Family Bungalow

Part of Fulbright’s requirements for English Teaching Assistants is that we be involved in our schools’ extracurriculars, so all 44 ETAs in Indonesia run some type of club, covering anything from debate to theater to sports. In the English Club I run on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, the students and I talk about some aspect of American culture for 10 minutes and then play games until we’re too sweaty to stand it. My favorite club meeting centered on weddings: I showed them pictures from my older brother’s wedding, explained the something-old-something-new tradition and then taught the reception dance floor favorite, the Cha Cha Slide. (This proved to be an inexplicable hit with the 11th grade boys, with their acne and wispy mustache-sprinkled faces, who have downloaded the song to their cell phones and sing along “Now cha cha, y’all!”)

Last week, the club’s topic was Thanksgiving. We went over Pilgrims, turkey and football, and then I asked the students what they were thankful for. Most of them said their family and their health; one brave boy thanked God for his girlfriend, which naturally made his friends whoop. Then Yafed, a shy 16-year old boy, said “I am thankful for Miss Polly, because she is my only American teacher, so I want to have relations with her. Good relations.” I spluttered for a few seconds, confusing everyone, and then suggested what he really meant was “a good relationship.”

In that brief, spluttering moment, all I wanted was someone in the room to make eye contact with and giggle. I wanted to share the joke without having to explain its punch line or look up words in my dictionary. Like a tree falling in the forest, a joke isn’t really a joke unless someone else is there to hear it.

All of this goes to say that for the Thanksgiving weekend I had the unrivaled joy of hanging out with eight of my best ETA friends, and more or less laughing for four days straight. They came from their placements around Indonesia—Sumatra, Java, South Sulawesi and Maluku—to Bunaken, a small island two hours from my town, famous for its coral reefs. We were the only guests at a lovely dive resort run by a gray-haired Australian man who said things like “We’ll have a quick bickie for brekie before headin’ out in the boat.” (And when he said that kind of impossibly Aussie thing, I always had a friend nearby whose grin matched mine.) Our rooms, joined by a porch, were called the Family Bungalow, and that’s what it was: a family Thanksgiving.

Loving life on the ferry ride to Bunaken.

Seabreeze Resort, our home for four days.

We cooked a Thanksgiving dinner, including sweet potatoes, green beans, apple crisp and absolutely no rice. We went on a dolphin tour, jumped off a pier for hours with a gang of local kids, and snorkeled through schools of fish that looked like bright confetti flickering in the water. We jumped off our boat when we were laughing so hard we risked peeing on deck (or maybe that was just me). We took naps together, had sing-a-longs with the Indonesian dive guides and chatted through our rooms’ paper-thin walls. We even posed for a family portrait.

Left to right, back row: JT, Brandon, Talya, me, Nicole, Kelsey, Eric. Front: Thomas, Paige.

When I got back to school this morning, a dozen elementary school students stood outside my classroom for ten minutes, staring at me and calling “What’s your name, Mister?” I asked Ely why they weren’t at their school and he explained that it was Teacher’s Day, a national holiday where the government conducts ceremonies honoring teachers. But, he said matter-of-factly, the local government hadn’t told the schools the holiday’s exact date or when the ceremonies would be, so half the town’s teachers had decided not to show up today and even more would not show up tomorrow.

“So the local government is appreciating teachers?” I asked.
“Oh yes,” he agreed.
“But it failed to tell the teachers when or how they would be appreciated?”
“Right,” he nodded.

I spluttered out a half-laugh and wished with all my heart that an ETA was there to enjoy the moment with me.





*Thanks to my beautiful friend Kelsey for the photos, as I was both too lazy and having too much fun to take my own.

Without Clucking Like a Hen

I have a lot of names in Indonesia. In school, I’m Miss Polly. When I’m walking down the street and I hear “Miss Polly!” from a passing mini-bus, there’s guaranteed to be a student in white button-down and blue tie waving from a window. Ely and Ester call me Pol, as in “Hello? Anyone home? Pol?” when they show up at my front door unannounced. Adults I pass in the street shout out either “Mister!” or “Miss!” depending on how much high school English they remember. Children are the boldest, of course: they follow me laughing and yelling “Bule!” White person! 

Yesterday I put on my little brother’s hand-me-down Red Sox cap and walked to the local supermarket in the afternoon drizzle. Sometimes I imagine a hat and sunglasses will keep passing drivers from noticing I’m a bule. Except Indonesians don’t wear hats or sunglasses.

