Some
exciting and fun things from the last few days:
Resource Shopping:
Monday night I went to Gramedia (book shop) to buy teaching resources. Ifra came with me, taking the pete-pete there (what Makassans call the angkot or minibus) and a taxi home… because I bought so much! I think it was the first time in my life where I just picked things up and thought, “Yep, that’s good and useful, I’ll buy it.” Usually I talk myself out of buying something, even if I really need it and it is the reason that I went to the shops.
Monday night I went to Gramedia (book shop) to buy teaching resources. Ifra came with me, taking the pete-pete there (what Makassans call the angkot or minibus) and a taxi home… because I bought so much! I think it was the first time in my life where I just picked things up and thought, “Yep, that’s good and useful, I’ll buy it.” Usually I talk myself out of buying something, even if I really need it and it is the reason that I went to the shops.
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| My resource haul from Gramedia |
Cooking
together:
Last night I had my first cooking class. We cooked Sop Ubi (Cassava Soup) and [can’t remember the name at the moment, but something very similar to Es Pisang Ijo]. I thought it would be just Kak Herul teaching me, but it ended up being pretty much the whole staff from Pusat Bahasa, as well as my homestay family and Alisa (an American student at Pusat Bahasa who also lives here). So it ended up being a very busy kitchen, but a very fun evening.
Last night I had my first cooking class. We cooked Sop Ubi (Cassava Soup) and [can’t remember the name at the moment, but something very similar to Es Pisang Ijo]. I thought it would be just Kak Herul teaching me, but it ended up being pretty much the whole staff from Pusat Bahasa, as well as my homestay family and Alisa (an American student at Pusat Bahasa who also lives here). So it ended up being a very busy kitchen, but a very fun evening.
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| Learning to cook (Photo: Kak Uni) |
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| All the bits and pieces |
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| The final product: Sop Ubi |
Learning to
dance:
As part of my cultural studies, as well as learning to cook Makassan food, I am also learning a Makassan dance called Tari Paduppa. So far I have had two lessons with Ifra and Alisa. It is apparently the easiest local dance, but that doesn’t mean it is that easy for me – a very unco person. But I’m getting there with it and doing the dance will be part of my final project.
As part of my cultural studies, as well as learning to cook Makassan food, I am also learning a Makassan dance called Tari Paduppa. So far I have had two lessons with Ifra and Alisa. It is apparently the easiest local dance, but that doesn’t mean it is that easy for me – a very unco person. But I’m getting there with it and doing the dance will be part of my final project.
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| The first lesson (Photo: Kak Jum) |
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| Starting to get the hang of it (Photo: Kak Jum) |
Discovering
new things about Indonesian and Indonesia:
Probably the most exciting thing that I learnt in my lesson today is that colours can become verbs! For example jingga (orange) can be used in the sentence “Sebelum matahari terbenam langit menjingga” (“Before the sun goes down the sky becomes orange”) and hijau (green) can be used in the sentence “Pohon menghijau” (“The tree turned green”). It has also been really interesting to continue to compare both the language and culture with Java. For example, I have noticed that “the magic hand” (putting your hand out to stop the traffic) is much less effective and people in vehicles are a lot less patient to get where they’re going.
Probably the most exciting thing that I learnt in my lesson today is that colours can become verbs! For example jingga (orange) can be used in the sentence “Sebelum matahari terbenam langit menjingga” (“Before the sun goes down the sky becomes orange”) and hijau (green) can be used in the sentence “Pohon menghijau” (“The tree turned green”). It has also been really interesting to continue to compare both the language and culture with Java. For example, I have noticed that “the magic hand” (putting your hand out to stop the traffic) is much less effective and people in vehicles are a lot less patient to get where they’re going.
