To tell you the truth, most of my days are spent walking to school, helping teach, and then walking home. I actually really enjoy my little 10 minute walk to school each day, just so long as I make the walk at 6:30 in the morning. After that, it's too darn hot to even think about physical exertion!
The Street View of Where I Live. Good 'Ol Bali Mas 2. Just what you imagined Bali to be, right?
I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but I stick out a little bit when I walk around the streets of Pontianak. While it might be my excessive height, or perhaps my shaggy hair that I need to get cut, I'm betting that the real give away is my white as rice skin color. And let me tell you - they know rice in Indonesia. So, when I walk down the street, there are few people who don't yell out at me: "Hey Mister! Halo!" Or, my favorite: "Dia sangat tinggi!" (He's really tall!) But I love to walk, so I continue to take the treck everyday, even if I'm not the biggest fan of having random strangers shout out to me.
Other than teaching at school, which I promise to describe in a separate post, I spend the rest of my time in Indonesia either playing sports with teachers and students, hanging out with friends, or relaxing in my home! Many students like to play Futsol (which is a mini form of soccer), and therefore I get sucked into multiple games after school.
Students, teachers, and basically everyone else in Indonesia loves Futsol! Fortunately, I'm a big fan too! It's an awesome experience to get to hang out with your students outside of the classroom. As a teacher, I often feel distanced from students due to rules and regulations, so having the opportunity to get to know the students without fear of upset parents or enraged administration really does the heart good. And as for their Futsol ability, these kids can play! Luckily I know a thing or two about getting in the way, and have thwarted many of their best attempts to score... And you wouldn't believe how excited both teams get when this bule scores a goal...! With flailing limbs and legs that always seem to get in the way, I think I'm making a name for myself on the Futsol field. Sometimes uncoordination and the element of surprise are they best way to confuse and beat your opponent :)
But don't ask me about playing Futsol with my university friends... I'm merely a speed bump that is unfortunately standing between them and the goal. And like any good speed bump, while I may cause minor annoyances and the occasional crash, I unfortunately am usually unable to bring a hard-charging Indonesian to a complete stop... Still, I press on, "like boats against the current," knowing that at some point, a cocky Indonesian youth will try to pull a crafty, over-the-top maneuver to impress his friends, and this wily veteran will be there, waiting for the slip-up that will open the door to my goal-scoring opportunity. And up until now, I have yet to leave the Futsol court without scoring at least a goal or two :)
In other news, I also play badminton from time to time. However as badminton is one of the highlights of Indonesia, I will save the topic for a later post. Just know that whenever I step on the court, I always "give 'em the business," and maybe even a few tricks I learned from backyard pool badminton with my dad.
Just so this doesn't drag on too long, I'll share three quick stories from over the past couple of weeks. Then I'll be able to end this post, and move onto some better posts about more significant events that have happened recently in my life! Without further ado, my stories:
A few weeks ago (I won't tell you how many...), a few teachers took me to the center of town to see the Sungai Kapuas, the longest river in Indonesia. Since Pontianak was built along the river, the center of town is located on the riverbank. In this "town square" of sorts, the people of Pontianak come to hang out, buy local goods from sellers, and eat along the riverbank.
While along the river, we decided to take a boat ride down the Sungai Kapuas...
Check out the "klotok," or boat, that carried us along the Kapuas River. The main bridge that connects the two sides of Pontianak city can be seen in the distance, lite up to shepherd late night travelers. One night, in fact, I was one of those sheep who got lost while riding his bike, and relied on the bridge to direct me back to my house! And of course, in the above photo collage, I have the mandatory photo of just me, myself, and I. I'm never allowed to get away without a picture of myself, standing awkwardly alone, in random Indonesian places. So all in all, my evening at the center of town and on the Sungai Kapuas was the relaxing night out that I had been long needing.
In other news, I've now made 2, count'em, 2 trips to one of the city's most popular tourist destinations: The Dayak Longhouse. Indonesian Borneo, the island I currently live on, is inhabited by the Dayak people, the indigenous group of Borneo. So while there are now many different cultural groups in Indonesian Borneo (Pontianak actually has large populations of Malay and Chinese heritages), the original cultural group will always remain the Dayak people, who are still a major part of the island. And one of the major cultural aspects of the Dayak people, is their homes: longhouses.
