Daily Life

I don't post that often about daily life, mainly because it is pretty much the same thing every day. I typically like to write about new activities or places because it's different from the standard. However, in reality, I am doing a job that happens to be in another country. Don't get me wrong, the different cultural and social enviornments are a challenge but after more than a year in the country I have gotten fairly comfortable with some of the standard differences.

Sometimes it does feel like I have a bit of an imposter syndrome feelings because I have many friends and relatives from back home who always tell me how brave and couragious I am for doing Peace Corps. When in reality, now adays it doesn't feel like I am doing anything monumental. I am just an english teacher who happens to teach in another country. I truely believe teachers are great and teaching is a great profession but I still feel sometimes that I am not really doing enough. There are expectations that we put on ourselves that aren't fair but are still there. I have these expectations for myself but I also have that voice in my head saying that what i'm doing is not enough. I'm sure most people have that voice. I could probably be the best person in the world, doing the most, and still hear that voice saying it's not enough. I don't think that voice will ever go away but it's just something we have to get comfortable with.

Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent but all that to say my daily life is very routine. I live about a minute walk away from the school I teach at so I don't have to wake up very much in advance. School starts at 7 a.m. so I typically wake up between 6:15-6:30 a.m. I don't have to do much at home before since I eat at school. I just get ready and grab all the things I need for the day. I will say my least favorite part of the morning is using the ice cold water. Most houses in Indonesia do not have water heaters so the water can be pretty cold. After getting ready, I head to school. My host parents have a food stall in the canteen at school. I stop there and get some breakfast which usually consistes of a bread of some kind, fried tempe, some snacks and a drink (either iced coffee or orange juice). I head off to my office. In Indonesia, students stay in their same classroom all day and the teachers move to the different classrooms when they have lessons so all the teachers have offices. I share my office with two other teachers. One is another english teacher and one isn't. They are both part of the VP of student affairs team which is why they have an office together. Typically, I don't have class the first period so I usually do some work, either online Peace Corps work or prep work for classes. Most days I have between 4-5 classes. Each class period is 40 minutes and I either have classes of one period or two periods in a row. There are no breaks between periods here but there are two longer breaks throughout the day. One from 9:40 a.m. to 10 a.m. and one from 12:30- 1 p.m. When I don't have classes I'm usually doing work in my office. Once I have my last class I typically go home. The time I head home varies with each day of the week. I have lunch after I'm back home. After lunch on Wednesdays I go back to school for an extracurricular english club. On the other days, when I don't have anything, I will usually be at home with my host family or going to another relatives house. Most of my host family's relatives live in the same town as us so we see them a lot. Sometimes I'll have online zoom meetings in the afternoon so I'll have those at home.

That's pretty much it. Everyday is kind of rinse and repeat.

Teachers group photo at my school

A view from my house