My strange connection to Robin Williams

Today I had to go to work early to fill out a bunch of forms to get my debit card for the bank here in Indonesia, after filling out all that paperwork I had a few hours to kill and walked to the mall to buy a bunch of pirated DVDs (my favorite thing about Indonesia; I bought 5 today for $2.50). While browsing the DVDs I came across a childhood classic, Hook, with Robin Williams as Peter Pan, Dustin Hoffman as Captain James Hook, and Julia Roberts as Tinkerbell. First, I believe this might be the only role in which I actually enjoyed Julia Roberts. She usually unnerves me in all of her roles. Especially Erin Brockovich, but maybe thats just because of my fear of strong, motivated women; who knows. Anyway, I realized as I was watching Hook that I was making some connections to the story and theme of the film with my current situation.

Now I realize this is my second blog referencing a Robin Williams movie as Mrs. Doubtfire was the topic of a previous discussion. I found it quite odd to be spoken to by two different Robin Williams films. I then realized he is also in a movie based on my highschool, MBA (Dead Poets Society), and the only film that can make me cry more than Rudy (Good Will Hunting). This seemed strange to me; of all the actors who make wonderful films, why is it that Robin Williams has been the one I am having the most connections with and finding most thought provoking. I can only hope it to be coincidence or proof of God’s twisted sense of humor, although it could be that I feel a connection because we are both hairy individuals. All I know is that I hope I don’t follow in the alcoholic and cocaine-addict footsteps of my new film idol (sorry John Cusak, you are now in second place).

But back to the point of this entry. As I was watching the movie I began to draw parallels to my own life. Robin Williams ends up on “a great adventure” as it is often called by the lost boys in which he becomes torn between this great adventure, this carrying on of youthful excitement, and his responsibilities back home with a family and job. In numerous scenes he forgets why he is even in Neverland (something most of the children who visited Michael Jackson’s version wish they too could do) only to be pulled back toward reality. It is a feeling I am quite familiar with; being youthful and trying to hold onto that as long as possible while occasionally forgetting that I am here in an attempt to grow. I am currently visiting Neverland by seeing parts of the world that were totally unknown to me. I travel with fellow “misfits” much like the Lost Boys. None of us are ready to grow up; there is a great fear to what lies ahead. In the film it is Peter’s “turning into an adult” that killed his ability to fly. I think that myself and probably many other TEFL teachers share a similar feeling. We see the adults around us who, to us anyway, look stuck; look as if they have forgotten how short and fun life can or should be. We are the ones who currently have the ability to fly, to go on adventures, to see new places, to live life. Now I admit this is an early 20s prejudice that is probably wrong, however it is still a feeling that is as of yet inescapable. I always hear my parents say how it is everything in their world to have a family, and I honest to God believe them, I just don’t think I am totally there yet.

Even Captain Hook is avoiding the ticking of time with his fear of clocks. Both Hook and Pan say that “To die would be a grand adventure.” I don’t think they mean they want to die, I certainly don’t mean for my connection to that statement to indicate as such (I don’t desire death, in case that was hard to understand...no suicidal thoughts here, just Steven Spielberg induced existential ones). However, I think they are saying that in their search for a life of youth and adventure the unknown of what death entails seems to have far more potential for adventure than the actual process of growing up. We have all seen people grow up, there doesn’t seem to be much adventure or excitement to it: get a job, settle down: eventually that routine turns into go to work, come home, eat dinner, fall asleep watching the 9pm news with the remote control resting on your beer belly. There is sense of repetition and boredom in what the average youth sees as adulthood. Now I assume that this is not actually the case as looks can be deceiving, just as well the look and appeal of adventure, or the closest we can come to Neverland, may also be deceiving us into this lifestyle.

The film ends with Peter Pan/Robin Williams realizing that his “happy thoughts” were based back in reality and before leaving Neverland he says “To live would be an awfully big adventure.” I guess what I am trying to say is that by taking my trip to Neverland through this experience I can both satisfy a very base and immediate desire to know that I am living a life worth living, one in which opportunities were seized, and also come to my own conclusion that “to live would be an awfully big adventure.” This begs the question as to if life is best lived in adventure (but relative solitude as close friends and family are hard to come by on the run) or if it is best lived in human connections that can carry onward even after we are gone. Mumford and Sons sings “The flesh that lived and loved will be eaten by plague. So let the memories be good for those who stay.” We all have to leave this life at one point or another, so is it best to live through love, or to live through experience. The first we can pass on, the second we can’t take with us. So as it was for Peter Pan; life, growing up, may take away our ability to fly, but perhaps there is something to be said for being grounded.

