First visit to an orphanage

Last night my friend Miss Hanna took me to visit an orphanage where she sometimes helps out. It was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had in Indonesia so far. It was an all girls orphanage in a fairly small building (really just a house) on the other side of town.

When I arrived with Hanna, there will a few children outside in front of the building. They came right up to me and one little girl grabbed my hands and asked me my name. This was unusual because usually when I meet kids they are a little scared and nervous around me. It usually takes kids a little while to warm up and feel brave enough to approach me. Not here.

We went inside and I met some of the adults who work there. The level of English was fairly low, but I got to practice my Indonesian a little bit and I had Hanna and some other friends from my work who helped to translate.

After introductions to the adults, we went upstairs and sat on mats to break the fast together. It’s Ramadan right now, so all Muslims are fasting during daylight hours. There were maybe 5 adults and 20 or 30 girls of all ages. During dinner girls asked a few questions like what my favourite foods are and where I’m from. One young girl (maybe 6 years old) asked if she could come to America with me. I wanted to tell her yes. I said “someday.”

After dinner they all needed to pray. I sat in the corner with a few of the girls who were not prayer. They were older (maybe 14 or 15) and I assume they were menstruating and that’s why they didn’t pray. Muslim women cannot pray while they are menstruating. They also do not fast while menstruating. Anyway, I tried to help one of the girls with her English homework during the prayers. She had a long story to read and some grammar questions to answer. The grammar seemed way to advanced for a girl her age and I wasn’t much help, but I think I summarized the plot of the story so she could understand better.

It seems that there is a common problem here of teacher advanced grammar too young. Students are afraid to practice English because they’re worried about past participles.

Anyway, as the prayers began to end, girls started coming over to sit around me. Suddenly I looked up and I was surrounded by all 20 girls just watching me and smiling. One girl seemed to be a little more confident in her English than the others so she asked me some questions and sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star for me. One of the young girls asked if I liked turtles because her favorite song is about turtles.

When I was getting ready to leave the girls wanted to take photos (you can see some photos below). They climbed right on my lap and held my hands. I have never met such warm, happy little girls. They must all have fairly tragic lives, but they were smiling the entire time I was there. I hope I can go back and visit with them many times.

Kaliurang Monkeys

Before I came to Ponorogo I visited Kaliurang with the other VIA volunteers and we went to a park that was full of wild monkeys. Here are some pictures.














The walk up to the park

some old photos and one new photo

Here are some photos from a few weeks ago. I went to a Hindu temple in Jogyakarta.



















A group of school kids surrounded me and wanted pictures with the foreigner


And here is a recent picture of me trying to learn to drive a motorcycle.

A few more photos

A few more photos:


An Indonesian Wedding


fishing at a nearby lake


My friend Hanna and her nephew playing


The nearby lake and mountains

Photos and things

Here are some photos of Ponorogo!

I hear there was an Earthquake in Indonesia but I could not feel it here and everything is fine!



The street where I am living


A neighborhood girl


Around the neighborhood


Right down the street


Neighborhood kids following me on my walk


And more rice fields

I have many more photos but a limited amount of time at the moment. More to come soon!

After one week

Life in Ponorogo is going well. Everyone I meet is incredibly friendly. I found out, to my surprise, that I will be teaching elementary school students as well as high school and university. I'm ok with this cause the kids are adorable, as long as I can keep my schedule under 20 hours of teaching time a week (which might be a struggle, i am negotiating now and they seem to understand.) VIA has a rule that we should only be teaching 20 hours.

The elementary school kids are somewhat terrified of me. The brave ones drag their friends, literally kicking and screaming, to try to get them to shake hands with me. They hide behind doorways and stare. It's really funny. The teachers are amazing, everyone is really nice and I think I will have many friends. Many of them only speak a little English. Even some of the English teachers aren't exactly fluent. I had a look through the high school text book and it was just full of mistakes and really awkward language. The teachers are really excited to have me here to help them with their language, especially their pronunciation. There is one girl, Hanna, who I think was officially given the job as my babysitter. She is sweet and doesn't seem to mind, I hope! She is teaching me to ride motorbike in a quite little stadium thing and it's really fun. And yes, I'm being careful : ) I don't think I'll be comfortable actually driving a motorbike on the streets anytime soon, but that's ok. I was ridiculously bad my first lesson, but very improved for the second.

Tomorrow is my first day of real teaching. It's Elementary and I will be team teaching so I'm not so nervous. I'm on my own for the university though and they don't even have a textbook (they thought I would have one?) so that will be interesting.

I am not in my permanent home yet. I am staying with the director of the school and his wife. They are awesome but keep to themselves much of the time. I will live here for about 1 month. I get the impression that the school bought a house specifically for me and any vols that may follow me, but it is not done being renovated yet.

I went to Surabaya (the 2nd largest city in Indonesia) over the weekend with a teacher from the school and his wife and mother. We stayed in a really nice hotel with a sit down toilet and hot shower! It was pretty awesome. We went to the zoo and it was horribly depressing. Orangutans and chimpanzees in these tiny tiny cages looking completely miserable.

My stomach has been pretty upset the last couple days so I think tomorrow i am going to start taking the Cipro (spelling?) I brought from home.

I guess that's it, I will have more to update after I start teaching.