I Know It's A Bit Late But...

Happy Halloween!

Yesterday I read all my classes a horror story, and then had them write their own horror stories in groups. Some of them were pretty creative, although they all used my story for ideas. I taught them about graveyards and monsters, and screaming and chasing, and many other scary things. When I read them the horror story I turned off the lights to set the mood. This got them all very excited.

Hannah and I went to the post office yesterday to pick up a package from Hannah's father that he sent for Halloween, but the post office employees seem to keep whatever hours they please, and so we could not get the package. We did however, pick up the package this morning! We've decided to make today Halloween since we were unable to pick up the package yesterday, so tonight we will likely be reading Mary Shelly's Frankenstein and eating some candy.

I wish you all a happy Halloween, and I hope you didn't let any pumpkins go uncarved!

-Nick

What's Up Chuck?!

Tuesday and Wednesday of this week was Idul Fitri, the moslem holiday marking the end of Ramadhan and the end of one month of fasting. For us teachers it means one whole week off. Woo hoo! I tried to make an update to the weblog a couple days ago, but the internet was giving me trouble and I lost all that I had written, so this entry will account for slightly more than usual, providing I remember it all.

On Sunday someone somewhere found an injured parakeet and gifted it to Louise. Now it lives in the empty room across from Shayna's, and Hiron (Louise's boyfriend) is it's keeper.

Louise met Hiron while she, Daniel and Lucia were lost in the jungle in Wamena (inland Papuan city with a lot of tribal culture.). Hiron found them and guided them to a hotel. Since he was so chivalrous, Louise consequently fell in love with him, and they've been together ever since. Hiron is from a Dani tribe in wamena. He was raised by his mother and is a very gentle person. It is fun trying to communicate with him as Indonesian is not his first language. He has slowly been teaching us words in Dani, and hopes to help Louise, Hannah and I compile a Dani/English dictionary. We'll see how that goes.

On Monday I woke up at sunrise and hopped on the bike. I rode up to the top of the Jayapura City sign and watched the sunrise. Then I rode out to the Honda dealership to see if I could get the bike serviced. They were closed due to Idul Fitri I suspected, so I went to the big market at PTC instead. The market at PTC is a huge open-air market with everything you could ever need. I walked in under the tents and passed a table with a freshly butchered cow neatly spread over it. The cow's head was lying on the ground next to the table, with its skin in a pile next to its head. I'd never seen that before! Don't tell Camille. I walked around the market in a circle twice before I stopped at a vender who was selling various things and among them, macadamia nuts! I bought a kilogram bag for Rp 5,000 ($ .50) and ate one right there to try it - INCORRECT. When I got home I ate some oatmeal and went upstairs to visit with Hannah and started to feel really bad. Twenty minutes later I bowed down to the porcelain god and made a sacrifice of half digested oatmeal and damper (Australian pancake). I will never eat something at the market again.

Monday night I had a really nice conversation with Shayna on the balcony about life in general, and she invited Hannah and I to come on a boat with Ike's family on Tuesday. Ike is a teacher at EF who went to study abroad in Canada, and befriended Shayna. Ike convinced Shayna to move to Papua to teach English so that she could attend Ike's wedding. Anyway, I discussed it with Hannah and we decided to go. It was a good decision. The boat was something similar to a ponga- long and skinny with bamboo pontoons on either side, and an outboard motor. The boat also had a small canopy in the center, underneath which we could store all our stuff, and on top of which people could sit to get a better view. Hannah and I sat near the bow. First we motored around the Jayapura bay, into a large lagoon, where we got to look at a Japanese shipwreck from WWII. Pretty neat. Then we motored out of the bay and around to the Pacific side, where we pulled into a beach about four miles from the city. It turned out to be the beach that Hannah and I had trecked to barefoot down the side of a mountain that one day. Very nice spot and very special to be able to aproach it by sea. We camped on the beach and I body surfed the waves for a couple hours, and then we lit a fire and had a feast of roasted fish with rice and sambal (salsa). After we ate we played a game of frisbee in the water, and used the boat as a jungle gym, then we all hiked barefoot up the small river canyon there to a large waterfall nestled in the cliffs. Everyone bathed and rinsed, and when it started to get dark we turned around to head back for the boat. We arrived back in Jayapura exhausted, and Hannah and I slept for almost 11 hours.

