Sumbawa to Singaraja on a Bike

Just back in Singaraja from Sumbawa. Another one of those long strange trips (what would we have done without the Dead?). 15.5 hours from Sumbawa to Singaraja on a 125 cc motorbike. My old Honda has taken a beating over the past five years in Sumbawa. I’ve run into a kampong dog and dumped the bike resulting in more injuries to me than to the bike; I took a broadside from a wild boar one night returning from a late school meeting; my teenage daughter had an over libidinous suitor smash into her while he was trying to show her his motorbike skills; and five years of rocky roads, pot holes, salt air corrosion and she’s still running.

My trip from Sumbawa to Singaraja on a motorbike has been a point of contention that has drawn in ex-wives, children, my wife (leading the “take the plane” group), and a few close friends. The pro-bike group included my colleague – the school driver – and my first wife and my first child. Everyone else was in the “you’re too old to be driving a motorbike across three islands alone”. My contrary nature has always led me to challenge anything that someone told me I couldn’t do. 35 years ago, one friend supported me when I decided to try to be a single parent, work a full time job, and go to school full time. I ended up with a Ph.D. and a son who is happily married and raising my new granddaughter. So driving a motorbike across three islands seemed like a piece of cake.

My plan was to leave my house in Sumbawa at 3:00 and arrive in my house at 18:00 so that I would miss the night traffic in Bali (I’m developing cataracts and the light from oncoming vehicles blinds me completely now). The night traffic in Sumbawa consists of water buffalo and horses out grazing and the occasional musang. I can deal with night traffic like that.

I spent a little longer than usual over coffee and cigarettes with my wife who was trying to delay my trip until sunrise, so I took off at 3:25. Despite driving slowly to negotiate the terrible roads in the south of Sumbawa, I made it to the harbor in Poto Tano in exactly 2 hours – only 20 minutes slower than usual. The harbor master waved me on the ferry that was just about to leave. I could see the lower deck filled with buses and trucks; the upper deck was filled with passengers checking out the final boarding. Just as I was about to enter, I noticed that the last truck was having some difficulty negotiating its entrance. I had to wait and wait and wait. The ferry crew was able to maneuver the truck in but I couldn’t get the bike in. The harbor master said that another ferry would be in in just a few minutes.

An hour later I was sitting up on the deck with Pak Hussan who works the ferries back and forth between Sumbawa and Lombok. He works and lives on the ferry; his wife and kids are back in Jakarta. “It’s not the best of lives”, he says, “but I make a living and my children will get though high school and inshallah college. What more can someone with a junior high education hope for. I’ve been working on ships since I was a boy. This is all I know.”

We sit and chat about Indonesia for a while until he goes off to work the snack bar. I sit and smoke and try to catch a bit of sleep. A few guys come up and slide in next to me on my perch on the back of the boat. I notice that they are checking out my rather used black Chinese slippers. “hey pak look at the bule. His shoes are worse than ours. He must be too poor to have some good shoes.” They enjoy a good laugh. Oh, I love this – just to be a little naughty as my daughter said. “Yah dong, pasti miskin sekali.” The folks sitting around us had a good laugh as the joker lost a little face.

I get off the ferry at 8:30 and take off across Lombok which has an incredible road that crosses the middle of the island. I do 90 on the desa sections and weave around the cidomos and bemos that clog up traffic in the village markets. I make the harbor in two hours – a record for me. I get directly on the ferry – a good piece of luck. We leave in 30 minutes but the ferry is almost full and I’m lucky to secure a seat on an uncomfortable wood bench on the back of the ferry. The currents are good and we make it to Bali in 3.5 hours and then wait for 1.5 hours to dock.

The ferry is full of people smsing about the arrival time. I haven’t slept yet and I’m looking at clouds over Bali. I don’t want to do the 3 hour drive in the rain. I’m feeling cranky and dirty and thinking for some reason about a chocolate malt from a little coffee shop in Chicago.

The police at Padang Bai almost always check your papers. Mine are in order and I take off wanting to make up a little lost time and get to Singaraja before nightfall. The road from Padang Bai up along the east coast has been repaired over the years and is an incredible piece of work. I do 90 easily until the road gives out and then I drop down to sixty.

