Two Months Stateside

August 3, 2017 by Mackenzie

Some days it’s hard to believe it’s already been two+ months since leaving Indonesia, other days (really, most days) it feels like I’ve been here for ages.

As you may have expected, I’ve settled in to life in America quite nicely. The first few days and weeks were full of rediscovering the joys of hot showers, diverse food, afternoons spent at the golf course, and spending lots of time with my family. I opened boxes of my old things and suddenly had a whole “new” wardrobe. I taught Spencer and Kenzie the card game that we played so often in Indonesia. I cautiously drove my car, repeating “right, right, right.” And… I interviewed for a job in downtown Seattle.

In April and May, I’d been applying to a dozen + jobs in Seattle trying to have a plan for what I was doing once I got back. I intended to find something short term in Seattle for the summer and then possibly move out to DC come August/September and find a full-time job out there. Well, the week before coming home, I woke up to an email from a marketing and communications firm in Seattle asking for an interview for a research internship I had applied to. I interviewed with them as soon as I got home and knew as soon as I walked out of the interview that I really wanted this opportunity.

I didn’t know anything about market research or public opinion research at the time, but I do have research experience – I did two fairly substantial research projects my senior year at WU and figured I could analyze data and write reports… I heard back pretty quickly and was offered the position!

My fellow intern and new friend, Mila

I’m now eight weeks into my time at PRR and loving every minute of it. I’m on a team with three other brilliant women researchers as well as Bruce (also brilliant but I’m all about the girl power), who leads our department. I help out with every aspect of the research process from editing proposals, programming surveys, and conducting literature reviews, to analyzing data, writing reports, and more. Our clients are generally in the public sector, so we work with a lot of government agencies. We specialize in transportation, urban planning, sustainability, and healthcare, which are generally new fields for me but so interesting once you dig into them!

I never would have thought I’d be solving Seattle’s transportation challenges but… here we are! I have always been a problem solver and someone interested in monitoring and evaluation – plus, I believe strongly in public involvement in policy decision-making… and that’s exactly what I’m doing! Through our surveys, I help to facilitate the public’s involvement in high-level policy issues – like evaluating the public’s attitude towards alternatives to fuel tax so Departments of Transportations across the country can make informed and appropriate decisions for their communities.

After a few weeks of commuting to downtown Seattle from my parent’s house in Lynnwood (1 hour+ each way), I realized several things: it was a long and relatively expensive bus commute; I couldn’t have a social life living in Lynnwood and working in Seattle; Seattle is a totally cool city and I wanted to explore more of it; and I might actually want to call Seattle home for longer than just the summer…

Current roommates, Maddie and Josh and I exploring the Bite of Seattle

So, I found a lovely couple in Queen Anne to move in with for the summer and now live in a fabulous neighborhood, walking distance from the Space Needle, quick hops to some of the coolest neighborhoods Seattle has to offer, with spectacular views of the city and the Puget Sound, and only a 15 minute bus ride to work. Everything has worked out wonderfully and I can assure you I am living my newfound Seattle/American life to the fullest.

The future is still a bit hazy but it’s coming into focus. I will be signing a year-long lease to stay in my apartment and just finished a week of stressful Craigslist roommate searching. Unfortunately, there were too many wonderful people who wanted to live with me and I had such a hard time deciding! But, I’ve chosen a wonderful girl to be my roommate and I think we’ll have a fabulous time over this next year! And I’m working hard every day in the hope that PRR will hire me full time. They have dropped many positive hints so I’m hoping things continue to move in that direction!

All in all, it’s been a wonderful transition and I couldn’t be more excited about the future. Hmu if you’re in/coming through Seattle in the next year!

Simple, from Abroad Thanksgiving Recipes

November 30, 2016 by Mackenzie

Most of you know this blog started out as a cooking blog. Cooking is my thing. I love to browse for recipes, shop for ingredients, and spend a whole day in the kitchen. Since I’ve been in Indonesia on my two Fulbright grants, I’ve done a lot less cooking then I used to, and my blog turned from a cooking blog to a travel blog.