Last night Hannah, Louise, Hiron and I very feeling silly, so we decided to have a pillow fight. The pillow fight degenerated into sumo wrestling with pillows under our shirts, which degenerated to sumo wretling with pillows padding our butts. Very very funny and very exhausting. If your lucky pictures will appear.

That's all the excitment for now! Keep reading and I'll keep posting!

-Nick

Trailblazers: Marty Was Wrong

They DO have teenagers here. I have three classes full of them. Trailblazers is the level at EF reserved for, you guessed it, teenagers. Traiblazers is not more difficult to lesson plan than adult classes or ealry learners, it's not harder for traiblazers to understand the material, and the material itself is not especially easy or hard compared to other levels. The most common problem is motivation. Parents send their four-year-old children to EF, and what can they do about it? They're four! For them it means having an hour reserved for playing while accidnetaly learning English. "Wow, that was fun! Oops, hey, you learned English!" For adults, well, they pay quite a bit of money out of their own pockets to attend a course at EF. The equivalent is about as much as a you spend in one month to live. Truly an investment for people here, seeing as how sometimes they don't even have enough money to live for one month. Result: adults come to class and have a certain invaluable quality that trailblazers often lack: MOTIVATION. It becomes exceedingly difficult to teach English to a student in a fun and ingaging way when the decision to be their is not their own. In particular I have difficulty with my 3:00 Tuesday/Thursday class. To begin with, the class is very large, which makes control a big issue. Second, my class includes a small handful of students who are very quick to learn, and a larger handful that have come to about half the classes. If you come to only half the classes, you will fail, and their is not point in comming to any more classes, ESPECIALLY is you are not motivated to learn. Imagine paying an entire month's salary for you child to have the golden opportunity of learning English, only to find out later that he failed because he didn't care to attend. Sorry mom and dad, should have sent him before he was a teenager!

On a lighter note, Hannah and I went to Base G last weekend (a local beach) and while Hannah bathed in the ocean I explored the surroudning ocean cliffs. I found in one spot some very usable clay, which I gathered into a ball. Then I journey back to the beach, and from there made my way up the hill, through the jungle in search of a suitable banana leaf to wrap my clay in. I eventually found a path that led across a ridge to the top of the hill overlooking the ocean. I declined to follow it and instead turned back towards the beach. I found along the path a spot of jungle that had been torched for some reason, and behind the black ground was a banana tree! I walked barefoot across the ash, and tore off a smaller banana leaf, wraped it around my clay, and tied it with some sort of stringy plant nearby. Now the clay is soaking in water, and later when it has evaporated enough, I will pour off the top and reconstitute it. After that, I assumer there will be nothing but happy pottery!

Until next time,
-Nickl

Early Learners

The earliest you can start coming to EF to bask in the English language from the mouth of native speakers is three. And at that age, basking is about all that you are capable of. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays my first class of the day is Early Learners. At about 1:25 PM while I am often still frantically palnning lessons, children come screaming up the steps, followed by their parents, to sit down in the lounge and wait for the parade of teachers to start down the hall at 1:30. If I'm lucky, four of these children will belong to me for the next hour and twenty minutes. (If I'm not lucky, I will have to give private English lessons to one three-year-old.) Jusuf, Intan, Rifki, and Adela are a lively bunch. Jusuf is the youngest (having just turned three), followed by Rifki, Intan, and Adela. Some days with this group are better than others. Wednesday was horrible, as it included lessons that did not match with the childrens' attention spans. Friday was wonderful. Here is what class was like on Friday: 1. Introductions with hand puppet- Students listen and repeat "Hi!" "How are you?" "Fine, thank you." "My name is Nick. What's your name?" "How old are you?" "One, two, three, four. Rifki is four years old!" "Yay!, Good job!" 2. ABCs- "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z... Now I know my ABCs, next time won't you sing with me." "Yay" (clapping) "Good job!" 3. Color flashcards- "What color is this?" "Purple, good!" etc. 4. Jumping on color flashcards- "OK, where's blue!" (screaming and destroying the blue flashcard.) etc. 5. Scribbling- Each student received a piece of blank paper, and we all proceeded to scribble announced colors. "Blue! Blue!" "Good Jusuf! OK, Green!" 6. Cutting- Then we took some scissors, and learned how to cut. We all just cut up paper for about twenty minutes- just cutting- and then 7. Snack time- students hold hands and we parade out of the classroom to the kitchen. A glass of water and two biscuits (cookies) for each student. 8. Play Time- Time to play with blocks. 9. Class is over- "Goodbye! Goodbye! Thank you!"
Ealry learners turns out to be much more like a play group where I just sort of sprinkle English on them and hope the absorb it. I often come out of class thinking the same thing as Wade "Hey that was fun! Wow I'm exhausted!"

