Saturday Dec 18 2010 Okay, three days in a row! Nothing special went on Thursday. Except of the fact that I went to Majene after teaching time to help some teachers find a good laptop. Yeap, end of year sale. After spending some hours in that small shop called “Miskah”, one of them was actually bought the laptop. Its brand is Advan, good specs 205 GB, 1,8gHz, , around 2.6 million rupiah. Never heard of it, but, as I turn it upside down, I found that it was made in Indonesia. Hm.. nice! After the shopping and going round and round to buy some stuff, I went to Coto Makasar, located just beside Miskah shop. The first Coto upon arrival in Celebes! Yummy!! I cannot go back too late as I got an invitation to attend the 10 Muharram gathering in the mosque near my home. Surprisingly. 10 Muharram is the day 10 of Islam Calendar which is counted upon the moon revolution, CMIIW. In my villages, this day was a time where people gathers in a mosque, lift a prayer and read the Al Qur’an to get away from catastrophe, or evil. They have pop-rice which was thrown all over the places. Pop-rice? Like pop-corn but using rice. My foster mom even asked me to put some of it under my bed. I just did it as said. The interesting part of this event is that many people brought food, cakes, snacks, etc to the gathering. Kids were there as well. Some of them did pray while some others focus on a race to get the most and delicious food. After the “amen” was thrown out of the Imam’s mouth, hectic was all I can see. My foster mom brought jelly, drinks, and snacks which she used to sell and is loved by kids. Less then a minute, those things vanished! Fortunately, I still got to taste the green bean porridge. Oh, my favorite. I don’t have any idea that this drink slash food is also Mandar food. So, what’s on Friday? Um, let me see. I test the student to read within 3 minutes. I found that 6 students in my class, grade 2, cannot read at all. Not even remembering the alphabets. To show the gap, the highest score is 220 word per 3 minutes. Well, in average, most of them read by merging the alphabet to get a syllable, end up in about 20 word, again per 3 minutes. Suddenly, I was picked by one teacher from neighbouring elementary school. He said, there is a meeting about Sport and Art Week for Region 3 Sendana in SD 42, right in the edge of main road. Okay, after closing my class, I went there. They were talking about the organizing commitee. Just as a formal position written for the reports. Informally, me and Sakti was demmanded to teach the student for the english poem reading competition. After the meeting stopped by Friday prayer for Moslem guys, the discussion continued on detail. For poem teaching schedule, I mean. They want 4 school to be clustered in one place, so that I will not need to go from school to school. Fair enough. My region consist of 9 school that I have different schedule for two cluster. About the time, I choose afternoon, either right after school or around 3 o’clock. However, looks clear for me that they choose this event over academic. Funny how they force me to train English poem within school hour while next week is the midterm test schedule. After the bargain, I can make it as far as “I will go out from school on 10.30” – while my class schedule i supposed to end at 10.40. In the afternoon, I went to one teacher house, together with other 2 teacher to teach computer. Well, just the basic as I am not a professional user. By the way, this Friday is a fried banana - or called loka yangno in Mandar- day. Every place that i went to serve me Fried banana. A real people food. Now, how’s Saturday treat me? Well, rain drops keep falling on my head. Lot of water vapour was in the air, litterally in the air. To heavy that it had to much weight to stay, it was then fall. But today is fine. Teaching math to my class, teaching poem to students from different school. Find some very cool unused science experiment stuff. It was locked, and moldly. I guess I am the only one to get excited there. The stuff has been there, and I don’t think it was ever used. Going back home, eat luch, have some talks with my foster dad. Watching “how I met your mother?” which relaxing me this whole time. Sleep for a while until dad knocked on the dor and said that I got a guest. Half conscious, I greet the guess. He is Mr. Saharuddin Tahir, a 6th grade teacher of SD 3 Somba. Quite a waking call. Mostly we talked and share about education, his achievement, and his life story. Interesting though. He went to school, 1st grade, in age 11. Why? Because he was afraid of the killer teacher who used to hit the kids with board ruler. His age friends were the harshness victim. Feeling ackward, no self confident, and shy during junior high school. Become head of student organization on Senior High School. And finally become a teacher with high achievement. He is one of the national evaluation examination contributor. You know, writing problems to solve. He won 3rd prize in East Indonesia Paper Writing Contest. He once also attend the flag ceremony in President Palace, during Indepence day I guess. Yet, he do love his work of being teacher. He lived the dream.. how about you and me?