Ramadan in Indonesia

I just found out today that our travel dates (for the Indonesia cohort) are being modified slightly.  Instead of traveling 14-28 July, we will be traveling the 17 - 31 of July.  I'm very eager to travel and the dates really aren't that important, but the reason for the change is that Ramadan begins July 19 and the host teachers in Indonesia said it would be easier for them if we changed our travel dates.  Thinking about Ramadan in Indonesia reminded me of a puzzling incident while I was in Hyderabad.

Hyderabad is about 50% Muslim and while my daughter and I were there, we stayed with her friend, Sahiti, and her parents.  They were a devout Hindu family (at least the parents were!), and I remember seeing her mother doing her morning prayers and puja in the family shrine.  She would always arrive, freshly bathed, and complete her prayers.  When finished, she would ring a bell hanging by the entrance to the puja room.  So, I was used to hearing bhajans being sung every morning.  But one morning, I was in the bathroom and I caught the faintest whisper of an old Baptist hymn: "All to Jesus, I surrender.  Lord, I give myself to thee."  I strained to hear because I thought I must surely be hallucinating, although the Telugu accented English kind of belied the experience as a fantasy.  Who could be singing about Jesus in this Hindu neighborhood?  Later, Sahiti cleared up the mystery by explaining you could hear surrounding neighbors practicing various music in their homes.  At 4:30 AM (I was never up that early), you could hear the neighborhood muezzin's call to prayer for the Muslim faithful.  At 6:30 AM, a young girl could be heard practicing Indian classical music.  And then around 7:30, what I heard, two brothers who are church musicians would begin their practice.  Should I make a pun about them all living together in perfect harmony?  Nah, I'll restrain myself.  Kind of.

So, I can't wait to experience Ramadan in Jakarta, or wherever in Indonesia I find myself.  And maybe I'll be humming a tune.

The Danger of a Single Story

While engaging in an online course as part of the requirements for my Teachers for Global Classrooms fellowship, someone posted the following video as part of a discussion about being empathetic about cultural differences.  I was very impressed and wanted to include it here so I wouldn't forget it.  Although I can't remember the person who recommended it, I'm sure she was an English teacher who used it in conjunction with the novel, Things Fall Apart.

The moral is, we all have our prejudices and 'blindspots' and perhaps should be a bit more willing to actually listen to others and find out their story.  We might be amazed.  And humbled. 

To Travel With Abandon

I just saw on Facebook that a former student and her husband have decided that the money they're saving will be used for a 2 year period of travel instead of a house and car to start off their early married years.  In this economy, some might see that as a foolish choice, but I simultaneously jump up and down and applaud their boldness.  I think that taking such chances will result in benefits they can't even imagine now.  Travel enriches, expands and changes us in ways both expected and unexpected and is like a treasure chest that holds so many jewels that we can lovingly pick up and examine over and over without any fear of theft.

I remember when I was in college (oh so long ago!) that one of my deepest desires was to see Europe, and especially France because I had studied that language in high school and just loved it.  But there was no money for extra trips like that and then I was accepted into medical school.  By the end of the first semester, I knew with certainty that I did not want to be a physician (my squeamishness just could not be stamped out) and I settled into a year-long lab tech position with a pharmacology professor who happened to be Armenian.  

In that year of organic synthesis heaven, I worked with an Egyptian post-doc and a Chinese (Hong Kong) doctoral student.  There were only three of us in a small lab, and our conversations were quite eye-opening to me.  Just by virtue of their backgrounds, they of course had world-views that were unique to them and intriguing to me.  When I expressed my condolences to Sami over the assassination of Anwar Sadat, he very curtly informed me that domestically, Sadat had not been that popular; he was just loved by Western foreigners for opening diplomatic relations with Israel.  Then there was the perspective of Chou's visiting parents who thought New York City was quite parochial compared to the hustle-bustle, high-density population that was/is Hong Kong.  When they arrived in Oklahoma City, they felt like it was almost pastoral!

