Thursday, July 26: We've Got Good Chemistry

Because of the late night the evening before, we started a little later in the morning for school.  I had the opportunity to teach my second chemistry class, and this time it was juniors whose teacher was a young man in his late 20s.  The class immediately walked in and put on their lab coats without any prompting, so I think they were more used to actually doing lab work than the class before.  We had a good discussion about characteristics of acids/bases and pH and what that scale meant.  They seemed to answer questions more readily than the last class, and when it came time to explore on their own, they very enthusiastically took up the challenge of neutralizing the acid.  In fact, most groups asked for more materials and wanted to do the reaction over and over.  One group of girls was especially pleased when they got the purple color that indicated a neutral solution.  When we discussed the practical applications of this lab, and I said that many colors could be produced through such interactions with indicators, one boy asked if he could make a blue shirt at home.  I think I might have seen the birth of an organic chemist! 

The chemistry teacher who accompanied the class had brought a camera and was taking photos of his students doing this lab.  At first very serious, he seemed to get into the swing of things and enjoy seeing the students so eager to work on their own.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with this class and appreciated their enthusiasm.

I thought we were going to present to one more class, but Novi instead had a special tour for us: Dibya (the young girl who sang ‘It’s Now or Never’ at the Hari Anak celebration) took us to the music room and explained what all the traditional instruments were.  She even let us try to play some of them!  After this, we were returning to the office, when we saw the junior high students preparing  for prayers at the mosque that was under construction [pics here]  I was taking some photos, when the English teacher came up and asked who we were and what we were doing.  We explained and then he was very friendly and explained how they had an exchange program with a school in Australia.  We might have talked more, but we were on a schedule and needed to go meet the music teacher.

Novi had asked if we had an ‘American cultural performance’ that we could do at the closing ceremonies on Friday, and when we said no, she asked the music teacher if he had something we could sing.  Turns out he did.  Mr. Tommy not only spent time telling us about the various kinds of traditional music, he had several karaoke songs downloaded on his keyboard.  When we saw that he had The Carpenters, we agreed to sing ‘Top of the World’ and had an impromptu practice in the teachers’ workroom (with lots of interested lookers-on).  Novi seemed satisfied with the way things were going and then said we were done at the school for the day and would leave for batik shopping but first we swung by a special Sundanese (W. Java) restaurant. 

Because it was Ramadhan, they were only serving take-out, so we got boxes to go for the textile museum.  There was a surprising variety of foods but most contained meat, so Novi steered me clear of those.  Jeanne toyed with the idea of eating one of the specialities: lung!  In the end, she decided to forego the experience.  Even brave women have their limits.

Only part of the textile museum was open, but we were able to see some lovely older pieces.  We also saw the batik-making process and it is a painstakingly­-slow one (which is what makes hand-made batik so expensive).  Hot paraffin is melted and placed in something that looks a bit like a pipe, but with a small opening in the bottom of the pipe.  Wherever the wax touches, the cloth won’t be dyed.  As we walked around the gallery, the signs by the individual pieces noted whether the dyes were synthetic (kimia, chemical) or natural (alam, which was a word I had just learned from Wiharti when doing the indicator lab).

The school vehicle had left earlier with the other teachers, so Novi got us a taxi (not always an easy thing to do) and when the driver attempted to merge from the museum driveway into the ever-flowing traffic, a man I thought worked for the museum stepped out into traffic and held up his hand so we could ease in.  I later learned that he was just a random guy on the street and the taxi driver had tipped him the equivalent of 50 cents to do this.

Before we returned to the hotel, Novi had one last surprise for us: an upscale department store that had a batik boutique (say that 5 times quickly!).  There were so many beautiful items and we spent quite a lot of time searching for souvenirs.  Because I hope some of you who will be receiving souvenirs are reading this blog, I’m not going to describe them.  Just expect some pleasant surprises.  With our special purchases, we headed back to the hotel and prepared for our final day at MAN 4.