Positive Experiences

One of my friends back home asked why so many of my blog posts are negative and mostly about crying while I’m smiling in all my Facebook photos. My response: You’re supposed to smile in photos, right? My grimace pose is not as attractive as my hand on hip smiling one. Ami right?!

But honestly, I think it’s healthy that I express my weaknesses through any form. At least I’m not keeping all the negative feelings inside me. But I do have a few positive experiences up my sleeve that I’d like to share:

1. My ibu woke me up early one morning to present a traditional Javanese rice dish eaten on special occasions, after which she sang me a wrongly worded “Happy Birthday.” It was September 24th. My birthday is in the middle of October.
2. One of my Indonesian friends was offered a teaching job after being observed by a senior teacher from that school at my IGLOW IBRO.
3. After feeling a bit insecure for having to wear a pretty ugly teaching uniform, I’m given the cute eyes from the handsome teacher at my school. Swoon. 
4. I dreamt that Freddy Kreuger was transgender and was trying to win the love of the person she loved but just ended up scaring that person. After fearing that this was a different but similar version of my life story, I scored a Tinder match that ended up becoming a relationship for six months.
5. Not all the teachers at my school can speak English, so our communication is limited. But the language we all can communicate with is the language of smoking Indonesian cigarettes. On school trips, the male teachers basically read my mind and find me places to smoke hidden from the students. Now this is integration.
6. I’ve collected an arsenal of bad words in Javanese (all taught by the same male teachers that hide my smoking) in case I ever come across a rude Indonesian that won’t stop harassing me.
7. After my father passed away last month, one of my best Indonesian friends told me: Be strong because you are strong. He understands me so well.
8. During pre-service training, my ibu would put a box of chocolate cookies in front of me as soon as I would sit down to finish Indonesian language homework.
9. I would spend the most awkward mornings with my bapak (host father) before I left for school. He would often mumble to me in Javanese I don’t understand or just smile as I sat down to eat breakfast. One morning, I thought the neighborhood cat had died because bapak kept hitting its back with a stick with no response. It turns out he was giving the cat a massage. 
10. I’m about to complete my Peace Corps service in less than six months.

It took me less than half an hour to compile this list, and I laughed through the entire making of it. That is #11.