As I walked into the crowded store, an employee in a bright orange uniform announced into the PA system “Look! A white person just came in.” I smiled, gave a little wave and walked past him as he called “Mister, mister!” While I was comparing water bowls for Louisa—can puppies get lead poisoning from metal dishes?—the employee approached me again, without microphone this time. We had a typical and brief conversation; where are you from, how long have you been here, where do you live and so on. As soon as we’d finished talking, he pulled the mic out of his pocket and started talking into it like a game show host: “Here is Mister Polly Furth from America!” I half-smiled, half-shrugged and walked away.

And the man followed. He followed me down the fruit aisle and up the drink aisle and past the cereal, peppering me with questions and hamming it up into the microphone. I picked up instant noodles; he chattered at my shoulder. While I was debating various brands of instant coffee, he thrust the mic in front of my nose. And I snapped: “I do not want to talk. I am trying to shop.” He laughed; I marched to the checkout, pointlessly indignant.

On the walk home, I couldn’t get the song Mr. Cellophane out of my head:

Cellophane
Mister Cellophane
Shoulda been my name
Mister Cellophane
'Cause you can look right through me
Walk right by me
And never know I'm there.

Giving Thanks

I’ve got Thanksgiving on the brain. A few days ago, I requested November 25 and 26 off from school so I could celebrate the Thanksgiving weekend with some ETA friends. Part of my request meant explaining to the teachers and headmaster what the holiday is about. I explained that it involved the first bules in America and eating turkey, but that mainly Thanksgiving is a chance to be with the people you love and to tell God what you’re grateful for. So, in honor of the days off which my school graciously gave me, here is what I’m most grateful for this Thanksgiving season: Ester.

Ester has not come up in this blog yet because she’s just too important for anything but an entry devoted exclusively to her. You know how Squanto taught the Pilgrims to hunt and which berries were poisonous and how to survive a New England winter? Ester is my Squanto.

Her full name is Ester Diane, because her mother wanted to name her after a Biblical heroine and a modern one (her brother’s name is Reagan David). She’s 26 years old and like me, she’s an English teacher at SMA 1, although she’d rather work in government administration. From my first day, Ester was there, translating, explaining, warning me against spicy foods, serving as a gentle barrier against people who asked baffling questions like “Miss Polly, when can I come sleep at your house?”

Ester likes to say “All the ways go to Rome,” by which she means, there is always a solution and we will find it, so please, Polly, calm down. Like when I was electrocuted for the second time by my third stove and started to cry, Ester patted me on the arm and said “I guess it’s time to try a gas stove,” and then told me firmly that I was not staying home to wallow in self-pity over a dismal peanut butter sandwich; she took me out for dinner. Or when a certain host beamed at me as I tried to gulp down his homemade juice, which looked and tasted like sewage, Ester whisked it away, saying “Can I have some? Here, Polly, try my drink.” Or when we were at the fanciest mall around, trying for the infuriating fourth time to make my internet modem work, and the power failed and the whole mall went black, Ester kept right on negotiating with the IT guy. All I could do was sit down and laugh.

That might be my favorite thing about Ester: her ability to make me laugh when I want to scream. Her response when I whined about my two-puppy predicament—one Louisa May in my house and another arriving in four weeks—was “We’ll name the first one Louisa April!” After trying for an hour to buy a plane ticket online, I finally asked Ester for help. She said “No problem, I have a friend who’s a travel agent!” and proceeded to buy me a ticket over text message.
   
Ester’s patience and strength are even more remarkable in light of the terrible fact that her boyfriend died of liver failure six weeks ago. She loves to talk about him—I’ve heard about the first time he asked her out and what songs they sang karaoke together—but she doesn’t ask for pity.  She often says "I believe God has a good plan for my life," and then quickly adds that she doesn't want to think about it because it only makes her sadder. I am thankful for Ester because she puts faulty stoves and foul juice in perspective.

I’ve gone with Ester to three of her boyfriend’s funerals. (In North Sulawesi, multiple funerals are held after a person's death: after several days, a week, two weeks, 40 days and a year). The funerals were a strange combination of devout Christian church service and raucous party; when I commented on all the joking and games—which came right after the praying and tears—Ester said “It’s to distract the family. To make them laugh.”