The weeks are going by faster and faster now. Lesson planning as well as teaching is starting to feel more fluid, and Hannah and I might finally be settling into some kind of regular meal schedule. Last night we got talking with Shayna over dinner, and ended up receiving a short lesson on the poilicts of Canada, which was very interesting. It got late, and Hannah and I crashed.

This morning Rani and her mom built a fire in the pit outside and roasted some fresh pig they picked up at the market. After they left I Bogarted their coals and built a little teepee fire around an improved clay oil lamp I had crafted. The wood was a little wet, and the coals were having trouble getting the wood to a combustable temperature, so I roamed around the neigborhood and tore a big leaf of a banana tree to use as a fan. Flames! Now I have a usable oil lamp with a handle, an improvement over my last one.

Now Hannah and I are at the Internet cafe, and afterwards we will ride our bike to a scenic overlook behind the "Jayapura City" sign. Later when the sun goes over the western hills I will take some vegetable scraps and seeds and begin planting for my front yard garden. This week: corn, potatoes, orange tree. If platning is succesful, I hope to plant new crops periodically so that I will eventually be able to harvest over an extended period of time. Wish me luck!

-Nick

It's Time To 'Buka Puasa'!

Well folks, it's October. In the states this means the first sure signs of fall and halloween. In Indonesia October means it's time for Ramadan again! Indonesia is a unique place, especially on Papua. Christians and Moslems live and work side by side, and even attend the same schools. This time of year Moslems fast during the day (no food NOR water), and eat again when night falls. At EF this means that about 1/3 of our students are in a slight daze for most of the day, and have to be coached into participating. Suprisingly, most of them are good sports, even though they haven't eaten. To help adjust to the schedules of those who are fasting, our 4:30 classes end 10 minutes early, and our 6:10 classes start 10 minutes late. This gives students time to break their fast when the sun goes down (about 6:00). For us teachers this means we get a 40 minute break every night instead of a 20 minute break. Yay! Also, it is Moslem tradition to eat dates when breaking the fast, so for the month of October, dates will be plentiful and inexpensive. I have taken this opportunity to buy lots and lots of dates, as a substitue for raisins, as raisins are very expensive, and whaddaya know, the dates are all from California! Who knew?! I bet president Bush doesn't know his country is helping Moslems all over Asia break their Ramadan fast pleasantly with some plump California dates. Better he didn't. He probably wouldn't care anyways, no oil over here.

On Saturday Hannah and I just lazed around the house. It felt good to relax and let our bodies fully rest. On Sunday we took a long bike journey to a beach called Holikamp. The beach stretches across the outside of a small ithsmus that encloses a lagoon. The outside of the ithsmus is in Jayapura bay. The bike trip took about 1 hour, as we had to climb up and down hills, and eventually traverse over 2 miles of dirt road. The beach was very relaxing, with the added bonus of having no coral or urchins under the waves. I was very tired and sunburned from riding the bike, so I naped under a palm tree while Hannah swam and drew the scenery with her pastels. We took a short hike inland from the beach, and peered into the jungle at various points along the road. We saw a very large lizard, about the size of an iguana, clinging to a tree. It was grey with small white specks. One of us moved a little to quickly and it jumped off the tree and scampered into the thicket.

This week I have been playing Bluegrass music to some of my students. Last night I played the first track of the Old & In The Way CD to my Beginner 2 students and had them write a paragraph about what they thought of it. I will read those tomorrow and correct their grammar and spelling.

That's about all the exciting news for now! Stay tuned and I'll keep you posted.

-Nick