I hit Tejakula and there’s a huge ceremony. We’re all backed up. How come my Hindu friends didn’t give me notice about this? They know I’m coming today. I hang around watching the ceremony pass by along with the inevitable van of tourists in ceremonial clothes snapping photos. I get through by walking my bike along the side of the road. I don’t want to bother anyone’s ceremony anymore than I want anyone to bother mine, but the reality is that I want to get home before dark and it’s getting dark. Heavy clouds but no rain yet.

I hit Bukti up farther north and have to wait for another ceremony. What did I miss here? Is this a Bali holy day? I wait and suddenly it’s dark. I take off the sunglasses and switch to nightglasses. The traffic is still relatively benign but it’s sundown and Balinese seem to enjoy wandering around the road after the afternoon mandi. I know this from years of taking the Denpasar-Singaraja road, but I hadn’t yet made a connection to it being an island wide cultural trait. Everyone seems to be out walking along the road just when my vision is at its worst.

Suddenly the sign for Kubutambahan looms up. What happened to Air Sanih? I realize that I’m sliding into the zone and pinch myself a few times. I glide though Kubutambahan and the sign for Singaraja pops up. Fifteen minutes more and I’m at home. So what’s the lesson here?

It ain’t over until the Fat Lady sings.

Life in a small village – when is close too close?

Today is just a short response to a recent email about living in a village in Bali. This is a fairly common theme in many of the emails that I receive about living in Bali, and so I’m writing here so that I can redirect emails to this blog. Hmm…Does that seem complicated enough?

Life in a small village, or a small neighborhood (if you life in the city) is pretty much the same here as it is in the US. The key point to note is that everyone knows all of your business – if you tell one person, you can assume that you’ve told them all. Village life has a limited number of amusements; gossip is one of the favorites.

If you happen to live in a typical village anywhere in Indonesia, you’ll most likely be within earshot of your neighbors unless you happen to own a large property or keep an air-conditioned house with all the doors and windows closed.

We have a large house here in Sumbawa with a fair amount of land surrounding it. Our neighbor to the east is a hotel and our neighbor to the west is the jungle. My wife and I could have a screaming argument and unless someone in the hotel was trying to listen and we were right by the door in the living room, no one would hear it. 

Our house in Bali is set in a very crowded kampung (neighborhood). Our house was built for the tropics and is very open as we don’t use air-conditioners. If I fell off my balcony, I’d fall on my neighbors roof. So not much privacy. If we have a screaming argument, our neighbors know every detail. In fact, neighbors two or three houses away would probably hear it as well.

If you have a hard time being constantly on stage, it can be hard living in a small village. You might want to air-condition a room just to have family arguments in.

So what’s the lesson here? Keep good relations with your neighbors; in a small community they will be your support if you cultivate good relationships or your downfall if you step on a lot of toes. Neighbors will help you with all sorts of things without you asking and won’t expect anything in return other than that you reciprocate when they need some help. If you make enemies, they can make your life quite uncomfortable until you repair the damage. I’ve been on both sides, and I make it a point to stay as friendly as my rather cranky constitution allows.

The second lesson – keep your fighting (and lovemaking) down in decibels and you’ll keep some of your privacy.

Liminality

I first came across the term liminality as a young anthropology student studying Victor Turner and ritual. Liminality is the sense of being between two states or cultural identities. It can be thought of as being a transitional state. I read an article by Bob Trubshaw recently that talked about liminality in terms of borders. Humans set up borders whether they are physical borders between one place and another, cultural borders between being a child and an adult, temporal borders between one time period and another.

A classic anthropological example is the rituals surrounding boys in certain tribal cultures moving from boyhood to manhood. In this case, the boys are taken away from their mothers and the community and isolated in a special place. They are put through a series of trials and after completing these they are reintroduced to the community, often being given different names. The liminality in this case is the period that the boys spend in their ritual setting where they are neither boys nor men. Their between two social categories.

An example more familiar to Westerners is the traditional wedding where the couple go through a series of rituals leading up to the marriage ceremony. Once the ceremony is complete the couple leave for a honeymoon where they are away from their regular group of friends and relatives. Once the honeymoon is over, the couple returns where they are recognized as having entered a new social category.

So, I mentioned in the last blog that I was feeling a sense of liminality. I’ve been trying to sort this out – where in the traditional structure associated with liminality I am. After all, I’m still at work, still teaching everyday, still working on developing curriculum, still holding meetings with parents. So where am I and why do I have this sense of liminality. And, an added question, does this relate to yesterday’s comments on “short-timers disease?”

