9/13/2012 Questions
Q. Wow! What a day. I have a few questions. What assembly do you attend every
morning? Does your host family go to
church? Did your host mom get presents
for her birthday? If yes, what did she get?
Can you just tell the driver only to pick you up when it's raining? Are the teacher's making fun of you?? And
can't you just continue your other math class and act like you didn't know your
suppose to be in Statistics? Love ya!
Take care of yourself.
Love, Aunt Sarah
A. On Mondays the ceremony is a flag raising and I think we go over a
brief history of Indonesia and SMK 4 (My school SMK means it is a vocational
school and SMA means it is a 'typical' book learning high school). On every
other day we just listen to whatever the teacher wants to talk about, again I
really have no idea (All of the presentation is in Indonesian is more advanced
than my 1 month of Indonesian crash course has prepared me for). My host Mom
did not get presents (as far as I know). But, we did make her a cake. My host
family likes to have me ride in the car but maybe I will talk to Diandra and
work something out. I don't think the
teachers are trying to make fun of me (everyone is really nice), I think they
are trying to include me and to see if I understand the material. I might be able to continue in the easy math
course but, all of my classes are easy, one hard class might not be too bad. Thanks! I love you too.
Q. I'm with Sarah...just go to whatever class. That seems to be the MO anyway. Do they put cheese on their pizza? Or Just "fun stuff"?
I love you...Mom
A. The pizza is bad, I'm not sure what they put on it but it isn't
good. I can't remember if there was cheese on it, but if there was it was only
a little. One of the first meals in America... PIZZA.
9/13/2012
First of all, I want to apologize that I have not been writing lately.
I have been super busy and lazy... which has been a problem. Today, I had my
Photo/ Video call which meant that it was modeling day. I can honestly say that
I never thought I would wake up in the morning and say "I'm going to model
today". Well, never say never. I got up even earlier than usual so I could
straighten my hair and put on make-up. I picked out on outfit that I wanted to
model in from my very limited closet got in my uniform and headed to school. I
am going to elaborate on the morning assembly just a little. Every morning all
the students in the school gather in the middle of the courtyard. Then a
teacher at the front of the courtyard starts yelling and everyone lines up. We
line up in a perfect grid, the courtyard does not have any guidelines on it but
it only takes a couple of minutes to get
all the students in perfect rows and columns (something that would never be
possible in America.. although my school in America was about 4 of 5 times
bigger than this school). Then a student at the front of the courtyard starts
yelling and we all have to stand in attention, more yelling, we repeat the schools
motto (I don't know it yet), we stand in attention again and a teacher talks
(sometimes for 10 minutes sometimes for 25 minutes), then we salute the
teacher, and then the teacher tells us to pray, after about 20 seconds they
call for the praying to stop and we are released to go to class. The people who
are late have to go in a different assembly in the basketball court outside of
the school (One day I will be late just to see what happens to them).After the
assembly a girl behind me asked me if she could touch my hair because it looked
like a Barbie's hair. I thanked her and she felt my hair, then her friends
started touching my hair and calling me a Barbie. So I became the first plus
sized Barbie with brown hair and real breasts (none of that plastic stuff). When I escaped the hair feeling session I went
to first period and sat with my classmates. Our teacher did not show up until
45minutes into class... congrats in America you would have missed the entire
first period. Then I got changed in the bathroom and started my modeling
career. I do not have a future in the modeling business. I was in the front of
the classroom trying my best to not be terrible with at least six different
cameras pointing at me and the entire rest of the class watching. Everyone was
telling me to do different things and yelling at me to do something else. I
really had no idea what to do, I will never doubt that models have hard jobs
again. So, I sat posing for the class for several minutes and I was really
getting tired of the entire idea of me modeling when, a boy on the side told me
to lay down on the ground in some sexy pose. I told him that I would do it if
he did it first and with lots of cheers from the class I made him start
modeling and I sat down. Luckily, everyone seemed to forget about me for a
minute, or at least they realized that my pictures were really bad and they
weren't getting anything else out of me. I was relaxing in the room (far away
from the cameras) when another girl walked into the class in her casual wear.
Before I say what she was wearing, I should remind everyone that Indonesia in
88% Muslim and as far as I know I am the only Christian in the entire school.
Muslim women try to cover up most of the time and it is very rare to see short
shorts or shoulders. Most of my classmates wear long sleeves and long skirts
every day. This girl walked in with a purple sequin dress that had spaghetti
straps and the shirt was completely see threw except for a small shift that cut
off right after her butt. She came in with her school uniform skirt draped over
her shoulders and crying that she wasn't pretty and that the dress was too
short. I hate this kind of pointless drama, she knew that the dress was really
short but she decided to bring it to school. She should have just modeled in it
and get over her body issues or she could have brought a different outfit. I
hate girls sometimes (she continued to whine and make people beg her to take
pictures with her). When class was almost over I changed back into my uniform
and went with my class to English class. I want to remind everyone again that I
had not gone to this English class yet because last week we had the American visitors
and class was cancelled, instead of class we just did a simple worksheet that I
finished in about 5 minutes. At the beginning of class my teacher started by
passing our answers from the worksheets back to us. I saw my answers in a
different pile and I cannot lie I was thinking that she was going to say
"and the only perfect paper.. Alaina" or " Now Alaina will
explain her answers" or at least "You should all do your own work and
not copy Alaina." but, it was not any of these. Instead she told me that I
did not write the entire question so I get a B while the rest of the class gets
A's. WOW! Really! I just got a B on an English assignment even thought every
other person got an A because they copied off me, and the teacher just made an
example of me in front of the entire class. Now, if the teacher had actually
showed up to class last week she could have told me to write the entire
question, but she didn't want to go to class so I was punished. It really isn't
a big deal, and I really don't care about the grade. I care about the principle
that I can be wrongfully punished, whatever. We went over the worksheet and a
lot of the grammar that the teacher was teaching was really bad, so I muttered
under my breath how nothing she was teaching was right. When we were finally
done with the worksheet the teacher decided that the class could ask me
question in English. So they wrote questions and I spent the next hour in front
of the class answering tons of questions. She never asked me if asking
questions was OK she just assumed... so annoying. Anyway I love my new English
class.. can't wait to spend another 3 whole hours in it next week. Great!
School finished early but my driver wasn't coming until 2 so I went to the
Angklung room for Angklung club. I introduced myself to everyone and showed
them my PowerPoint of all my family pictures until it was finally time to go
home. I only had enough time to do Seminary and watch one episode of How I Met
Your Mother before I had to go to Indonesian class with Mrs. Anita. I got to
class and the exchange student from Brazil and I studied for a while. I liked
taking the class with someone else because I got to practice and she was able
to ask some good questions. After class we went across the street to a restaurant.
We ordered by ourselves. The food was delicious, I got fettuccine Alfredo with
grilled chicken for dinner and a waffle covered in fruit syrup, fruit and
strawberry ice-cream for dessert. When
we finished eating I went home and fell asleep after a really busy day.
9/13/2012 Highlight
I really had fun going to a restaurant and ordering my own food. The
food was really, really good to. Way better than Carrabba's. Thanks for
reading! I love you all.
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