First Day Officially Working With Tunas Hijau

Surabaya- Today is my officially first day working in Tunas Hijau in Surabaya. First task is about assisting kids to vote for their favorite seven nearly extinction places on the earth. New 7 wonders is a website, listing with 28 extraordinary beautiful spots on the earth which will die soon if we do nothing.  As personal experience, it is quite sad seeing those wonderful things getting disappear and my kid may even be not able to have a look. You will not realize how magical the role the natural environment plays in a normal human’s life unless you get there by yourself.

Morning, we went to the first school, SD Al Muslim, a very nice private elementary school inSidoarjo-Surabaya. In the computer lab, after giving a simple self-introduction, I start showing kids how to get on the website and assisting them to vote.  Because of the language beerier, I found that I have limited help to them. Teacher there are really warm-heart and show us around the school.

All the flowers on the window table are made of used plastic wrapping paper or used bottle. Local teacher told me that the roof of school is soundproof. Even outside is pouring, teaching will be in progress as usual. The funny part is when we passed by the praying room and introduced ourselves. They are so crazy about knowing Alexis after Alexis said she is from Korean. So Muslim school students can be not that conservative as usual people thought, which is really good. We need open minded future.

After a very nice lunch, we moved on to another school that is a bit far away from this one. It is called SDN Perak Barat. Students are screaming when they see Alexis again. I think Indonesia kids are really external kids. As my experience when I was in Chinese elementary school, we stay quiet and serious when we meet guests. Even though we are curious about the guests and have questions, we still stay quiet.

Same as one of Asian country here, I saw people here are warm just like the tropical weather. It is still Asian, but just southeast a bit. Back to our environmental tasks, teaching kids put rubbish into the right bins. Bins in this school are separated to paper, plastic and dead plants. However, students didn’t really followed the rules sometimes, they put plastic cup into paper bin and an apple core which should not appear in a recycling bin. So we taught students differ rubbish and collect some recycling rubbish around the school.

I had a full and interesting day. I guess this is the right strategy: environmental awareness should start from kids.