Update

Once again, it has been a very long time since I have updated my blog—over a year actually! But, it is high time for an update!

Last year I received a scholarship called the Darmasiswa Scholarship. It is offered by the Indonesian Ministry of National Education in cooperation with the Department of Foreign Affairs. With this scholarship, I was able to take some Indonesian literature classes at Universitas Indonesia from September 2008 until May 2009. It is a great opportunity, I recommend anyone interested in learning more about the Indonesian language/culture to apply! http://darmasiswa.diknas.go.id/english/

I am currently teaching English at Lazuardi Global Islamic School in Cinere, right outside Jakarta. I teach elementary and junior high English. It is a bilingual school and I am enjoying my time there very much.

Another activity is volunteering with Nurani Dunia Foundation. I mostly volunteer teaching English once a week to kids in a kampong in central Jakarta.

I have also been doing some translating :) Indonesian to English of course:

http://andrea-hirata.com/?page_id=148

That’s all for now!

To Aceh

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2244706&l=bbdd1&id=12311763
some pics from Jakarta, Aceh, and Bandung

I was able to go to Banda Aceh about 2 weeks ago and see first hand the post-tsunami reconstruction efforts. it's been about 4 years and so much progress has been made. It's funny driving around and seeing different NGOs', companies', and other organizations' signs all over projects that they have sponsored. What is really neat about it is noticing that these different organizations are from all over the world.

I was really excited to be able to tag along on this trip because I have been in Indonesia for about a year and had not yet made it there. Aceh is not quite a plactoe one vacations and I did not just want to pop up in Banda Aceh by myself to walk around as a tourist, I would not be comfortable doing that. So an opportunity popped up for me to go there with people who know the area, who have a set purpose there, and who don't mind me tagging along :)

I tagged along on this trip with Pak Imam (director of ND) and Bu Gita (his wife and SUPER ND volunteer) to see a bunch of Nurani Dunia projects there. (Pak Imam and Bu Gita have also been letting me stay at their house for over a month now, so nice of them).
Projects to see: Training Center, Radio Station, Boats built for villages to use to fish, School, Housing Complex
also visit Kuala Syiah University

My favorite place that we went to was a training center that Nurani Dunia built. It is available for rent (very cheaply, only charging to cover the costs of electricity and facility upkeep). To rent a hotel or another such facility for training workshops usually costs upwards of USD $200. This only costs about $50. I believe the group that had just finished up there when we were leaving was a group being trained on how to run free and fair elections.


Also on the grounds of the traning center is a radio station, Kiss FM Aceh. This radio station is really cool, because it was made possible by 3 different organizations from 3 different countries; Radio Belanda (Netherlands Radio), Nurani Dunia, and USAID.

We also went to a housing complex for victims of the Tsunami that was part of a Nurani Dunia project.


Aceh is really hot, that's for sure. It is such an interesting place, religiously, politically, and developmentally. It is a region that has been given special autonomy in Indonesia. There is Sharia Law (non-muslims don't need to worry about it). So I did not need to wear a jilbab (have to admit I kind of wanted to just to see what it would be like for a few days, but did not bc I wasn't sure if it was appropriate or not). They are also in the process of developing new local political parties, a touchy practice in the wake of relatively recent free aceh movements. A few of the new political parties are already eligible to compete in national elections next year. I'm just babbling now haha, sorry, I guess if you wanted to catch up on politics in Aceh you would be reading an article or book about it and not my blog :) oops

anyways, that's a bit about my trip to Aceh. great experience.

Also, i recently got an article published in The Jakarta Post :) I am really excited about it:
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2008/08/18/developing-a-future-freedom.html.

Jakarta and Nurani Dunia

I have been in Jakarta for about a month now. I have spent my time volunteering with the Nurani Dunia Foundation. With four other volunteers from Universitas Gadja Mada, I was able to teach English courses everyday for about 2 and a half weeks. The original plan was that I was going to volunteer in Komunitas Proklamasi maybe once or twice a week teaching English and then spend the rest of my time translating articles from the Nurani Dunia website. However, the Pak RW, like the head of the community, was really excited and wanted the classes to be everyday. We agreed on Monday-Friday.

So I showed up on the first day, and there were about 80 children grades 1-high school! Ah. Thank goodness I was not alone, Bu Gita had come with me, we split them in half and did introduction type activities. Then the UGM volunteers , came on over from the office and helped divide the students into 4 classes-- grades 1-3, grades 4-6, junior high, and high school. So grades 1-3 and 4-6 had class at the same time everyday, one with me and the other with the volunteers reviewing what they had done with me. The volunteers were GREAT. They all spoke English fairly well and often came up with fun activities of their own to do with the children. It was really fun, very loud, and definitely the experience of a lifetime.

Komunitas Proklamasi is really interesting. It used to be kind of a conflict/slum area. After some really good programs were implemented there 6 years ago through the help of Nurani Dunia, Komunitas Proklamsi is developing into a really cool place. Drugs are not quite as big of a problem, the conflicts have definitely died down, they are starting a Go Green program, and they have built many useful community areas--such as gardens, a study house, a little art house, an adult reading area, and they are now working on building a music studio.
(the members of Cesplenk practicing in the art house with an enthusiastic audience of children from the community)

The music studio is for Cesplenk Band. The members of this band used to be anak jalanan (street children) and are all from Komunitas Proklamasi. I have gotten to know them because I also did an English course for a group of adults in this community. That was also a lot of fun.

