teaching | Ramblintraveler

My time in Malaysia had finally come to an end and it was time to get out of the country to explore a new one. I had been wrestling with what to do and where to go for a while and all I really knew was that I wanted to continue to volunteer somewhere, but just didn’t know where.

Makassar Airport

Makassar Airport_2

Tirelessly I researched place after place and continuously ran into programs that allowed volunteers to work with this or that animal, but the cost of doing so was atrocious! Finally I came across a site called helpstay.com. After reading reviews about the site as to its validity and exploring the various opportunities they had available in surrounding countries, I decided to take the plunge and join as a member of the site so I could contact one very specific volunteer opportunity. In all honesty, the second I found the posting to volunteer teaching English at a home site in South Sulawesi, Indonesia that also had an organic farm, I signed up to the site and kept my fingers and toes crossed that they had availability for volunteers.

Makassar Street View

Traffic

Within a few hours my inquiry was replied to and a Skype date was set so we could put faces to one another and see if we really were a match for each other, volunteer-wise. Though part of me was a bit nervous to give away information about myself and Skype a literal stranger in a foreign country, the minute we chatted I knew I’d made the right decision.

Makassar Street View_2

Makassar Street View_3

The volunteer program organizer is an 18-year-old marvel named Faisal. He invites people from around the world to stay with him and his family in exchange for volunteers to develop lessons and teach english to local students aged 6 to 18 years. I was so very impressed with him during our Skype session, that I immediately committed to volunteering for a month with him and couldn’t wait to get there!

Makassar Street View_4

Makassar Street View_5

En Route to Belopa

Now, all of my volunteering to this point involved animals, because that’s really where my love and strength lies. I’d never taught English before (and I’d made sure to relate that to Faisal during our chat) but being a native english speaker I thought, how hard could it be? Less than a month after connecting with Faisal I was on a plane from Kuala Lumpur to Makassar, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I stayed the first night in Makassar (as my flight landed in the late evening) and first thing the next morning made my way to the Terminal Daya bus station for the 8 hour bus ride to Belopa.

En Route to Belopa_2

Faisal’s School House

The Neighborhood

Upon arriving at Terminal Daya I noted several men standing in front of the very, VERY basic bus terminal. I spoke zero Bahasa and no one so far spoke any English (or very limited at best!) but luckily all that was required of me to say was: Belopa?. That did the trick as they simultaeously all practically cheered “Belopa!” together. They whisked my bag out of the taxi and walked me over… away from the vehicles that actually looked like busses… to basically a 4 door Ford truck. Hmmmm…. is this right??? They all had stickers on the front saying “Pelopo” so I pointed to the truck and said again “Belopa?”. “Ya, ya” was their response as they hauled my bag into the bed of the truck, took out their cell phones and typed in 150,000… the cost of the trip!

The Neighborhood_2

The Neighborhood_3

The Neighborhood_4

Lord knew at that point whether I was getting majorly ripped off or not, but what choice did I have exactly? As it turned out, that was the correct and normal price 🙂 Happy day! Moving on, I paid the fee and squished in the back seat with two other females and after a few minutes we were on our way. There was actually a third line of seats behind my own, so in total we were a team of 7 people trundling along on the journey to Belopa (an hour South of Pelopo as it turns out).

The Neighborhood_5

The Neighborhood_6

The Neighborhood_7

The journey there was visually beautiful. The mountains and the sea, vast and open rice fields, the endless green and tropical lush surrounding us. Absolutely stunning! The one downfall was that the driver smoked the entire way up, which was a bummer, but at least the windows were fully open to allow quick exchanges of air. We took one break along the way for some food and a bathroom and made it into Belopa just about 8 hours to the dot later. After a bit of miming and a game of charades with my fellow passengers in the truck, I was able to communicate that I wanted to be dropped off at the nearest ATM as I seriously had zero rupiah on me. Luckily enough, the ATM I was dropped off at was next to a coffee shop that offered free WiFi. So while sipping on a cappuccino (made from an instant coffee sachet) I used the WiFi to let Faisal know I’d arrived, and my exact location.

The Neighborhood_8

The Neighborhood_9

The Neighborhood_10

About 5 minutes later, Faisal showed up in his brother’s vehicle and we finally met in person. Faisal, again only being 18 years of age and having only studied English for about 2 years spoke english brilliantly! We loaded my stuff into his vehicle and made the 15 minute drive to his town called Bajo. The town was absolutely adorable!! When we arrived there was a football (soccer) match at the village field so there were tons of locals gathered for the game.

