The first days at the UNY

12-02-2014

Today we went to the UNY for our first lessons!! On our schedule we saw that our classes where Bahasa Indonesian grammar and Indonesian Culture.
After a 40 minute walk, we arrived at the university campus. On our way we met the Chinese students, who were also on their way to the university. So we joined them.

Our first class was grammar. We got a lot of information and learned a lot. For example; asking someone’s name, giving answer to that question, introducing someone else, tell somebody where I came from and where I live now in Yogya. The lesson was very interesting and also nice to accompany. Still, it was hard to follow two foreign languages (English and Indonesian). It was real funny to me that when we learned how to ask something or to answer a question, the teacher told us which words in the sentence could be left away. For example: Apakah Anda mau makan malam dengan saya? (do you want to have diner with me tonight?) can be said shorter as: Mau makan malam? I should definitely give this question a shot during the next five months =P
Our lecturer was a real nice and friendly woman, which made the class extra nice to me.

After grammar we got the culture class. Our lecturer told us about the history of Yogyakarta and how the former kingdom got separated in Surakarta and Yogyakarta. After this he told us about the food, the typical Indonesian fruits like rambutan (we also got some of him), the ways of transport in Yogyakarta and about how batik clothing is made.
After the theoretical part of the class he told us which cultural buildings we are going to see during this semester, for example the Borobudur temple.

13-02-2014

Our second day of school, and today program: English for children and Indonesian arts. Starting with the last one. I didn’t had a slightest idea what we were going to do during the Indonesian arts classes. When the class started our lecturer told us that we are going to learn an Indonesian dance, and that we had to choose between several dances. We saw a short video of every dance that we could choose. The formal dances (only performed in the sultan palace, or special occasions) are very slow and long dances. The social dances (dances performed by ‘regular’ people) are more dynamic. After seeing the dances we chose the Jathilan dance, which is performed with bamboo horses. We are already very excited to learn this dance, even though most of us aren’t that good in dancing. Like me xD. At the end of our class, the lecturer showed her dancing skills to us. Which was very impressive!

The second class this day was English for young children. The lecturer didn’t had a lesson planned for the first meeting, but wanted to make a syllabus with us for this semester. During this class we discussed how we are going to work out the four subjects the lecturer gave us. Like how are we going to learn what experts say about English for young children and how do we think about their opinion.