The Friendships We Form

Rachel Wisthuff currently volunteers as an English Teacher at Universitas Muhamadiyah Solo in Surakarta, Indonesia.

At UMS, I divide my time between two different programs. My main responsibility is teaching Speaking I-IV as a part of the English Teacher Training Faculty. The students under this faculty are the are the super hard-working, creative, and fast improving ones I introduced in a previous blog post.

For this post, I wanted to write about the other half of my job: teaching at UMS’s International Boarding House, KH Mas Mansyur. Most of my students are enrolled in the double degree program where they are studying English alongside such mind boggling things as automotive engineering and business management. I help all of them to prepare to take the IELTS and TOEFL examinations so that they may soon study abroad at UMS’s partner institutions in England and Australia.

With regular classes all day and my class at night, I know just how dedicated they all are. When they told me about their upcoming camp-out on the white sandy beach of Sundak, I was super happy for them. Then…they invited me to come along. I thought the last thing they would want is for their teacher to tag along on their vacation, but it did not take much convincing for me to jump on board.

Maura, a fellow VIA Indonesia volunteer, came with us and took some amazing photos. I had some of my best memories in Indonesia that weekend. It reminded me that VIA isn’t just about developing relationships in the classroom, but forming friendships outside of it.

Watching the guys float out in the water, being serenaded while a fire was started and a whole chicken was roasted, sleeping out under the stars and waking up before sunrise, nothing could have been better. At least, that’s what I thought, until the sun rose in the morning.