Meet my awesome students!

Here are some of my students at SPH. At the beginning of my time here in August, I couldn't remember some of their names, so I did what some college professors did for their students: I took photos of the kids with their names so I could look at the pics and memorize faces with names. It's a very helpful tactic. Also, it's helpful to call the students by their nicknames, which they prefer, anyways, because their full names usually involve 4-5 names, with about 10-15 letters each, which are fun to try to pronounce. (*I didn't take photos of my 7th and 10th grade drama kiddos because it was easy for me to memorize their names, for some reason, so they're not posted on here.*)

In the photo above are some of my grade 12 English students: Ratria, Tia, Gita, Kiki, and Edgar, who's eating his name sign and prefers to be called "Edge". Grade 12 has been reading, watching, and studying John Steinbeck's book Of Mice and Men. They've actually been enjoying it, too. :)

Here are more, but not all of, grade 12 students: Tina (she's Tia's twin sister), Dhita, Steven, and Tasia (pronounced Taszya).


Here are some grade 11 English kids: Martin, Alvin, Aditya, and Gita. Grade 11 has been patiently plowing through Arthur Miller's The Crucible. I have a million other ideas for teaching this next year to ESL kids, so hopefully it will be more fun for next year's 11 graders, although these guys have never complained about the difficulty. I love these kids!



And yet some more, but not all, 11th grade: Tika, Billy, Samuel, and Bita.

Here are most of my happy, happy, happy 9th graders in drama class, playing the Human Knot game, and having a fun time, even though it took forever and they all were gushing sweat: Kenny, Jim, Adit, Kevin, Nindia, and Aldi. They're surprisingly mature for their ages, and they're much more focused about theater than the 10th grade drama kiddos are.

Meet some 8th grade drama boys: Arnold, Gio, Hendra, and Trias (on the floor). There seems to be a HUGE maturity difference between grade 9 and grade 8, as seen in Arnold's display of maturity in sticking out his tongue. But they're definitely a fun bunch, and they help keep me awake at the very end of the day on Fridays when I'm feeling tired.

And here are some 8th grade drama girls: Vera, Jennifer, Shanti, and Ananda. They're so cute!
There are other photos of the 8th grade class, but they're not very good quality, so I'm not going to post them here.



Teaching here has been such a blessing, I love my kids to death, and I wouldn't rather be anywhere else right now. :)

Mandy's Musings, Part 2

Some more random thoughts...

Haha! I see these signs outside of the mall, advertising steamed brownies, whatever those are. "Amanda" is supposed to be a quality company that makes these brownies. Finally, I can take pride in my name! :)


*Kids here smoke.
*Kids here drive ojeks. I haven't yet seen any smoking while driving an ojek, and I hope I never do.
*The Starbucks and mall that I go to all the time are in the town of Bogor, which is about 15 min. away. Bogor is the #1 place IN THE WORLD for lightning strikes. Comforting.
*As I type this blog post, there's a terrific thunderstorm crashing outside and scaring me to death. Storms here are scarier than anything because I'm on a mountain. The only good thing about rainy nights is that they keep the rats (or at least, rat noises) from outside my bedroom window at night. (I haven't yet determined if I hear stupid cats or huge rats thumping around, but either way, they're scary, annoying, and keep me awake at night.)
*Girls and women hold hands all the time, and it's not considered a "sketchy" thing; it's just a cultural way of showing friendship here.
*I've been listening to my Christmas music for a week now. Noooo, it's not too early to do that...and plus, stores here won't play it, so I have to fulfill my Christmas music fetish somehow!
*I have no tan whatsoever. You'd think I would have some sort of sun on my body from living in a tropical climate, but I'm always inside. I think I'm even more pale than when I arrived here in August!
*Interestingly, Indonesians think that lighter Indonesians are more beautiful than darker ones. My girlfriends are kind of dark, and they hate it. Funny how everyone in America is constantly trying to get a tan, even in winter. (So tell me: who IS happy with their skin color???)

This is a dormant volcano that I pass by every day on my way to school. I think it's called Mt. Sukabumi or something. It's pretty much the coolest thing to see EVER!

An Indonesian Halloween

So Indonesians don't celebrate Halloween. In fact, it's looked down upon here. One reason why, I think, is because people really, truly believe in ghosts, and so they don't want to celebrate a holiday that honors those kinds of spirits. I don't blame them. But I celebrated, anyways, with one of my girlfriends, Fera, who's spending the weekend at my house again. We only had one trick-or-treater, and it was pouring rain, so it was a very low-key Halloween. :(

Here we are, looking pretty scary with spiders and spider webs on our faces. (Courtesy of black eyeliner.)