Because I really had no plans after med school, I decided to save my money and fulfill my dream of travel to Europe.  By the time I actually left for my two month back-packing adventure, I had met my future husband who had earned his Ph.D. at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and had many friends in and around London, Glasgow and Leicester so I never stayed in hotels while in the UK.  I bought a travel journal before I left and completely filled the 100+ pages by the time I had returned.  Many of the entries, as I look back at them, didn't have any  stunning revelations or epiphanies but were instead filled with observations of just how different the quotidian things were 'over there'.  Years later, when I traveled to India, I brought a similar journal and filled about that many pages in three weeks instead of two months!  India was either just that different or my skills at observing were more finely honed (hint: India was that different and I was enchanted by all of it).

The common thread that ran through both those journals and journeys, however, was that the differences I saw allowed me to see my own country (and life) through a completely different lens and to question why we do some of the things we do (like having a 50 gallon tank of hot water just waiting to be used, and reheating it when it's not used quickly enough or why students here sometimes literally toss away the marvelous chances they've been given).  I also felt more intensely alive while traveling; everything was an adventure, and I do mean everything (I have very fond memories of a French waitress in the port of Calais, looking simultaneously disgusted and contemptuous, teaching me how to chaussez de l'eau in the WC!).  I think it's that feeling of intensely, mindfully experiencing every moment of the day in a foreign land that is so addicting.  It's the memory of that feeling that makes me so strongly encourage others to travel as well. 

We always regret what we didn't do more than what we did (and sayings don't get to be cliches unless they have a bit of truth about them).  One of Stevie's (my former chemistry student) friends commented, "Oh!  That sounds like fun, but be safe!"  Pish posh.  Safe.  Be bold!  Cast off the bowlines and leave the shore of safety (and boredom) far, far behind.  You'll never regret it.  I never have.

Explanation

In spite of diving into various social media, I've never felt the urge to blog before and I wouldn't have started this blog except for the nudgings from a professional development program I'm a participant in.  But that's kind of typical; I rarely dive but am often pushed and THEN start swimming!


In the spring of 2011, I received an email from the Oklahoma State Department of Education's listserv about a grant program that offered the possibility of international travel.  While I was mulling over the logistics of possible travel, a colleague forwarded the same email to me and exclaimed, "This is right up your alley!"  That settled it, and I decided to apply.  Turns out, over 400 educators from across the United States thought it would be a great idea, too, and also applied.  I was ecstatic when I discovered in early September that I was one of 68 teachers who had been selected.  At that point I only knew that there were six possible countries of travel: Brazil, Ghana, Morocco, India, Indonesia and Ukraine.  During the application process, we had been asked to list our top three choices, and mine were India, Indonesia, and Ghana.  The final unveiling of destination would not occur until after we had completed an online component.


The entire program is funded through the United States Department of State's Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs.  It is administered through IREX (International Research and Exchanges Board), and all of the TGC (Teachers for Global Classrooms) cohort was introduced to each other via an eight-week long online course.  I have never had the experience of an online-course before and it was quite eye-opening.  Of course, there was the expected reading (which was both substantial and fascinating) but there were also the asynchronous discussion posts and various new technologies which I had to quickly acquaint myself with.  One of those included an online concept-map known as Mind42.  I truly hated creating updates to that at first because it seemed so cumbersome to use.  But somewhere in week 2 of the course, I began to realize the value of it and eagerly posted all the great ideas, websites and technologies I was being introduced to.  By the end of the course, glancing over my mindmap reminded me of all those ideas I had that tend to get lost in the shuffle of daily school life and helped reinvigorate my efforts to incorporate those ideas into my lessons.


Another wonderful tool we were given was a Bloggie camera to use for our future travels.  As part of our assignment for the week we received the camera, we had to create a video about our unit plan.  One teacher in my group posted a video that seemed to solve the problem of simultaneously holding the camera and recording herself talking: she stuck it in the core of a roll of paper towels!  What a low-tech, ingenious trick that really worked!

By the end of the eight weeks, our country of travel had been revealed and I discovered I was going to Indonesia!  I was thrilled with this, and when I learned that the other four teachers from Oklahoma had also been assigned to Indonesia, I wondered if the assignment to a predominantly Muslim country had anything to do with the fact that the state of Oklahoma had overwhelmingly voted to pass a law that forbids the consideration by judges of foreign law (despite protests, the proposition seemed to be taking aim at Sharia law, even though that poses no threat to the state).  I don't know; I just know the whole incident reminds me of Mark Twain's wonderful observation: "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."  I only hope my fellow travelers and I will bring some of that unlimited vision back from our sojourns or at least convince others that they, too, should take flight.