Well, despite still being in place and carrying out my regular duties, I’m recognized by myself and by others as being different from the other teachers in my school because I’ve already notified everyone that I’m leaving and my contract is running out at a time when my colleagues have all renewed theirs. And yet, at the same time, I haven’t reached the stage known as retirement – one of those sociocultural boundaries that we set up to define a person’s life in a culture and community.

Not having my Turner around (the ex-husband of an ex-wife has it), I googled the term and found that the Wikipedia article mentioned that liminality is “…characterized by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. One’s sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation. Liminality is a period of transition where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior are relaxed - a situation which can lead to new perspectives.”

Good, so now that I’ve labeled the sense of liminality and identified and matched some of the characteristics to some of the feelings, dreams, comments and insights that have been invading my life over the past month, I can get on to seeing what I’m going to do with this new understanding.

Liminality, short-timers disease

Two weeks to go until vacation. I’m getting strange feelings with retirement now only 12 working weeks away. It’s something like liminality. More on this in a few days.

And besides liminality, I’m fighting the urge to get short-timers disease. So far I’ve avoided it and am actually working even more than usual, but I can feel the pull a lot. When you don’t have much longer to go and you have plans that you are looking forward to, you get a feeling that you’re marking time. In my case, I really want to see if I can make a minimal living doing freelance writing. I’ve written over 20,000 words so far on a book about relocating to Bali. I’m about half-way done. Then I have to figure out how to sell it. And that is what is really occupying my mentally and intellectually at this time. 

My colleagues get really irritated when I mention how much longer I have to go, and I find that rather amusing. If they want to quit working, why don’t they? Money is such an addiction. Too bad that you have to have it.

I’m definitely going to miss teaching and students; I’m definitely not going to miss the rest of it. Hmm, I think that I’ve said this before.

The weather is getting better, but we still have quite a bit of rain. You never know from moment to moment if it’s going to rain or not. Everything is incredibly green here with all the rain. We have all sorts of fruits. I’m going to miss this place.

We still haven’t gotten more than a few inquiries about buying the house, and only two about renting it, but nothing more. I would like to get all this sorted out soon. It would be a shame to leave the house empty, and I would like the income. I told Su that we should drop the rental down a few million a month, and she’s thinking about it. Another idea is to rent it out to surfers. It would be seasonal and something of a pain to keep track of, but it could be done. I kind of like the idea as it would give me a reason to make a few trips over here occasionally. We’re going to think more about this in the coming weeks.

Well, time to get this week started. Parent-teacher conferences. My last.

What I’d Teach the Teachers

I’m cross-posting this on several of my blogs because…well, because I think that it needs to be said, and I hope that my Indonesian friends who are teachers will take this in the collegial spirit in which it was written. This was first posted on the Jakartass.blogspot.com website.

What I’d Teach the Teachers

International teachers who teach in a developing country generally teach at the best schools that the country has to offer. Quite often national students are not allowed to attend those schools, or the tuition is too high for them to afford. In many developing countries, there are a variety of choices for national students: the government schools, private schools (either religious or non-sectarian), and international schools. From my experience, the average national school in developing countries is on par with the worst of our schools in the United States. There are many reasons for this - money (for facilities, resources, training and salaries) being the main one.

It’s heartening to see so many international schools develop community projects that revolve around helping the local schools. But, like international aid projects, those kinds of programs can only do so much. Developing countries need to develop and fund their education systems, and the rich and powerful need to be leading that fight. When rich Indonesians or Indians or Pakistanis can put their kids in private schools, they have little incentive to improve the national education system.

I’ll be honest about this. My wife and I became more involved with the local schools when our own children left the international school system and entered the national school system. It’s time that the movers and shakers got moving and shaking on improving Indonesian schools. What follows are some of my thoughts on Indonesian education, starting with what I know best - teachers.

Let me start off with a little background. First, I started teaching 32 years ago, and I’ve taught students from ages 3 to age 60. What’s that mean? I’ve either been fairly good at what I do, or I’ve been lucky, or I’m an expert at CYA. Most probably a bit of all three. Second, I have a lot of respect for many of the Indonesian teachers that I’ve met – they work for peanuts in crumbling schools with few resources and little parent support (not to blame the parents either as most of the ones that I know are occupied with trying to scratch out a living and provide as best they can for their children). My wife and I give as much support to the schools as possible, but here are a few things that I’d like to teach the teachers.

