Good grief, Charlie Brown

Training is exhausting!  I’ll likely write this post over a few days as usually don’t have the energy or the desire after a day of training or language classes to sit down and draft a blog post.

 

Overall, things are going really well!  Today marks the end of our first week (5 days) of language classes, and it has proven itself to be the most intensive structured language learning experience I’ve ever had.  I specify ‘structured’ because getting dropped in rural Costa Rica for 2 months of Master’s research last summer with little more than my wits and my laughably basic Spanish skills presented it’s own unique set linguistic challenges.  Whereas there I was left to pick up what I could ‘on the streets’, here we’ve got 3-8 hours of language class per day, which is great for picking up a language quickly but it is EXHAUSTING.  I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to sign up for free semi-private Bahasa Indonesia classes offered by the Indonesian Consulate in Toronto which I attended diligently throughout the summer, which are paying off like crazy in terms of the speed a which I am building up my skills but there’s so much to learn.

 

I can thankfully report that the rumours that Bahasa Indonesia is a pretty straightforward language to pick up are true (Note, the language is called Bahasa Indonesia, and not Bahasa as some told me.  Bahasa actually means “language” in Indonesian, although I did hear an Indonesian staff member refer to the language as Bahasa in conversation today so maybe (probably) you can use either?) 

 

Phonetic pronunciation, no tones, no tenses and the simplest pluralisation structure ever (repeat the noun twice) mean that it’s easy to pick up the basics  of the language quite quickly but then the real work begins.  I began language classes in pretty good stead as I already had the basics mostly under control but within this first week the difficulty has been ratcheted up daily and now the playing field has been levelled significantly and we’re all in unfamiliar territory.  Fortunately we also happen to have a fantastically patient language teacher who’s approach to language teaching has made this language learning experience different than any other I’d had before.  He is very much against direct translation of words, and tends to teach using as little English as possible, usually opting to act out the meaning of a word or explain it using Indonesian words we already know.  We’ve also been taught to sing a few simple Indonesian songs and have field trips which forces me to use my language skills (read: make a fool of myself, but more about that later) outside the classroom in real world situations.  Overall, although tiring I am really enjoying the process.  Homework tonight is to write 3 or 4 paragraphs about what we do each day as part of our daily routine which we are presenting in class for discussion (again, in Indonesian) tomorrow.  In the afternoon, we are also going out to interview people who grew up in our respective placement locations (for me, Ende which is on the island of Flores).  I have been in contact with the previous volunteer who’s job I am going to be assuming fully at the end of November when he leaves the placement and his advice was to really work on my language skills because there is practically no one who speaks English in Ende, and that no one at the University is fluent (I have brought some agricultural reference textbooks as well, but have been informed that I will have translate them into Indonesian before they will be useful to anyone, a task I plan to use as an excuse to really work on my language skills and which I can work at pretty independently as I work on finding my feet in Ende).  I anticipate the integration process is going to be pretty intense in that regard and I’m doing my best to prepare.

 

A few weeks ago, our morning language class covered numbers and bargaining.  Phrases like “Boleh kurang?”: Can you lower the price? Definitely come in handy in a place where haggling is a way of life.  As a fresh faced volunteer from North America, I have never been particularly good at the art of the hard bargain, and the next day, the women at the office were shocked and appalled when I told them I paid the equivalent of 2.50/kilo for the aptly named “snake fruit”.

The trouble with bargaining is I`m still somewhat unsteady on my feet when it comes to numbers.  Thus, although I know the appropriate response to “25,000 Rupiah/kilo!” is “No! That’s ridiculously expensive! How about 11,000 Rupiah?”  I instead choose to stand there like a jackass and try to figure out what number “Dua puluh lima ribu sekilo” is, especially when she fires it at you so fast it sounds like “DUPULULIMSKILO!!!”

 

By the time I had figured out how much she was asking for, the old lady at the stall had scoffed, chuckled something to the woman at the next stall over and shovelled TWO kilos of fruit into a bag, tied it up and placed it firmly into my hand, at which point I was too embarrassed at my poor grasp of the language to argue the point further,  and walked away.

 

I have to stop writing now, I have been dealing with vertigo intermittently for the past two days and another bout has come on. I end up feeling very dizzy and nauseous for a while, while trying not to throw up or pass out.  Will explain/continue this later.