it felt like a tidal wave hit us! I came out of that one sputtering and spitting out a mouthful of brown water and feeling like a drowned rat, but I managed to keep the bike on the road, thank God.

When we got home, we went to go to the seamstress who, naturally, was closed. So we ran a bunch of other errands instead - still in the rain, though less torrential. Then we went to Melanie's house to order pizza (a recent exciting development in my town!) and watch a Christmas movie - only to find that we were locked out! Thankfully, Mel's roommate got home about 10 minutes after we did and let us in.

I am exhausted from all the driving and the cold rain and the errands and going to 13 different stores/houses/museums/restaurants in two different towns. But sometimes the most unexpected days are the best days.


Aaaand tomorrow, I am going to Pak Jono's retirement party. Apparently we are fishing? I expect a good adventure.

Counting the Days

1 more day of school.
7 more sleeps until Christmas.
8 more sleeps until Bali.

And I made it almost all the way through the day before I realized that my underwear were moldy. How many more sleeps until dry season??

Brain Aneurysms, Rainstorms, and A Life Well Lived

In my last post, I left you hanging at the beginning. I'm ready to talk now because I think I finally have things sorted out in my mind. So I'll probably spent the next few days writing this post and sorting my thoughts into words...

One of the greatest people I have had the opportunity to work with here died suddenly of a brain aneurysm on Thursday. Pak Gono was 38, and he left behind a wife and a young daughter.

Every single time I go to a funeral in Indonesia, I come home feeling very upset, and not only for the obvious reason that someone I know just died. There's more to it than that. It wasn't until I went to Pak Gono's funeral on Friday that I finally realized why. Sometimes I'm a slow learner...

The kind of death that I grew up with is not the same kind of death that I find here. Yeah, death is death. It always equals a loss of life. But death in America is somehow... softened. We make it prettier than it actually is. Because things that look pretty maybe aren't so difficult to face. 

When someone dies in America, a stranger comes and takes the body away, and a medical professional generally performs an autopsy or, at the very least, states the cause of death so that the family can have the closure of knowing exactly what happened. Then we pay professionals to dress and preserve the body and to make the deceased look as healthy/happy/peaceful/lifelike as possible, because that's how we want to remember them. And families have three or four days to grieve privately before they have to face the funeral and the onslaught of family, friends, neighbors, and near strangers coming to pay their respects. We put our dead in fancy boxes that shelter them for as long as possible from the elements, because there is some solace in knowing that we are protecting them, even in death. We use fancy cars to transport them from the funeral to the graveyard, and we say some comforting final words there before we leave. Someone else lowers the casket and buries the body safely, deep below ground and puts up the expensive headstone that we picked out. We don't have to hear the thud of the dirt hitting the casket. It might be too much finality for us. We have an entire multi-BILLION dollar industry built to soften the blow of death.

When someone dies in Indonesia, the family washes and dresses the body themselves. No makeup or preservation tool of any kind is used. No doctor is consulted, no autopsy is performed because - let's face it - dead is dead, no matter what caused it. If the family can afford it, a small wooden box is ordered for the body. If not (or if the family is Muslim), the body is just wrapped in strips of cloth. It is laid out somewhere prominently in the home for mourners to see - often on the kitchen table or on top of sawhorses in the front room. The family stands around the body, greeting and receiving condolences from those who come. Then, the family often undresses the body (dead people don't need pants) before nailing the lid on the box. Men from the neighborhood carry the box to the closest graveyard where they unceremoniously drop it into a hand-dug hole. Then the family stands around and watches the hole get filled back in. Sometimes the family themselves shovel the dirt back into the hole. The headstone - a piece of wood or a block of cement with the deceased's name carved into it - is stuck into the ground somewhere in the fresh mound of dirt. And all of this happens within 24 hours of death. It has to, both for religious reasons and also because bodies have a tendency to decompose quickly in this heat.

