Dear Diary
A lot has happened during the past few weeks, and after finally gathering enough photos I decided it is time for yet another blog entry.
I decided to try out and become an English teacher at St Franciskus which is a local primary school located in Lawang (which my little sister Nadya also attends).
Participating in a few classes held in the school and has been very interesting. The day starts with morning aerobics (with a super happy song called Bangun pagi-pagi), after which we can all enjoy singing Ave Maria although it sounded more like A-FE Maria.
Like every representative of a religion here, the kids are being warned that if one doesn't pray properly a meteorite will fall on the Earth and God won't help you since you didn't pray properly (This is a free interpretation of what i was able to understand). I never knew God was so wrathful.
The classes are quite chaotic to say the least, kids are quite boisterous here. During every lunch break total anarchy breaks out, everything is allowed to promote 'creativity'.
Perhaps this behaviour can be accounted for due to the the incredible amount of sugar that is consumed during the break (probably explains why half of their teeth are rotten, Jamie Oliver would turn in his grave if he was dead). My mother recently made an interesting remark
Even though children here are let loose and aren't given any direction at all, usually at later stage in their life they tend to be obedient, whereas in Western societies where children are under constant supervision tend to rebel at a later stage in life.
While this does not apply to everyone it seems to be valid for most cases, very curious indeed.
A few days later me and Ron participated in the school trip to Jawa-Timur Park. Let's just say my personal 'meteorite' was about to fall.
There was a bit of a mix up with the name cards, apparently they were of the understanding that my mother would come along. So when checking the name list my name wasn't added to the list but a Mrs Odetta was included, so we were confused from the get go (more confusion because mother's middle name is Odette). This resulted in the following picture
~Congratulations I see the surgery was successful Mrs Odette~
After the necessary preparations were done (I was put in the fish group) we were finally off to Jawa-Timur park. Some of the kids referred to me as Mr. Bean and kept harassing me during the bus trip. I was a bit uncertain how to react to this behaviour, it didn't seem to be mean-spirited, however, at the end of this trip I was ready to take one of them and beat them to a bloody pulp somewhere in the shadows! Will have to work on my attitude towards keeping order.
When we finally arrived at the theme park, hell was about to start. As soon as all the children from our school had gathered we slowly entered the park.
As we entered the park we adopted a certain formation which I like to call the caterpillar, during the ENTIRE trip to the park we walked like this in the park
Walking like this is extremely exhausting (like a geriatric using a walking-aid), other things which didn't help the overall enjoyment was the rather hot weather and the fact that the park was extremely busy that day. Which made 'snaking' through the crowd even slower.
I really felt sorry for the kids in the end they were only able to participate in two or three attractions the rest felt like a speed run through the park. After eating lunch (which consisted out of rice, chicken and some ketchup and sambal) I actually managed to lose my entire group, the only group I was able to find was the cat group, so I decided to join their group rather then getting lost by myself (in hindsight probably one of the better choices I made). The aquarium was actually quite interesting, you were even able to see some turtles swimming in a big basin and even touch them (not sure whether this was allowed). But as the group consisted out of small children we were moving through the entire attraction like a snake covering every corner, instead of everyone checking things on their own.
After this ordeal we went back ahead to the bus, which sounds easier than it was. When we found an exit we first went through a clothing market then a souvenir market then a vegetable/fruit market and then we FINALLY arrived at the damn exit.
Pretty good timing to get back to the bus if I do say so myself, as soon as we left the park it started to drizzle and eventually erupting in a full blown rainstorm. I was one of the few who kept dry during this storm.
Simply falling a sleep during the trip back was of course not an option, after being harassed a bit more I had to listen to the sweet karaoke songs of such great singers like Bartje van Houten and God knows who else.
All I can say as I am glad the trip was over and hopefully will not have to go through that again!
Other interesting things I did was visiting a pameran in Malang. Though only was able to make some pictures outside the pameran, as the battery of my mother's camera failed at a crucial point, the backup battery being back home.
Though most things being sold were shit, there were a couple points of interest. We bought a helmet for Nadya for when she goes to school by motorcycle
~I come in peace, human~
The most interesting thing I witnessed there was a dish consisting out offal meat, it looked positively disgusting, I didn't try it but still just look at it.
~Side of cow lip anyone?~
Of course after we went to the exit it started raining yet again, but it was fun to visit this event, can certainly recommend if you have time to kill.
Another interesting thing I saw in the hipermarket (hypermarket, guess its better than a supermarket) was the Fanta Blueberry, I had to taste this concoction which I was certain would taste as vile as it looked
~Little taste my deary......?~
While as bright as its counterpart Fanta Strawberry, the sugar level doesn't immediately does give you diabetes compared to its counterpart does, nor does it instantly eat away your teeth. Even though it does smell like blueberry the foul radioactive blue liquid does not actually have a lot of taste. Its tastes more like water with synthetic sugar than real blueberry. Nevertheless not recommend unless you want to try it just for kicks (even then just buy a can and not a bottle), and if your really a daredevil go for Fanta Strawberry your dentist will be very grateful to you!
Will write another blog tomorrow about my other experiences.