Here's our lone trick-or-treater, Cahaya, dressed up as a Chinese warrior, complete with a sword. She didn't actually say "trick-or-treat" because she was too scared of our faces, but we gave her candy for coming in the rain. :-P

But Alia wasn't scared of my face, amazingly. (She looks scared here, only because of the flash.)

Here we are, listening to and dancing to "The Monster Mash" song. Well, at least I was; Alia was more focused on chumming for the camera and trying to get her sucker stick back from me...

Here's a bear that she tried to dance with to the song. It was funny and I tried to take photos, but none looked good enough...

...but it was VERY funny! :)

One word: AWWW!

* H A P P Y H A L L O W E E N ! ! ! *

Alia turns 2!

Yesterday was little Miss Alia's second birthday. I bought her some blocks because she loves building things, and she opened them when I was eating breakfast. These are really
cute photos of her when she carefully unwrapped them. :)

Of course this picture would be perfect...if her eyes were open!

I was going to have a birthday party for her after school. Some of my girlfriends came over with balloons and presents. Alia was terrified of Fera and Detty, accepted the balloons with much hesitation, and promptly fell asleep at 5:30 and slept through the night. So when other SPH teachers came over with presents and cake, we just hung out in my living room and talked politics while eating her birthday cake. Some wild party that was!

This is Leland. He lives next door to me and is my mentor at school...which, I think, is very, very funny...but anyways, here he is, trying out Alia's new, fold-up house that she got from Eric and Christine. :-P

There isn't much else to say in this post about Alia's birthday. I guess that's about as exciting as it gets when adults show up to a two-year-old's birthday party and the host goes to bed on her guests. Oh well. My living room is coming together as I type this...SOOO...photos of my newly-renovated house will be posted verrrrrry, very soon! Stay tuned!

Mandy's Musings: Part 1

So I'm procrastinating lesson planning for a few minutes and feel like writing a random post instead...
Yesterday, I went into Jakarta with Eric and Christine a few hours before church so they could do some shopping for house decor. I needed stuff, too, but I didn't get much because we went to some expensive stores. (Interestingly, the prices are probably the same as some stores in the U.S., but we're so used to things being so much cheaper that it now seems too expensive for us. However, this mind-set could financially benefit me in the long run, so it's ok!)

Eric insisted we go to this world-famous coffee shop that he'd heard about, so we did. And... guess what I'm drinking here...I was insanely crazy and tried a cup of the coffee that's "passed through" the kopi luwak animal that I wrote about in August.
I did this only because:
A. I really was intrigued
B. I really am crazy
C. It was only $5 a cup and not $75 like at that mall in Jakarta
D. All of the above
(The answer is D.)
Anyways, Eric sipped from my cup and said he loved it. Personally, it did nothing for me. It really wasn't that great at all. It was just another cup of black coffee that I had to dump tons of cream and sugar into. Give me a calorie-laden Starbucks frappuccino any day!
p.s. I know that here I look like I have 2 black eyes. I don't. It was just a no-make-up day for me because of the heat.


Here's one of my good friends named Yoshie. (Her real name is Josephine, but Yoshie's definitely more fun to say.) This pic is us from Indonesia Day last month. She's one of the dorm supervisors at the school, and she stayed with me for the weekend of our Idul Fitri break because the dorm closed for the week. That was fine with me because I hate living by myself. (Samini and Alia had the week off for the holiday, so they went out of town.) Yoshie's been a huge help to me! Over that weekend, she volunteered to cook us lunch since she never gets to cook and I'm afraid of my gas oven; she actually WANTED to help me paint inside my house (I didn't FORCE her to help me); and she took me to the police station to get a written statement to take to the bank so I could get a new account because my ATM card got eaten in one of the machines at the mall. That was an interesting ordeal...but everything's settled and secure now, thanks to her. :)


These are 2 more of my girlfriends that sometimes spend the night with me on the weekends after church on Saturday night. Fera, in the yellow, teaches science at school, and Detty, in the white, teaches English. They're both from a town called Jogja, which is somewhere in eastern Java (we're in southwest Java somewhere). They want me to come visit their town for a few days over Christmas break, so I probably will, because the airfare to do that is incredibly cheap, like $45/one-way. Score!