However, this year I’ve been much more adventuresome in the kitchen. Last weekend we hosted a Friendsgiving complete with mashed potatoes, stuffing, and pumpkin pie! I scoured the internet for simple ingredient/stovetop recipes, seeing as we don’t have a stove, and as there were all a success, I figured they might come in handy for future Fulbrighters/expats wanting to experience a Thanksgiving of their own, but with very limited resources and ingredients. Thus, here are our recipes!

Creamy, Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Recipe Type: side dish

Cuisine: Thanksgiving

Author: Mackenzie, adapted from Alton Brown

Prep time: 30 mins

Cook time: 20 mins

Total time: 50 mins

Serves: 10-12 servings

An easy, but delicious mashed potato recipe. Proportions edited from Alton Brown’s recipe – http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/creamy-garlic-mashed-potatoes-recipe.html

Ingredients

10 medium russet potatoes
2 tablespoons salt
8 oz “cooking cream” (what we found in Indo or heavy cream/half and half if you can find it or milk if you want to be super cheap)
3 gloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 tablespoon (ish) salt

Instructions

Wash, peel, and dice the potatoes. Place in a large saucepan or wok and cover with water. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to maintain a rolling boil. Add salt. Cook for about 15-20 minutes – until the potatoes are soft and fall apart with pierced with a fork.
When potatoes are almost done cooking, heat the cooking cream and garlic over medium heat until simmering. Remove from heat and set aside.
Drain the potatoes, move to a large bowl, and mash them.
Pour the garlic cream mixture over the potatoes and mix it all together. We then moved it to a rice cooker to keep it warm while we prepared the other food. Just before serving, stir in the softened butter and additional salt, to taste.

Garlic cream sauce

The almost-finished mashed potatoes!

The original recipe for this came from Alton Brown and I only modified the proportions, and took out the parmesan cheese.

Sorry, apparently I can only add one fancy looking recipe in each post – but I want them all here so I’ll have to make do.

We based our sweet potato recipe off of this recipe from Tyler Florence. We made ours more of a mashed version, but flavor-wise it was this! (We bought non-orange sweet potatoes so it turned out really ugly and gross-looking but it was delicious so… no picture 😀 )

Our no-bake pumpkin pie was more of a challenge but in the end, it turned out to be pretty simple and delicious!

First, I bought a pumpkin, halved it, scooped out the goop, chopped it into big slices, and boiled the slices until soft.

It took about 20 minutes to get them soft and then I pulled them out, let them cool, and peeled off the skin. I stuck it in a tupperware to cool and came back to it later!

I used this recipe for a no-bake crust. We couldn’t find graham crackers here so we bought a similar type of cracker and it worked out fine (we used the Indo brown Malkist crackers). I also used less sugar than the recipe called for, per the reviews. Oh, and we couldn’t find normal size round pans so we bought smaller ones and had enough for two pies! (This recipe was enough for two smaller pies)

We followed the directions exactly – crush the crackers, mix it all together, press it into a pie pan, and refrigerate for an hour before pouring in the filling. And when we served it, we had no trouble getting it out of the pan or keeping it together – my initial concerns with a no-bake crust.

I used this recipe for the filling – it was delicious!! Gelatin is a no-no here (Muslim community) so I used a substitute, agar, instead. It came out of the package red and we were worried it would taste like strawberry… but it didn’t so don’t fret! Only other differences were fresh ginger and my pumpkin, but otherwise we followed it to a T. AND IT WAS SO GOOD. I WILL NEVER GO BACK TO CANNED PUMPKIN EVER AGAIN.

Cooking the pumpkin mixture

Ready to chill!

After pouring the filling into the pies, we put both in the refridgerator and within an hour it seemed ready to serve but we didn’t use them for another three hours or so.

The final things we made was stuffing! We were really unsure about this one since we didn’t have an oven and were worried about finding all of the ingredients. But in the end, it turned out perfect!!