Anyway, I hope this makes sense to the rest of you. Maybe you can see a connection, or maybe you just see me as some self-obsessed egomaniac who can turn even a children’s movie into a metaphor for his own life. I think both may have some bearing. Well, I am off to find more Robin Williams connections in my own life, perhaps next up with be the genie from Alladin, wish me luck.

First Post in nearly 2 months.

My Recent Adventures

My first few months in Indonesia was filled with relatively little traveling. I left Surabaya all of one time from my arrival in late September until Christmas break. however, since Christmas I have really started to scratch the itch from the travel bug. Over Christmas I spent a week in Bali and since then have seen Probolinggo, Bromo, and Tretes. Most recently I traveled to Tretes for a weekend with two friends, Zac and Allan. Tretes is a beautiful mountain town about 2.5 hours from Surabaya. We decided to take our motorbikes up there for a weekend, leaving late Friday night and coming home Sunday mid afternoon. Tretes was absolutely beautiful. It was a bit cooler and the scenery was amazing. We couldn’t see much on the drive up as it was already dark, but regardless the drive up there was amazing. There is a sense of freedom that one feels while driving a bike “cross-country” that you miss while driving a car. Once up there we stopped into a hostel called Villa Putih that was very nice and costs the equivalent of $3.00 a night. During our days we wandered around the town and down some hiking trails that led to beautiful waterfalls. We stood at the top of the waterfall looking down into an amazing valley below us. During the nights we met a few local guys who took us out for a drink. It was a nice chance to practice and learn a bit more Javanese as they spoke no English. The drive back may have been my favorite part though. Since we left while the sun was still up we got to see the awe inspiring scenery as we drove down the mountain. Absolutely breath taking mountain-side terraced rice paddies with streams running through the middle. Tiny towns filled with nothing but rice farmers and colorful houses. It was one of my favorite experiences so far.

A few days before Tretes we took advantage of having a Thursday off for Chinese New Year and about 10 of us hired a car and driver to take us to Probolinggo and Bromo. In Probolinggo we hired a little john boat to take us out to sea where we chased after Whale Sharks in an effort to be able to swim with them. This tiny boat with no life-jackets and enough floatation rings for about 3 of us puttered along at the pace of a snail way out to sea. We saw beautiful, colorful fishing boats from Madura; one of which pointed us towards where they had seen some Whale Sharks. As we were chugging along towards the supposed Whale Shark spotting the boat needed more gasoline and a man poured more in while simultaneously smoking a cigarette. (if you haven’t figured it out by now, safety concerns are not of the upmost importance here). Once we saw the whale sharks everyone stripped down to their swimsuits and dove in after them. They are huge, amazing animals. Blue and what and grey and covered in spots as if wearing polka-dots. The mouth is shaped like the head of a vacuum cleaner and I believe it works in the fashion as the vacuum, sucking up plankton as if it were dust bunnies hiding under the couch. We swam right up next to them and they would slip underwater and pop back up 15 feet away. Some were more curious and swam directly towards us getting with arms reach. We noted how strange it is that we were swimming AFTER sharks and not the other way around. After splashing around for awhile, we all hopped back into the boat and began the slow chug back towards land. During this return trip one of the sharks actually ran head first into the boat, killing the motor temporarily.

After arriving back on shore, we loaded back into the rental cars and headed towards Mt. Bromo on our way home. Bromo is an active volcano that is currently erupting. Its eruptions are very rare, allowing people to live and farm on the mountain. It is a very popular tourist destination because of its amazing beauty. Bromo is one of the few places, outside of Bali, that has a majority Hindu population. There were beautiful statues of the Hindu deities dotting the road and villages as we made our way up the lush, green base of the mountain. As we made out way up, we noticed some majestic terraced rice paddies. Bromo’s volcanic soil causes it to be a great farming area. However, as we slowly ascended the winding roads the scene began to become more bleak. We began to notice ash on the side of the road piled up like gray snow on the side of the ride after the plows come down the streets. Also the fog covering the top of the mountain began to dissipate giving us a view of the massive black cloud spewing from the top of Bromo. When we reached as high up as were safely allowed to visit the scene became post-apocalyptic. Trees and plants were dead, covered in ash. Houses and whole neighborhoods were deserted and blanketed in ash. It looked like Mordor from Lord of the Rings. After seeing a place entirely devoid of life, we decided to go back down the mountain and return home. However, night fell as we were driving down and it began to rain ash. The windshield became impossible to see out of and the curves of the roads that hugged massive dropoffs down the side of cliffs became nearly impossible to navigate. We were stopping, getting out, and using our water bottles to clean the windshields in order to make it far enough until visibility was gone again, only to start the process over. Finally we made it past the range of ash-rain and all breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Before these two brief trips however, I took my first extended vacation over Christmas break to Bali with my roommate Paul and our friend Allan. I was a bit nervous about the trip as they are both a little more wild than I am (or at least more wild than I am trying to be). Also, Paul is in his early 50s. I have never travelled with someone my parents’ age unless it was, of course, my parents. Paul also is a unique character. He looks well over his age because of his previous rock-star lifestyle and lack of about half of his teeth. He recently travelled to Thailand and while there had fake teeth made and fitted, but refuses to wear them because they feel funny now that he is used to having no teeth. Someone asked him about if he were excited to be able to eat an apple again with this fake teeth and he responded “I haven’t eaten an apple in 30 years, why the hell would I start now.”

