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Published: March 27th 2010
After sitting in one position for 17 hours on the airplane I arrived in Singapore. I dont know if I have ever sat for that long of a time in one position haha but I did get some good meals in the air as well as watched about 5 free movies which was a nice way to pass the time but I literally did not think the flight would ever land. I arrived in Singapore, one of the cleanest places I have ever been to in my life. I didnt get a chance to walk around the city but the airport was sparkling clean, and someone goes in and cleans the bathroom after EVERY person. I also learned that you can receive some hefty fines for chewing gum, jay walking, spitting and not flushing the toilet! Crazy I know! I met my Director of Studies at the airport and we took the ferry to Batam Island. This is when the story starts..
Well here I am in Indonesia in the very unique Batam Island. As I have come to find out this place is not a destination, and one would really have no reason to come here unless you are a rich white male and either in the shipping industry or looking for a piece of young indonesian arse. This island is like a split personality where either your really rich and live very luxuriously or extremely poor and live in a shack with no running water and no option for education for your children.
Eating has been probably the biggest adventure so far. Since I have been here I have realized that there is really nothing that I want to eat here. It is all so weird, like mystery meat I have never seen before sitting in the hot sun four hours growing bacteria that will give you stomach turbulence and diahhreah that you would only get in a nightmare. Fish come with the heads still on it, chicken with bone and skin still on, and you may even get a chicken claw or chicken heart in the mix if you don't know what your ordering..which I rarely do. I can't translate the menu so I try to randomly pick something and hope for the best...which has only proved successful one time. I have been trying to eat things out of my box but I just cant. They give rice with everything and either you can eat carbs, sodium or fatty meat. They also don't know what to do with condiments. They are an unknown and experiential item to them..for example, they serve ketchup with pizza, and put cheese on top of chocolate doughnuts..it is very strange I don't get it. Everything is either fried, greasy and oily or something I wouldn't even eat if it was the last morsel of food on the planet.
I have grown a keen fond for fruit..there is no real way to mess up fruit! I have even discovered a wonderful mango tree in our front yard which bears the best tasting fruit I have ever eaten. I have also learned there are hundreds of types of bananas is the banana world and have especially become fond of the litte bananas because they are really sweet and chewy. I also tasted the best pineapple I have ever tried the other day so I am happy about the fruit. Although it is hard to go out and eat the food is extremely cheap, for instance the other night i ordered a plate of crab and it cost me around $1. They don't really believe in vegetables which is sad because I love them.
My first trip to the grocery store was like putting a baby in a college classroom and expecting it to do algebra. I didn't know what ANYTHING was and so i stuck with what was universal and the same, fruit and vegetables. They did have some cereal that was stale but edible and bagged chips with flavor variations of soft shell crab and seaweed. I settled on peanut butter, bread, and jelly. Very nutritious lol. The one thing that makes my day everyday is that there is literally hot sauce sriracha on every table, and is the staple condiment so I never have to go without spicy food which makes me very happy. They do have some american joints here like Pizza Hut and KFC…well pizza hut doesn't understand that pizza has cheese on it and doesn't taste like cardboard and kfc doesn't offer anything besides stale frenchfries and 5day old fried chicken. You literally cannot find anything that is not fried here. Looks like I should have brought my fat pants it seems almost impossible that I wont gain about 10 pounds. Another sad observation is that chocolate is not chocolate here, because they put some nasty tasting chemical in it so it doesn't melt. Ice cream that has chocolate in it is good though, you just gotta learn to eat it under a minute before it melts lol.
It is also definitely really hot here. I love it though. I love never being cold and being able to go outside at night in shorts and a tanktop. My hair doesn't seem to ever want to look good but thats ok. It also rains ALOT. One second it will be sunny and the next it will be a torrential downpour. I love the rain though. I sweat a lot and my makeup gets shiny and almost film-like within an hour, im kinda getting over trying to look good, plus I literally have no one to impress.
There is also an abundance of wildlife..aka ants. They are everywhere, and I hate ants so i have had no choice but to get over my fear. They are almost just like part of your day now. That and lizards…which run so fast they literally look like a wiggling blur moving across a surface. Supposedly we have other cool wildlife like monkeys and tropical birds up the hill so I am waiting to see that.
We live in a neighborhood called Sukah Jadih which is comparative to what would be the "Beverly Hills" of Indonesia. There are some really nice houses here that I would love to live in and then there are some that I don't really understand why they are there. Our house is not as nice as the boys' house and it is dark and gloomy and swarmed with ants, but I am happy to even have running water and a roof over my head, in a country where there is so much poverty. We have an amazing pool however though right by our house. The water is refreshing yet warm and very clean.
The other teachers are great, there are about 5 of us now, two from England who have the hardest accents to understand, one guy from Boston and another from Hawaii. They have all been here almost a year and are renewing there contracts so we will all be working together for a while.