The Neighborhood_11

The Neighborhood_12

The Neighborhood_13

Just a bit further along the road we came to his lovely and humble home where I met his mom (mama as we called her who spoke zero english) and dad (who spoke a bit of english) and his cousin Irpan (a student in one of the english classes). His family was lovely and so immediately welcoming that it just made my heart melt. I was shown to my room and given a tour of the house and the school-house built by Faisal and some of his schoolmates Ucok and Iswan. We had some dinner together (Faisal whipped up a deliciously spicy nasi goreng if memory serves) and I made my way to bed.

Rice Field!

The Neighborhood_14

Thus began one of my most memorable months of traveling…

Visit Faisal’s website to find out more about his amazing volunteer program!!

Review of the Our Chance school

On to Favorite Memories from Bajo

Back to Indonesia

Volcan, as you may guess, means Volcano in Spanish. This particular volcano however was not a cone volcano, but rather a geyser. It is apparently the largest active geyser in the world! But I’m getting ahead…

I took a bus ride to the volcano with all my gear in tow thinking there was a town nearby where I could stay for the night, and not really fully understanding that the volcano was located in a National Park… Therefore NO sleeping facilities… In any event, the ride there was almost entirely uphill and quite cloudy. There literally were times when I had to stop watching the road and just trust that the driver knew what he was doing because it became so cloudy at times that it was hard to see more than a few feet ahead!!

We reached the National Park entrance and all tourists on the bus were asked to get off so we could pay. All National Parks in Costa Rica cost $10.00 for tourists to enter, but if you are local it’s cheaper. I’m not entirely sure how much cheaper, but none of the locals had to get off the bus to pay, but rather they were all counted up and paid for by the bus driver. It was standing in the line to pay for the park where I met two fellow Americans. One was teaching English to students in Alajuela, and the other was a retired gentleman who was going to head to Puerto Viejo after a short stay in Alajuela to potentially retire there.

Once all the payment business was over we loaded onto the bus and were dropped off in the bus parking lot… Perhaps now is the time to bring up again that since I was thinking that I could stay the night in or at least very near the park, I had brought my backpack with me… Well, when we were all getting off the bus, since I wasn’t sure whether we were going to have the same exact bus on the way back down, I thought it best to bring my backpack with me. But what this meant was that I was going to get a bit more exercise than I had signed up for originally, lol!! Basically I hiked all around the park with my dang backpack cinched on me and cursing every time I had to walk uphill, lol!!

In any event, after getting off the bus I simply followed the signs and my two new friends up the trail to the volcano. My oh my what a view…

Isn’t it just fantastic?!?!?! Ok, now I know it doesn’t look like much, but believe it or not you are actually looking at the volcano in this picture. Everyone looked and looked and looked around for some sign of where exactly this volcano was, but because of the low clouds, all you could see (as above) was mist. My two friends and I hung around for a little while longer and agreed that this (the dense fog) was probably the reason we were given 3 hours to hang around the park. Apparently dense fog is quite common at this volcano and one must be very patient if they want to actually see it.

Patience wasn’t very high on our list however, and since there were two other trails that led to a lake beside the geyser volcano, we decided to try our luck and see whether the lake was visible. Up and up and up we hiked through dense jungle forest on teeny concrete paths until again meeting our final destination. And can you believe it??? The lake looked exactly like the picture above!! Nothing but dense fog!!

Once again we resolved to simply hang out for a little bit and got to chatting. And then it happened… In mid-sentence one of my new friends gasped at the image that unfolded in front of us. The clouds suddenly lifted revealing a beautiful green lake!

This beautiful view literally only lasted about 10 minutes and then the fog once again swept in and obscured the lake from view. Thinking perhaps to try our luck at the geyser we immediately left (all downhill thankfully) and headed back to the geyser.

The rain started to pour down on us as we went down and I even had to stop to put on my poncho before getting too soaked! Once back to our original station at the geyser, the fog once again showed no signs of lifting. But about 10 minutes later, just as it had at the lake, the fog miraculously lifted and you could see the geyser!!

Just as the mist came and went within 10 minutes at the lake, the same was true for the geyser! We really lucked out on our timing for this trip!!

After waiting for the fog to close back over the geyser, we headed back for a snack at the cafe in the park and awaited our bus. It was on the bus ride back that I was offered a free couch for the night at the girls place. I accepted the generous offer and we were all dropped off in Alajuela. The rest of the night was spent hanging out with my two new friends and the girls boyfriend. We had a great dinner at a local soda then wandered the streets for some ice cream at a chain place called Pops. Personally I wasn’t impressed by the ice cream there, but many people seem to enjoy it, so to each their own!

On to La Fortuna

Back to Costa Rica