We decided to take the train to Bali; it was about a 10 hour train ride. We departed around 10pm on a Friday night and a few hours into the ride decided to head to the food car to buy some beers. Unfortunately the people there looked at us as if we were crazy and offered some noodles or fried rice. Totally defeated and sober, we headed back to our seats to try and get some sleep. We were in “business class” which is actually bucket seats with no A/C and some interesting smells. Executive class is nice on Indonesian trains, but business class was just a slight upgrade over the train scene in Slumdog Millionaire. While my two travel companions laid out newspaper on the dirt covered metal floors and began to sleep the sleep that only prescription pain killers can induce, I was left to try and sleep without the aid of pills. Needless to say, I slept a total of maybe 45 minutes over the 10 hour trip. So after sleeping for 10-15 minutes at a time throughout the first few hours of the train, I decided to head to the space between cars. As I was walking towards the area between cars, I passed Paul sleeping on the floor and realized he was covered in ash. We had driven past Bromo as it was erupting and the cars had filled with ash (I soon realized that was why I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face about an hour earlier and explained the sulfur smell...I had assumed something caught fire and that caused the smoke, again safety not a big issue here). I was amused at how much he looked like a relic from Vesuvius, covered in ash, sleeping peacefully on his Christmas themed pillow. As I said before, safety is not the biggest concern here, so I joined a fellow sleepless traveler in opening one of the doors to the outside, catching some fresh air and watching the sun come up over the beautiful scenery.

After arriving at the end of Java, we unloaded the train and piled onto a bus that drove directly onto a ferry. We floated across the Bali Strait onto Bali island where the bus pulled out of the ferry and began a windy 3 or 4 hour trip to Kuta. Upon arrival to Kuta around 1pm we decided to first and foremost grab a beer and then find a hostel. After one beer turned into 3, we finally made our way to a little alley that Paul had stayed on before. We found a little hostel with yellow foam constituting a bed and an outdoor bathroom with no hot water. However, for $3.00 a night when the next cheapest thing in Bali costs $15.00 it seemed like a great find. It actually was a nice hostel and the staff was very nice. The biggest downside was the lady-boys who circled the area constantly trying to pick up us nice looking white boys. I believe my favorite part of the trip was one of them cornering Allan and grabbing his ass as she/he gave him a big ole kiss right on the kisser. I have never seen a look of fear like I saw at that moment. I nearly wet myself I was laughing so hard as we sprinted the last few meters back to the hostel. The next night Paul, our elderly companion, was stopped by the same lady-boy and he took off in a dead sprint (for about 5 meters, which he is convinced is the first time he has run in decades). The weather in Bali wasn’t great so we spent more time bar hopping than surfing or laying out, but it was still a great trip. Paul was a champ on this trip, by about day 4 he was still going out harder than any of us and smoking about 4 packs of cigarettes a day. His stomach started to get to him, so instead of taking it easy he just would sip from a Pepto bottle between beers and cigarettes.

While I really enjoyed the trip, Kuta beach was full of Aussies. Aussies are the Jersey Shore cast of the rest of the world. They apparently have a huge aversion to shirts that have sleeves on them. I have never seen so many sleeveless shirts. We stayed out of any and all night clubs because they steroid ridden monsters just wanted to drink and fight anything that moved (I think that included women as well). I honestly don’t know how American’s got the “ugly American” stereotype when compared to these guys (well actually I do, but if you put an American and an Aussie together on travels and didn’t tell people who was who, I think most people would pick the Aussie to be the “ugly American”). Kuta was very touristy though. It was what I imagine Cancun to be. Next time I go to Bali I think I will just rent a motorbike and see the rest of the island, some of the other beaches, Ubud, and some of the mountains and temples.

Anyway, that is all for my travels so far. Hopefully I will have more to write about soon as I have a trip to Jakarta planned in March and a week in India in April.

