Day 2: Educational Crash Course

Day in emojis: 👩‍🏫🚐

Today we started with a lesson on the Indonesian education system.  There were a few big surprises to me:

• They have a lot of "school" days - they don't have much a summer break at all, but at the same time there are a lot of school days dedicated non-academic things.  They have days where everyone cleans the school, days where they have community events, and days they have celebrations.  
• They go to school on Saturdays.  It sounds like this is starting to change, and they are moving to longer M-F school days and getting rid of Saturdays.  Before, elementary school essentially got done at noon every day.
• There are lots of uniforms.  Each grade level has their own national uniform and even the teachers wear government uniforms Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday is a white uniform, Thursdays everyone wears Batik (a local dress), and Fridays are... something else, I cannot remember.  
• Islamic studies is taught in nearly every grade level.  There are Islamic High Schools that are part of the educational system here where they do a lot more of the Islamic Study coursework, but even the average public school has Islamic study.
• Special Ed isn't as much of a thing here.  Their supports for special ed students appear to be rather minimal.
• Students need to test at the end of each band of education (elementary, middle, and high school).  It sounds like if students don't pass there isn't a whole lot of repercussions to their educational career - they can move on to the next level.  I am guessing that if they don't pass the high school exam, their chances of going to college are quite low.

All of that was kind of an "information dump", but I think once we get to our actual schools we will understand this system a bit better.  I will be in a Vocational school which is a parallel track to the traditional high school track.

After this, we went to the offices of a program that arranges US/Indonesian partnerships.  They told us about some of their programs they have which were really impressive. 

A group photo from the office.

From there, we headed to the National Monument.  We went inside and saw the museum there too. 

Day 1: Intro to history and tons of food

My day in Emojis: 🧐🇮🇩🍚🕌

Literally right after I posted my previous blog post the call to prayer started.  I don't know why I love the call to prayer so much.  We heard it in Egypt too.  There is something unifying about it.  Maybe there is something reflective about it.  Maybe it is like an outside voice saying "hey, it is time to take a break from what you are doing".  Cannot put my finger on it.

The rest of "true day 1" continued with lunch.  This lunch buffet was crazy town.  In the way that I think "buffet" doesn't really do it justice.   There were just so many options.  Again, as someone who's Asian food experience it typically curry or sushi, there were lots of things I didn't know what they were.  I stuck mainly with recognizable items to me - there was just so much unknown that to "try" anything made me think I needed to try everything. 

By far my favorite tables were the fruit and dessert table.

The Dessert Table. The Great British Bake-off would have been happy with these.

Fruit Table.  Lots of different options!  Unfortunately, I tend to stay away from thin-skinned fruit when I am traveling but it all looked amazing.

This place really knows how presentation works!

After lunch we had a little history lesson on Indonesia.  There were lots of questions - I give credit to our guide who tried to answer as many of them as she could.  If I were asked to give a complete history of the US talk, I would struggle with some of the details too.  It was interesting that they talked at length about the diversity they had in the country and how they saw it as a strength of their nation.  Some people asked great questions about conflicts between diverse groups which I think highlighted some of the conflicts we see in the US between different groups.  According to our guide, there isn't as much tension between these different groups.  Another American teacher pointed out that many of the different groups appear to be geographically separate from each other which perhaps leads to a different dynamic than in the States. 

We also talked about the role religion plays in the government and how one leader lead for 32 years until the economic troubles in the country in the 90s.  It seemed like a lot of people in the group had a lot of questions (I know I did!) - I think that might be because history is complex.  Nothing is straight forward.  Even in the US, we stick with the "Columbus discovered America" and then several people point out that maybe he wasn't the first European here and others point out that natives already were here, so how could he "discover" something that thousands of people already knew about because they lived there.  In summary, I would not be a good "here's the history of the US in 1 hour" presenter.  We wouldn't get past Columbus.

