My classes have been fun, I made a game called "Dinner Party" - where students randomly select a characteur to act as, there is one person with a magic frog, one who loves ice cream, and another who sneezes whenever they hear the word "frog" and laughs when they hear "ice cream", as well as a lot of other crazy people. It was really fun to do. I was laughing, and my students loved it. It went so well I used it in 3 classes and gave it to other teachers to use.
Also, for the first time ever, I sent a student out of the class. I was teaching an all-girl group, where most of the girls are very sweet, but a few are absolute terrors. I introduced my form of classroom discipline - a smiley face on one side of the board and a sad face on the other, the students names go on the board to show if they are behaving well or badly, if a student on the bad side misbehaves, they are out of the class. When I put one girl's name on the board she kept repeating "I don't care" and disrupting the class further, so she was out.
For a treat on Friday another teacher, Michelle, took me to a place called the Candy Bar, where they serve English food. I ate a steak and Guiness pie, and it was delicious, it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day. I got talking to the owner of the bar, an English guy called AJ, and he invited us to the bar's one year birthday party on Saturday.
Later that day I was teaching my regular class of upper-intermediate students, and they had a task to write about their problems when learning English and meeting native speakers. One student wrote that her biggest problem is that it's difficult to lip-read people if she doesn't know them. Yes, lip-read. It turns out she is almost deaf and has to watch people's mouths in order to understand what they are saying. I was amazed, I have taught her about 10 times, and I didn't realise until she told me. Yet more, when I checked her writing, it was virtually perfect, with no grammatical errors at all!
On Saturday afternoon, Steve, a returning teacher - Nat, and I played basketball. It was fun, even though I'm not used to the sport, and in Indonesian heat it was really good exercise. Then in the evening I went to the Candy Bar's birthday party with Phil, Michelle's boyfriend, where there was free food and drinks. I got quite inebriated, and may perhaps have made a fool of myself by dancing on a pole. Anyway, the most remarkable part of the evening was that I actually got a picture with a ladyboy!
His/her name was Jasmine, and (s)he was quite a convincing woman, with just a few give aways such as (s)he was taller than me, which doesn't happen with Indonesian girls, and had big hands despite the effeminate handshake.
On Sunday I woke up with only a mild hangover, and my students picked me up to go and play football, I had fun, but again we lost, and again I only scored one goal. After the game they took me to a food court to try some pork soup, which was very tasty. However, when we went back to the car, we saw that while we had been eating someone had smashed the passenger window and taken one of the student's bags. It was a really unlucky thing to happen to such nice guys. So we cleared up the broken glass and went home, feeling a bit dejected.
Monday came, and I met the head of EF Indonesia - Alan, the guy I did my interview with over 4 months ago. He's a Scottish ex-serviceman who has been in Indonesia for 20 years, and gave me a few good tips on culture and teaching techniques.
After work on Tuesday we (Alan, Steve, Tanti, Tommy and I) went to a place called Golden Land - another food court with a karaoke stage - to eat sate and drink beer. A few drinks later we were feeling merry when a girl came over and said to me "Hey, you handsome." (which as far as I can tell over here means "Hey, you are white.", but anyway). She asked me if I wanted to sing on karaoke with her, at first I said no, but everyone egged me on, and seeing as I have made a fool of myself singing before, I agreed to be led up to the stage...
She then proceeded to lead me straight past the stage, into the car park behind, where there was a car waiting with a pretty girl in the driver's seat. The girl who led me away introduced me to the girl behind the wheel and then opened the back door and told me to get into the car. I looked in the car and there was a guy sat in the back seat. I obviously refused, and they said they were going to take me to a bar to sing karaoke. At that point Tommy, who had noticed them lead me away, came running and started shouting at them in Indonesian. The car drove away, and we went back to our table, confused and angry. We explained what had happened and then, amazingly, the girl who had originally led me away came and sat at the table. Alan told her in no uncertain terms to go away, but she just sat there staring at him with an insolent look on her face. The atmosphere started to get unpleasant, and we left soon afterwards, with the girl following us to the car, shouting insults in Indonesian.
After that my week has been pretty uneventful. I've spent most of my free time working on a project for a class which will write about in my next post.
Man, I can't believe you nearly fell for the old "let's sing karaoke" trick! I fell for that once and it was horrible (they made me sing karaoke).
ReplyDeleteAs for discipline, I suggest torturing the troublemaker with a few Callan questions, including "Are you fatter than your mother?" and all the ones about pigeons and reflexive pronouns. That oughta teach her not to mess with you.
On second thought, Callan might also work against potential kidnappers, so always make sure you carry a copy of Book 4 everywhere you go.
Cheers,
Przemek
Haha, awesome comment. I just laughed out loud at that. The power of Callan can be used in any situation.
ReplyDelete