Week Five: Top Five

Over the past month I’ve been to one wedding, two funerals, four birthday parties, two traditional markets, six malls, one scout camp, one beach barbecue and more dinners at friends’ houses—and by friends, I mostly mean strangers who want to become friends with the bule—than I can count. I’ve tried bat (never again) and I’ve raced on the back of an off-duty policeman’s motorcycle at midnight. I’ve listened to hundreds of students say their names, ages and hobbies and I’ve taught at least half of them that “fifteen” isn’t pronounced like “five-teen.” It’s been a busy month. Since this is my fifth week in Amurang and I’m still playing catch-up in this blog, I’ve decided to bring you up to date with a few Top Five lists.    

Top Five I’m-So-Not-In-Kansas-Anymore Experiences

5. I’ve eaten at Kentucky Fried Chicken twice, which is twice as many times in five weeks as the number of times I went there in my four years in Kentucky. Indonesians take me there to give me a taste of home, and I don’t object. But KFC in Indonesia isn’t much like home: before they eat, everyone washes their hands in a long, metal trough by the back door; every entrée comes with a moist mound of rice wrapped in tissue paper; the soft drinks come in one size, which is about as big as a Dixie cup; ads with cute teenage girls in jilbabs eating fried chicken play continually on TV screens.

4. If I’m not walking to school, I’m taking an ojek (taxi-motorcycle) or bendi (taxi-buggy). Both take you anywhere in town for the equivalent of 20 American cents. The teachers prefer I take a bendi because it’s slow, safe and traditional; I prefer the ojek because it makes me feel badass to zoom to school sidesaddle in my ladylike teacher’s skirts.

One of Amurang's many bendis.

3. The whole school took a field trip to the North Sulawesi State Fair. While I was half-walking, half-being pushed through the crowd, a man on stage started yelling into his mic, “Amerika, Amerika!” He was the MC of an English speech competition for students that had just begun; within two minutes, the headmaster of my school had decided I should serve as a judge and had pulled me onto a balcony above the stage. For an hour, I listened to adorable kids give nearly incomprehensible speeches with titles like “Go Green, Sulawesi!” and “Just Say No to Drugs and Free Sex!” When I announced the winner at the end of the competition, the crowd stared at me blankly. It turned out no one knew the word “winner” in English.

2. Ely, my teaching counterpart, told me September 24 was National Sports Day. He said, “We will all go jogging together in the morning to celebrate.”
I said, “Cool. So it’ll be like the students and the PE teachers?”
He said, “No, no; all the teachers and all the students from every school in Amurang will jog with all the town’s government officials and policemen.”
I said, “Um. Cool.”
And he was half-right: thousands of students and hundreds of adults met at 5:30 am outside the regency headquarters and a stretch of road was shut down for us, but no one jogged. We walked.

Students, teachers and bureaucrats marching along a coastal road.

1. I have a newfound hatred for the inventor of the camera phone: my photo is taken constantly, by everyone around me. The teachers take my photo while I check my email; the students take my photo while I eat lunch. Those two funerals I attended? People took my photo while the preacher spoke. People who have never met me thrust their squirming children into my arms and take my photo. To keep my sense of humor (and sanity) about the whole thing, I’ve made some rules: you have to introduce yourself before you can take my photo, no photos in class, if I want to stick out my tongue or cross my eyes in the photo, you have to let me.

This is what it's like to stand in a crowd of camera-happy Indonesians.

Top Five Reasons I Like Teaching at an Indonesian High School

5. If I forget my laminated map of the US, I have to draw a map on the whiteboard to show Boston and Kentucky—and the students usually don’t know how bad it is.

I tried and failed to learn my ETA friend Thomas' impressive map-drawing skills.

4. I get black marks on my face from the whiteboard eraser on a daily basis. It happened on my first day, in my first class. But Indonesian students don’t sit tactfully silent and let you go around looking like an idiot; if you have something on your face, they say so. Marker on my face is now a running joke in my classes.

3. There’s no AC in school and fans in only three classrooms, so everyone sweats a lot. This makes everyone chain-drink bottles of water. So the combination of North Sulawesian heat and North Sulawesian generosity means that bottles of water appear in my hand almost magically. Sometimes students or teachers just show up at my desk or in the classroom to give me a bottle.

2. In the middle of school one day, I played a spontaneous, five-minute game of basketball with four students while 800 others cheered me on. I made three baskets, the crowd went wild every time and I think I can confidently say that it was the peak of my athletic career.

1. I ask all of my oldest students, “What do you want to do after you graduate?” Their answers are inspiring—“I want to be a pilot and travel around the world” and “I want to be a career woman and make my parents proud” and “I want to be a public prosecutor.” Sometimes when they answer me, I say, “You know what’s important for becoming a pilot/career woman/president/international lawyer?” The whole class shouts, “LEARNING ENGLISH!” and then giggles like crazy. 

