Tuesday, 25July06

Highlights: another request for a native English speaker, playstation 2 gift, All plus English conversation group

We’re working on poetry in ‘conversation’ class… never my strong-suit. I’m resigned to the fact that I’ll never become Shakespeare in bahasa Indonesia.

I’m not quite sure how my name gets out there sometimes, but two more students from Jogja State University (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta) came by to ask if I would be willing to sit in an English conversation class that they are organizing for 80 high-school students who are doing their KKN (month long community service) in Bantul.

What other answer is there but, sure!?

I’m lucky in the fact that, unlike my USINDO friends who have to run home before school start dates at Berkley, Northern Illinois Univ., Eastern Illinois Univ., U of Hawaii, U of Florida, Oxford, etc… I’m staying here for a year- so there’s no rush coming up in 3 weeks. I’ll work with these kids on 15 August, after all the USINDO summer studies stuff is over, and before 17 August, Indonesia’s Independence Day.

Interesting side-note about Independence day here… They celebrate the day Independence was bravely declared from the Dutch (17Aug45), not the day it was actually won (19Dec49). Huh. Well it’s their day, so they can celebrate whatever day they want.

After finishing some work at school, I was thinking about Ena’s family from this weekend. The kids were playing a play-station game on the computer, but only had a few games to choose from. I’m guessing they spend a lot of time in their temporary bamboo house with not much else to do.

During both of my deployments, I’ve watched grown 30 year old men glue themselves to X-box and play-station for months at a time. Those deployments would have been twice as miserable for them if they didn’t have their games… and I was thinking about what kids from Bantul have to entertain themselves with. A small effort on my part could make a big difference for them, so- I went by a video game store & picked up 8 new play-station games ($2 total) and brought them by the salon to give to Ena.

I had an hour to fill before volunteering my mastery of the English language (ha ha =) at the All-plus language school, so I ate Bakso with the salon girls & tried convincing them that embracing mistakes is a key to learning a new language. Go out & make lots of mistakes when learning to speak English,,, you’ll learn from them & get better as you go.

At 7, the English conversation class got started. Some of the same faces from last night showed up again, but mostly fresh faces of university students who wanted to listen to English from a native speaker, practice a little, ask questions about America… and all the while- refining their English abilities. It was great. They asked questions like: does the price of gas hurt Americans as much as it hurts Indonesians?; what are political parties like?; what’s the difference between national laws & state laws?; do big companies make the laws?; are there regulations about advertising?... etc. I did my best & had a great time talking to them & describing things about my country.

Then went home to my host family, ate spaghetti with Sinetron soap operas playing in the background, told stories about my day & laughed. Ha ha. My host family is great.