We used this recipe for a stovetop stuffing. Edits:

Didn’t use a crusty loaf because we couldn’t find one. Instead we used a regular loaf of whole wheat bread (from the bakery at Hypermart) and cut it the night before and left it out to dry
1 regular onion (not 2)
Couldn’t find celery so we swapped it for two diced apples
6 cloves of garlic (not 3)
No sage (couldn’t find it)
Dried thyme, rosemary, and Trader Joe’s 21 Spices Seasoning (~1 tablespoon of each? I can’t remember)

Basically, we doubled the herby goodness. We initially made it as the recipe called for but it smelled so damn good and didn’t seem like enough so we doubled it (kinda).

We made a lucky find of thyme and rosemary seasoning the night before in a random little grocery store and that was clutch. The TJ’s seasoning Kate had brought from home.

We followed the actual directions exactly and it tasted unbelievably good. I couldn’t believe I was smelling those smells and tasting that in Kendari!

So that’s what we did! It all turned out fantastically and we were thrilled! If you want to attempt your own Thanksgiving feast, I’d recommend these recipes (and modifications!)

Thanksgiving x3

November 30, 2016 by Mackenzie

Guys. I got to celebrate Thanksgiving three times this year. And got to eat stuffing and pumpkin pie TWICE!

As an ETA in Indonesia, Thanksgiving and its related foods are not easily found. In Jakarta and some cities with an expat community, some restaurants will serve a traditional Thanksgiving meal and if you’re ambitious enough you could probably even find the ingredients and make a whole meal yourself.

In Kendari however, it’s a different story. There are eight expats living in/around Kendari (including us three) and Western food is limited. Restaurants include two KFCs, Pizza Hut, and Papa Ron’s (pizza). Grocery stores carry a tiny selection of Western food and brands, namely pasta, tomato sauce, and mayonnaise. So when November rolled around, we didn’t expect anything Thanksgiving-related.

But that assumption was FALSE!

The first celebration of Thanksgiving occurred on Thanksgiving Day. I taught three classes that day and then met my English club after school. I wanted to introduce them to Thanksgiving a little bit so I shared a few photos of my family at Thanksgiving from years past. They loved the pictures of me and my family, all the food, but especially to see the inside of my house 🙂 I shared about Thanksgiving food and how my aunt Suzy and I usually spend two days cooking and preparing everything for the family – they were impressed! As a treat, I had made them guacamole because I had talked about it before and they wanted so badly to try it! Half of them loved it, half of them hated it! (Avocados are usually considered a fruit and served sweet here so it was a weird experience for them!)

Digging in to the guac!

(Mostly) Happy kiddos!

We made hand turkeys of what we are thankful for – I loved watching them make it and was so happy to put them all up on the wall in what is quickly becoming my beautifully decorated classroom!

Everyone pitching in to decorate the wall!

How cute!!

We also did a mannequin challenge, the viral video challenge where everyone freezes in place like a mannequin – swim teams and gymnastic teams have made some pretty impressive ones! Ours is fun too!

That evening, I met up with Kate and Shelby and we went and ate pizza together to “celebrate” Thanksgiving 🙂

On Friday evening, the other expats invited us to their Thanksgiving celebration the following day. So on Saturday we followed them out to where the other expat couple lives (on the beach!) and were astounded to discover a beautifully set table on the beach and endless dishes of stuffing, mashed potatoes, turkey, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, black olives (my favvvv), gravy, homemade rolls, pumpkin pie, apple pie, pecan pie… my jaw literally dropped.

Got off our bikes and discovered outselves here

Got off our bikes and discovered ourselves here

We enjoyed a wonderful evening chatting with all of these new friends, watching the sun set over the mountains, and eating food we thought we would have to wait another year for…

Best looking plate I’ve seen in a year and a half <3

A perfect setting

Beautiful view

Pies!!

Then, on Sunday we hosted our own Friendsgiving! We wanted to share some of our culture with the people who have helped us and befriended us in the three months we have been here, so we invited them to a big Thanksgiving potluck last Sunday. We spent the week before looking up oven-less, simple ingredient recipes, going to different stores and markets to find the ingredients, and finally spending all day Sunday cooking up a storm!