The other day we had our driver Aday drive us to the beach, it was really fun. The drive there was very nice because we finally got out of the dirty city and got to see the beautiful countryside of lush rainforest and beautiful mountains. We crossed a couple of cool bridges and one of the most famous the "Barelang" bridges where a bunch of people hang out and watch the sunset and eat from the various food vendors. Once we got to the beach it was beautiful. The water was so warm! It was like bath water and it was raining so it was so cool, it seemed almost magical. We paid for a ride on a banana boat and that was fun although we got flipped off a couple of times. We played a game of "pooh sticks" which is essentially picking a stick putting it in moving water and seeing whose gets down the course fastest..its funny the games we make up to pass the time. I collected some pretty shells, took some pretty pictures, saw a crab and ate some weird food that ended up being a chicken heart. Then we left and on our way back got some roasted corn by the Barelang bridge which was delicious.
Nothing really makes sense here. Indonesians are really never doing anything that makes sense. They drive like lunatics and overtime I step into the car I may be signing my life away. Mopeds swarm the street holding upwards a 5 person family squeezed on darting in and out of the lanes, well there are no lanes but the cars. They have open sewage which offers a natural aroma of stench so unpleasant you can't help but cringe. When it rains, the whole city shuts down, they don't know what to do when it rains. They also don't walk anywhere, so if you are walking in the rain, you are looked at like an alien from another planet. They also don't exercise, so you can imagine the looks I got when a white girl went on a run in the rain. We really are local celebrities here. So many people come up to us and ask to take a picture, which is really interesting because we are just ordinary people but they don't ever see white people. They all try and be white and you will never see them laying out in the sun because being black is looked down upon and if there skin gets darker they get mad. They even have lotion with bleach in it. It is crazy. Another thing you will hear on a daily basis is an Indonesian hamnering. You wonder what or why they are hammering and it turns out to be nothing. Its like they get bored and don't know what to do so they hammer. This island is build for and around men.
There is so much prostitution here it makes me very sad. If you are a white male, regardless of your age or how huge your gut is you can take a pick from about 100 Indonesian ass. Some of them are the most beautiful people I have ever seen. I didn't understand at first why they swarm white people so much but it is because they view white guys as a way out of poverty and guaranteed money. They think all white people are rich. In the place called the white mans village you will see some of the most unattractive fat old dumpy men of your life with these young hot indo women. It is so sad that these men even play into it. Do they forget that there being used? I wonder why they live on this crazy island but when I see how much attention they get I start to understand. I have made friends with a couple girls though who are nice. The beer is cheap here and the liquor is expensive, im going to have to learn to drink beer or I will be broke in no time.
The EF school is probably one of the nicest buildings in Nogoya Hill. It is very modern looking, colorful, 3 stories and air-conditioned. The students are very nice, sarcastic, funny and mostly well behaved, except for the children. Since you have to pay a lot of money to go to this school, these are usually the spoiled rich children. We get to school around 12pm and then classes usually start around 4pm. So we get ample amounts of time to plan lessons. Students come here after there regular school as an extra cirricular activity.
I have started teaching two classes! The ages are around 17 years old. They are all very well behaved but they are shy and don't like to speak up much which makes me think that I am boring them. I know it will get easier though as I gain more confidence. I have about 14 students in one class and 7 in the other. I hope to get some younger students soon because they have more energy although they will be harder to handle. Lesson planning is very easy because they have a book we teach out of and a cirriculum to follow so it is very well organized.
One really good thing about the island is that everything is cheap! I got a full body massage for one hour for around $6! I couldn't believe it! We are getting paid relatively well in comparison to the rest of the Indonesians, however it is easy to spend a lot of money when you go out drinking or eating, so the more you live like an Indonesian the more you can stretch your money.
There are a couple really big malls here with all of the same stores all selling the same useless junk…fake purses, perfumes, rhinestone everything and shoes. We have Nagoya Hill mall where we bought some really cheap black market DVDs for around $1. I had been wanting a massage so bad so we walked around and found the cheapest and nicest one and we got an amazing one hour massage-full body for only $6!
A couple days ago I ate probably the best tasting food I have had since on the Island it was like a beef Kabob type thing. It was delicious, we also got to pick a fruit from a basket and they made it into a smoothie for us. I had a fresh blended mango and Michele (my roommate from Alabama) had a dragonfruit, which is similar to a watermelon and its dark purple. We really felt like we were in Indonesia while eating cause we ate on the ground outside on a blanket with a little table. Then we met this group of like 8 indonesian guys who were really nice and offered to buy us a coffee drink and so we did. It felt really nice to start meeting some local people and making friends on our own. We made plans to see them again and go out for drinks at a club later this week.
Sorry this is so long, havent had a chance to share my experiences. I just strung this together really quickly! My next entry will be more organized and informative! I miss everyone very much. Still adjusting here, but time will be the only way to be comfortable.
Stay tuned and feel free to comment and ask questions, I will try my best to answer them.
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Cindy L
non-member comment
Love it! Thank you for the update. I think of you often and wish you nothing but greatness. I'm sure your students aren't bored...perhaps in awe of your beauty! ;) Please keep this up. I really loved reading it. Take care, be safe and have fun!