Staff Holiday Photo

Here is the gang at SPB wishing you all a happy New Year!

I leave for Australia tomorrow and won't be blogging until I return.

Enjoy your holidays and here's to a happy and healthy New Year.

Teachesr Drama presentation

Your's truly got to be in the teacher's performance. Here I am playing Stacy's mom. What's even harder to believe is that I'm sewing a button on Stacy's shirt! It was suppose to be serious, and I tried my best, but.....

dancers

Three of my primary 2 students (2nd graders) prior to their dance routine. They performed to a song called "I can dance".

My competition

This time the Primary 3 (third graders) performed the gamelon. Bryan was the "gong" man. I wish I had been able to be so relaxed about my performance. He was actually very good!

Christmas Tree Competition

The school had a christmas tree competition. The entries went from very commerical "adult made" to more home-made child particpation". This happens to be Tasha's tree made from blue bottles. For those of you who are old enough (and I know there are plenty of you!) the blue bottles are Vick's Vapor Rub.

Christmas in Cirebon

My first real Christmas tree! This was the night of the Christmas program at Regina and Deni's church. Regina is part of the choir- as she plays the electric keyboard.

Christmas Program at Regina and Deni's church

Deni's parents belong to the church choir and Deni's mother invited me to the Christmas celebration last Thursday night. (December 11th). I thought I'd be treated to a number of Christmas Carols - but the choir only sang one song- an Indonesian one at that. The rest of the service consisted of preaching, and other songs. I knew two of them - Silent Night and Come All You Faithful. I sang in English as everyone around me sang in Bahasa. The program began at 6:00 p.m. and didn't end until 9:30 p.m. Then we all went to a house for a catered dinner. But no eggnog or christmas cookies!

Christmas in Jakarta

Saturday December 13th I went to Jakarta via the school van. Two of the teachers were attending a conference, so Ms. Regina, Tasha, Jason and I bummed a ride to just walk around the city. This is in the Phillip Morris building in Jakarta where the conference was being held. It is a massive building with lo and behold a Starbucks. I actually got brewed coffee and treated the children to hot chocolate.
The cigarette companies have some of the largest building in Jakarta- unfortunately.

Idul Adha Holiday

This is the viewing gallery of the killing of the goats for this holiday. The woman to the far left in the light shirt is Hanifer who is a teacher's aide at the school. (She graduated with a degree in French!!!!) Next to her is her cousin who teaches high school English. Unfortunately, her cousin's English was very limited. Hanifer's mother is the woman holding her first grandchild (Hanifer's daughter and she is called Hani. )This is the family home that is in a village about an hour from Cirebon. This was the second of three stops we made visiting relatives all day. Hanifer's dad (not pictured) said to me as we entered the first home- "These are friendly Muslims, not terrorists."

Festival of Sacrifice

Festival of Sacrifice" is a religious festival celebrated by Muslims worldwide to commemorate the willingness of Ibrahim (Abraham) to sacrifice his son Ishmael (Issac) as an act of obedience to God. However, God provided a ram in place once Ibrahim demonstrated his willingness to follow God's commands. They slaughter goats here and then distribute the meat by thirds one to the poor, one to family/friends and a third for themselves.This goat's head is lain on the wooden block, that has a niche carved out for its neck prior to it being slaughtered.

After the slaughter

The goat is pulled back from the wooden block where it's throat was sliced - but not completely. The animal is still alive and the breathing sound is very disturbing.

Having never seen an animal slaughtered before I was amazed at how bright red the blood was. There were three goats slaughtered that day. Between each killing the massive blade was shoved into the trunk of a palm tree. From there, the blood slowly dripped off onto the ground.

Prayers over the goat

Only the men of the village can be part of this ceremony. Here they are praying over the goat before they kill it. The man in the hat and is kneeling is the one who will actually slaughter the goat.

Idul Adha Holiday

The sheep skin to the middle left of the picture will be used for clothing later.