Cooking away!

We ended up with quite a spread considering our limitations. We made delicious creamy garlic mashed potatoes, a fantastic stovetop stuffing, yummy but nasty looking (not orange) sweet potatoes, garlic green beans, and even managed pumpkin pies – from scratch! I bought a pumpkin from the market, cut it into big slices and boiled them until soft, cut off the peels, and then had pumpkin to work with! Let me just say, I was quite impressed with myself 🙂

Proud chefs!

Our friends loved the chance to visit, meet each other, and try our food. We even made little Thankfulness turkeys and went around in a circle sharing what we are thankful for. It was a great end to a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend!

The crew!

Potluck-style – everyone brought something to share

Two of my coteachers, Ibu Asni and Ibu Erni enjoying our meal!

Forget the 14 couches we all could have comfotably sat on… in Indo we sit on the floor 😀

My ibus <3

My no-bake pumpkin pies!

Introducing bahasa tutors to Apples to Apples

Shelby, Kate and I finished the day sprawled out on Kate’s bed watching both the cartoon Grinch and half the Jim Carrey Grinch, before we began to drift off into a happy, food-coma sleep.

Mack is Back

August 14, 2016 by Mackenzie

Mack is back.

After seven weeks in the US of A, I’m back in Indonesia, about to begin my second Fulbright grant. I arrived about a week ago and have been spending my days in Jakarta working in the AMINEF office, helping prepare for the arrival of the new ETAs and the upcoming orientation. I’ll be here in Jakarta for two weeks before the new ETAs arrive on the 23rd and then we all depart to our sites on the 24th. I vividly remember the confusion, the exhaustion, and the strangeness of all this last year – we had barely gotten a full night’s sleep before we were shipped off to our site with no language skills, very little idea of what we were doing, and great excitement to finally see the community we would be living in for the next nine months.

Dim Sum with the AMINEF office

This year… is so much easier. Yes, the flight was long and the jet lag was real but the airport was familiar, I could speak to the taxi driver, and my phone worked from the moment we touched down. I know how to dress, I can deal with the heat, and I know what to order at a restaurant. This is just so much easier. Not to say next week will be easy… Jakarta is familiar and comforting, but when I land in Kendari it will be for the first time. I’ll be meeting a whole slew of new people, moving into my ruko (rumah toko = house store ~ more on this once I get there ?), and stressing about what my most conservative outfit is that I’ll wear on my first day at this Islamic school.

Beautiful sunset as we took off from Tokyo to Jakarta

Car Free Day in Jakarta – every Sunday the main thoroughfare in Jakarta is shut down to cars and motorcycles and thousands of people come out to run, walk, bike, and explore.

I obviously posted nothing over the summer. It was a time of relaxation and family, eating great food, and playing a lot of golf. It would have been nice to see a few more friends, and spend a bit longer with those I did get to see, but with my friends spread all over the country now, it’s a hard thing to do!

All of my Indo memories <3

Date night with momma <3

A highlight of my summer occurred right from the start when I went to DC and St. Louis less than 72 hours after getting home from Indonesia. Last year, you may remember when I traveled to DC in June to attend the Pre-Departure Orientation for new Fulbright grantees. It was an incredible week of meeting my cohort and learning about the year ahead. This year, I got to return to the PDO as an alumni. I spoke on a few panels, answered endless questions from the incoming grantees to Indonesia, and spent a lot of time eating, drinking, and sight-seeing my way through DC with the other SETAs (Senior ETAs ~ Returners) and the AMINEF staff who had come all the way from Jakarta.

Speaking on the panel, Living in Southeast Asia

SETAs and the AMINEF team

Meeting with the Indonesia bureau of Voice of America with Rizqi, Astrid, Ceacealia, Kelly and Grace

The incoming Indonesia ETA cohort!

Sightseeing at Renwick Gallery

Indo-bound ladies!

