I’ve resigned to the fact that 27 months is an insufficient amount of time to know any place well. I know I’m still in the dark about a lot of things that make Indonesia special and beautiful. In an effort to quickly learn about things I may be missing –and to get an insider’s perspective— … Continue reading
The other day my counterpart, Pak Warai, sat next to me as I prepared material for English club. Suddenly he asks, Mel, what can we do to make students study outside the classroom? Pak, I laughed, if we can solve that we would improve education all over the world! He sighed. I feel putus asa. … Continue reading
For a multitude of reasons – some of which are admittedly strange – elephants have been on my brain. So when I encountered this poem back in January, I paid extra attention. This poem then led to an entire month of English Club focusing on poetry, which culminated in some pretty decent rhymes (for the … Continue reading
As Peace Corps Volunteers we are forbidden to travel away from our sites overnight during our first three months at our permanent site. September 15th marked our group’s three-month mark, so we are finally released from our gilded village cages. To celebrate this, 13 volunteers and I headed to Southern Bali for the first time … Continue reading
The other day I arrived to my site from visiting nearby volunteers in another city and it was pretty late—meaning after 6pm. It was already dark out and I didn’t feel like walking the several kilometers between the bus terminal and my house, so I decided to take a becak. A becak is basically Indonesia’s … Continue reading
Tulisanya – write/spell—comes from the word tulis, which means write. Tulisanya usually translates to spell, and it makes me think of tulip lasagna – a totally logical mnemonic. Timon – cucumber – I think of Timon from the Lion King. This is actually logical. Bagaimana – how – makes me think of Benihanas—a mythical restaurant … Continue reading
in the land of dragons 