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.