After the PDO, I spent a few extra nights in DC with my bff Martha, who had just moved to DC to start a big-girl job. From there, I went to St. Louis for a few days where I got to see college friends, professors and mentors, and my former coworkers at Taste. It was a fabulous 10 days!

Finally reunited with Martha <3

Catching up after a year apart with Shannon and Abby, my good friends from WU

Catching up after a year apart with Shannon and Abby, my friends from WU

Taste with Abby <3

So much love from both Taste and it’s sister restaurant, Brasserie

Soaking up the sun and the ice cream with Abby in STL!

A second highlight was getting to attend a talk given by Malala. Mom surprised me with tickets to the event when I first came home and gosh, it was such an incredibly inspiring night. As a teacher in international education, in a country with a poor education system, it was so cool to hear directly from Malala and be inspired by her passion and work. If you haven’t read her book yet, I can’t recommend it highly enough! Read it and if you ever get the chance to see her in person, do it – you’re in for an awesome evening.

Highlight of the year!

It was exactly the summer I needed. Lots of family time, lots of good food, and lots of time enjoying the balmy Seattle weather. I completed another million step challenge with mom – and am returning to Indo feeling fit and strong. And now, I’m back in Indonesia where I feel content and at home. I’ve got 11 more days in Jakarta and then it’s off to really start this year!

Already miss this so much!

Spend so much time with this sweet girl this summer :)

Spent so much time with this sweet girl this summer 🙂

The Million Step Challenge: 1 million steps in three months. We did it!

Packing was still a nightmare this time, but it was altogether much, much easier and less stressful! This is some of my pile of Oleh-oleh (gifts and souvenirs) for my friends and students here!

Ate all the berries I could find in the PNW!

Greenlake adventures with my buddy

Golfing with the fam

Found an Indonesian restaurant with Kata, an incoming ETA from Seattle!

Brunch with the fam

Golfing on the 4th of July

What a great summer! Sampai tahun depan Amerika!

Jalan-Jalan

February 9, 2016 by Mackenzie

In December and January I was able to do a little jalan-jalan (travel) around Indonesia and Southeast Asia, and let me tell you – it was very much needed!

Due to the smoke, my school didn’t have a proper winter holiday – instead, we only got December 24 and 25 off and December 31 and January 1. Luckily, those lined up with weekends so I had two four-day weekends. I didn’t want to sit in an empty asrama (dorm) on Christmas, so I decided to join my friend and fellow ETA, Shalina, in Jogja for the Christmas break!

Jogja is… wow. I’m so very jealous of the ETAs who are placed there. Jogja is a bustling city in Java known for being the cultural heart of Indonesia.

Malioboro – the famous market street

Shalina and I spent our short vacation exploring all that Jogja has to offer – we went to the Keraton, or Sultan’s Palace:

We went to Taman Sari, the Water Castle:

The Palace of the Prince of Solo:

And of course… Borobudur and Prambanan. Borobudur is a 9th century Buddhist temple, and is the largest Buddhist temple in the world… it’s truly indescribable… but let me try. It’s enormous. There are nine levels that you can walk all the way around and each level has reliefs depicting Buddha’s life. In total, there are 2,672 relief panels, 504 buddha statues, and 72 stupas with buddhas sitting inside. It’s estimated that it took 75 YEARS to build. Imagine… an entire lifetime. And, most impressively of all (to me at least) is that they used no glue/cement/other binding material. It’s all interlocking stones. And it’s now lasted some 1300 years. Holy shit.

Parts of it are destroyed… note the headless Budha

Prambanan Temple is a 9th century Hindu temple and is again, one of the largest temples in the world.

The compound is composed of several large temples and you can climb up each one and see the statues to Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. Gah, it’s just so, so cool. And SO OLD.

I call this… “sassy mack”

Oh, and we also ate a bunch of Western food 😀 😀 This was our Christmas Eve dinner – new tradition I think! (also, omg my mouth is watering just looking at this!)

The pizza was at this adorable Italian restaurant with the prettiest patio. I was in love.

