Day 158. Kyle & Leanne joint blog. Ubud, Bali, Indonesia.

Today is a day we wake up glum.  Glum because our classes yesterday were pretty tough on us.  Add to that limited sleep thanks to the village’s ample rooster population. And we still have to spend at least 4 hours prepping for today.  It’s only a few bad apples.  The kids are just kids but still the taste of disrespect is still fresh.  However, perseverance must win, as the vast majority of students are very engaged and eager to learn English.  It’s super hard work to be a teacher and now we appreciate that fact even more.  

“It will be better today.  It will be better today.”  We try to pump ourselves up.  We also need to double prep two lessons today so we can take the morning off tomorrow to tour around Ubud. The teens are hard at work finding worksheets, creating presentations, prepping learning games, and sharing tactics that worked well. True teamwork. 

We head over to the school. A dozen kids see our van coming from down the street so they race our van two blocks to the school. Smiling and enthusiastic, we emerge from our van with the positive mental attitude that every teacher somehow must muster every day. Many of us are over-prepared today as we have learned the hard way having too little, too hard or too easy activities creates time where antics and issues occur.  Keep them BUSY! So we lug in a huge stack of worksheets today.  

The school is quite minimalist.  No field or court, just a simple blacktop. Wooden tables and benches serve 3 children per table. There is only the President’s photo on the wall (with a couple of other government leaders) and a handmade calendar.  Kyle and Corey’s room has a broken window and only the 4th grade room is nicely painted. We learn later in the week that the children have to clean their classrooms with old mops that have seen their day.  There’s no books around much less a school library. The school is no frills and vastly different from classrooms back home. 

Today the students overall were notably better behaved. Apparently Gita’s discussion with their teachers sunk in hard and whatever their day-to-day teacher said in return absolutely worked. A couple of kids even brought us bracelets trying to use a kindness to make up for their troublemaking peers.  A few compliments even come our way, flattering us. Break time brings more pure joy and happiness as Monster Tag and Duck, Duck, Goose bring out in the inner child in us.  

John did have the challenge of showing up and once again, the mischievous student duplicating machine was hard at work turning his 10 kids into 15 kids.  John has the hardest class of all now with the most kids, only one teacher and the youngest kids.  But John survives smiling at the end of the session. The ride back to the center is back to the laughing, jovial ride with everyone talking and happy. 

Thursday night is a special weekly dinner at the center with all the volunteers and staff in attendance.  At the end of dinner, all those departing get up and give speeches on what the experience meant to them. It was very cool to see the range of people from different countries, ages, backgrounds all with the common goal of giving back and helping make the world a better place.

Leanne and Kyle have a nightcap after dinner at Dawa’s food and drink place in the village with Kerri and Troy in beanbag chairs overlooking a rice paddy field. They are our new friends from Sacramento who are a lot of fun to hang out with.  Troy played professional basketball in six different countries so it was great to hear his perspective on living abroad. A great way to end a much better day.