So here we go… I landed in Indonesia in Surabaya. It was again ridiculously hot and humid, it was even worse than Malaysia I guess. After a few moments I met AIESEC people at the airport and they drove me to my temporary accommodation, which was not on my previous schedule.
When I reached this temporary accommodation I immediately noticed significant differences in living standards. Everything was tiny and not well maintained. Indonesians obviously suffer from a lack of space and therefore these tiny houses sandwiched between each other. It was the most significant difference I have noticed amongst others. Before coming to Indonesia, just make sure that you will insist on some evidence of what your place will be like. It will make it vastly easier for you to absorb any cultural shocks. After staying in this temporary accommodation for nearly two days, I finally moved to the orphanage where I was supposed to be working for another 6 weeks. Well, if I had mentioned something about living standards above, this place was far below any known living standards and moreover the TN description was just so different from reality. There were no developing activities whatsoever, my daily duties were to play with kids and that’s it… Pure babysitting - something definitely not for me. I guess I still have enough time to learn how to look after kids and thus I had to appeal to AIESEC people to come up with some other internship, otherwise I would be leaving in a few days. But since i spent money and time to get here, i wanted something in return from AIESEC, to obtain some valuable experience. All this process was difficult and full of pitfalls and various difficulties that I am not going to explain into detail here. However, one advice for any potential people coming to Indonesia, insist on some photos of the place where you are supposed to stay and double check your TN description. AIESEC people in Indonesia (Surabaya) are hard to communicate with and lack any signs of reliability. I strongly believe that they will change their approach since students spend their own money to get here to get some valuable working experience and not to argue about an already signed contract that does not reflect reality. After almost a week I managed to get myself another internship at one organization operating in environmental issues. Sounded promising and tempting. After having an interview I was accepted and the following day I finally begin my work. Thanks god that my six weeks do not get wasted and I will be doing some productive and interesting work. I think that i am probably going to be the only student doing three internships during this double the fun program :)
I began to work for Tunas Hijau (feel free to check out their website, I already finished some articles from various trips: http://tunashijau.org) and to be honest this internship looks really promising and like something what i will enjoy. What Tunas Hijau essentially does is visiting schools in Surabaya and observes how well or unwell they look after its environment and based on this assessment we come up with relevant suggestions and ideas how to improve it. There were a number of activities within the last week where I met the mayor of Surabaya and some other official people. Having a chat with these people is always interesting and the fact that I am from Europe makes them even more interested in me from some reason. Next week our entire team is heading to the city called Situbondo, which is roughly 500km from Surabaya. We are going to educate teachers and students of a middle school how to be more sensitive towards our environment. We should give presentations on various topics and also in an entertaining way to try to raise awareness of relevant environmental issues. It definitely sounds great and I am looking forward to it so much.
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