It is hard for me to comprehend why one of my friends wears the same pair of shoes his grandfather wore at his own funeral. Or how my other friend carried her mother's freshly dead body to the backyard and used a hose to wash her off. Or how yet another friend can even eat off her kitchen table anymore after her mother's body laid there for an entire day. I don't understand why mourners would want to look at a dead body that hasn't been preserved in any way - the jaw sometimes hangs slack, and weird fluids sometimes bubble out of the nose, and it ALWAYS smells - who wants to remember someone that way?! I have a hard time wrapping my mind around these things because I am so used to the way Americans do death. It is prettier. It is gentler. It is easier.

Pak Gono's funeral was the hardest one I have ever been to. His house has two doors - a front door and a side door. Usually mourners go in the front door, but it seemed like everyone was going through the side door, so the group of people from school that I had come with got in line. I hesitated because I didn't want to see his body. That is the worst part of every funeral for me. I hate looking at the body, I hate that that is the last view I have of them. We didn't know yet what had killed Pak Gono - we only knew that he had been found dead in his room by his nephew after complaining of  a headache and going to lay down - so I didn't even know what condition to expect his body to be in. Even as I hesitated, one of my friends grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the line and told me not to worry because the body wasn't inside. I was confused, but knowing that I wouldn't have to see the body made it easier to go in. 

Until I got in. I really think that Ibu Erna, Pak Gono's wife, was still in shock. It hadn't yet been 24 hours since she got the call that her husband had died, and he'd been in Jakarta at the time, so she had only seen his body for the first time 3 hours before people began arriving for the funeral. She was sitting on the kitchen floor leaning against a wall in her pajamas, sobbing into a dish towel. I can count on one hand the number of times in my life I have seen someone so broken down. I wanted to leave. I wanted to scream at everyone else in that room to leave. To let her mourn in peace. To hold her daughter. To give her time to wrestle with this and to say her goodbyes without a room full of people watching her. But that's not the way things work in Indonesia. 

I don't know if it was because she was sitting on the floor or because of some other religious/cultural custom that we all dropped to our knees as we entered the room. We literally crawled across the tile floor to her to shake her hand, give her a hug, and whisper meaningless condolences into her ear before crawling back out to sit in the street for the remainder of the funeral. As I exited the side door and passed by the front door, I noticed several people I knew standing there, so I went over to say hello. Some other men were ripping up strips of fabric and carrying them in through the front door. I asked what was going on, and Pak Jono, our school driver, told me that they were going in to wrap the body up. I asked why they had the body in a separate room, and Pak Jono told me very matter-of-factly, "Because he's still bleeding out his nose and mouth".

I wish I didn't know that. Because even though I never saw his body, I still see the blood in my mind every time I think about him. That information though is what makes us think he probably had a brain aneurysm. And with that, I am choosing to believe that he died peacefully and painlessly in his sleep.

As I was talking to Pak Jono, some men carrying an odd looking contraption came, and I moved out of their way so that they could get in the front door. They were carrying a piece of wood about 6 feet long and 2 feet wide with 4 or 5 bands of metal arched up over it. I didn't realize it right away, but that was the coffin. The next part happened so fast, it kind of seems like it didn't really happen at all. But as the men carried the coffin into the front room, I was walking away from the house and felt jostled from behind. I turned around to find several men carrying a table OUT of the house - they had accidentally bumped a corner of it into me. I didn't even realize what the table was for at first, but out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something shiny on it. I glanced at it. It was a blood slick. It was the table Pak Gono had been laid on, and his blood was on it. The blood from his head. The blood that was still coming out. I thought I was going to throw up. I don't know how long I stood there, staring at that blood. It can't have been long. I must have gone pale or something, because suddenly, a co-worker materialized by my side and told me to close my eyes and follow her.

I did, and she led me over to some chairs set up under an awning in the street. Shortly after, several men carried the body outside and the funeral began. The wrapped body had been placed on the piece of wood, and a tapestry of sorts had been laid over the metal bands. A priest began speaking in Arabic as several people placed flowers on top of the coffin.

