Mid Autumn Festival; leadership seminar
The festival was a Chinese Festival in which "moon cakes" are served and people carry around lanterns and wear read, I guess. Our school had a singing competition in which students sang pop songs in Mandarin Chinese and not, as one would hope, traditional Chinese songs. The event was devised by the Mandarin teachers and Mandarin was the language used by all participants. Thus, I had no idea what was happening for the two hour competition. Nevertheless, I was one of the judges. I had to determine if the singer was on key, remembered the lyric, was dressed appropriately, and whether they were self possessed on stage. One thing that might have improved the competition--shorter songs! A pop song these days seems to run around 6 minutes. These kids might have song just a verse of two but they did the whole thing start to finish. It took a while. There were a few very nice performances, but as per usual, the audience listened when it felt like it and parents pulled kids out to go home when they felt like it. 'Twas not the Festival of Bad Manners, but close. In other Mid Autumn Festival news, the nearby KFC donned its Colonel character in Red tradional Chinese dress complete with the Colonol donning a queue (the long braided pony tail that Chinese men used to wear)--that's your corporate sensitivity in the age of globalization.
The retreat was as one would expect it--an awful lot of talk and energy spent on elementary pontificating about simple concepts. In other words, we were taught what was rather obvious in a fashion that suggested that there we were being handed the pearls of wisdom. It was a long weekend, but we were in the mountains and it was very cool, and pretty. For only the second time since arriving here (both times were in the mountains, I wished for a long sleeved shirt).
This morning in the bus, driving to school but still on my block, I saw a woman who collects garbage walking down the street balancing the bag of trash on her head. That way she could presumably carry more trash, or perhaps it was the only way to carry the amount of garbage she had collected. We see people like this in America but not this extreme.
Scanning the Jakarta Post it becomes very clear that the main concern of Indonesians regarding their government is corruption. So many articles dedicated to this issue. Technically, Indonesia is a democracy, and it may be as much a democracy as most others, I don't really know. At any rate, in a class that was focussing on political systems I asked the class what kind of government Indonesia had. This girl who is the best student in the school and one of the best people, I'd say, answered, "a corrupt government." I was reminded of a time when I subbed in a high school class in the States. In the context of a discussion about nuclear proliferation, I asked the class why the US went to war with Iraq. Several said aloud, "For Oil!" "Ok" I said, "but why did we say we were going to war with Iraq?" While some may find that cynical, I think it's delightful.
The retreat was as one would expect it--an awful lot of talk and energy spent on elementary pontificating about simple concepts. In other words, we were taught what was rather obvious in a fashion that suggested that there we were being handed the pearls of wisdom. It was a long weekend, but we were in the mountains and it was very cool, and pretty. For only the second time since arriving here (both times were in the mountains, I wished for a long sleeved shirt).
This morning in the bus, driving to school but still on my block, I saw a woman who collects garbage walking down the street balancing the bag of trash on her head. That way she could presumably carry more trash, or perhaps it was the only way to carry the amount of garbage she had collected. We see people like this in America but not this extreme.
Scanning the Jakarta Post it becomes very clear that the main concern of Indonesians regarding their government is corruption. So many articles dedicated to this issue. Technically, Indonesia is a democracy, and it may be as much a democracy as most others, I don't really know. At any rate, in a class that was focussing on political systems I asked the class what kind of government Indonesia had. This girl who is the best student in the school and one of the best people, I'd say, answered, "a corrupt government." I was reminded of a time when I subbed in a high school class in the States. In the context of a discussion about nuclear proliferation, I asked the class why the US went to war with Iraq. Several said aloud, "For Oil!" "Ok" I said, "but why did we say we were going to war with Iraq?" While some may find that cynical, I think it's delightful.
posted by athensinternational at 5:09 PM
2 Comments:
is the paper in english and how are you doing on learning the local language? do you know how much different Maliasn is from what you are learning? You may have discussed that earlier but I've forgotten what you said.
Great post. It is impossible to understand why a staff meeting is always a complete waste of time not to mention an insult to the teachers IQ. I thought maybe a private school would be better. Oh well, after 21 years I should get used to it but it always leaves me feeling PO'd. Did they at least serve you decent food??
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