Sadly I can’t even remember the last time I wrote in my blog, at times I even forgot that I had one. With not much to report and an attempt to keep people from reading random posts such as my last one that had nothing to do with my time in Indonesia, I have just refrained from writing in here, because while my days are slow with minimal activity there might be busy bees somewhere out there just itching to read about my time in Indonesia.
Lately, my time in Indonesia has been to relay advice to people. This past week I was invited to another school to introduce myself which always comes with an advice section on “how to make the students learn English quickly” as if I have a magic Native Speaker potion that works instantly. Just as soon as I was giving these youngeens advice I was off to Malang to help with training the new Peace Corps volunteers where I was asked to share my wisdom with a different type of youngeens….So what information did I relay to these two sets of people…….well hold on and I’ll get there, remember I said life here is slow, I work on Indo pace now so settle your horses!
“The only thing to do with good advice is to pass it on. It is never of any use to oneself.”
What I often tell to students learning English is a multitude of information.
I tell them first and foremost there needs to be a strong desire to learn the new language, without the desire no one will ever learn a new language. It’s like students here have a strong desire to understand Arabic so they can read the pure form of the Al Qu’ran and not the translated version, as the Arabic version is poetic.
Once the desire is there, there are many ways to learn the language, from proper classes, to watching movies with subtitles or listening to songs. These are fun ways to learn a language where it doesn’t necessarily feel like learning. If you have a favorite movie in a foreign language and watch it over and over eventually you won’t need the subtitles anymore.
Next is practice, practice, practice…Instead of talking to your friends in your mother tongue practice speaking your newly acquired language. In Peace Corps its easy for us to pick up the new language as we have 3 months of intensive classes 6 days a week while living where it is spoken and being forced to used the new language every day.
Lastly is to not be shy and never give up, you will get things wrong…a lot. Don’t let it deter you from learning. You don’t need to be fluent to practice and speak, you only need to be able to understand someone and be able to express yourself. There are plenty of times I have had to use 10 words to express one because I don’t know that word, but thats life!
My advice the our new volunteers, and really any volunteer especially those thinking of joining Peace Corps.
Joining Peace Corps can be daunting, you fly (lots of times 30+ hours) to start your time as a new volunteer and get off the plane and it may hit you, I have 27 months of service. That can be extremely overwhelming. You cannot think of it like this you have to take it day for day, week for week otherwise you will drive yourself insane.
After giving PC (Politically correct) answers such as, take everything here with a grain of salt, and don’t let anything get to you. I went in for what I figured would be great advice for me.
You will HAVE to find something at site that drives you to keep yourself going. This can come in many forms, maybe an amazing host family or great Counter Part, or your students, or your secondary project, or anything. Focus your time on that. Boredom is a killer at site and if you have something to keep you going all will be well.
2 Country Directors ago, our CD said that you don’t sign up for Peace Corps once, but every day, on those days where everything is going wrong you have to wake up and reconfirm your commitment to Peace Corps and continue to push yourself.
Welcome to the Ring of Fire! 