Getting to Know You

“Hello, Miss! Where are you from?”
Saya dari di Amerika.
“What are you doing here?”
Saya guru Bahasa Ingriss.
“Have you eaten yet?”

Almost every time I meet an Indonesian, these are the first three questions I’m asked. Asking someone if they’ve eaten yet in North Sulawesi is a little bit like cramming “Hello, how are you, you’re my friend, and I care about you” into four simple words. It’s the first question I’m asked when I arrive at school, and I’m usually asked again ten minutes later by someone else. Even if I’m not around, people check in on my food-status: Last Friday at 8:30 am, I got a text from an economics teacher at my school: “Hello polly, did u have breakfast?” Sudah makan and Kenyang—I’ve already eaten and I’m full—have become as much  staples of my Indonesian vocabulary as rice is a staple of an Indonesian’s diet.

I arrived in Amurang on September 17. That first weekend was a flurry of shopping, unpacking and figuring out how long I can leave unwashed dishes out before the ants invade (answer: I can’t). My house, a pink and blue cottage ten yards from the ocean, was a wonderful surprise: clean, pretty and with views of the sunset over the bay that would make National Geographic weep. (Photos to come as soon as I can get solid enough internet for uploading.) Several teachers from school helped me furnish it with the necessities, including a water cooler, a rice cooker and a little wooden mortar and pestle that I have no idea how I'm expected to use. My only complaint: while coffee trees are common, coffee makers are nearly unheard of here. So as a resident of Sulawesi--an island whose coffee beans are sold at Starbucks, for God's sake--I'm learning to resign myself to a year of instant coffee.
                 
I live alone, in a small neighborhood of brightly colored, empty bungalows. But there are always people around: My landlord Jantje, who’s got Steve Martin’s white hair and his goofy sense of humor too (or at least, what I assume is a goofy sense of humor, since we can’t really communicate but he’s always grinning); the man who whisks away my trash every morning and fixes my water when it mysteriously stops; the group of construction workers building an apartment above mine who always say Dari kemana—Where have you been?—when I arrive home; and, of course, Ely.

Ely—Amelius Elias, a 40-year old English teacher at my school—is my AMINEF-approved “counterpart” in Amurang. He’s a small man with a big, cackling laugh that accompanies pretty much everything he says. (Our favorite reason to laugh together is when one of us says “doggie bag.” It’s a phrase I taught him at our first dinner out. Originally, the fact that in North Sulawesi dog meat is often on the menu and therefore your doggie bag could contain actual dog, struck us both as hilarious, but now I laugh just because his high-pitched giggle is so enjoyable.) Ely is my Big-Picture Logistics Man: he introduces me to local bureaucrats and policemen, organizes my teaching schedule and generally ensures my health and well-being.

My first two weeks at school were officially Orientation and Observation, but what that meant was five hours a day of sitting in the teacher’s lounge and becoming friends with the other 30 teachers, who mainly speak something between almost no English and absolutely no English. They are the friendliest people I’ve ever met and are borderline pathologically generous. (The way they bring me food to take home reminds me of that book The Very Hungry Caterpillar: on Monday, I went home with a bag of fruit; on Tuesday, I went home with a box of cake and two pork buns; on Wednesday, I went home with a packet of peanuts, a sack of pastries and an entire dinner’s worth of fish.) Because they’re so eager to talk with me—and because they’re so patient—my Indonesian is improving a lot quicker than I expected.

With the teachers, cultural exchange happens on a minute-by-minute basis. I startle them by walking to school (But Miss Polly, it’s so hot!) and drinking black coffee (But Miss Polly, it’s so bitter!). They startle me by smoking in the teacher’s lounge and not knowing their students’ names. I make them laugh when I try out Indonesian tongue twisters (ular lari lurus); they make me burst out laughing when the electricity goes out and they just keep on chatting. I learn from them that openly wiping sweat from your face with a tissue every couple of minutes is not only acceptable, it’s expected. They learn from me that, confusingly, English speakers say “Bon appetit” even though it’s not actually English.

I finally began teaching this past Monday. I’m teaching the tenth and eleventh grade, which means that I have about 600 students (20 classes of 30 students each). The students are thrilled to meet an American; we have a lot of the same interests (High School Musical, Taylor Swift, the Netherlands’ soccer team) and they think listening to me speak Indonesian is about the funniest thing in the world. Although they know English grammar pretty well, getting them to speak in class—something that has not been asked of them in English class before—will be more challenging than I had imagined. This week we practiced “How old are you?”, “What are your hobbies?” and—my favorite teaching moment so far—the difference between “How are you?” and “What’s up?”

So much has happened over the past three weeks (teaser: for one hour, I was the Simon Cowell of North Sulawesi) and I plan to write more about it as soon as possible. Trying to find internet frustrates me daily, but I’m trying to have an Indonesian-style patient attitude about it. I do have a phone number and an address now, so if I go MIA for weeks again—which I don’t plan on doing—you can get in touch with me.

Phone: 082110362272

Address: Evangeline Furth
    d/a SMAN 1 Tombasian – Amurang
    Jl. Trans Sulawesi
    Kel. Bitung, Kec. Amurang
    Sulawesi Utara 95354