After our history presentation we made our way to the Istqlal Mosque.  This is the largest mosque in Indonesia and holds up to 200,000 people and was built after the Indonesian people won their independence from the Dutch.  There was tons of symbolism in the mosque in terms of numbers representing dates, places and times.  I found it interesting to see what people were doing in the mosque below.

Here is our whole group at the main mosque area.

A picture of what was happening in the mosque while we were there.  There is a group of people praying.  1 person here is laying down, and another guy is charging his cell phone.  It was a bit of everything.

This was the outside courtyard of the mosque.  You can see the tiles in the ground.  They don't run parallel to the large space - they actually represent the space a person can take up for prayer.  During large events, they pack people into this space and each person gets a square's worth of room.  The lines all run so people are all facing mecca.  It is like having built in "carpet squares" for individuals.  You will also see the minaret in the background which is 66.66m tall to represent the 6666 verses in the Quran.

Here we have a drum used to call people to prayer and a sign that says "kiblat".  Which, might sound like a great superhero name, but it actually points to the direction of Mecca. 

In addition to seeing some nice culture/archeticture places in the mosque there was a good number of kittens - this one was playing with a leaf.

And that seems like a good place to end our blog post for the day.  Day 2 tomorrow includes a trip to a school and learning more about the Indonesian education system as a whole.  Again, probably a topic I would struggle to present to others in a 1 hour lecture...

Teachers For Global Classrooms - Day .5

I am counting it as day .5 even tough it has been well over 24 hours since I have left MN.  I am now in Indonesia!

A little back story.  About 4 years ago, I ran into a teacher who was going to India on some sort of teacher exchange program.  I put the program on my "things I need to do list" - it literally sat on my laptop "post-it note" for years.  About 2 years ago I applied and got it!  The program essentially looks to "globalize" classrooms by infusing awareness of global issues into everyday curriculum.  I took a semester long class about this online as part of the program and now I am doing our "Field Experience" in Indonesia.  I am with a group of 11 other teachers from across the US who are spending a week in Jakarta and then doing a week long "placement" with a teacher elsewhere - my placement is in Padang.

This was ALL of my luggage for the trip.  50% of my blue bag is "gifts" for our host school.  I will be SO happy to give those gifts for many reasons, one of which is just to have the extra space in my bag.   Also, yes, this picture was taken in the MSP airport bathrooms.  I 🥰 the MSP airport art. 

I woke up at 3AM on Saturday morning to get to the airport for a 5:00 flight to Houston.  Then from Houston we all met in Tokyo and then got into Jakarta at 11:55pm Sunday night.  Doing the math... we the trip to Houston was 3 hours, I had a 2 hour layover there, Houston to Tokyo was 13 hours, had a 5 hour layover there, plus another 8 to Jakarta... soooooo... 31 hours travel time.  I spent most of the airtime asleep or watching movies - but mostly asleep. I am so thankful I am able to sleep on airplanes!

This is from the Tokyo airport.  Two of my fellow fellows made a block print in this free culture exhibit.  We were wondering, what would be the US equivalent to this?  Something that people could do (maybe even take home with them) that demonstrates the US history and culture?  Got ideas?!  Share them with me!

This is part of the group waiting in Tokyo.  I tried to keep walking at stretching but while my luggage was condensed, it was also DENSE.  So walking around was not my fav. but I did a lot of stretching in place instead. 

I am a little nervous that I have watched all of the movies I want to see on the way there, I am hoping that airlines refresh their movies every month so when I fly back in August there will be some new options - I realize this it a absurd "problem" to have, but I would be lying if it weren't on my mind.  Airplane movies are the best - they are ones that you would never go pay to see, but you are still a little curious.  Sure, some are complete duds ("Isn't it romantic" was a major bust, BTW), but others will surprise you (Captain Marvel - I was a huge fan of, even on a tiny screen).  Which brings me to my million dollar idea of the day - connecting movie flights to Rotten Tomato scores on the screen - I need some help prioritizing all the B-list movies I am psuedo-interested in.

