You'll Never Walk Alone

This past week was the first week of school. On the first day, my go-to ice-breaker activity was to have a bunch of questions written on sticky notes and to give each student one question. The students would find an initial partner, introduce themselves, and ask the other person their question. After each student had answered the other’s question, the students would physically trade sticky notes and move on to another partner. They would not be allowed to pair up with the same person a second time. I’m starting this blog post with this story because the only question that my students had trouble understanding/translating was, “Who is your role model?” They didn't know what that meant. I would say, “A role model is someone that you look up to. My role model is my father. I look up to him for the way that he leads our family and the way that he treats people.” Speaking of my father, I also have a great deal of respect for him when it comes to anything English/writing. He has a journalism degree from the University of Kansas and is usually spot-on when it comes to anything involving writing. He has been very supportive of my blog, but his big suggestion was to add more pictures. He said, “people love pictures.” Dad, I agree. I am a person. I love pictures. It would make sense that the people reading this blog would like pictures. So in this blog post, I give the people what they want: pictures.

The first week of school went well. The first day I felt lost, but that was because the entire educational format here is so different than what I grew up with. The students are great, so far. They are fun, energetic kids (I teach almost exclusively P3 and P4*). I am not going to spend any more time talking about school in this blog, because, well, it’s school. The most exciting part of this past week has been the last 36 hours. Great Saturday and a great Sunday.

              

*Here, primary grades are P_. Once they are done with P6, they move into Sec1 (Secondary_). From there students are put on two tracks. One is accelerated and consists of 3 years of secondary school and 2 years of JC, or junior college, and the other consits of 4 years of secondary school and 2 years of JC.

Saturday started with me playing basketball with some locals right by my apartment complex. I was really tired from the first week of school but I knew that this was a great opportunity to meet some locals and try to make some new friends. They usually start playing around 7:30am on Saturdays but were a little delayed this week because of rain. All the guys were very friendly and genuinely seemed to like having me there. Just another way that God has been faithful in giving me people to interact with. I really haven’t felt alone since my first night in Jakarta. Just amazing how you can travel, literally, halfway across the world and still feel close to people.

The big part of this blog post will be the Liverpool-Indonesia exhibition match that we saw at the futsal stadium last night. Crazy doesn’t even begin to describe this experience. I’m not sure anything will ever top KU-Mizzou in Allen Fieldhouse in 2012 for “Craziest Sporting Event of My Life,” but from an eye-opening experience this one was up there. We got down to the neighborhood around the stadium about 3 hours before the game. Last week I bought an away Indonesian national jersey for 40.000 rupiah, so I wanted to buy a home Indonesian jersey to wear to the game last night. Same deal: got one for 40.000 rupiah. One of my new friends, Cory, is a life-long Liverpool fan and wanted to get a Liverpool jersey. I was able to work the price down on his to 45.000 rupiah. Both he and the couple (Levi and Andy) we were with complimented me on my skills on working the price down. I owe all the credit to my dad. He has taught me everything I know (pictured below: the 3 guys outside the stadium.)

As we made our way into the stadium, a young man grabbed me and asked if I spoke Bahasa Indonesian. I said, no. He said, “would you like to be interviewed on TV?” I’m not sure why not speaking Bahasa qualified me to be on a Jakarta TV station, but we were thrilled to be interviewed on live television. The four of us were interviewed (pictured below: me being interviewed outside the stadium) and the reporter asked me why I was the only one in an Indonesian jersey.

  

I said, “I see all these people from Jakarta in Liverpool jerseys. I've only been in the country for 3 weeks and I feel like I have more national pride than they do.” After the interview, we had at least 10 different groups come up to us asking for photos. The craziest request was this guy who wanted us to his Liverpool jersey. Hey man, anything for my fans (pictured below).

It was fun to see the people of Jakarta go nuts seeing a Premier League team in their home stadium (video below: video of the stadium; unfortunately there is no audio because there is a really sick Indonesia chant going on in this video that I put as my closing at the end of the blog).

