Road to Indonesia--Cracker Barrel vs. a Fire Pit

 As my grade 8 language arts students came in today to class, I was peeling a baked sweet potato and eating it. A friend had given me about 6 of them, which I had baked. Maybe it is a bit strange to take it to school as your breakfast, but you take what you can get sometimes. An MK who has lived most of his life in Indonesia and is from a family of 7 kids asked me if I liked sweet potatoes at Cracker Barrel. We talked for a few minutes about how great they were, and it was obviously a good memory to him.  Another student, who is a native Indonesian, had come in also while I was peeling my sweet potato.  He gave me the Indonesian word for sweet potato which immediately flew out of my head, of course. But then he went on to talk about being "in his village".  With a big smile he recounted how he and his friends would have sweet potatoes that they would bury in a pit with hot stones on top of them in the morning. Then when school was done they would come and unbury them and have a treat. What a contrast: from good memories of Cracker Barrel to good memories of burying food in a pit with hot stones in a jungle.  Often I forget who I am teaching. At MK schools it is often "Little America". (The students laughed when I used that term.)  We are teaching in English and using US curriculum.  Our day is surrounded by things that make us comfortable. And then all of sudden one is reminded how different life is outside the gates of the school.  This particular student asked me a few days ago how I spelled my last name. When I told him, he looked confused and said, "But that is how your husband spells his last name." During the conversation that then ensued,  I found out that often Indonesian women keep their own family names, and if their family names are the same, two individuals cannot marry.  Indonesian version of keeping siblings, cousins, even distant relatives from intermarriage, I guess. We then had a long conversation about recessive genes and handicapped children.  But I realized how many, many differences we don't even think to mention (like women often change to their husband's name), or how we fix sweet potatoes with brown sugar and cinnamon.  Or again, as the same student has mentioned, how sling shots and bows and arrows are things that one should become adept at using.  I also thought about how this student must be missing his village life just as thoroughly as many of our students miss the US.  He has a brother at University of Oregon and a sister at another big Univeristy in the States. He is a very bright and responsible kid, who I assume will go on to college in the US.  But what a long long long way that is from a village in Indonesia.