First Week of Teaching

So I have finally completed my first week of teaching. To put things in perspective, I teach eight 10th grade classes, each with close to 40 students. Essentially I teach 1-2 classes a day, with each class lasting about an hour and a half. Since I'm only a teaching assistant, I am always in the room with a teacher (excepting for today when teacher called in a sick day).

I still haven't quite adjusted to being a teacher yet. I guess after 16 years of being a student and sitting in class its hard to adjust to suddenly being in the teacher's position. Even after just one week, I already have a great respect for every teacher I've ever had. What I never realized before this week was that teaching is essentially like putting on a performance. But its more like improv than a performance. You stand up in front of an audience (in my case, 40 teenagers) and then perform for an hour and a half. Do you have things you want to do? Of course, but you have to be ready to get sidetracked.

My situation here is of course a little bit different. For one, not many of the teachers I work with understand English. Even the other English teachers and I have had problems with communication, so you can imagine what its like with the other history, science, or language teachers. Ironically, I have befriended the Mandarin teacher and have hung out with her a lot outside of school. The language barrier essentially means that I do a lot of acting out of what I'm saying. All I will say here is that it can get really embarassing really fast (today I acted out an airplane) and makes you develop a fairly thick skin early on.

For the most part, the students are eager to learn English. Like students anywhere, they chat to each other during class and tease each other. However, I don't feel like popularity plays as big of a role in their classrooms as it did in high school. Perhaps this will change as I learn more about my classes though.

There are parts of my town that I love, and parts that I wish were different. For one, I love that its small. Its size makes me feel like I am having more of an authentic experience. Small towns allow you to establish a network with other people. However, with small towns also comes a lack of nightlife or comprehensive transportation system. And when I say nightlife, I'm not talking clubs or bars -- I simply mean life at night. The main street in my city more or less shuts down at about 7pm (the sun sets around 6-630). For awhile I thought that I was mistaken and just didn't know where everyone was going. After talking to some locals though, I've realized that there just isn't really all that much to do at night. And since I don't live in City center, getting around once its dark is a little more tricky, even though my town is really safe. However, as I meet people, hopefully this situation will get better.

The one great thing about my town is that there is a pretty big university here. I finally started hanging out with some people in their 20s this week and that was really refreshing. For awhile I was just socializing with the teachers or students at my school -- I was in desperate need of someone my own age to talk to. The Mandarin teacher at my school actually owns a trendy little coffeeshop right near the university (I'm actually reporting from their town). It is your quintissential college coffeeshop, complete with angst-ridden chain smokers, independents musicians, and people with a lot of feelings. Its completely outdoors and best of all, it has great Indonesia coffee! I love my host mom and all, but the woman only has NesCafe. I don't generally consider myself a coffeesnob, but its hard to be on Java and drink instant coffee every morning. So far, my favorite coffee drink is this coffee they brew with ginger. It sounds kind of gross but its delicious. Beware though, they leave the coffee grinds in the coffee, so if you are going to drink it, bring floss!

I also recently found a warung that I love. Warungs are food stalls that line the streets at night. Because its fasting month, I have tried fasting in an attempt to understand my students. All I can say is that it is really hard and can definitely make you appreciate a solid afternoon nap. I'm letting myself drink stuff during the day, mainly because I don't want to get dehydrated. I guess I can't really say I'm fasting because I also let myself have either juice or a piece of fruit in the afternoon. When you have to act out every conversation you have, you find yourself in despearate need of sugar and caffeine all the time. Once night falls though, I usually head to my local warung. The one on my street actually specializes in tofu and tempe, so I'm pretty much in heaven. They also have rolladu which are casava leaves (tastes kind of like spinach, but a little more substantial). I usually order 1-2 pieces of each and take it home to each with some nasi putih (plain white rice). Sometimes I splurge and buy some nasi goreng also (fried rice), but that usually ends up making my meal pretty greasy. The total cost of this meal (2 pieces tofu with vegetables, 2 pieces rolladu, 1 piece temple, fried rice)? Sixty cents! I'm definitely going to miss the cheap food in Indonesia. For those of you that eat meat, they have a lot of chicken, beef, lamb, goat, fish, options as well.

That's pretty much daily life for me so far in Central Java. I already know there will be good stories to come.