The bemo took us right to Nusa Alam's door which is down a lane way off the main road! After signing in, in the visitors book, we headed straight to Febi's room where students were preparing to head out for a primary assembly. Fantastic that we were in time for it. I was able to do quite a bit of filming which i hope works out as each class was asked to stand so it gives a good picture of the number of students in each class.
After assembly was an English lesson which i missed because i was really keen to get some video footage of the baruga. Luckily Derek was there for a while and i was able to video him teaching physics in it with some senior students.
At recess i had fun in the yard filming students playing and filmed an alphabet game played by small groups. Students were amazed to hear that some Australian schools and universities provide iPad's for all students!
After recess, Febi gave us all her students so we had about 40 mins to do some filming. I did some kenalkans and had 3 students also work together to say subjects in Indonesian and then say which is their favorite subject. So much we wanted to do but still the students were so cooperative and helped us even though it was difficult in front of the camera. Looking forward to finishing the videos and then sharing them with Diane & Febi through the dropbox.
After this Sharon & i spent half an hour in the senior prep class (receptions in their 2nd six months) observing a letter land lesson. This class are now at school for a whole day so they were very tired and hungry during this lesson which finished at midday!
After a quick thank you to everyone at Nusa Alam who had in many ways made our time their sooo enjoyable, we caught a taxi back to the hotel where we finished packing and headed off to the airport via Sukarara, a traditional weaving village.
There we observed several women sitting on a small deck with looms on their laps, weaving original designs. It was well set up for tourists because not only could we watch them, but we were also encouraged to have a go. Kelsey and Kate both had a go. It gave us an opportunity to ask questions too. Apparently it takes a week to just set the loom up and then depending on the size of what is to be woven (sarong/tablecloth/wall hanging) it takes from 2-5 weeks to weave just one article. I bought some wall hangings: one for Elizabeth and one for myself. Feel like i paid way too much but i really liked them and interestingly enough at the next place i learned that the 2 i bought are made from pineapple leaf fibre!
As we still had quite a lot of time till we had to be at the airport, we asked the drivers to take us somewhere else to look at woven baskets. We were taken to a huge building which sold all sorts of things and out the back were several people doing batik. One girl was penciling a design onto material while another was using a cap to wax over designs with melted wax refilling her cap from a pot of hot wax heating on a kerosene stove down by her feet.
While there were many interesting photo opportunities we took advantage of, nobody bought anything here.
We got to the airport with heaps of time thankfully because Garuda had only processed one of the 2 bookings. Seems they are having a few issues with this part of their website. They claimed the booking timed out yet from our end it was all processed even to the point where Sharon received an email with booking numbers! Thankfully this happened at the brand new Lombok airport where we had a very lovely young guy, Wawan, who bent over backwards sorting it all out while simultaneously dealing with all the other problems that arose. He patiently and politely dealt with it with Sharon & i following him around asking questions! I was so impressed with his efficiency and courtesy. With about half an hour till boarding, the bags were loaded and finally boarding passes issued. What a relief. Unfortunately all remaining oleh-oleh were in the suitcases!
Thus ended our time in Lombok with Febi and the fantastic staff and students at Nusa Alam.
No comments:
Post a Comment