Rainy Season Blues

Well, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that rainy season has officially started. It has rained at least once a day for about the past week and the Weatherchannel.com has a 60% of scattered T-Storms everyday for the rest of the 10-day forecast. I have to admit that a rainy season is much more bearable than a winter season. I do not miss cold weather, bitter wind, and snow or ice. At all. Not that rainy season doesn’t have its negatives, they just aren’t as unbearable to me as the downsides of winter.

Earlier this week I had my first real rainy-season incident. I was at dinner after work with a few friends when a massive storm blew in. One minute is a clear night and the next the rain was falling in a way I can only imagine it did before the Noah’s Ark flood. Lightning that lit the sky as if it were noon, rain that came down in sheets, and instantaneous flooding. We decided to see if it was a short storm and just order a beer to wait it out. As time went on, however, it became clear that we were not waiting out a storm anymore but just allowing the streets to flood.

We leave, walking outside to be drenched in rain and getting on our motorbikes to attempt a very wet ride home. I only know a few roads home as I have only had my bike for about a week at this time. I begin my ride home being pelted with rain, but enjoying it drive. The rain had that sea smell that only storms that come in off the ocean can have; that sweet and salty aroma that made me feel as if I was lying on the beach watching a storm roll in. With Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker playing through one ear-bud of my I-pod I listened to Adams sing about rainy days and broken hearts and drove in what felt like the perfect weather to listen to that album. The intoxication that comes from the freedom of riding a bike combined with the choice of music and ocean-rain made me feel for a moment immortal. That feeling would soon change however.

As I got about a mile from my house I drove onto a street that all of a sudden swallowed my bike in water up to my thighs. I pulled the bike out, let it dry for awhile and hoped to God it would start up again. Luckily it did, and I was off to try and find a new way home. Two hours later I would end up in the same spot, having to push my bike home; but for two hours I drove all over Surabaya. I saw slums, I saw beautiful neighborhoods, and I saw floods. I saw men pushing motorbikes through water so high one could not even see the bike but just the hunched over figure of someone who must be pushing something. The rain quickly turned from sweet and salty in my mind to pounding and intimidating. I drove through areas where the water rushed enough that I was able to feel my bike being pushed in the direction of the flowing water. I saw landmarks that let me know where I was, but in front of all of those landmarks were floodwaters blocking my way home. I was terrified to turn my bike off in case it didn’t restart because I thought it probably in-took a fair amount of water so after an hour when I really had to pee, I had no choice but to pee down my leg as I was driving my bike in a part of town I had never seen before. It didn’t matter, other than the initial warmth it provided, it was just like peeing in the lake. I was so wet that it made no difference.

As I kept driving I became more and more frustrated. The walls of water became just that, walls. Literally stopping all attempts to get where I was going, it was like trying to cross rivers without bridges.

I finally found my way back to where I originally drove my bike into thigh high water and called a friend to see if he knew any dry back roads home. His answer was what I feared most: “I’m at your house right now, you have to push your bike home if you want to make it.” I closed off the clutch to keep water from getting in the bike and started pushing. The water went from thigh high to being above my waist. For over a kilometer it was waist high. I couldn’t get my knees out of the water while pushing my bike. At one point it dropped to about the middle of my shins, but that reprieve was short lived as after a few meters it swallowed my knees and waist again. For over a mile I pushed my bike.

I finally arrived home to see my friends and neighbors shirtless in the streets. I got my bike into the driveway, drained it of water, and opened the best cold beer I have ever drank in my entire life.

I survived being lost in a monsoon. I made it through something I could never have imagine doing. One more day in Indonesia, and one more lesson learned about the ability I have to do things I never though I could. Looking back, I enjoyed that experience because it gave me confidence that I actually do have the strength to push myself through hard times. There is a line from a Bright Eyes song that says “your eyes must do some raining if you’re ever gonna grow,” but maybe all it actually takes to grow is pissing yourself in a monsoon.

A Bit About Indonesia

I don't have much to say here, but CNN has a nice page about Indonesia and its growing economy and also the struggles it faces in trying to take advantage of the rich natural resources and man-power that it has but hasn't quite figured out how to use. Thought some of you might like to know a little more about Indonesia and this site has some great articles on it.

http://edition.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2010/ilist/indonesia/

Enjoy.

Update on Life in Indonesia

As of today, I have been in Indonesia for 2 months. It’s hard to believe that it has actually been that long! The first month had its ups and downs, as has the second, but this past month has ultimately been amazing. I have had the opportunity to travel a bit to Solo and Jakarta, as well as meet some family that I had never met before in my cousin Kevin who lives in Jakarta. I also started teaching at EF.