Master cook, aka Meidy's mom

Master cook, Ms. Meidy's mom is explaining how to make pepes jamur. Pepes Jamur is a dramatic banana leaf parcel of mushroom slices, hot red and green chillies and garlic and shallots. After that mixture is placed in the center of a banana leaf, there is one tablespoon of egg to thicken the mixture. It is then intricately folded and secured with something similar to toothpicks. Next it is steamed for 25 minutes, and then grilled until brown. Very good, and very time consuming. The process took us 3 1/2 hours to make and less than 1/2 hour to eat.

Final product

The best part-the finished product. We ate steamed crabs, and the pepes jamur. Then, even though it was Saturday - I had to go work on exams at school!

The results of my first attempt

I have a shredded mess! But Medy's mom just laughed at me. We had a great time even though she spoke not a word of English.

My turn

Medy's mom showed us how, but as you can see these two neophytes don't quite have the hang of it. I shredded more leaves than I care to admit.

Reni

This is Reni's job - cleaning and cutting all the mushrooms. Reni is another teacher at the school and she joined us for the "cooking class."

Banana leaves

The pile of banana leaves that are to be stripped of the rough edge and then ripped into uniform pieces. Not as easy as it sounds!

preparing the banana leaves

Meidy's mom hard at work. She made stripping the banana leaf of it's tough edge look easy. With swift hands she was able to strip the side of the leaf and rip uniform pieces of leaf so that we could wrap our rice mixtures inside.

banana leaves

Then banana leaves are soaking in the sun, so that they will be pliable when we wrap the rice. I however, never mastered the art of wrapping!

Hard at Work

I was given the job of cutting and chopping garlic, which would eventually be ground on this stone mortar.

Prep utensils

My prep utensils. A stone mortar and pestil and and a very sharp and rusty knife. We worked outside, rather than in the very small kitchen because there were three of us and Medy's mom.

Beans for the "burnt rice"

These beans come in long pods which we took apart. They are delicious - however, they make your breath and urine stink! These were also mixed

gutting fish

After the fish has been soaking in salt water, the maid gutted the pieces to put into the burnt rice .

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Since they do not celebrate it here, and no turkeys can be found (at least not of the non-human type) I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for my celebration. But fear not! I enjoyed the outdoor swimming, as well as the view outside my house, palm trees. Right around the corner are the banana trees. Even though it's difficult to imagine that it really is December, I'm loving not having to deal with cold, rainy/snowy days.

The following pictures are just some of the "hot spots" in my neighborhood.

hang out

This is next to the kiosk, and seems to be a favorite hang out for becak drivers. They are all men, of various ages and they just sit here until someone needs a ride.

neighborhood grocery store

right next to the tailor's is this shed, which sells food, and water, and a little of this and a little of that. The young man has been away now for about two weeks. But as I understand it rather typical, they close when they want and open when they want. I would usually get a banana here as I walked to school.

local tailor

At the end of my street sits this shed, in which a tailor is there late into the night. He has one machine and always seems busy.

local angkot driver

Right outside my school sits this angkot (Angkot. Stands for ‘Angkutan Kota’, which means city transports.) Every morning this man and his wife come and wipe down the angkot, then he jumps in to start it while his wife pushes from behind. I've introduced myself and they have said their names, but unfortunately, they were long and difficult for me to remember.

neighborhood becak driver

I see this old gentleman every day as I walk through my neighborhood. We both smile and say pagi (morning) but one day he allowed me to take his picture. Again, it is fuzzy because of me and because it is the early morning mist.

early morning worker

Although this picture is rather fuzzy, partly because of the photographer, and partly due to the early morning mist, this young man I see virtually every day. Neither of us can really talk to each other, but, he is always so friendly. This morning, I asked him if I could take his photo and even though he said yes, I knew he was in a rush. The reason being - he delivers huge blocks of ice to various places every day.

daily ice delivers

I know it's not a very good picture. But this is the young man pedalling his becak full of ice. I can't imagine doing this for a living.

Yanti and Adam

This is the wife of the American Abdul. I am holding their son Adam. They will be leaving Cirebon this Friday to go to a city called Bangdun. It's about three hours from here. They have been very good to me, and Yanti has been a big help translating things for me and helping me get my Internet set up at home. I will miss them - but hope to get to Bangdun to visit sometime soon.