Okay, so after Jogja, I came home and had a very quiet New Year’s. I went down to the roundabout and joined in the festivities with a friend – but other than that, I spent almost the whole weekend at home. I was pretty bored so I decided to read Harry Potter – haven’t read that in years! I read book 1 on New Year’s Eve. Book 2 on New Year’s Day. And eventually finished all 7 books in the month of January. LOL. #junglelife

The third week of January, I headed off to Jakarta for our Mid-Year Enrichment Conference. I hadn’t seen most of my fellow ETAs since our orientation in September so it was a BLAST to be back together again. We all have so many hilarious stories and it’s so good to talk to other people who understand the cockroach struggles…

The group of ETAs and coteachers at the US Embassy Chief of Mission’s Residence

Our coteachers came along with us so we could do some teacher training all together – I chose to bring Tisia and we had a blast 😀 We even had matching dresses made…

The ACCESS coteachers who I worked with during the evacuations in Jakarta were helping out with the teacher training. It was SO wonderful to see them again and I was just a very, very happy girl that week.

We also put on a little show at the @America center in Jakarta. It was a pretty amusing show with each region contributing a 15 minute something… My group, the Kalimantan group, did a puppet show. Yep. It was awesome.

Then… I went home to Palangkaraya for about 16 hours and then jetted off to Thailand! My students had their semester exams so I was free to jalan-jalan. We only get a certain amount of international vacation days and domestic vacation days so I really wanted to use my international days while I had the chance. So… off to Thailand I went! I’ve been wanting to get my scuba diving certification for awhile now and decided this solo vacation would be the perfect time to do it!

I threw this trip together the day before I left for Jakarta. It involved three flights and a five hour ferry. When we finally pulled up to the dock to get on the ferry, my jaw dropped. This is what I saw:

I knew I was in for a great week.

There are several islands/destinations in Southern Thailand and I’m not sure how I randomly picked the most beautiful and remote island ever but when the boat docked (after a five hour ferry ride!) my jaw dropped for a second time that day. This is what I saw:

And sunset night #1

Most of my six days there were spent diving. The PADI course is several hour of classroom work/movies and then one confined water dive (pool) and four ocean water dives! Omg I was terrified at first. I almost quit. I was in a class with three other macho guys. Like army, not scared of anything guys. And then there’s me. The adventurous but never life-on-the-line adventurous kind of girl. But hey. I had to prove that girls can do this too. I am proud that I beat two of the guys in the 200 meter swim and while while I was terrified for parts of the diving – once I got over it, it was AWESOME. I 100% loved it. And now I’m a certified scuba diver!

(For anyone else who randomly wants to visit Koh Tao, Thailand and learn to dive – I can’t recommend Master Divers enough. Lemme know if you want more details…)

This trip is best told in photos so I’ll just share the rest of them… 😀

Oceanside brunch

Hiking

Stunning view of the island

The other view from the hike… WOW

Sunrise on the ferry home…

And then… I had to say goodbye to painted skies and endless oceans, and come home to Palangkaraya. Yup, think Flint’s water is bad??

December is busy no matter where you are!

December 30, 2015 by Mackenzie

So I realize it’s been almost a month since I’ve last written. I’ve meant to blog so many times… but things have been all over the map here – the last month has held some of my lowest points in Indonesia (see Not Gonna Sugarcoat It), as well as some of my favorite memories. It also held a little bit of travel as I went to Jogja for Christmas. In addition to the travel and the emotional highs and lows, I’ve suddenly become extremely busy. I’m teaching, tutoring, being tutored, running English clubs, hosting informal hangouts with my students, and also trying to be an adult and keep my house clean, eat something besides instant noodles (haven’t achieved this yet), and exercise here and there. Oh, and internet is always a struggle so uploading pictures and posting a blog post is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

However, it’s Wednesday afternoon, December 30th and school finished early today for the holiday and I’m now nestled into a comfy booth in the corner of a cafe that I just found. With an avocado juice and free wifi, I’m a happy girl.