The tickets we got were for 75.000 rupiah each. Those tickets were supposed to get you seats at the very top of the upper level. Once you got into the stadium, it was more-or-less GA seating. So we ended up sitting about 8/10ths of the way up the lower level (pictured below: Levi, Andy, Cory, and myself in our seats).

  

We waited until we got inside to get food, assuming that there would be concession stands just like any other sporting event we had been to. Unfortunately, the only food they had in there was the food stands/carts that you see on the streets of Jakarta. We found “Lekker Hot Dogs” for 30.000 rupiah and enjoyed dinner with bottled water (5.000 rupiah) at our seats. The only thing that didn’t go our way the whole night was that there was no alcohol served inside the stadium. After seeing how crazy the fans were, it was probably a good idea. Still kind of disappointing that we couldn’t enjoy a couple Bintangs while watching the game. The way that Indonesians watched the game from their seats was interesting. There were normal seats with a backrest for everyone to sit in. The strange part was that instead of sitting in the seats or standing the whole game, people put their feet where your bottom would usually go and would sit on the one-inch-wide top of the backrest. When a big play would happen, everyone would pop up and be standing on their seat. Very uncomfortable. And very strange. Smoking was prohibited inside the stadium, so naturally, everyone did it. It was kind of humorous because I would be watching the game and you would see the little puffs of smoke reminiscent of players’ breath from Madden in cold weather popping up throughout the crowd.

The two coolest parts about the fans were the songs/chants and the flares. Fans brought in tons of flares (pictured below) and were setting them off throughout the game.

Indonesians love them some Liverpool. I was talking with one of the guys from the TV station, SCTV, before being interviewed and he said that Liverpool was the most supported Premier League team in the country—even more than Man Utd. Liverpool’s main song is, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and the fans there knew that song and all the other chants by heart. It was really cool to hear soccer chants in person and especially seeing so many people so happy that their club traveled so far to visit their stadium. My friend Cory was eating all of this up. He is a legit soccer fan (he knows his stuff) and was having a great time singing, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” He still wants to sing it at Anfield before he dies, but he was happy to have this experience. I was happy to be there with him.

Sunday I went to church with two Filipino teachers from my primary school. After church we went to the National Monument in downtown Jakarta. It was pouring and we were soaking by the time we got there, but it was a great experience to spend time with them and see the monument (pictured below).

A few random notes:

• Still no food poisoning. I am getting a little more adventurous with trying food from stands/carts and I am loving all the spices here. I was never really that big of a fan of spicy food until about a year ago, but now I cannot get enough—and Jakarta is the place to be for spicy. Physically, everything has been great for me health-wise. The only strange thing about my bowel movements has been…wait, was I really about to go off on a tangent about my bowel movements? This blog has lost its luster way quicker than I thought it would. Keep it together, Matt.
• Everything here is in military time. Our class periods are 30 minutes and the students are released at 13:45 each day. They also put the day of the month before the month (i.e., 21 July 2013).
• Bahasa Indonesian (just refered to as “Bahasa,” meaning “language”) is fairly easy to pick up as far as languages go. Very phonetic and not too much to get confused on. The only strange part is that there are different levels of formality. “Tidak” means no, but you would only say that in written form or maybe to a superior. Instead, you would say, “unga.” My Bahasa is coming along. The only sentence I know is: Maaf, saya tida bisa Bahasa Indonesian (Sorry, I don’t speak Indonesian language). I have a good chunk of root words down, but there is a long way to go !!

Thanks for all the thoughts and prayers from back home. God has been very faithful in putting amazing people in my life and making sure I haven’t felt alone. I know that not every day will be great, but so far things have been far better than I could have imagined on Java Island. The Indonesian motto is, “Unity in Diversity.” I like that.

INDONESIA!! (clap-clap, clap-clap, clap) INDONESIA!! (clap-clap, clap-clap, clap) INDONESIA!!