Another new housemate

Now that the torrential rains have been here every day, it can get very soggy, and new housemates appear every day. This lovely snail was on my kitchen wall, and his friend was on my wok. I left this one alone on the wall, but really had to wrestle his friend to get off the wok. They are rather big and messy.

I also have something running in my walls and ceiling the last couple of nights. The house next to me is getting ready for a new tenant- so I think they disturbed a rodent of some type. I just hope I don't see it or them face to face during a thunderstorm.

The rains have been so strong lots of flooding, and as I write this my bedroom ceiling is leaking. I've moved the bed, away from the wall as the water is streaming down. But I won't be able to get anyone to fix it tonight - it Sunday evening at 5:00 pm here. Hopefully tomorrow the school handy man can do something. But I suspect I will just have to live with it.

New haircut- and Micky Mouse Ears

Edward scissor-hand and I sadly parted ways and I tried a new place this past Saturday. I also decided to dye my hair to a nice shade of red, so look carefully at my ear. These plastic coverings are what they put on your ear to protect it from the dye. The man in the picture is the owner of the shop, he cuts the hair, his wife washes the hair and gives you a massage. Yet another person put the dye in my hair. For eighteen dollars I can't complain- and my mouseybrown and gray hair is gone for a while!

Rambutan- my latest fruit

The rambutan is a relatively common fruit the same way an apple is common to us. The word "rambut" in the fruit name 'rambutan' is Malay for 'hairy,' and this refers to the spiky rind. Besides being hairy it was covered with ants, so by the time I cut open and put in the frig, I was ready for a Granny Smith.

Family Fun Day

Saturday the school hosted their second Family Fun Day. One of the goals of the event was to have parents actively engaged in the activity with the children. Apparently here, parents stand around and don’t participate or have the nanny do the activity with the child. The children and parents (many with nannies) were scheduled to come at 7:30 a.m. so the staff was there at 6:00 a.m. We needed to start early since by 9:00 a.m. the sun is brutally hot and most people would be gone. Here I am with two other teachers after we had our faces painted

What impressed me the most was the simplicity of the “games/booths”. They didn’t need all the “whistles and bells” that we have sadly come to expect. No blow-up bouncing rooms, no arcade games, just simple old-fashioned fun. We had hopscotch – which many children didn’t know how to do; along with water relay races, and hockey using a rubber ball and cardboard. At the bubble station the wands were made with a long plastic stick with a pipe-cleaner attached to it to create the bubble wand.

I was working the Piggy Back Race, in which both parents were required to participate. Since many parents also work on Saturday, I was the surrogate parent for many of the participants. We had a lot of fun and lots of giggles.

Vendors had been arranged so there was plenty of food, so I tried different items. They have ice here, which in shape is similar to our freeze pops. But it is much smaller, and consists of coconut milk and different flavors – avocado, melon, and chocolate. The avocado which I had was very sweet with frozen avocado pieces.


After cleaning up a group of us went to a restaurant (really a shack) and had gado-gado. Gado-gado is pure Indonesian cuisine. It is a salad that consists of cooked mixed vegetables and peanut sauce.

A shop

This stall is on the street where my school is. It sells water, juice, food and you can make photo-copies.

water crisis in Cirebon

The rainy season is suppose to be days and days of rain, with a great deal of flooding and mud. However, we haven't seen as much rain as in the past. This has caused a terrible water shortage in the city of Cirebon. For the past three days I have been with very limited water supply. Often times the water is only coming out of the spigot in a trickle and between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. I've been storing up water in buckets so that I'll have enough for the dishes and laundry. Many of the hotels in Cirebon are also without water. Even though it has been reported in the paper as to the extent of this situation - nothing has been officially decided as to how to alleviate the situation.

Another weekend- another trip to Jakarta

Two weekends ago, Regina, her two children and I went up to Jakarta for the Indonesia/Japan expo. This tribesman from Papua was busy creating carvings. He never once looked up - even though many of us were milling about.

tribesman from Papua

Here you can see in the background some of the fantastic carvings this man has created.

