Author: Ilse van Huizen
Internship coordinator of the KPZ: Harrie Poulssen
Before going abroad:
Headmaster: Mrs Janet Desjardins
School: The Netherlands Inter-Community school
Place: Jakarta, Indonesia
Email: info@nis.or.id
Telephone: +62 21 7823930
The school:
The Netherlands Intercommunity School is a international school. There is a dutch and an English stream. The whole school contents 160 children. Some classes are really small with 3 or 4 children others have more like 16 children. Every class has one or two teachers and most of the classes got there one TA’s (teacher assistants). They speak dutch, and English with the IPC- lessons on the dutch stream. The English stream only speaks English. The meetings are in English. There are a few intership places at the NIS, be early and have a good CV and motivation letter if you want to do your internship here!
At home:
Before you go to indonesia you need to get a Social- Culture VISA. The NIS helped me with this, you need documents from them and you can’t do this on your one. I paid for my visa around 100 euro’s and I did this at a special commpany named: Visumpro (it is in The Hague.)
Review of your stay abroad in academic terms:
It was a great experience. I have learned a lot about international education and it was good to be alone at the otherside of the world. I have experienced a lot of new things in education to children. I have learned to work with IPC. And because of illnessy of my mentor I had the class a several times for myself. I also had the chance to have al look at the NTC lessons (Nederlands Taal en Culuur) these lessons are all over the world teached.
Review of your stay abroad in cultural terms/social terms:
The religion in Indonesia is the Islam. It is really normal to walk in a burka despite the hot weather. Mostly every woman is wearing headscarves. You need to dress yourself properly, so no thanktops and no shorts. As a woman you should not go on experience by yourself it’s better to go with a local. A lot of man will try to ‘get’ you, so you better act as a married woman.
Indonesian people see foreigners as really special. The love to call you ‘bulle’ what means foreinger, so you better smile and say hello.
They people can’t speak english, so you need to be really independent and plan everything in advance, example by coming home from the school or shopping mall. The people are very kind and very helpful even there is less communication possible.
The traffic is a chaos in Jakarta, be prepared if you are in a hurry.
Everything is really cheap in Jakarta except the groceries stores. Those are really expensive because only the expats will use them, you will pay 2 euro’s for yoghurt. Everything form dairy produce is very expensive. The use Rupiah as a currency. 1 euro is 15000 rupiah, and that’s enough to have a good lunch in a local market.
When you will meet new people it is very normal to give eachother 2 kisses. Do not be put off when this happened!
Also, when you want to travel to Bali, you will see that there is a lot of differents between Indonesian islands. Bali is very rich and a lot of people talk english there. It looks like a whole other country!
Useful tips
- Stay cool. I had car accedent when I was not even one hour in Jakarta. You just need to stay calm and then everything wil be alright.
- To go to your internship you need to get the ‘go-jek’ or grab application. You will order a scooter with driver who gets you through the traffic. It is really cheap and fast, I use this for everything in Jakarta. As a woman were your 'marriage ring'!
- Only travel with blue brid taxi, those have a meter! Do not go with any other taxi companies this can be really dangerous!!
- Do not get upset with taxi drivers order by application (blue bird), they don’t understand everything about adresses. Just help them to make sure they can find you.
- Explore Indonesia as well. Jakarta is a really dirty city and there is not that much to do. You can’t go to the beach because of the polution. So book a flight and go to Yogyakarta or Bandung, Bogor. When you have more time visit Bali and the gili islands, it’s really a must see!
Budget
Retour airplane ticket with stop-over in Doha. I was flying with qatar airways which I can really recommend, I paid €670.
Residence: I had a hostfamilly
Go-jek/Grab for 3 months: 2 euro’s each day
Trips to Yogyakarta and Bali around 2000 euro’s
For any questions please contact me at:
i.huizen@kpz.nl
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