 

·          Don’t teach to the test

·          Students will respond to interesting lessons

·          Long fingernails may be personally irritating, but they don’t have much to do with           education.

·          Use your time wisely.

·          Individualized education is a possibility

·          Listen to what students have to say, you might be surprised at what you hear

·          Professional development, professional development, professional development

·          Parents are Partners – include them in the education of their child

·          Organize and develop a real teachers’ organization

 

Don’t Teach to the Test

This isn’t just for Indonesian teachers, although the amount of time that my children spend cramming for the national exams is outrageous and takes away precious time that could be used for some real learning, i.e. that is developing knowledge and understanding, not memorizing facts and figures.  Barack Obama said something very interesting last week in a speech in Virginia when he was discussing education. He said that the US needs to expect excellence from our students, but that we need to stop teaching to the test. High stakes testing is found everywhere these days; it’s time that we all realize that doing well on a test is not the same as education. Take a look at the 21^st Century Literacy movement. It’s where we need to go. 

Students will respond to interesting lessons

Reading from the book (when our students have them) and parroting back answers is boring. It’s boring for the students and boring for the teachers. Bring in outside resources, get the students to do the presenting, break them up into groups and have a debate, let your personality come through in your lessons. One of the things I almost never hear an Indonesian student say about their teacher is that he/she is interesting or cool or fun. Education shouldn’t be a drag. 

Long Fingernails and Hair

I don’t know how many times I’ve watched a child run back in the house because they just figured out that they might get punished by the teacher for having fingernails that are too long or hair that needs a trim. I thought the hair thing went out in the 70s. Take a look at the hair on kids on tv, quite a number of the cool ones are a bit shaggy. Shaggy might be cool. I can’t quite figure out why my kids are more concerned with the length of their hair and nails than their homework.

Use your time wisely

The school day for most Indonesian children is short enough as it is – my son in 6^th grade does a period a day less than my students do. That’s ok if you use all of the time for teaching, but what about all the days that kids spend hanging out doing basically nothing around exam times, and the days spent sweeping the school? The schools should have a sufficient janitorial staff to take care of these duties. Provide some jobs for the folks that need them.

Individualized education is a possibility

We can individualize our teaching. I watched an Indonesian teacher at a “good” school spent forty-five minutes on a lesson that most kids had figured out in 15 minutes because a few kids didn’t get it. One size fits all only in cheap nightgowns. Students learn and work at their own pace; we can keep them engaged if we give them lessons that challenge them. A class that is always all on the same page may look good to someone, but it most likely won’t be to the students.

Listen to what students have to say

Students have a lot to say about a lot of things. They think, they question, they want to understand how the world works and that means that they have to work at it. They’ll get more from telling you about a concept or an issue or what algorithm works best for them, than they will from you telling them about it. What ideas and backgrounds and mindsets are they bringing to class? That’s where we need to start. It’s old hat now in Western education to say that teachers should be guides rather than the final authority, and most of us have gotten that (well, I hope so). According to Edgar Dale’s book, Audio-Visual Methods in Technology: “After 2 weeks we tend to remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear, 30% of what we see, 50% of what we hear and see, 70% of what we say [and] 90% of what we both say and do.” It’s time this lesson reached Indonesia.

Professional Development

I can’t stress enough how much good PD has done for my teaching and my understanding of what it is that I do everyday. And there’s still so much to learn. Read about your subject, think about it, talk about it, discuss it with your colleagues. Push for PD. See below for more.

Parents are Partners

As a teacher, I know that some parents can be irritating, rude, and difficult to deal with, but the overwhelming majority want what’s best for their children, and they will support a communicative teacher with all their resources. Let them know what the homework is, give them regular updates on how their children are doing, create a school or class newsletter. Have an open house night for parents to see what’s going on in the classroom. Get them to provide extra resources if they have them. Children will be more responsible for their education if they know that there is regular communication between school and home.

Organize

Teachers need to be paid more, they need professional resources, they need professional development, they need modern technology in the classrooms. They won’t be given all this by bureaucrats and politicians. They have to demand it, and they need to do it with their students and their parents as partners. It’s time that the government takes education seriously and realizes that by shortchanging children today, they’re shortchanging the country tomorrow.

