Monday, July 25
Another sunny, hot day in Siantar! We were asked to do a workshop on “Teaching English Method and Games.” I wonder what that means… In the meantime, we create and present an amazing (in our humble opinion) two-hour workshop on games and ideas you can use in your classroom while teaching English. We stayed and talked with students for a while, then headed home to do laundry (perfect day for drying) and catch up on our reading and blog writing. There is one hotspot on campus, in the postgraduate office. It is sometimes open. Sometimes not. It opened at 2:00 today. This was perfect, because Jim needed to download information for a course we were teaching in the afternoon.
Anton came and picked us up in his mother’s nice mini-van at 4:30. He was very prompt. Hmmm. Not very Indonesian! Of course, we love it! The three of us were going with Anton to his family’s English Teaching School. We weren’t sure what to expect – and boy were we surprised!
The school, Kimh’s English School, is in Siantar Center, on a narrow street, easily accessible to the Chinese community, a significant minority group within Siantar. (Yes, Anton is Chinese.) There are over 200 students coming and going, being dropped off on motorbikes, by car, walking, micro-bus, all children of Chinese descent, anxious and ready to study English. The building is old with basic concrete floors and walls, but through the years, Anton’s mother has added running water, electricity, fans, some air-conditioning, beautifully painted walls and doors, a library, clocks on the walls, nice white boards, and one room with a projector (known as “infocus” here) mounted on the back wall. The desks were narrow and wooden with benches, very traditional, but the school was neat and clean and the students were very hard working.
We each were assigned a class for one hour, and then another class for an hour. Let’s just say, Jacob was again the star! He had the younger students (11-13 year olds) and had brought his ukulele, his music book, and taught songs like “head-shoulders-knees-and-toes” and “Old McDonald” and “The Hokey Pokey” and had the students singing, and laughing, and cheering, and adoring him! He was like an award-winning camp counselor!
Jim and I had the older students (high school) and loved working with them. Their English was very good and they were polite and focused the entire class time. They had a lot of questions, mostly about American culture and how to get into a good school in America. These advanced students all speak Mandarin (Chinese), English, as well as their native language of Bahasa Indonesia. They will be very marketable on a worldwide basis when they graduate from college! After two wonderful hours of class, we took a bunch of pictures with the students and staff (again, more facebook listings for Jacob), and were presented with a picture-perfect-fruit-cake with a sign on it that said “Welcome Jim’s Family.” This cake should have been featured on the front of Ladies Home Journal, it was that beautiful.
We all headed out to dinner at the noodle/seafood shop in the Megaland area, just past Nommensen University. We waited for everyone to arrive, and the shop owner picked up an inside table, put it on his head, and moved it outside for our group. The temperature was perfect for dining outdoors. No bugs, though the roaming cats were plentiful under our feet. We were served plates of crab, shrimp, calamari, grilled fish, super-spicy fish, fried chicken, vegetables (yea!), and bean sprouts …cooked with salted fish. And of course, a big, heaping pile of rice. Everything was delicious and Jacob ate, and ate, and ate… They were so tickled to see him eat so much “and be skinny bean.”
One of the men joining us, a dear friend and former student of Anton’s mother, was sitting next to Jacob and offered him a cigarette. Jacob politely said no thank you… then looked at me with HUGE eyes. The gentleman was very polite, and left the table to go smoke. We Americans appreciate that so much. After eating, and eating, and eating, and talking, and talking (half English, half Indonesian) we finally said our goodbyes and Anton sent us home. His lovely fiancé Evonna safely carried our cake home for us. At 9:15 we arrived home (our latest outing ever!), Jim baked some bread, we all ate a piece of cake, and went to bed – thrilled by an eventful and enjoyable evening!
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