Right after the ceremonial part of the funeral started, the skies opened up and began to POUR rain. Everyone tried to cram under one of the three canopies set up in the yard and in the street, but it still wasn't enough to cover everyone. As we all huddled there, attempting to stay dry, I looked around for the first time and realized how many people had come. Hundreds. Some simply stood in the pouring rain because there was no place dry to go.

I've always thought of a full house at a funeral as a sign of a life well lived. And Pak Gono's was. He was always willing to lend a hand any time someone needed help with anything. He taught me a lot of the Indonesian and Javanese words that I know. He ALWAYS made me laugh. One of my favorite memories of him is how he would come to school in the morning singing and dancing ridiculously just to make everyone smile. It worked every time. He painted my classroom for me last summer. The color looked great on paper when I picked it out, but I've always kind of hated it on my actual wall. But now I know I can never re-paint it.

There are no words to express how much Pak Gono will be missed in our community. The chair that I'm sitting on is wet with tears even as I write this.

I think I could live here the rest of my life and still never get used to the rawness of Indonesian funerals. But I know that I'll never stop going to them. It doesn't matter how nauseous I feel or how much I hate dead bodies or how hard it rains - I'm learning more and more that even in all its harshness, I NEED that time to honor the dead, to show respect to the living, and to allow my heart to say goodbye. I'm slowly learning to accept the way Indonesians do death.


(** All pictures taken from Facebook**)

Highlights

Today was a really, really, really hard day emotionally. But I'm going to leave you hanging, because I'm not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe tomorrow. There were a few highlights though.

In Algebra 2, we were studying for exams (next week!!), and several students asked if they could listen to music with their headphones. Our school policy is that students are allowed to use headphones during study hall, but they are forbidden at all other times. So I told them no since it wasn't study hall. Then one asked if she could just use her iPod's speaker to play music out loud without having to use headphones. I said I had no problem with that. Then like 4 other kids wanted to play their music too. So I taught them the word cacophony, and we all agreed to just play Christmas music on my laptop instead.

"I'll be Home For Christmas" came on, and one poor girl in the back corner seat yelled, "MISS!" I looked at her, and she looked back at me with wide, watery eyes, and just shook her head at me. She's new at our school this year. Her family lives in Jakarta, and she lives here in the dorm. But she's originally from Korea. So I sent someone to change the song, and we landed on "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause". Harmless enough. After that came "Ave Maria", which also almost made my corner sitter cry. We skipped that one too. She asked if she could use her headphones, and I said no, but that we would avoid all sad songs. In the meantime, I caught THREE other students creatively attempting to listen to their earbuds - one had it wired down his sleeve and kept pretending to scratch his head. I am pretty good at spotting he-who-thinks-he-is-stealthily-doing-something-he-should-not-be-doing.

About 20 minutes from the end of class, sad girl slouched down very low in her seat and held her math book vertically in front of her face. Very sneaky. I knew what she was doing, but I also understood what she was feeling, and I chose not to fight that battle. That class gave me all the more reason to love them as not a single one questioned why she could listen to headphones when they couldn't. These kids get it.

The only thing that drove me a little crazy about the situation was that she probably thought that she got away with something without me knowing about it. I thought that she thought that I had noooo clue at all that she was back there with earbuds on. I can't have students thinking I'm losing my edge! So it was a little bit of a heartwarming surprise when I passed her hanging out with her friends on my way home 45 minutes later, and she grabbed my arm as I walked by and said, "Thank you for letting me listen to my music earlier. I just needed it."


I had a student refer to me as "girl" yesterday. I thought it was strange. Then I realized today that he intends to keep using that form of address, and instead of finding it rude or disrespectful, I find it oddly heartwarming. I have a nickname. Kind of? It's at least better than "bro", which I have also been called several times this week.

I also had two 9th grade boys who didn't feel like studying busy themselves with cleaning things in my room that probably haven't been cleaned for months - like my chalkboard and my erasers. And then two 9th grade girls decided to give me a back massage until I finally made them go study again - that was a hard call to make.

The kids knew that I was having a rough day, and when I got home from school, I had a Facebook message from yet another 9th grader telling me not to feel sad and to distract myself by playing games with him instead. So yes, I am not ashamed to admit that I did spend a large part of my afternoon playing Songpop with students.