Time for Another Retiring in Bali Blog

I probably get about ten emails a month asking for information on moving to Bali. Some of them are from people who want to work here, and I can only offer limited advice for those folks unless they’re teachers, and even then the advice is pretty much tempered by my own peculiarities such as – I won’t work for a language school that pays pennies and offers poor conditions just so that I can live in Bali. I’d much rather live in Kazakhstan and get paid well. Actually, I’d like to try living in Kazakhstan now that I think about it.

Then, too, some folks have girlfriends who have just the right place for them and they want some advice. That’s a minefield that I don’t want to enter. Been there and done that and screwed up – so I don’t comment on people’s relationships and offer advice from far although I know that there are websites and forums that will.

Now that I’ve written a bit on retiring, I get quite a few requests from folks – usually guys but sometimes women – who want to retire to Bali, and I try to answer those as best as I can but then again, my own situation is fairly specific – an Indonesian wife, a bunch of kids, and a long history in Indonesia so writing a general answer to a question like, “I want to retire to Bali and live simply. How much does it take?” is pretty tough.

What you see below is where I am now in my replies to those folks. I’ll take any advice on what else I might say.

I’m not sure how much Bali is Paradise – you might want to take a look at a few of my articles on Hubpages about Paradise. But one man’s Paradise is another man’s desert or something like that.

Questions about how much money one needs to retire are pretty subjective. There are questions about the number of people that you’ll be supporting, where you want to live, what kind of food can you eat (and still enjoy it), what kinds of entertainment do you like and need, how much do you drink (and what do you drink), what kind of living arrangements do you need in terms of basic amenities (bathrooms being one of the most frequently cited questions), how often you’ll want to go back to the States, medical issues/insurance, and a few more things that will pop up. Can you be a little more specific about your lifestyle?

So, what else do I say? I put some numbers up months ago about the budget that I had planned out for retirement, but the closer I get to the final day of work, the less likely it seems that I’m going to meet those numbers. Still, there are times that you just need to take a leap of faith and see how things turn out. And that’s about it. Live long and prosper.

The Soggy Life in the Tropics

Wow. Life without internet is tough. The school’s internet has been very spotty over the past week and getting anything done has been a struggle. I’m hoping that this new week brings some relief.

Weather is the big thing here. Rain, and rain, and rain. I’ve never seen it rain this much in the five years that I’ve been in Sumbawa. The back part of our property is soaked. Literally soaked. The ground can’t absorb anymore water and walking through the back is like walking on top of a sponge. That said, we have plenty of water in the house which means lots of showers and no problems with washing clothes. I’m waiting for the dry season to see how our new water system will actually work once it’s really put to the test. 

One of our goats died the other day – I’m not sure why, but we found her after a few days and her body was decomposing. Yuuck! Dave, our main dog, has developed the travel bug and insists on being let out in the village everyday or he goes ballistic. Once he has his run out with his buddies in the neighborhood, he comes home to eat. Ah these men.

With all the rain and the ground as soggy as it is, we’ve had a rash of snakes appearing looking for dry ground. Last night we had a green viper about half a meter long. Su got hysterical as she does when she sees snakes, and it was clear that it was poisonous so there was reason to be worried as it was dark and my teenage daughter almost stepped on it which would have been very bad.

I start on Week 15 tomorrow. That is I have 15 weeks of teaching here left. As my whole 8^th Grade Class (of 3) will be leaving with me, it should be an interesting period. All of my students have been accepted into boarding schools for high school: two will be going to the States and one to Canada. So we’ve done our job. One of the things about our school is that our students always do well in their new schools being placed in advanced classes or achieving top grades. That’s a good feeling for a teacher. It’s something that I’ll miss.

On the upside of leaving, I’m really looking forward to having all of us reunited in one house again. And I’m looking forward to having unblocked internet access. I haven’t been able to read some of my favorite and most valuable blogs just because they’re on blogspot.

I started writing on Hubpages to see what that’s like over there. It’s part of developing my web presence so that I can try my hand at freelancing for some blogs or websites starting in June. This is a new hub that I put up today about Paradise.

Life around the world as seen from Sekongkang

Living in a sleepy little village on a remote island is peaceful and pleasant, but can give one a sense of isolation from the global currents.

United States

I spent Sunday watching the primary results on CNN.  This is the first election that has caught my interest since  I left American almost 19 years ago. I followed as much as possible of the Clinton – Bush campaign, but back in those days we had limited tv in the jungle and no internet so I didn’t see that much of the election. After seven years of Bush and an awareness of the process of voting for citizens who live overseas, I’m closely following the election.