The projects in Komunitas Proklamasi have largely been possible because of donations from companies like Sara Lee Indonesia, GE Money Indonesia, and PLN State Electric Company. Last year a fire in the community burned down 42 houses and ruined the homes of about 150 residents. But because of the community ties that these programs have helped form, the people are currently working together to rebuild the houses that were destroyed.

When we did our Perpisahan (Farewell) for the kids, they were all sobbing! And about 100 of them had shown up that day. It was so touching.

My friend Rauf helped teach too a few times a week, here he is comforting some of the crying kids

I have also spent my time attempting to translate some of the articles from the website, I am quite slow haha, oh well. Slowly but surely I'll get there.
www.nuranidunia.or.id

I am a bad blogger...

So I am pretty much the worst blogger ever and have not updated this thing in over 6 months. So much has happened over those months, but to catch up now would be too hard. I have been home twice and back to Indonesia during that time. I finished up my grant, and now am back in Indonesia volunteering at the moment.

My Kids in Singosari Last Year




In the mean time, I have been keeping pretty busy in Jakarta...

Halloween

I decided to have a Halloween party for my kids at school. I taught about it all week, spent a lot of money on candy and decorations, asked permission to teach about it and to have the party. The day before the party I was told that the party would have to be changed to another day or be canceled. I was a little flustered about changing it. The next day I got a text message from a 3rd party who knows people at my school saying that people are concerned because they think it is a religious holiday (they said halloween sounds like halleluiah?) and that they were nervous that the Muhammadiyah Ulama would be upset if I had this party, and so on. I became veryyy upset about this misunderstanding, mainly because I was never approached about it and only came to know about it from an outside source. This came at the end of a not so great week. Earlier that week, my friend Erica found a massive scorpion in my house, I got a ticket (it was my fault, but very scary---I later found out that what I paid was not a ticket, but korupsi), got a flat tire, and my pipe in my bathroom was somehow leaking into my neighbor's house and flooding it.

Then came the Halloween fiasco. I had a breakdown about this, I do not know why but it was really upsetting to me. So I talked to Nelly from Aminef, and she had Pak Parto, her friend from Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang explain to them that it is not celebrated as a religious holiday, etc. So everything got smoothed over very quickly, and I got to have my party a week later.


It was so fun! The kids bobbed for apples, played pin the tail on the spider, did a candy jar guess,and carved jack-o-lanterns. Cultural misunderstanding has been fixed :)

Idul Fitri

It is almost December... that is crazy. Well I am way behind on this thing, so I have to go back long way to Idul Fitri, which was in October! For the actual holiday, I was in Singosari. But the day after Idul Fitri I took a train to Solo (Central Java) to visit my friends Putut and Elin. Putut and Elin both just finished their Phds at Ohio University in June and moved back to Indonesia. They live outside of Jakarta, but for Idul Fitri everyone goes home to their hometowns, and Putut's family is from Solo. It was really cool to be there because he has a large family (like 6 brothers and sisters I think) and it was the first time they had all been together at the same time in like 6 years! There were so many children running around, it was great. I went to a Wayang Orang show in Solo, and we also went to Gunung Lawu (Mt. Lawu).
Elin and I (above) Some future bobcats (below)

We also returned to the traditional Javanese house that Putut's father grew up in so that they could take a family photo, it was a really cool house.

After Solo I went to Yogyakarta for a day. Solo is not too far from Yogya and a few other ETA's were there, so I decided since I was so close I should stop by.

When I came back from Yogya (on an 8 hour overnight train ride--yuck), I went around to some of the other teachers houses at my school. It is a traditional Idul Fitri activity to go around and visit your friends or neighbors. You ask their forgiveness, because during Ramadan you are becoming closer to God, so after you have God's forgiveness you ask forgiveness from your fellow human beings. You say "Maaf mohon lahir dan batin" (or it is Mohon maaf lahir dan batin...I always forget haha). Anyways, what really happens is you stop by their houses, they make you eat lots of treats, and we did this at aout 10 houses. I was so terribly full, but everytime I tried to refuse food I was told I must at least try it because it is rude not to. I think I ate 800 cookies that day :( it was funny.

The last month

I have not been good at keeping up with this thing over the past month! A lot has happened, time kind of flies by...

I went to Bali for a week at the end of September and that was so much fun! My friend Matt is an ETA there, so I visited his school in Denpasar, and one of is students is an Indonesian friend from OU's little sister!

Talk about a small world. A few of the other ETA's were in Bali too, so it was really nice to hang out with everyone. We went to a city called Ubud for the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival which was nice, and then we hung out at Kuta Beach for a little while.

<-- this is a pic of me and my friend Eka's sister! Kuta Beach->













Rice Terraces in Ubud



I also cut my hair very short when I was in Bali!





After Bali my friend Danielle came to visit for a week, while she was here we went to this place called Taman Safari 2. It is awesome! We went with 2 of my other friends, and what you do is you drive through this park/zoo in your car, like a safari and see all of the animals. When you are done you park you car and you go to a walking zoo, and there is an area where you can hold baby lions and tigers!!! I also got a kiss from an elephant!


Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, also just finished up. Muslims do not eat or drink during daylight hours (it is much more complicated and religious than that). I will write about my post Ramadan and Idul Fitri (the big day that ends Ramadan) experiences next time.