After months and months of planning, the group of 5 students and 4 teachers from Petra Berkat School in Denpasar finally arrived!! The final weeks leading up to their arrival was quite frantic at times with last minute tweaking of host families and their timetable. We were so delighted when APBIPA suggested we consider inviting this group of primary students and while their visit is not over yet, it has been very successful so far.

Our school hosted Grace, a 14 year old in year 9. She stayed with one of our families as they have a daughter the same age as well as a son in year 5. We also briefly hosted Ibu Yustine, the school director. Her family run the school and thus she was the person with whom we communicated with to organise the various details leading up to the visit.   The other 4 students were shared across Victor Primary & Goolwa Primary with the remaining staff. Ibu Oka was based at Goolwa and taught the kecak dance to students there while Ibu Leni was based at Victor and did mask making with the classes she met there. Ibu Yustine and Ariel (the designated photographer) were the only 2 staff members to visit all sites.

Ibu Yustine mentioned in her emails that she enjoys cooking with students and was very keen to cook mie goreng while visiting our sites. She chose mie goreng because not only is it a well known traditional Indonesian dish but also because it needed to be a recipe that could be cooked and eaten in a 50 minute lesson! Her day at PEPS was full on without any non face to face time. Her only breaks were at recess and lunch!

6 lucky classes were delighted to arrive at the Indonesian classroom to discover the chairs arranged around a table covered in ingredients and cooking equipment and standing behind the table were Ibu Yustine and Grace finalising last minute preparations. After the ketua kelas had led the students in a greeting (murid murid, berdiri dan kasih hormat kepada Bu Yustine dan Kak Grace), Ibu Yustine began cooking.

Here is her recipe:

Cook the  dry noodles till soft. Drain and pour sufficient kecap manis, kecap asin & tomato sauce over to coat the noodles.

Beat 5 eggs and fry like scrambled eggs. Remove from pan.

fry onion, garlic till cooked. Add grated carrot, finely shredded cabbage and cook.

Add egg and stir through.

Add noodles and mix thoroughly.

Taste and top up with sauces if necessary.

Such a simple yet delicious recipe. The students all loved it, even the ones who claimed beforehand that they don’t like egg!

I loved that when Ibu Yustine commented in Indonesian about the recipe, my students could largely follow along and when she said something they didn’t understand, the stop sign was raised immediately! It was great. We began by showing students the ingredients and explaining what they were in Indonesian. While kecap manis was a familiar term, kecap asin was not. With the later classes, I broke down asin to ‘us’ & ‘in’ which helped enormously with retention later in the lesson when Ibu Yustine reviewed the ingredients! It made such a difference with recall. When Ibu Yustine added ingredients, she would say, “Kasih kecap manis, kasih kecap asin, kasih saus tomat” etc which was awesome. So lovely that our visitors are largely understood now in the Indonesian classroom unlike before when all cultural lessons were 100% undertaken in English or with English translations.

After the school day finished, we headed off to staff meeting where the year 3 class outlined to staff their inquiry into establishing a 4th sports team. It was a perfect demonstration for Ibu Yustine to witness how our students develop inquiry questions, collaborate as a class to research it and then share with staff and students their findings and their recommendations. The 4 students who stayed back after school to present to staff did a great job and represented our school beautifully. Ibu Yustine was very impressed. She was also impressed with the presentation by our principal about listening. She was delighted when he offered to email it out to staff and has since informed me that she would like a copy so that she can share it with her staff at the begining of the new school year!!

Straight after staff meeting, staff headed over to the staff room to enjoy a staff family cooking workshop with Ibu Yustine. This time she made nasi goreng. Staff helped with the chopping and slicing before sitting down to watch her cook. This too was delicious and all who participated were pleased they had stayed back to do so. I bet Ibu Yustine slept well that night!! 7 cooking workshops in one day!! All in all she cooked for 5 classes at Victor Primary, 2 at Goolwa and 7 at PEPS. No wonder by Wednesday she had almost lost her voice!!

On Wednesday evening we held a ‘Cultural Evening’ for the host families and principals. The program included Ibu Yustine cooking mie goreng for the final time, a dance performance by the Petra Berkat School students and Ibu Leni

as well as presentations. Ibu Yustine presented all schools with art work completed by her students and our principals/ deputy principals reciprocated and presented her with artwork from our sister schools on the APY lands. Sharon, Annie & I were also presented with a beautiful batik jacket each.

The cultural evening finsished with an Aussie BBQ as our contribution to the cultural evening!
For me, that was the end of my involvement in the visit as I am now flying off to Medan to visit another partner school through the Bridge Project. I hope the rest of the visit is successful and that we see Petra Berkat School back on the Fluerieu one day soon!