Have I mentioned how much I love my 9th graders?

Kevin. Again.

On my way home from school, I passed Kevin walking with a boy whose father grew up in Kenya, so to test his memory, I asked him, "Kevin, what is Nairobi?" Here's how that went.

Me: Kevin, what is Nairobi?
Kevin: What?
Me: Nairobi.
Kevin: What?
Me: Nairobi!
Kevin: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
Other boy: Are you serious?
Kevin: Yes.....?
Other boy: It's where my dad grew up!
Me: Kevin, what did we talk about at lunch yesterday?
Kevin: What?
Me: Lunch! Nairobi!
Kevin: Lunch? I forget.

*I recount our entire lunch conversation from yesterday*

Other boy: Are you SERIOUS? You don't know what Kenya is?? It's a country in Africa!
Kevin: No it's not!
Other boy: Yes it is!
Kevin: It can't be! Africa is a....
Other boy: .... continent.
Kevin: No, no, no. Africa is a country!
Other boy: CONTINENT.
Kevin: Oh yeah. It's a continent that contains.... Africa?
Other boy: NO!
Kevin: I think I mean South Africa.
Other boy: Yes. South Africa is a country in Africa. So is Kenya.
Kevin: Kenya is a state?
Other boy: Country.
Kevin: In South Africa?
Other boy: NO!
Me: Kevin. You know Asia?
Kevin: Yes, of course.
Me: You know how Asia has a lot of countries in it?
Kevin: Yes, of course.
Me: It's like that. Africa is the continent, and it has lots of countries. Like South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and others.
Kevin: Oooooooooh.
Me: So to recap, Kenya is...?
Kevin: A country.
Me: On the continent of....?
Kevin: Africa.
Me: And its capital is.....?
Kevin: Nairobi.
Me and other boy: GOOD!

Lunchtime

Kevin: Hey, Miss, do you know any black people?
Me: Uh.... Yes......?
Kevin: Really?
Me: Yeah. I used to live in Africa.
Kevin: WHAT?!
Me: Before I moved here, I worked there for two months.
Kevin: Where?
Me: Nairobi.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: The capital of Kenya.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: A country.
Kevin: Where?
Me: East Africa. Near Ethiopia.
Kevin: What's that?
Me: Umm... Mount Kilimanjaro?
Kevin: You're making this more harder!
Me: MOMBASA!
Kevin: What?
Me: Mombasa - it's in Halo. Do you play Halo?
Kevin: Yes.
Me: Mombasa is in Halo.
Kevin: OH YES! I know Mombasa!
Me: OK. That's a city in Kenya.
Kevin: No, it's not.
Me: WHAT?!
Kevin: It can't be in Kenya. IT'S IN AFRICA!

Don't Remember Buying That...

I had a nice surprise this morning while I was cleaning out my wallet and found a receipt. I was trying to decide if it was important to keep or not. Since I'm treasurer for two different church groups, I often have receipts in my wallet for stuff I need to reimburse people for.

This particular receipt was from a local mini-mart. I recognized the first thing on the receipt as something I had bought when I used the ATM located there - a bag of garlic roasted peanuts. The second item though, I didn't remember buying AT ALL.

 It read, "P/ORN".

I tried to think back two weeks to what else I'd bought along with my peanuts. Finally I remembered...

PULPY ORANGE JUICE, people!

DURING the Geometry Test

Student: What does it mean when it says, "Be careful - extra information may be given"?
Me: It means extra information may be given.
Student: Like, extra?
Me: Yes.
Student: OK.


Student: Is it OK if I don't use all of the given information?
Me: Did you read the instructions?
Student: Yes.
Me: Did you read the part that says, "Extra information may be given"?
Student. Yes. So?


Student: OOOUUUUCH!!!
Me: WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!
Student: Putting out your candle with my fingers.
(He had actually gotten into my desk while I was helping another student, gotten my matches out, dropped a match into my candle, then when it caught fire, he tried to put THAT fire out WITH HIS FINGERS. I now have an entire match stuck in my nice Christmas scented candle.)


