What Else?

#presents #sweets #treats #dutamall

One of the perks of being a foreigner is the endless surprises (treats) you could get from the locals. And it is only expounded if you are a foreign teacher! This week was the last of our days in Banjarmasin. Before we could say our goodbyes, which would happen next week, the teachers and some students already gave us tokens. What a delightful surprise!

We were given donuts by the students, got invited to one of the teachers' ice cream birthday, and I was gifted these beautiful accessories (which made me think maybe they find my outfits boring and needed a bit of touch... haha). The boys got hooded shirts with sasirangan prints which I find also beautiful.

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This past week seemed to be bland as we did not do much of anything big but teach. But there were many small things that filled in our time.

1. We joined the school's fun walk on Friday morning. It was just a short walk but as an avid fan of fitness, I think it was great! Getting the students to be moving around is always good. The walk also had me exercise my legs a bit - very helpful especially because in that room given to us at school, we all sit on the floor, crossed-legged, for extended periods.

2. We arranged some documents that were somehow disarranged.

3. Obliging to selfie requests by the students. They also asked for our instagram accounts, especially for the boys who they initially thought were Koreans. Whenever I hear the girls scream upon seeing them, I feel like I was back to being in high school.

4. There was also a moment when I offered to have English lessons with the Thai girls and our buddies. I hope they learnt something, even just a little bit. :)

In the small bowl is cut up dried fish sautéed in oil and pepper. The big bowl is pumpkin soup with corn. While this was cooked by our Indonesian buddies, we have a dish in the Philippines just like this.

5. We took turns cooking dinner. One night I cooked Filipino food, another night I cooked an Indian dish (no photo). The Thai's also cooked for us their specialty, somtam and green/red curry. Then our buddies cooked Indonesian food for us, not like we are not eating Indonesian food daily already..hahaha

Counterclockwise from left: Somtam, green curry, scrambled eggs, and red curry cooked by the Thai girls.

I cooked chicken schnitzel and tortang talong (eggplant omelette), my favourite!

Some of these happened within the span of three weeks that we've been here. There are many other small things we did but without any pictures, it would be too boring to just tell you so I'll just leave it at this for the moment.