The New Semester

School in Indonesia is broken up between two semesters. The first is from July-December and the second is January-June. There is two weeks to a month of break between the semesters. We just started the first semester of a new school year.

One thing that sets the two semesters apart is the number of holiday days or days off of school. In Indonesia, these days are called Hari Merah (red days) because on the calendars they are highlighted red to indicate which days are off. In the first semester there are rarely any days off, only 2-3 days for the entire semester. This is in stark contrast from the second semester where there are many official and unofficial days off. During the second semester there are major religious events like Ramadan and Eid that have days off from school. Also because the month of Ramadan is a month of fasting, the school days are shortened and often consist of religious activities only.

So this new semester is very busy and there seems to be very little breaks. I teach more than 20 hours a week but on top of that the prep for all the classes makes them more of a 40 hour work week. Now that I've been here almost a year, I've gotten into the swing of things so this semester doesn't really require much adjustment. Just lots of busy days!

And of course, Indonesia has a culutre where events pop up randomly with often little notice. So when those pop up it adds to some of the work on top of the normal work load.  

In addition to all the work at site, I've signed up to be a resource volunteer to help the new volunteers who arrive end of september so that is also keeping me busy.

All this to say it has been a busy start to the semester!