I had a chance to watch Obama’s speech in Virginia. He talked a lot about his plans for education. Highlights for me were the raising of salaries for teachers, support for early childhood education to close the achievement gap, supporting high standards but not teaching to the test (just hearing that gave Obama my vote as a teacher), universal heath care and taking care of senior citizens so that they can live their senior years with dignity. The speech was powerful and his explanation of his politics of hope was excellent and moving – something that I haven’t heard in a long time after seven years of the politics of fear and greed.

 Pakistan 

As I’ve often said, I loved my four years in Pakistan and revisit those times often. I just found a cache of photos from my Lahore days which were wonderful reminders of a great time. I still keep in touch with some of my friends and students from Pakistan, and the recent events are tragic and troubling. I know my Pakistani friends are concerned about where the country is heading. The news today about another bombing and the beatings of lawyers just adds to mess (as a friend described the situation).

So a mix of good news and bad news today. Naïve or not, after almost 59 years I still can’t see why folks can’t let other folks live their lives as they want to. The people that I know here – Muslim, Christian, Hindu, and Buddhist – just want to follow their religions, take care of their families, and enjoy life as much as possible. From their leaders, they want them to be believable, honest, and take care of the business of running the country. What’s so complicated about that?

 

Chinese New Year

I have a four-day holiday because of Chinese New Year. It’s great to have the few days off because for some reason, I’m just really tired even though we’ve just finished Week 4 of the Third Term and have another six weeks to go before vacation. Partly, it’s just the stress of school with the amalgamation coming up, as well as thinking about getting the house here in Sekongkang rented or sold before July, although we can actually do it later. It’s just going to be a hassle to try to do it from Bali so we’ll put a little more effort in to renting the house out with some notices on my blogs, podcasts, and websites, as well as a sign in front of the house.

Amazing Race Asia is holding auditions for the next season, and I really wanted to try out. My students’ responses have run from amusement to interest. They think that it would be cool to watch me on tv, but find it somewhat bizarre that joining the race is what I want to do with my first few months of retirement. Anyway, I can’t take two weeks off in April so this season is out, but I’m thinking about who could be a partner to try out the next time auditions come around. 

I was able to vote in my first U.S. election in decades the other day. This is one of those “I love the internet” moments. Fortunately, I’m a registered Democrat so I was able to use my last U.S. voting address in California to take part in the primary. For the election in November, I’ll need to get a ballot and do the voting by mail, but now that I know that I can do this without having a current address in the States (which I thought was necessary), I plan on voting in November.

The weather continues to be cloudy with intermittent rain; last night it poured and we lost power for an hour. Today it’s cloudy and humid. But, we have lots of water so what can I complain about?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last January

I passed through the last January of teaching. Now that I’m down to four months and two weeks (according to my counter on cyberbali.com), things will get interesting. I have three students left in my homeroom, and they all will be graduating in June. So none of us will be left – the thing now is to keep all of us from getting senioritis and keep us with business as usual. I just want to have some fun.

The weather here has calmed down a bit. Early last month we had some intense storms, and we had some water damage here, but we’ve just about finished with fixing the problems. I love doing the house repairs. It is nice have running water. The water tower that we put in last month is doing just what it is supposed to be doing, and I have no idea why I didn’t put this in years ago.

 

We’re at the point of getting serious about renting or selling the house here in Sekongkang. We had our first company in looking at the house for renting so we’ll see how that goes.  I’d like to sell the house, but Su prefers to rent it out. We’ll do whatever seems the best when the opportunity arises.

Last week we had a week of Qur’an reading here in Sekongkang. There was a huge parade here with students from as far north as Taliwang coming down here for the readings. Just like you would find in any small town in any country in the world, the whole village turned out to watch the students and teachers and dignitaries parade through the village on their way to the community field where the opening ceremonies were held. Life in a small village has its little pleasures.

Sam’s starting to prepare for the national exams that students take here at the end of 6^th grade and 9^th grade. I’m not a fan of these exams as students spend an inordinate amount of time preparing for the exams rather than carrying on the educational process. It also puts a lot of pressure on the students, as well as their families. Students in small remote villages like Sekongkang are at a disadvantage compared with students who live in large urban centers with more resources, but then if you look at education in the States, you’ll find a similar situation.

Well, time to get some work done around the house.