High School. Indonesian High School

Since my “mother” is English teacher , she asked me to show up at her school a couple tikes this week to talk about European culture and just to talk, in general. Since apparently Indonesian kids in Malang can see foreigners only on TV this was a big deal for them. REALLY a big deal. You have no idea. We arrived to school early morning by motorbike. Three persons on one. Yeah, lil’ guy who had to go to kindergarten in front, “mother” who was driving and me in the back. Apparently Indonesians are quite economic people, who manage to fit three people on one motorbike. Saves money, saves gasoline, saves the planet… probably doesn’t save that many lives, but anyway.

So, we arrived to school and I was given a tour around the premises with heads turning everywhere I went. I went to say hi in a couple of classrooms and the reaction was literally as if they had seen a Hollywood movie star… I also visited teachers’ room which was just a simple classroom with many desks loaded with books and papers and many shy teachers hanging around. Only a few of them could speak some basic English. Despite that, I got called a Barbie girl at least three times that day…

Then I went to the actual classroom where I had to give presentation and there were only boys, maybe around 20 boys aged 17-18. When I asked the English teacher if this was a special class for boys, she said that they don’t discriminate between boys and girls while composing classes. The thing was, that English is supposed to be a “masculine” subject and that’s why mostly boys choose it. Yeah, I know..humanities and languages=masculine. Wtf? Indonesia, land of wonders.

So I shortly presented where I’m from, what I’m doing in Indonesia and guess what, the teacher had to translate almost every word to Bahasa Indonesia…. Then there was the question time. And the questions were posed in Indonesian again, translated for me in English and then translated back to the kids in Indonesian. Teacher was embarrassed..God damn, she should be!

The next class was the class of my “mother’s”  and the situation was much better, there was hardly any translation needed, I could understands kids’ questions and they could understand me. Also, it was a mixed class.

Who knows me, knows that I’m totally not a kids’ person and I usually have no patience whatsoever to teach. So I was not expecting too much from this schooling experience. I was so wrong. I loved to see how unspoilt Indonesian kids are. They were curious, respectful and actually INTERESTED. They had no clue how life in Europe actually is, but did their best to find out.

One of the most popular questions were how old I am, where I live in Malang and if I’m married. These questions might seem inappropriate for Europeans but are perfectly normal conversation starters for Indonesians.

Fun fact  about Indonesia #347: kids, while leaving the classroom, have to kiss their teacher’s hand. When class is constituted of around 30 -35 kids that takes some…They even kissed my hand as well. And yes, that was weird. I actually talked to one elderly American who works as an English in one of many Malang’s universities. He was also totally freaked out by this tradition. He didn’t mind the girls though. But he feared that he might look like a pedophile to western onlookers who saw young boys kissing his hand and then touching their cheek with his hand. Again, this is Indonesia, take it as it is or leave it!

P.S. I heard that younger classes are protesting that I didn’t visit them...School principle promised to do something about that, i.e. invite me again. At this rate, they should start paying me for this!

So, this is picture of me and the 1^st class with only boys:

This is school’s parking lot. Quite different from Denmark, huh?