Winding Down 2013

When I started off 2013, I was standing underneath the Harbour Bridge in Sydney, Australia with thousands of other people awaiting a remarkable fireworks display followed by a mass exodus through the streets that made George Street completely unrecognizable. Right at the stroke of midnight, I was looking for one of my friends so I was alone but not for long before my friends found me again. 

I have now spent most of 2013 in Indonesia and will spend my third Christmas away from home and my third New Year’s in another country. After close to 9 months here and as I find myself thinking in Bahasa Indonesia, I’m realizing that Cikedung is in fact my home. These past two weeks should have been slow and relaxed considering it’s the end of the semester and yet I find myself at school even earlier and staying even later then during the actual semester. 

A few weeks ago, two of my twelfth graders approached me to ask if I would help them create a dance team and be their coach. Instead of cutting kids loose at auditions like we planned, we decided to keep everyone for the rest of the semester. For the past two weeks, dance club has had practice every day for over 3-5 hours. My kids created a rule that if you’re late you run a lap for every minute you’re late, since everyone is often on Indonesian time our team warm-up is on average 27 laps which usually consists of me running while my kids complain and walk. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been two weeks, but they have all improved so much in their confidence and individual skill since they auditioned I couldn’t be more overwhelmed with pride.

All the while in between dance practices, my English Club students are getting ready for their first Awards Ceremony and final presentations. So I’ve been running around sitting in with different groups while they practice their presentations, rehearsing speeches and scripts with 6 MCs and 3 group leaders from automotive, hotel and multimedia. On top of that, this week is site development for the new ID-8’s that may be sharing Indramayu with me and my friend, Courtney! With all the craziness of moving, it’s been decided that I can more permanently stay with one of the teacher’s at my school and his family. All the while, my principal and I are improving our communication with each other; turns out he likes reports too! During the madness of figuring out a new homestay, I also expressed a few other concerns to my principal, namely wanting to have monthly meetings so that he is also up to speed on what I’m doing. We had our first monthly meeting the other week and we went through everything that I had done this semester from how many hours I taught with who, to Les, teacher training, materials created, the progress of English Club as well as the newly formed Dance Group. Since he liked the reports I made, we decided that every semester I would write my plans and at the end of the semester I would write another one with what was actually achieved. After a lot of math, we found the following:

6 months in Cikedung

Over 504 hours taught

10 hours of Children’s Les

Over 72.5 hours of English Club

Over 36 hours of Dance Practice

5 days spent chaperoning 2 overnight camps

14 hours at exhibitions

4 hours of giving ‘motivation’ for English at different schools

The result is countless memories and falling more and more in awe of my students.

With all these memories, there are some within these past few weeks alone, I will look back on with a smile. The other day after dance practice, it was 5:00pm everyone had returned home and I left the music on the loudspeakers.  I danced by myself in the mud of the middle of the school grounds while my certificates for English Club were printing in the office. Or  the days  I spend hours kidding around at the canteen with a strange combination of Indramayu Javanese and Indonesian as the ladies at the canteen curiously try the pasta I brought to heat for lunch. Or perhaps its days when I had to ask a friend to drive me to Cirebon so I could pick up a care package and spent the day laughing until I was in stitches to come back to school with my dance and english club students waiting my arrival.

I got home around 7:00pm that day and couldn’t wait to open my care package. I sat in my room with all my things still packed in suitcases for the exception of the 5 outfits I wear for school.  I opened the Christmas card from my family and as I was reading tears of joy began streaming down my face. Just the thought that everything in my care package had been touched by my loved ones made me feel connected to them, because I had a piece of my American home inside my Indonesian home.

Today was the English Club Awards Ceremony and first premiere for the Dance Group. The Dance Club was planning to dance for a "Pantas Seni" or equivalent to a Talent Show planned by the student government, but because it couldn't happen due to budgeting--I convinced my principal to let them dance for their parents the day of "Berbagi Rapor" or Report Card & Parents' Assembly day. Since it's rainy season and the only place they could dance was a puddle of mud, that also didn't happen. Instead, they performed during the break at the English Club Awards Ceremony. They were a hit and all their fears of being bullied by upperclassmen as they had expressed earlier were out the window because my dance kids were awesome and left everyone speechless. 

This was an especially proud day for English Club and in Peace Corps Indonesia we're really lucky to have such great support from our regional managers. I told my students I hoped to have a guest judge and when other volunteers couldn't come through there was Ananda, my regional manager, who stayed an extra day after weeks of site development, traveling and helping with my move. I am eternally grateful for his coming because it really made such a difference to the students. English Club started with over 300 students interested in participating, then the first week of English Club we had a total of 81 members, as the year passes and students become busier or priorities change so do English Club numbers. In order to qualify as an English Club member you needed to have at least 50% attendance, at the end of this semester we had 46 members. 29 from grades 10, 11 and 12 in Multimedia. 9 twelfth graders from Hotel and 8 twelfth graders from Automotive. There were 4 meetings every week and days were divided by vocational study. The students would receive attendance points, facebook points and participation points. Out of 46 members: 

21 received first honors which requires 90% attendance and exceptional participation.

13 received 2nd Honors which requires 70% attendance and good participation.

3 students all from Automotive had Perfect Attendance.

4 students all from Multimedia had written over 50 Facebook posts in the Facebook Group.

6 students for Outstanding Participation (2 from each vocational area)

9 students who were the Top 3 from their area of study was decided by total points. 

1 student surpassed everyone by a landslide in overall attendance, participation and facebook participation. 

Each area Automotive, Hotel and Multimedia prepared a presentation, and their group leaders prepared a speech. Their presentations were more like performances, but they had fun and they used English so that's all that matters! Multimedia surprised me by beginning with a thank you debut to me, and each student said something in English from a memory or what they took away from English Club- I couldn't help but tear up. After that they went straight into a bunch of popular contemporary Indonesian dances. Then Hotel did a skit combined with music and dancing where a girl fell in love with a boy who turns out to be her friend's boyfriend. The automotive boys to end the show sang "Not With Me" and it ended up being a great sing along. The awards ceremony gave my kids the push they needed to be confident in speaking English because usually it's a struggle to avoid Indonesian let alone Indramayu Javanese. 

Now I'm exhausted and I don't know what to do. Next week begins my end of the year adventure. I will start with going to mass on Sunday with a Catholic family I have grown close to and stay in town with them. After spending the day with them, come Monday night I’m on the train to Surabaya on the other side of Java. After spending Christmas in Surabaya with some PCVs, I’ll head back to the west by bus with a few stops along the way. My first stop will be in Batu-Malang where I will get to see my host family and friends from my training village, afterwards I will stay with another PCV in Ponorogo and depending on ticket availability I will be on my way to either Yogyakarta or Semarang in Central Java before I come back to good old Indramayu to celebrate New Year’s in the village. 

2013, it's been REAL. 2014, I'm ready.

Happy Holidays! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!