Student: What does this mark on this diagram mean?
Me: I don't know, you made it.
Student: Oh. Thanks.


Student: Is problem 3 based on problem 2?
Me: Did you read the instructions?
Student: No, why?


Student: Can I use the information in problem 5 to answer problem 6?
Me: No.
Student: Why?
Me: Because the instructions say, "Each problem is completely separate from the others".
Student: Oh.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: Please don't wave your test around in the air. Everyone else can see your answers when you do that.


Me: PUT YOUR TEST ON YOUR DESK. NOW.


*student opens a candy and throws the wrapper on the floor*
Me: Please pick that up and put it in your pocket.
*student puts it on his desk then 30 seconds later sneakily knocks it back onto the floor*


Student: Is New Year's Eve on a Sunday?
Me: Do you need to know that right now?


Student: Where is E in this diagram?
Me: Look at the diagram.
Student: I did.
Me: Look closer. Where could E possibly be?
Student: Is this it?
Me: Does it say "E".
Student: Yes.
Me: Then...
Student: Oh, there it is!


Student: I HAVE A QUESTION.
Me: Then raise your hand, please.
*student raises hand*
Student: I HAVE A QUESTION.


Student: Can I take this test next week instead?
Me: Are you sick?
Student: No.
Me: Did you miss any class periods during this chapter?
Student: No.
Me: Why do you want to take it next week?
Student: I don't know.


Student: What does "choose the best answer" mean?
Me: It means decide which possibility most closely fits the information given.
Student: So there can be more than one?


I have mentally forehead palm-slapped myself a dozen times already. I'm about to forehead palm-slap someone else. And we're only 29 minutes in to a 70 minute test period.

Pointy Noses

Pretty much every race of people share a common physical trait that they are generally not content with. For example, a lot of white people don't really like being pale so they tan a lot in order to darken their skin. Indonesians, on the other hand, don't like being brown, so they use lotions with chemical whiteners and carry umbrellas in the sun. Koreans don't like having straight black hair, so a LOT of Koreans get perms and dye their hair (even the men!). Also, it's not uncommon to have eye surgery in order to change the shape of the eyes and to create a folded eyelid. One day while I was riding the subway in Korea, I even saw an advertisement for a hospital offering facial extension surgeries - to move out the cheekbones and upper jaw so that the face wouldn't be so flat! It wasn't until that point in my life that I even realized that Asians have flatter faces than Westerners. 

As a bule (white person) living in Indonesia, I often hear people marveling about my physical features that they wish they had. This list includes:

• My pointy nose
• My small ears
• My curly, brown hair
• My big eyes
• My blue eyes
• My white skin (though I'm darker than a lot of Indonesians!)
• My arm hair
• My thick eyebrows

Once, when a friend of mine was pregnant, she told me that she hoped her child would have a pointy nose like mine! On multiple occasions, I've had Indonesian men come up to me and ask if they can feel my arm hair. It's also not uncommon to find people touching my hair or to hear people talking about my eyes. Things I've never even thought about before are things that other races are envious of!

Sometimes I think it is a little crazy the extent Indonesians will go to to try to look more western. They buy color contact lenses and bleach their hair. They draw in bigger eyebrows with black pencils, and some women will actually get eyebrows tattooed on! A lot of times, I see old women who have damaged skin from so many years of using chemical whiteners. 

But when I saw this little device online this week, I thought, "Well, this one takes the cake". It is basically a nose clip that promises a pointier nose after just 2 weeks of wearing it 5 - 15 minutes a day!

Accomplished

Badminton doubles tournament WON!
A gallon of turkey stock made, dished, and in the freezer.
This week's menu, shopping list, and market money ready for Ibu Sri.
Books closed for both treasurer jobs I'm doing.
Choir songs practiced for two different Christmas choirs.
House straightened, clothes folded and put away.
Backpack packed and clothes set out for tomorrow morning.
A week's worth of cat food made.

Feeling ready for this new week.
Christmas break is so close, I can just feel the anticipation building!!