Random musings:
*Tonight, I went to an A&W root beer restaurant for supper. I ordered chicken with rice and a root beer float, and I think my order was only $2.50 or something. It was so yummy. The cheapness here still amazes me!
*People will spit all the time outside. Get used to it.
*Watch your step at ALL times, for hundreds of reasons.
*Never stand in front of people, or animals, that spit.
*Big ants, cockroaches, gross cats with half-tails, rats, small ants, body and vehicle bomb inspections, body odor, squatty potties, and ants are just a part of life in Indonesia. Life would be a little easier without them, but they exist, so you just go with the flow.
*When you're in a public restroom, you're supposed to stand in front of the stall that you want.
*When you're in a public restroom, ALWAYS be sure you have some tissue on you. Otherwise...yeah...
*When you know you're being stared at by adults, if you stare right back at them with a horrified look on your face, they'll quickly look away. I've just discovered this on my own. (I don't mind if kids stare at me or if adults look at me for a few seconds to try to figure me out, so this tactic applies only for the obnoxious adults who think I'm a freak show.) When I was standing in line at the store, I could feel this older guy analyzing me and my groceries. This gets annoying after about 8 seconds. So, all of a sudden, I looked right back at HIM like HE had a problem, and I started analyzing him and his groceries. He kept looking at me, but eventually he looked away because he felt uncomfortable, I guess. Serves him right.
*As far as food is concerned, no food has made me sick here yet, but I have learned which spicy foods I should avoid like the plague. My stomach adjusted within a week when I got here, which was great. I'm not sick of any sort of Indonesian food-not even white rice-and I don't really crave anything. All kinds of chain restaurants are close by: Mexican restaurants, Pizza Hut, KFC, McDonald's, etc. I do, however, miss drinking 2 % milk, since the milk here isn't real and so I don't drink that much of it.
I should get back to lesson planning now. I'll continue to work on my house this week, hopefully!

"Heyyy, must be the moneyyy..." and yard photos

Here is the amount of money I currently have in my wallet. Indonesian money is very beautiful. (Other countries have colorful money bills; why doesn't the U.S.?) The dirty bills in the bottom-right corner are equal to 10 cents each; the red bill above it is $1 U.S.; the 2 green ones to its left are $2 U.S. each; and the blue one under them is $5 U.S. ($1 U.S. =about 9,000 rupiah.) Total, I have $12 U.S. on me, or about 120,000 rupiah.
For each ojek ride to school from home, it's 70 cents. If I want to go to Hypermart from my house, it's $1. On a happy note...I can walk to the bus station from my school after school, and the 15-minute bus ride to Starbucks costs only 60 cents. :) I don't really understand this money concept, but it's nice to know getting to the mall-and Starbucks-fits into my budget and schedule so conveniently.
Things are soooo incredibly cheap here. I saw the movie "Bangkok Dangerous" yesterday at the cinema with my friend Yoshie. (I do NOT recommend wasting your money or time on this movie. I could have made a MUCH better film in Bangkok that didn't involve killing anyone.) On the weekends at this movie theater, the price is $1.50 U.S., which Yoshie said is expensive because it's $1 U.S. during the week. She also told me about another theater in Jakarta that costs $10 U.S. You sit in recliners with blankets, and a personal waiter brings you a huge meal that you eat while you watch a movie. Hopefully I can do that over Christmas break!
So today (Monday) is my last day of Quarter 1/Idul Fitri/"Fall Break". :( I have started painting the inside of my house, but it's nowhere near finished and won't be for a long time. (Plus, it's messy, and I still have the lovely dirt in my living room that I'm anxious to get rid of.) Since I won't be making any changes to either my back or front yards, I took some photos of them to show you.

Here is the view of my backyard from my back door. Yes, that is a banana tree on the right (the one with the huge, green leaves). I think it's too small to produce any bananas yet, but it's pretty cool.





Here is the back of my house. (I'm standing beside the banana tree for this shot.) My house is 2 stories tall. The open door at the top is on a small balcony that leads to a second room on my top floor. It may someday serve as a guest bedroom, if anyone ever visits me. (HINT HINT!!!) Currently, the room is empty, except for the HUGE armoire closet-thing that came with the house, and for the stuff I throw in there because I don't know where else to put it.





Mountain view from my doorstep (Hence, the name of my addition is "Mountain View".)




Photos of down my street....












Here's the front of my house.

The girl who lived in my house last year planted all of these little, white flowers in the yard in front of my house. They grow in really long grass. They're really pretty when they're all in bloom, but today, only these 2 little guys were blooming for the camera.