Top Five Things I Miss Most About America

5. Coffee.
4. Fall weather.
3. Food that isn’t eaten with rice.
2. Coffee.
1. Coffee.

Top Five Surprises

5. I got electrocuted by my stove. My left hand was numb for an hour.

4. A group of friends (most of whom I had met at least once before) showed up at my door at midnight on my birthday with cake, confetti and party hats. It was so thoughtful, it nearly made me cry.

My wonderful Indonesian friends and a newly 22-year old me.

3. I was given a puppy, who I named Louisa May. She was brought to my house as an early birthday present. Way, way too early in fact—the puppy was less than four weeks old and could barely open her eyes. After one night of her peeing in my bed and sleeping on my neck, I demanded that she be returned to her mother until she was eight weeks old. It was my first near-fight with an Indonesian: the teacher who had found the dog told me it was cultural—four-week old puppies are commonly adopted in Indonesia!—and I told her, carefully, that it was biological—four-week old puppies can die without the nutrition from their mother’s milk. Luckily, Ely, who raises dogs, weighed in and agreed that four weeks was too young. The puppy was returned.

2. I was given a second puppy, who I also named Louisa May. She was plopped into my arms when I arrived at school on my birthday (four days after I’d returned the first Louisa). She is, thank God, a healthy eight-weeks old and pees exclusively on newspaper or outside. Raising a puppy is proving to be more difficult than I had imagined; as one teacher put it when I complained about being tired, “Being a mommy is hard.” But it’s also fun: Today we went for a walk around the neighborhood with a gang of kids who scooped Louisa up whenever a motorcycle or unfriendly dog appeared. I would call “C’mon, babygirl” to the puppy when she lagged behind; the kids would laugh and laugh and shout “C’mon, babygirl!” The whole town is getting a kick out of watching the white girl walk down the street with her little white dog trailing after.

Louisa May celebrating my birthday/her adoption day in style.

After Louisa's first bath.

1. I really, really like it here (almost all the time).

Nine Thousand Words

My house (I live on the first floor).

The living room/kitchen area.

Amurang Bay at sunrise...

And at sunset.

The public high school where I teach.

Ely and I try to sing "Happy Birthday" at his wife's birthday party.

Some of the teachers and me in the ruang guru (teacher's lounge).

At a lunch for 30 teachers, 13 pots of rice were prepared. Seriously.

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

Piranha 3D

On Friday, I rode on the back of an ojek (taxi-motorcycle) for the first time--in a skirt and without a helmet. It was terrifying and fantastic, but it wasn't the craziest thing I did this week.

I also paid 50,000 rupiah to have a swarm of tiny fish nibble my feet.

It was a spa procedure called Dr. Fish and I'm told it's fairly common in Asia. The "pedicure" consists of fish eating all the dead skin off your feet, leaving you with baby bottom-soft soles. My friends Emily and Paige and I decided to take the plunge (pun intended) and try it.

Once we were sitting on the ledge above the tank of fish hungry for our flesh, all three of us had embarrassingly girlish freak-outs. But we stuck our legs in anyway. The sensation wasn't unpleasant; when I closed my eyes, it felt like a thousand gentle vibrations against my feet. Looking down at the little black, almost worm-like fish devouring my body, however, remained disturbing for the duration of the 30 minute pedi.

If I had done some research ahead of time, I would have learned that fish pedicures are banned in several states because of the health risks. I would have read a doctor's warning: "Risks include the possible spread of viral diseases, such as hepatitis and AIDS, as well as the fact that the water is not sterile and is full of bacteria." And I probably wouldn't have done it. But I did--and my callus (and infection)-free feet are grateful.

In other slightly freakish news, I spent one evening this week being an ex-convict aunt-of-the-groom at a Hick Wedding. It was an ETA named Talya's idea: put on a very un-PC, backwoods-themed wedding and reception, with all 44 of us participating as characters, from "homeless groom" right down to "awkwardly seductive ring-bearer." We threw ourselves into character with the same imagination and passion that will serve us so well in the classroom. There were exaggerated Southern accents, fake cigarettes, insults hurled from family member to meth-addicted family member and a brawl between the groom and the bride's ex-boyfriend.

Looking fierce in my prison-orange and prison-tats (thanks to Elena for the quality photo).

Leif, the belligerent ex, interrupts the ceremony.

And best of all, there was Justin Bieber performed by the ETAs' very own, brand new, chart-topping boy band.