I really enjoy the teaching job. I got quite lucky in that I am not teaching many really young kids. Most of my classes are around 10-18 year olds. I really enjoy my classes with the teenagers. The whole process of planning a lesson, and then executing it, is really fun. It makes me feel quite good about myself to plan a lesson and see it play out in the classroom as well, or better, than I had hoped. Even the lessons that fall short of my expectations provide me with a knowledge of things to leave out of future lessons. In just a few short weeks I am starting to get the hang of what works and what doesn’t. Having such helpful coworkers who are more than willing to give me ideas for lessons is nice as well. I feel so welcome in the school and really enjoy everyone that I am working with.

I still have some slip-ups along the way: on Saturday I planned a lesson on the totally wrong subject for a 2 hour class, but was able to think on my feet well enough to conduct a fairly good lesson with no real materials.

This whole year seems as if it is going to fly by. In just a few weeks it will be Christmas break and New Years, and before I know it, I will be 3 months into my contract and 1/4 of the way through my 12 month contract! I am very excited to be enjoying the teaching as much as I am. A large reason I came here was to make a decision about wether I wanted to become a teacher or go back to school in order to find out if something else was driving me. I am starting to realize that teaching is probably my calling and it feels nice to have an actual clue about what I want to do with the rest of my life.

As I mentioned above, I went on a few trips in the past month. I really enjoyed the culture that I got to witness in Solo, seeing traditional dance and music in Gamelan and Wayang Orang. Jakarta was amazing as well: what a massive, modern city. It exceeded all of my expectations. My favorite trip so far was a day trip to Singapore in order to get a new Visa while my Work Visa is being processed. Singapore is “a fine city” as they say because it is a wonderful, beautiful place, but also the way they keep it as such is through massive fines for everything. A few hundred for not wearing a seat beat, a few hundred for chewing gum in public, a few hundred more for throwing cigarette butts into places they don’t belong. Because of these strict city-state Big Brother rules however, the city is PRISTINE. Not a single piece of trash anywhere. It would be as if Chicago or New York were maintained like a Botanical Garden. The architecture there was amazing as well. The most modern city I have ever been to, by far. I don’t know that I could live there with the Big Brother type of environment though. Not that America doesn’t seem too far behind adopted that type of system anyway.

Speaking of “Big Brother” I want to talk a bit about the Indonesian lifestyle and attitude on most things. It is quite hard to be here as a Westerner sometimes; our views on everything are SO different. In classes if you have a debate no one will take the view point of what might be seen as not traditional or moral. There is a right and and wrong answer for everything and there is no reason to question why for these people. It can be quite frustrating since as a teacher I want to always get students to ask why, but that is not a culturally acceptable thing here. They have universally accepted ideals such as; Women need to be married before 30 or they are dried out and useless. Money is more important than love. Sex is only for babies. Men have higher importance. In actuality, the Indonesians remind me of pre-Vatican II Catholics.

I did a lesson about the future “will” and “going to” using the idea of a zombie invasion and they had to plan an escape using the future tense. I told the students that you cannot go to the mosque, it won’t be safe and that is not the point of the exercise (other teachers told me they did this exercise and if you don’t say that the students will answer: go the mosque or pray so God will protect me from the zombies). Even with those instructions I still got “I will go to the mosque because it is holy ground and the Zombies cannot enter.” I am not trying to blast deep devotion, but there is a total unwillingness to question anything that they have been told. I see some good qualities in having a bit stronger moral stance in everyday life, but as one of my coworkers said “the reason Batik is the only thing the Indonesians have provided to society is because they refuse to ask the question why.” I hope I am not coming off as if I am judging this society for its strict stance on most everything; I am just trying to give a view on the ideals of Indonesians and the difficulty of trying to understand it that I struggle with everyday. It is very interesting to see, but quite frustrating in the classroom at times. In anthropology we were always told never to make judgements on a culture but to observe and report, and that is what I am attempting to do here. These Indonesians are not universally right or wrong in their lifestyle and ideals, just as the West isn’t universally right or wrong in its own lifestyle as well.

What is interesting is that it seems that this generation is starting to finally begin to question and challenge authority. Indonesia is the third or fourth largest user of facebook in the world and in terms of the percentage of individuals using Twitter based on the numbers of internet users is the highest in the world. And they are using social media to connect, questions political leaders, and rally around others. There was a news story about Indonesians raising TONS of money for a woman that was unjustly accused of libel for writing to the paper about poor healthcare she received. Also when one of their political leaders shook Michelle Obama’s hand even though his religion states he is not to touch women outside of his family there was an outcry about the hypocrisy of political/religious leaders (and even the practice of not touching women outside of the family in general) on Twitter. Its a very interesting place and I am very glad I chose Indonesia to live and work in for this next year. I am learning so much about this culture, Eastern culture in general, and a fair amount about myself as well. I think its very important to be learning about Asia as it very much seems as if Asia is primed to become the new economic center of the world with the problems the West is trying to deal with while having such feeble results.