Which means, an update. So much has happened in the last month and I have no idea where to start…

I just posted today something that I wrote several weeks ago but never had the chance to post. It was my most difficult time yet in Indonesia and everything seemed to be going wrong. I didn’t have internet to post it then, and quickly afterwards things got better and I forgot about it. But today, I saw that unposted post and realized I should probably post it… it’s important to know this isn’t all sugarplums and fairies. So go read that first: Not Gonna Sugarcoat It and then come back and read this and see how things got better 😀

But back to the good… On December 1st, the Christian students and teachers and I all participated in a huge Christmas Parade through the streets of Palangkaraya. It was a blast. I drove over to it with one of the teachers and a bunch of the 10th grade girls. The 10th graders are by far the shyest with me but they loosened up pretty quickly 😀

With the 10th grade girls

Who knew Palangkaraya even had this many people?!

Trying to hi-five every little kid on the sidewalk 😀

I looked like an idiot sprinting through the streets but everyone loved it

On December 2 and 3rd the local tv station came to our school and filmed all of our extra-curriculars for two days. One after another, student groups performed traditional dances, showed off their pantomime skills, did martial arts, etc, and of course showed off their English skills! They filmed my English club – I led the students through a few games while the cameramen went from table to table filming the students and me. Afterwards, they wanted to interview me! I wasn’t nervous at all, but then everyone started telling me how big of a deal this was and then I got really nervous! ha!! But it went well and was super fun! Apparently this will air as an hour-long segment or something? I’m not sure but I’m excited to see whatever it turns out to be!

Microphones and everything!

The tv anchor on the left, me, my student, and the two English teachers

On the second day of filming, about 100 students did a traditional Dayak dance. Of course, they wanted me to participate so into the middle I went! It was hilarious and the tv cameras LOVED it. At one point they had the camera right in my face and I was so bad at the dance but it was hilarious anyways 😀

My school also apparently does the “penguin dance” on fridays so we had to highlight this for the tv station. I’d never done it before (they do it at 6am and I don’t have to come to school that early so I’ve never seen it.) But again, I was placed smack in the front and literally danced in circles with my hands at my sides like a penguin. It was the funniest five minutes…

Chilling with the teachers watching the kids perform

After the craziness of those few days, things settled down a little. I taught classses, began tutoring some girls for the TOEFL exam, started my Bahasa Indonesia tutoring sessions, and spent a lot of time hanging out with the kids. December meant a lot of snowflake making and tree decorating. They LOVED it! I showed a few girls how to make snowflakes and the next night, more girls came over and asked how to make them… for five nights in a row I had kids coming over to make snowflakes! It’s been so fun. And mom sent me a tree making kit – I snagged a few of the girls after dinner and together we made it! I can’t describe to you how cute and excited they were!

Mom sent a Christmas package – I was so, so happy 😀 I didn’t ask for any of it but it was everything I needed or could have wanted!

I also added some decorations to my house… this is my favorite.

The pancake parties have expanded. We now make pancakes and play UNO all the time. We even bought out Hypermart (~Target) of their pancake mix. So… I bought flour and sugar and we’ll try making some from scratch!

They’ve also taken me to the local swimming pool a few times… its so fun! But so many of the kids can’t swim!! They go anyways and I make sure to keep my eye on all of them to make sure no one is drowning! (Of course there are no lifeguards)

Then, the weekend before Christmas, we had a huge Christmas party at school. The students prepared for WEEKS! Which was irritating for me as a teacher, because they kept skipping class to prepare for the show. However, it was very fun (all six hours!) and we took tons of pictures, sang Christmas songs, and received presents. I got two more batik shirts from the school! I have so many now! Oh, and the teachers sang a song… in the traditional Dayak language. Of course, that meant I participated too. All the students were delighted when they saw me on stage singing in Bahasa Dayak!

The teachers practicing for our debut 😉

Tisia and I

On the 25th, I headed to Jogja for my short Christmas vacation! I have so much to share from that trip so I’ll save it for another post 😀 Which I promise is coming soon!

Mackenzie

A Look Back