I AM BALINESE! :)

Today was the day for my Balinese dance performance!
It was held in the food court in our local strip mall, where Hypermart is located, so we had a relatively large audience watching us. I was a bit nervous, but I pulled through it. :-P

Here I am, waiting for Ibu Ayu to arrive and do my hair and makeup.

I'm very uncomfortable here, due to a combination of what I'm wearing and what I'm NOT wearing! I could barely breathe because I was wearing a corset, which, I've decided, is the MOST EVIL invention for women EVER! I also had about 2 dozen safety pins holding my skirt layers and bodice strips together, and my head gear and various pieces of fake hair were attached to my head with painful bobby pins.
But it was all worth the pain! :)

Elise, Lis, and Fera came to watch! (Fera also videotaped it for me to show people, so hopefully, I can do that when I come home next week.)

Here I am with the dancers, Marina (middle right) and her sister-in-law, Jenny (middle left), and our teacher, Ibu Ayu (right), and her assistant on the left (forget her name).

I'm holding a bowl of flower petals that we tossed at the end, as a Hindi offering.

Check out our head gear!

Warming up with a pose...

Notice my 2 sets of eyebrows.

Also, I had to take an ojek home wearing all of this makeup because Ibu Ayu didn't bring wipes. Haha!

We got certificates of participation!

After our performance, a troop of little girls gave the exact same performance, and they were a combination of beautiful and adorrrrrable! :)

*AWWW!* :)

Check out my fake hair piece (top left) and the black netting for my real hair. I love how it (doesn't) blend into my hair color, haha!

This is my final post before I go home on Wednesday, unless something majorly earth-shattering happens between now and then.

If not, I'll be back on here when I arrive back on July 18th.

Thanks for reading and commenting over these last 3 years! :)

Last teacher day at school

(Disclaimer: This post is mainly geared for past teachers so that they can see photos of other teachers. Sorry if it's boring for most of my viewing audience!)

The day after our Wednesday night farewell gathering was graduation for the seniors. At the end of my first year here, we teachers wore batik and looked beautiful. However, starting with last year's graduating class, we had to wear the school uniform with jackets. I personally thought we looked boring and sterile, but we have to do it to maintain consistency across all of the SPH campuses.

Whatever.

I was never actually issued a jacket in my size, so I've always had to borrow one from the office.

Here I am with Fera on Thursday.

Now you can see why I was so eager to get rid of the dumb jacket immediately after the graduation ceremony!

*Dumb jacket - be gone!*

Of course, my school shirt still makes me look pregnant, but at least it makes me look a little more proportionate than the jacket...

Me, Lis, Fera, Elise, Stela, & Brittany

Lis was one of the emcees for graduation, so she lucked out and was able to wear a gaudy kabaya and too much makeup instead! :-/

These next photos are from Friday, which was teachers' last work day. We were able wear free dress, thankfully!

With Chrismy, who's leaving after only a year here.... :'(

Pak Agung, my Bali field trip coordinator

Elise and me with Pak Harun, who is an office helper and is in charge of refilling the water dispenser in the English department whenever we run out because we drink too much coffee. :-P

Being silly and prayerful with Zeke, right before he left for college in Texas.

Sweet photo!

Ernie, Nalia, me, Fera, Lis

With my Stela Bella

Being goofy with Leanne!

(We went to her and Brittany's house for Easter.)

With Chrismy and Victor, who works in the computer department.

Fera, Chrissie, Ibu Jenny, Dini

Ibu Jenny was the principal for the elementary school. She's leaving now, along with Chrissie and Dini.

Detty and Fany

Dini and Josh

So long, farewell, auf weidersehen adieu - again

This past week of school was filled to the max with class inductions for next year's classes and last-minute tasks for teachers before they left for the holiday break.

Last Wednesday, we expats had a night of gathering together one last time and commemorating the 4 ladies who are leaving our school - Dini, Chrissie, Elise, and Lis.

Hanging out with Cara Grace

Believe it or not, she and I were actually having fun. We had just finished reading an epic-long book and were celebrating her having graduated from Kindergarten on that same day, so she was in a good mood. She was just being a total stinker for this photo...

Becky, our hostess, and Josh, the emcee for the evening

The party was at Jared and Becky's house, and Josh was in charge of moving the night's activities along. (And making everyone laugh!)

Marie, Shirley Anne, Becky, Josh, and I had each written a song and/or poem to perform.