Anyway, just wanted to give a quick update and let everyone know that I am doing quite well, enjoying myself, and getting everything out of this experience that I hoped I would. I do miss home, and we had a little Thanksgiving dinner over here the other night which (in true Thanksgiving fashion) we all had too much to drink at and a few of us ended up dancing on a bar later that night. It was nice to have a little taste of family Thanksgiving with great friends and good food (even found a Turkey God-knows-where). I also keep forgetting that it is winter back home: I see snow in football game replays here or Facebook pictures of people in jackets and scarves; its really hard to comprehend that its December or that its cold anywhere in the world with this heat. I love it. I now know for sure I can live somewhere without winter for the rest of my life. So enjoy the snow, miserable biting cold, and Black Friday/Christmas-shopping stampedes for the next month; I’ll enjoy my 85 degree days and a trip to the beaches of Bali!

Eid-al-Adha: The Festival of the Sacrifice.

WARNING: This post discusses some pretty graphic details of the sacrifice of goats and cows. Also, even though some of the descriptions may be a bit graphic, I do not mean for it sound as if I am judging this ceremony. Cultural norms shift greatly throughout the world and what I witnessed today was in no way “animal cruelty” in my mind, but a religious experience for the devout followers and a bit of a spectacle for the children (and myself) running around outside the mosque.

Today was Eid-al-Adha. Eid-al-Adha is the Festival of the Sacrifice for Muslims. It celebrates the story of Abraham and Isaac (Ibrahim and Ishmail) and Abraham’s obedience to God through his willingness to sacrifice his son, and also God’s giving of the ram to be sacrificed in the place of Isaac.

I headed toward the mosque nearest my house a little before 5:30am, following the procession of men and women towards the Mosque. As I approached the main street I found that the street had been closed off and a make shift prayer area had been built. I was a bit nervous heading to this festival by myself not knowing if I would be accepted or wanted there, so I asked a man walking near me if a “bule” (foreigner) can come. He said of course and asked me to come sit next to him, so i followed him and I took a piece of newspaper they were handing out as makeshift prayer-mats and took a seat about 4 rows from the front. The prayer session in the street lasted probably an hour and a half as it was composed of prayer and a sermon. I tried to go through the appropriate motions along with everyone else, but I naturally felt quite out of place until I looked around and not a single person was staring at me, or giving me a dirty look as if I was unwanted. If anyone did make eye-contact it was followed by a big smile and mouthing “hello.”

I was so struck by the welcome that I received at the first part of this festival. I can only imagine try to describe it by putting the shoe on the other foot: it would be as if a Muslim man in a prayer robe, mosque cap, beard, and carrying a prayer mat walked into Christmas Mass, looking totally lost but just there to experience and gain appreciationg for something he is unfamiliar with. Except I have a hard time imagining a Muslim man walking into Christmas Mass with America’s general sentiment toward Islam right now being treated with the respect and welcome that I was today.

After the prayer service, everyone got up and began a mass exodus down the next side street, I followed not entirely sure if everyone was going home or if this was leading to the sacrifices. I saw a small mosque off of a side street and walked up to it hoping to ask if the ceremony was over or if more was to come. The man I began trying to talk to in broken Indonesian was pointing at the goats and asking if I was here to be a part of Eid-al-Adha today, I told him yes and he asked if I wanted to eat. He led me upstairs where his family and friends had quite a spread of fish, rice, and what I assume was chicken. They kept piling food on my plate asking if I liked it and if I wanted more. I was STUFFED by the time I walked back down for the sacrifice to begin. The sacrifice took place in an open area behind the mosque and between a few houses. It was not at a large butcher shop as I understand some of these to take place. A hole was dug and the first sacrifice occurred. The goat was laid down with his throat over the hole and in halal style they slit his throat. The goats were hard to watch be slain because of the screams that they made. It reminded me very much of Clarice’s statement about hearing the lambs crying in the film Silence of the Lambs. The yell from a goat in distress is strikingly human and that human-like scream right before death was very disturbing for me.