3-d fashion

In one of the exhibits there were two three-d movie about Japan. The first one focused on the breathtaking scenery of the country and its people. The second one featured the "bullet train".

road construction signs

These tree limbs are what they use to let you know that they have dug up this section of the street. This is the street leading up to my school.
There are 4 of these (they just paved the road 3 months ago).

Happy Halloween, Go Phillies, and changing seasons

It has been a very busy two weeks in Cirebon. I went to Jakarta two weekends ago(more on that later) and since then I've had my picture in the newspaper, and today (Friday) I have a radio interview to do. It's a very slow news day in Cirebon when they want to talk with me!

The picture in the paper is because Tasha won 2nd place at the National EF (English First) Spelling Bee. The reporter (perhaps 10 years old?) came to the school and interviewed Tasha. He then took a pic. The picture reminds me of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's travels with the Lilliputans. I appear very tall, blocking part of the school sign, while Regina and Tasha appear rather short.

Our season has also changed. We've gone from sunny hot humid days, to rainy, cloudy, hot humid days. The noticeable differences in the seasonal change are 1) whether my laundry will dry or mold first and 2) new creatures are inhabiting the dwelling. I now have frogs in my humble abode. In fact, the other night at 2:00 a.m. I got up to use the bathroom. As usual, I turn on the light and check out all nooks and crannies. There next to the hole/toilet was a frog. I looked at him, he looked at me and I realized I was not going to fight a frog for a hole in the ground. So back to bed I went with a full bladder. He or a relative have also taken up residence in my living room area. When I leave the house in the morning, there are a number of them in my yard, but so far none of them are singing!

2nd place in National EF Spelling Bee

Here's Natasha after winning second place in the spelling bee competition. She won a trophy, money, food and an MP3 player! After the competition we headed back to Cirebon via the train. We didn't get in until 10:30 Sunday night, so that Monday I was exhausted.

Bajay

This three wheeled contraption, called a bajay, is what got me to the American club so that I could vote via absentee- ballot. After taking a 3 hour train ride, we hoped into this "vehicle" and shook all the way to the Club. However, when I got there I couldn't get over all the people who looked like me! And talked like me! And to sweeten the deal the club provided brewed coffee with milk and carrot cake. Who says voting for the President of the United States is drudgery?

Obit

Unexpectedly, on October 11th Mr. Coffee Maker passed away. He was a youngster, only having brewed 3 pots of coffee. His personality bubbled over and delighted the many people he met He leaves behind a grieving friend, Carol Murphy, and a young vegetable steamer, who will continue on his tradition of making coffee at 4:00 a.m.
An autopsy revealed a broken part that is not found in Indonesia.
May we always remember Mr. Coffee as the “little engine that couldn’t”.

Marcel

This is Marcel, the school secretary/administration's son. He is in Kindergarten 2. Students here go to half day kindergarten for two years before entering Primary 1 or first grade. He loves to come and give me hugs and even though we each can't speak too much to each other, we enjoy each others company.

Lebaran Celebration at School

Today, Saturday, October 11th we invited all 28 Muslim students and their families to celebrate Lebaron. We had singing, musical performances, reading from the Koran, a fashion show of the students, and lots and lots of good food.

I don't want to work I just want to bang on the gong all day!

Here I am - making it look so easy! For all of you who think I have no rhythm back home - you can rest assured my gamelon talents are even less! Who knew how hard it was to keep the beat to Indonesian gamelon music. Eru, Anna's husband, and professional musician was very patient with me as I "gonged" too early, too late, or not at all through our two songs. But I still think I'm ready for Carnegie Hall with just a few more lessons.

World Premier of Sekolah Pelita Bangsa Gamelon

After months.... no weeks........no days of practice we made our debut at our celebration. That is yours truly on the gong! We performed for the parents and children as they came in. We only performed for fifteen minutes - but it seemed like an eternity to me. Not only was it very hot in the room, but I was so nervous, the perspiration was running into my eyes.

Ms. Lusti

This is one of our nursery teachers and the organizer of the celebration. She sang a solo during the celebration.