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Kevin traveled to Muara Enim (4 hours from Palembang) in South Sumatra to present a teacher workshop and to
visit students. On Kevin's way back to Bali he attended a meeting with PUSTEKOM in Jakarta.
I left Bali on Sunday morning November 9th and flew through Jakarta and onto Palembang in South Sumatra. But
that wasn’t the end of the travel. Pak Bambang from the Muara Enim Organizing Committee, MEETA, met
me and then we drove to his town of Muara Enim. That was a 5 hour drive on poorly maintained and quite busy
roads. It was along trip before we finally arrived in Muara Enim and I checked into the hotel there.
On Monday the 10th, Pak Bambang was at the hotel before 7am to take me to the teacher workshop that he and
his fellow committee members had spent many weeks organizing. The workshop was held at SMA 1 which is an
interesting school in several ways. The administration section is housed in an old, traditional type of building
and another interesting point is that the school doesn’t close until 9pm each night, That’s right,
the students sometimes have to study until the evening. This is the first time I have ever heard of this
in Indonesia.
The workshop was meant to have 100 participants but as the day went on and more and more teachers arrived
(many in jam karet time) the final number reached 168. That meant we had a very crowded room for
the workshop however teachers were active and participated well in all activities. They also ordered about
50 KGI Teacher Packages so that means they, and their students, will be using KGI activities and audio materials
for many months (and maybe years) to come.
As usual, students arrived just as the teacher’s workshop was finishing up. The student meeting ran
for an hour and the 38 students really enjoyed finding out about KGI. Of course they loved the souvenirs as
well.
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