But I digress...

One of the things I was most worried about in Indonesia is the weather/clothing combo.  It is hot an humid and with it being a Muslim-majority country, it is pretty conservative.  We were told long sleeves and pants and lots of linen.  Let's just say that's not in my regular closet - especially after Marie Kondo convinced me to get rid of everything I never wear.  I spent much of my previous weekend going to Goodwills and Marshalls to see what I could find.  I ended up doing alright for myself, but I gotta say, wearing long pants in this heat and humidity makes me a bit queezy just thinking about it.  Hopefully my body will just adjust to the weather.  My roommate, who lived in Malaysia for a year, has yet to put in her AC in her room in MN and "loves" the heat and humidity there - she claims it is from her year in Malaysia.  We will see if I will be able to acclimate so quickly.

Since clothing has been on my mind, I spent a lot of time in the airport looking at what women were wearing.  It certainly is more conservative and there are a lot of head coverings, but there are dresses that are knee-length and some tanks and for sure some short sleeves.  I think Jakarta is going to be a little more OK with less coverage - unfortunately I didn't pack any knee-length things (maybe I will need to go shopping here).  I do know the school we are at is very conservative, so I am prepared for that - at least clothes-wise.  They don't have AC... so... that will be an adventure!

The hotel we are in right now is really nice.  I woke up this morning and looked out the window to see a "pool-side view".  I think "pool" isn't really the right word - it s a more of an Oasis outside! 

Once you get past the distraction of the pool this image might have a lot of other info.  There are some serious sky scrapers.  But also some really small "huts" or "shack" type places near our hotel too.  I am curious about that juxtaposition.  You can also see what looks like a mosque of some kind and to the far right you can see some garden or greenery on top of the roof.  The "Question Formulation Technique" training in me is on full blast - there are so many questions that could come from this one photo.  It is times like this that I wish I taught social studies because there are so many "social" questions in this photo.  I suppose you could make some math questions out of this too, but the social ones intrigue me more at the moment.

This morning I forced myself to wake up at 8 am to try to get into a routine a bit.  I went down for breakfast which was way more than I expected.  It is like a global breakfast - European, American, Asian - all sorts of options.  I ran into one of our guides at breakfast who encouraged me to try this juice.  I will find out more about what it is - I didn't have a notebook on me to write it down.  It supposedly was a very popular.  I think "juice" maybe wasn't the right word.  It had some kick to it - maybe it was cinnamon... I will get the name and google the recipe.  I had an omelette and fruit for breakfast.  The variety of other options was a bit overwhelming and we have 5 more days here, so I thought I would stick with the basics for day 1. 

Un-named juice.

After breakfast I hit the gym.  I know there are people out there right now saying, "WHAT!  You're in freaking Indonesia and you are going to the gym?!  GET. OUT. THERE."  Those hater's can stop reading here.   I do understand your perspective but a bit of gym time is just good for my soul.  It is a bit of "me" time that I need on a vacation - especially a vacation with a group of people like this.  

The gym itself was pretty good for a hotel gym in general.  I think gyms are a pretty US thing (I don't know what makes me think this... and if you know more about this, I'd love to hear about it), but this gym had a lot of cardio equipment and free weights.  My favorite thing about using weights in non-US countries is the fact that everything is in Kilos.  So while I used to do a dumbell bench press with 35lbs, now I just have to try different weights until I find some that "feel" right. 

Some of the free weights. 

That's all for day .5 of my blog.  I am hoping to spend 30 minutes blogging each day while I am here as a meditative/reflective practice, but I anticipate the future ones will be a list of bulleted wanderings/wonderings and not quite as comprehensive, but I also have started plenty of blog posts in the past that have started as "10 minute" reflections and lead to a weekend of adding to, refining, and re-thinking.  I am hoping to "just press 'Publish'" while here though.