Next, the Sapi (Cow) was slaughtered. The cow was tied up around the body and pulled down by about 5 or 6 people who then hog-tied its feet together. Once his feet were tied, the cow was dragged over to the hole dug for the blood and turned to be facing the correct direction. While the sound was the hardest part about watching the goat sacrifice, the amount of blood and the visuals were the hardest part of watching the cow sacrifice. The cow’s throat was slit and blood SPAT everywhere. It spurted almost like in a bad Steven Segal film. But maybe even worse than the blood was the visibility of throat muscle or esophagus or whatever it is that you breath from: the muscle was opening and closing pushing out what air was left in the cow and trying desperately to breath more in but all it could accomplish was to spray the blood that was running into and over the opening. Also, as it came closer to death some greenish liquid that I can only imagine to be stomach acids/bile started to pour out as well. All of this was very graphic, especially for me: I vomited after watching the live birth video in health class, after watching a live birth video of a cow in a science class, and stuck my lab partner trying to hold down and cut upon a pig fetus in highschool because I threw up again and almost fainted; I don’t do blood, its not my thing. So this was quite hard to watch and I was honestly pleased with myself for not having to run into the street to throw up into the roadside ditches.

After the slaughter, the animals were hung upside down, skinned, and beheaded (the animals head cannot be removed until it is fully dead) and divided into three sections for family, friends, and the poor.

I bring up the gruesome details of the story to make a point of not sugar coating everything. It can be so easy when witnessing such a foreign celebration to just go on about how eye-opening and life-changing it was while shedding only positive light on the experience. And while this certainly was eye-opening, there were parts of it that were hard to be a part of, and I think that made me realize how large some of the differences between cultures or religions can actually be. But in witnessing these difference in celebration, worship, or even sacrifice it became a bit more clear to me that all of these differences should be seen only as differences in the details. Faith is Faith, and these people certainly had a lot of it. While Islam and Christianity may be incredibly different in their practices, they are still both a way of relating to a higher power and hopefully of gaining a message of acceptance and love. And there were certainly similarities to be seen as well: the men and women at prayer this morning were as devout as someone at Easter mass. The sacrifice seemed to have a meaning that strangely mirrored the Eucharist. But despite any differences between myself and the Muslims I spent my morning with, they welcomed me with open arms. They embodied the good nature of people that religion, ALL RELIGION, should aim to nurture. They did not try to “convert” me, but merely asked if I had questions about what was happening or its meaning to them. It makes it hard to look back the “ground zero” mosque or Murfreesboro mosque controversies and see how narrow minded this American Islamophobia is. If people would open their eyes and try to experience other faiths and accept their differences rather than blindly judge them we might not be in the situation we are currently in.

Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire

So tomorrow marks three weeks here. After my first 3 days here I’m a bit surprised I made it this far, and kinda impressed with myself as well. Baby steps I guess. Week 1 and 2 were really great. I started to get into a rhythm and met some new people, I felt like I was accomplishing things. This week has been a bit tougher. I started my student-teaching sessions (more on that later) and those are nice. But they are part of the reason for things getting harder as well. The first two weeks I had class all day followed by about 2 hours at the internet cafe, dinner, and bed. Not a terribly large amount of free time. Now with the student-teaching I am usually busy from 8am to 10 or 11am. I go to the internet cafe and do my lesson plans, but I’m done around 2 or 3. Lots of free time with not a lot of fillers. Free time is a killer here. I don’t really know my way around, nor do I know how to drive a motor-bike, so my options are pretty limited. Also not a lot of people to interact with during that time. Because of all this I have gotten a little down recently. I’m very much ready to finish this course, get a job, and move into a teacher’s house with a few other people. I know that things will pick back up once I have full days of classes to teach and people to spend my evenings with, so I’m trying to keep my head up during this.

Part of this feeling came from a simple facebook post as well. So thank you Matt Giffhorn for referencing Mrs Doubtfire. The mere mentioning of that movie made me more sentimental/home-sick than anything else here. For those of you who don’t know this little fun fact, my roommate Matt and I watched Mrs. Doubtfire AT LEAST once a month. I could do a one-man Broadway adaptation of that film. But anyway, I started to see some similarities to my own situation and that of Mrs. Euphegenia Doubtfire. Robin Williams is forced to realize that his life is not where he wanted. He never grew up and it caught up to him in the form of a divorce. As for myself, I hadn’t grown up enough to accept what post-collegiate life had in store and it was catching up to me in the form of a fair amount of self-loathing (forgive my self-indulgent pity-party right there). He deals with this by dressing as a woman to see his kids, and ends up doing all of the adult things he never wanted to be a part of (cooking, cleaning, homework with the kids, etc) and grows up because of it. Its a mid-life-crisis “coming of age” story, I suppose. I am dealing with it by putting myself in an equally challenging situation, except instead of living life as an elderly woman, I decided to go live life as a teacher on the other side of the world. This comparison is a bit of a stretch, I realize, but there is one line in the movie that really kinda stuck out to me in relation to this situation: When Robin William’s wife begins hinting at a divorce she says “We can’t just take a vacation, our problems will be waiting for us when we return” and he responds “Well we can move when we get back, maybe they won’t find us there”. You can’t actually run away from problems. I left some in the states and ran head first into some of the same ones I left as well as some new ones. And the only thing I can do is face them and try to grow from it. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up living in San Francisco hosting a children’s show in drag after this as well.

