Doing My First Activities Today by Pasquelle van der Jagt

So today was my second day at Tunas Hijau. Mandy and I have to make a plan for our project that we want to do at the schools in the beach areas. So Roni gave us a book with lots of cool activities in it for children in which they can learn something about the environment. We looked through the book and we found some nice activities that we can do. By example making a ‘worm castle’. Worms can eat your left over garbage, turning it into rich soil which can be used in the garden. Or if we want to explain about the ozone problem, we can do a little experiment with water and pepper and soap. I can’t tell the secret here already, but it gives a simple representation of how CFCs attack the ozone layer.

In the morning we visited the elementary school SDK Kristus Raja. Here Mandy and I gave a brief presentation about our environment and our problems in our home countries (Malaysia and The Netherlands). So I explained about the global warming and its effects on the Netherlands; as the temperature will rise, the ice caps on the Nord pole and the South pole will melt and the sea level will rise. The sea level will also rise because the seawater will expand. Because the Netherlands lies so low (below sea level), we have to build our dykes higher or we have to come up with another solution. Best is of course reducing the global warming.

Afterwards the kids asked a lot of questions about how we can reduce the global warming. This is because here in Indonesia the climate is already affected by the global warming. Actually May is already the dry season, but since I got here (like 5 days now) it at least rained once every day. Maybe if they would do something about the traffic (jams) and everything it would be al whole lot better, by example they could make more public transport, but not on the roads, but on a rails. Like a metro or on a rails above the roads or something.

Next we went to a new school, the SDN Kaliasin I. We had to introduce ourselves. The kids agreed that the environment here is really important and that’s important that you take care of it. So after a short presentation and everything, we did a little game with them (Snake & Ledder). I don’t know the exact rules, because it’s in Bahasa, but the kids were having fun with it. Curtis, Mandy and I had to involve with the kids and talk with them about the environment here and back home. Really funny, because if you tell them that it can be freezing in the Netherland and that we can skate in winter, they don’t believe you and they can’t make an imagination about how it looks like.

At the end of the day Mandy and I discussed with Roni about our plans of the activities we planned to do in the beach area. So now we can work everything out. Tomorrow we will visit two schools over there and then we can set a schedule for our activities.