TRAVELS WITH MY TEXTBOOKS 3

Related tags: Gap Year, Teaching, Work Experience, Blog

Kate Ross gets up to some monkey business

My director of studies has begun to use my linguistics degree to his advantage. Apparently, having spent three years of your life studying advanced syntax should result in a greater grammatical knowledge than the average person. Since I am the first to admit that I spent most of my degree in coffee shops and bars, I feel he is possibly sweet-talking me into teaching the more challenging classes.

I now teach advanced English. Admittedly, the grammar doesn't daunt me quite as much as I'd expected, but the vocabulary is substantially more advanced. As a native speaker of English, it's fairly unnerving to realise how reliant I've had to become on my dictionary. Definitions now involve lengthy descriptions. The topics are much more serious; urbanisation and utopia. When faced with a roomful of seventeen-year-olds, you can imagine they aren't always widely enthusiastic.

I have also begun teaching a brand new beginner class. After the challenges of advanced English, it is slightly less brain-taxing to go back to the basics. Typically, the students, aged four and five, are completely split on their activity preferences. Two love to sing - one so much that 'Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes' has been on repeat in my head for a week. Five love to colour. One refuses to speak, even in Indonesian, and prods me or smashes a pencil case on the table to get my attention. Three others refuse to stop speaking.

Luckily, they all love to be read to, although their preference on the choice of book always takes some careful negotiation. They also all love Max, who is a terrifying character in their workbooks who eats flowers and appears on the supplementary cassette (yes, really) and DVD material with a high-pitched squeaky voice. If I do not bring Max the puppet (who is missing one eye) to class, I am met with uproar.

Finally, one pupil suffers from extreme separation anxiety. Since my friends and cousins aren't quite at the having babies stage yet, it's been a long time since I've seen a tantrum first hand. Just in case I'd forgotten just how ear-shattering they are, I was lucky enough recently to witness one in full force. Foot stomping, screaming, crying, punching and kicking. For half an hour. The catalyst was not a natural disaster, the end of the world, or the sad demise of Max, as her outburst seemed to suggest. Instead, her mother had left the room. As her tantrum reached its peak, another student, who had earlier displayed his own scene of separation anxiety, arched an eyebrow at me conspiratorially as if to say 'look at her making a scene. I'm far beyond that' and promptly shushed her. The other girls shook their heads, tutted and squashed their heads between one shoulder and a hand in an attempt to block out the noise while keeping the other hand free for colouring. Needless to say, this particular student hasn't been back since.

After all of these adjustments to my schedule and the extra energy that has been required, I was glad to take my first proper holiday since January. My parents and sister came to visit for nine days and held me responsible for their excursion through Indonesia. My personal challenge was speaking Bahasa Indonesia. I began lessons two months prior to their visit, partly because I wanted to be able to travel to more remote areas by myself, which necessitated speaking some bare essentials, but also because I'm a naturally curious person. I like to know what is being said around me, and it's always a bonus when you're teaching because you are much more aware of when your pupils understand or when they are not actually doing any work, but discussing the Jonas Brothers or what you're wearing. My Ibu (teacher) was confident that I could cope. And, astonishingly, I did. The conversations were all very similar, but there was only one situation where they did not understand me. And in this particular conversation, I am confident that they chose not to, because I know that the words 'orange' and 'lemon' are very different. Speaking Bahasa Indonesia is an undeniable advantage. It goes without saying that you earn a much greater level of respect from the locals and you can wangle discounts everywhere.

After weeks of planning, my family and I had eventually settled on a route. Senggigi in Lombok and Gili Meno introduced them to Indonesia's beautiful beaches. Ubud, Bali's cultural capital, allowed time for art galleries and markets. Approximately twenty-four hours after her arrival, my mother was planning her return. It reminded me that I had almost begun to take Indonesia for granted.

Some very lazy days spent soaking up the sunshine were only interrupted by sunset spotting and a visit to the turtle sanctuary on Gili Meno. Meno is a fairly desolate island, an hour's walk in circumference and devoid of any kind of motorised transport. Although the strip of hotels and cafes are a blatant comfort for the visiting tourists, the locals are extremely friendly and the sunbathers and dining companions sparse. According to the locals, this all changes in July and August, when elbow jostling and over-crowding mean that some travellers are left to kip on the beach.

It was in mountain-perched Ubud that my Bahasa Indonesia was the most useful. In the jostling, colourful markets, full of sarongs, jewellery, spices, musical instruments, clothes and incense, when I wasn't tracking down mangosteen and rambutan (fruits I have sadly never found in the UK), I found myself gallantly repeating 'that's crazy! I live here, those are tourist prices!' while my family pointed out their must-haves. This inevitably led to a predictable but delightful conversation about whether I was married, what I thought of Indonesian people, and why on earth I had decided to leave the UK.

Ubud is a beautiful town just to kick back and meander aimlessly through, full of temples and galleries, with some jaw-droppingly beautiful architecture, incredible shopping and a wealth of spas. Bali is predominantly Hindi and, in Ubud, this is stunningly evident. Even a casual stroll through the town inevitably involves dodging the offerings laid on the ground outside the houses. We walked through the rice paddies and spent an evening in the Grand Palace watching a traditional Legong Dance, complete with the full regalia of traditional Indonesian instruments, colourful outfits and masks. We also braved Monkey Forest, full of notoriously bad-tempered and aggressive monkeys. My friend's glasses are sporting bite marks from these particular menaces. A large billboard of instructions on what to do if a monkey jumps on you ('stand completely still and back away slowly') were situated near a stall selling bananas. As this was my second visit to Monkey Forest and it had been traumatic enough the first time, I instructed my family not to purchase any bananas themselves but instead to tactically position themselves near to a person with bananas. My logic was that the monkeys would prefer to attack someone who clearly had what they wanted. However, the plan did not go smoothly. A monkey stole a bag from my sister containing her recent purchases. It extracted a ring and proceeded to gnaw on it. After that incident, somehow even the baby monkeys weren't quite as cute and we all explored the forest fearfully, not wanting to be the first person to suggest that we retreat to a nice, safe spa.

After over a week of lazy indulgence, I was surprisingly eager to hurtle back into hustling, fast-paced Jakarta and my day-to-day routine. But seeing Indonesia through someone else's eyes was enlightening. It's important to be reminded that year round sunshine, the friendliest people on earth, beautiful white sand beaches, and casual weekend trips to Bali are a fairly unique perk to someone's daily existence.

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