Bahasa Indonesia

The last three days have been filled with learning how to speak Indonesian.

I'm a student at a small language school called Realia Indonesia that teaches English, Indonesian, and offers translation services. Each morning I arrive at school at 8 am (a one-minute commute from my home stay across the street) and begin a two-hour, one-on-one language class. Yes -- two hours of concentration! Class takes place in open-air rooms, cooled by fans, and instead of a blackboard the teachers write (upside-down, no less) on paper so that we can take the notes home and don't have to worry about writing ourselves. At about 10 am we get a small break, then two more hours of class. Lunch is at noon, and afterwards we have a final two hour class. After all this learning and thinking each day, my brain hurts but the method is very effective -- I am can now blunder my way through some important concepts such as my name, country of origin, reason for traveling to Indonesia, etc.

The teachers here are very young -- mostly around my age, 23-28 -- and female. They are all French students at local universities, and after the lessons are over they love to tell me about the history and customs in this country. With more than 17,000 islands it is a very diverse place in terms of language and custom and even genetically. For example, most everyone here (on Java) speaks Javanese as well as Indonesian, but in Papua (farther south) many of the people don't speak the national language, but only the local tribal language.

My fellow students are very few -- currently there are only three. One is a man from Australia who works in Kalimantan teaching English to workers at an orangutan rehab center. Another is a man who works for UNESCO, and will be stationed on Papua for two years helping with the HIV/AIDS campaign there. Finally, there is a woman from Germany who is doing her PhD in Balinese art.

After school I return to my homestay house and hang out with my homestay "parents". They are Muslim, very devout, waking up to pray at 4:30 am each morning and many times throughout the day. The woman is my age, and wears a head covering whenever there is a man in the house. She is a teacher at a nursing school. The man is a bit older, and works as a physics teacher and film editor. They are quite sweet, and speak excellent English.