[Side note]: Mrs Doubtfire always reminded me of Grandma, I mean I always thought that Mrs Doubtfire looked a lot like Grandma in that movie as well as his inappropriate elderly humor that she shares as well. To those of you in Dallas who may read this, please don’t tell her that).

I guess what I am trying to say is that I do already feel like I’m growing from my short experience so far, and I am looking forward to more of it. The hard times and the good ones. I have already been forced to do some things that I feel uncomfortable doing, or that I know are going to be hard. Just doing these student-practice teaching exercises is a small example. They are hard. I am scared I’ll fail in front of the class each day. Its the kind of fear-of-failure thing I would have given into in the very recent past. In the past I probably would have taken the “when life gives you lemons, just say the fuck the lemons and bail” mentality and not actually gotten anywhere. Here I am forced to do these little things that I feel are starting to add up. I just feel more confident and ready to take on whatever is next both here in Indonesia and whatever is going to come after this as well. But as they say in rehab, its one day at a time, so I’m done with the over-arching positive thoughts on the future; back to the present.

Anyway, some good news, I have had a few interviews that went well. I think I will be offered a job at EF Surabaya hopefully by the time I finish my course a week from tomorrow. Also an International School in Solo is very interested in my services as well, but I am not sure how I feel about that one. I’ve also had a few other interviews with schools in Bogor and Cirebron (I think thats where it is anyways) that went well. Its looking very good on the job front.

But anyway, to the Student-Teaching. Its pretty interesting. Preparing to teach and actually doing it are two incredibly different things. I feel I am doing a good job though, and my instructor seems to always have good things to say after my lessons. My first class was 2nd graders (about 7 or 8 years old). There are only two words to describe children of that age: Noise and Chaos. Now, as much as I may try to make it seem that I revel in those two things (and after a few drinks, maybe I actually do) they actually drive me up a wall. The kids are all good, they are just loud. And one instant of free-time or the smallest thing that is remotely humorous to them sends them into fits that I can only imagine adults can only find by stacking speed and Crystal-Meth. I know that I’ll be teaching all age ranges once I get a job, so I am working on how to deal with handling the lessons for small children. A few pre-class Xanax was my first idea, but I feel that may actually be a bit counter-productive.

My other classes have been 4th or 5th graders. Those kids are much better. Once kids hit about 10 they seem to calm down quite a bit. They still get riled up pretty easily, but its easier to bring them back under control. I like working with kids that age. I knew all this going into it though. Working at camp this summer I thoroughly enjoyed the 3 weeks that we had older than about 4th or 5th grade, and was in shambles after 5 days with the third graders. Like I said, I learned all of this at camp this summer; I know what each of these age ranges is going to be life. Once they are a bit older they understand the concept of self control a little better. And once they are older they can carry on conversations that don’t involve dinosaurs, their pets, and how much they FUCKING LOVE CANDY! I understand why so many people do drugs once they get older. You develop a tolerance to sugar. Thats it; a tolerance to Sugar. That is the first drug we get. These kids absolutely tweak out over a snickers. They are high out of their minds bouncing off the walls, and eventually the come-down arrives. You watch them start to drag, looking out the window at the kids in the hallways eating their sugar-filled snacks. Probably thinking, “man, look at that candy. I wonder if he’s holding. Maybe I can trade him my lunch for one bite. I don’t need my backpack, maybe he will take that for an air-head or a lolli-pop.” Its clearly a slippery slope from sugar to heroin.

I don’t want all of this sound as negative as it probably does. I really do enjoy teaching. I have a lot of fun at the front of that classroom. It feels pretty natural up there actually. Also, I am very much content to be teaching some little kid classes as well. I will learn a lot from it, I just also know that when I take a teaching job back in the states it will be in a middle school or high school. I can handle the awkwardness of middle school kids. I think I’m still as awkward as a 14 year old boy half the time anyway.

Anyway, thats all I’ve got for now. Not a whole lot of new things in life here. I wish I had some wild stories to regale you with, but its a pretty slow lifestyle out here. I should have some more stories in the next few weeks once I get a job and get settled, but until then I’ll continue to try and make some mundane details of my life here and the occasional self-indulgent positive or negative thoughts into reading material that some of you may (hopefully) find entertaining.