Meet Marshmallow, the bunny- Cara's graduation present. :)

Each of the girls received a Wordle of their favorite Bible verse.

They also received a special copy of the songbooks that we sing from on Thursday nights, when we all have Prayer and Praise at Becky's house.

Cara was still on a high from graduating, and she started teasing Zeke with the twine. (Zeke was the son of Scott and Diane, and he just graduated from our school. He'll go to college in Texas.)

Somehow, I ended up being on Cara's team against Zeke...and we ended up winning!

Here's a group photo of most of the expats on Friday morning at school.

Back row: Scott, Brittany, Terri, Dini, Leanne, me, Mr. Nick, his wife Robyn, and Jared

Front row: Diane, Elise, Josh, Lis

(Oops! These are out of order!)

Here are some cute photos of Dini and me that someone posted on Facebook for us to share.

Students, staff, and painting fun!

My students are done with my classes! Here are some quick pics of them and what I've been up to...

Here are my Drama 8 students. They spent all semester learning about puppetry and, eventually, how puppetry can be used in education.

Each group of kids came up with a skit about caring for the environment.

You can't see it very well in this photo, but the boy in the middle is holding the main character for his skit- a mosquito!




Look how big it was!

It's like the mosquito from Hell!












:)






These boys, more or less, performed a skit about caring for the environment.




These 9th grade boys made puppets and computerized scenery for a story about 5R Man, who zips around the town, reminding people to reduce, reuse, recycle, rethink, and refuse. (It's a concept they learned in Humanities.)



These boys made a video about the problems of overpopulation. Personally, it was more entertaining than educational, but oh well...





The sweet girls!

They made a video about poverty and human trafficking.





Here are some of my big, bad, tough 10th graders...





...and some more of them.

I taught most of these students for the last 3 years, while they were in Drama 8, 9 and 10, so it was kind of a sad day for me to say goodbye to their shining faces... *tears*






On Wednesdays, we teachers and staff always have chapel at the end of the day. Since this was our last Wednesday to meet together, we just had a day of playing sports together.

I can already hear my family either laughing already or expressing their disbelief that I actually did anything. I DID! We warmed up by playing soccer, which earned me 2 huge bruises on my right leg that I'll gladly show to the doubters when I come home in a few weeks.

I also hung out in the archery corner by the pool. (Don't worry- no swimmers ever get shot!)

Here are some pics of me with some of the crazy teachers!


Here I am, pretending to be Robin Hood!

However, my archery skills are severely lacking, so if I ever need to kill something for survival in the wilderness, I'm in big trouble! :-/









With Pak Ferry, the gym teacher

(I don't know what was so funny in this photo, b/c the bow was incredibly heavy and hurting my left shoulder...)










Ready...aim...














Woo hoo! I actually shot an arrow close to the bull's eye! :)








Oops!

This is Pak Andre, the school photographer. And a total goofball. (!)












Ready, aim....and...













I love this photo!












Pak Andre and Detty got a little crazy!

(Detty's one of my girlfriends that I mention once in awhile on here.)











I'm not sure what they were doing here...encouraging Chrismy, maybe?
















Yay! Chrismy did it!















With Chrissie and Lis













Welcome to my Zambian/Chinese prayer room/art studio that I finally organized!

I had bought Chinese pillow cases in Singapore 2 years ago to use in this room, but I never actually set up this room until a few weeks ago. I bought the red hanging things and the little Chinese girl pillow at Hypermart during Chinese New Year this year.

A few months ago, some expats came over and painted something for this room so that I could remember them and pray for them in this room.

p.s. Isn't the sunlight just perfect in this photo??? :)

This is a beautiful teak dresser that I bought from Kris and David last year. I was sooo excited to finally have a dresser instead of putting my clothes on shelves in my wardrobe.








I love my Chinese pillows! :)






These are candle holders on my dresser, made out of bamboo (I think), sitting on top of a beautiful sarong/wrap/thing from Zambia!

I needed something to put underneath the candle holders so that candle wax wouldn't get on the wrap, so I used 2 DVDs that I somehow acquired and will never watch- "I Am Legend" and "Quantom of Solace". I personally think it's a great way to recycle action movies!



This is a very macabre-looking candle holder I bought in Jakarta few months ago during my Girls' Day shopping trip.

I love it!










My wardrobe



I'll post more photos later this week, after I've had more exciting adventures! *home is less than 2 weeks away* :-D