Dayak Longhouses are the traditional homes of Dayak people, and are still used by individuals who live outside of the the big city of Pontianak. (Apparently it may one day be possible to travel out and see a Dayak community in the Borneo Rainforest) However within the city, the longhouses are solely for ceremonial purposes and tourism, not domestic life. What a shame, eh? Who wouldn't want to live in an open-concept home on the equator, replete with sun-scorching heat and mobs of mosquitos...
The reason the Dayak homes are called longhouses, fairly obviously, is because they are long. Enough said, right? Wrong. I always have more to say. The reason the Dayak homes are so long is due to the fact that Dayak families add onto the building as newer members of the community are born, so that families can have their own space, while still being under the same roof as their friends and family. So as the community grows, so does the house. Kinda cool, right?! Apparently some longhouses can grow to have as many as 200 doors/apartments inside of the upper-level living area, which means there could be 200 individual families! Fortunately they have the bottom area for activities and such.
This first Dayak Longhouse I visited was recently completed in July of 2013 and is the largest in the city. I'm going to throw out a guess here, and say that its enormous size and grandeur is meant to be representative of the continued strength of the Dayak presence in Pontianak. It certainly impressed me. However unlike the normal longhouses which are made from wood, this behemoth was constructed from concrete. I explored the longhouse with some of my new friends from the local English club, and dared to enter the longhouse in the traditional way: walking up the giant tree trunk. Did it seem unsafe? Of course. Most tourism outside of the U.S. often is. But that's what makes it awesome.
Above you can see my mandatory photo by myself, that my lovely friends forced me to take. (Sometimes I'm actually glad when they force me to take photos, because I come out with gems like the photo above.) From the Dayak Longhouse we could see a traditional Malay House (the building on the right), which makes sense since many Pontianak Indonesians have Malay heritage. I hope you also enjoy the awkward photo of my friends and I on the Malay House's front steps...
And of course any photo description would be amiss without an explanation of the bottom left photo, in which I enjoy a traditional Indonesian snack with my pals after a long day of wandering around the longhouse. We purchased "rujak" (cut up fruit and vegetables with a peanut sauce) from a roadside vendor, and drank bags of sweet sugarcane water. Always a tasty drink on a warm day.
As I said before, I in fact made TWO trips to the giant longhouse, which may be indicative of the lack of sites in Pontianak...! The second time, however, I went with my site partner Adam, as well as a teacher from his school. So while the picture below may have the same building, note the different people posing for awkward photos.
However after leaving the Rumah Radakng on this day, I did not go enjoy a snack of rujak, but instead visited another Dayak Longhouse! This long house being significantly smaller than the giant concrete behemoth, but far older and more "classic."
Make sure to notice the tree trunk man on which I climbed to to enter the longhouse. I could have walked around and used the stairs, but stepping on a face of an old wooden guy is slightly more "romantic," don't you think?
Apparently this longhouse is one of the oldest (or maybe the oldest) in Pontianak and is also now used for ceremonial purposes and tourism only. While at this longhouse, we met some of Adam's eccentric students, took our obligatory photo with them, and discovered that for some strange reason, this longhouse is a place for people to bring their dogs...
So the longhouses are cool, and represent a traditional culture of Indonesia, which is great. Hopefully I'll learn about it as I continue my journey!
I'm bringing this long post to a close. My third story is short. I went to a Mr./Mrs. Pontianak Beauty Pageant... That's about it. I just believe it's important to note, because things like this happen everyday - I wind up in strange places.
The highlights of the show included the small kiddos in Pontianak batik, and the traditional Malay dance, where they tied up a woman while dancing...! Then we left early because I had to teach in the morning and the thing was ending no time soon...
Well, this has been a little peak into everyday life. Honestly I need to start doing a better job of keeping track of the amazing things that happen to me everyday, because I am in shock and awe just by the day-to-day happenings of Indonesia. Hopefully now that I've caught myself up a bit, I can blog as things happen, instead of in hindsight. We'll see :)
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." -Anthony G. Oettinger
Talk to you soon,
Ryan
No comments:
Post a Comment