Dissa Ahdanisa's Stories

Leaving is hard. But it is harder when you can’t say goodbye to some of the people you love. That what I thought would happen on my last day. Pedro, or so I called him Pedrito is one of the smartest kids in the school, he plays chess, he doesn't tattletale and he doesn't get into trouble. Those are enough to make him my favourite. Also, his smile is super adorable. However, on my last day, I thought I would never see him again. Have you ever met a kid that sounds and behave very maturely? I have met few and Pedro is one of them. Talking to him doesn't feel like talking to a 12 year old. He listens and responds like an adult. He doesn't go around and looking for trouble with other kids, instead he sits down and read when the class finishes and he has nothing to do. One time he told me that he was bored, so I told him to teach me Spanish. He actually sat down and told me all vocabularies of things around the school.   Former v...

Every friday we  have a fun day. It's when the kids do not have their usual English class and volunteers come up with and idea for a fun activity instead. So, Leonie came up with an idea to clean up the barrio, or the neighbourhood and last friday, we had an environmental day at the school. For weekdays, we have around 40-50 kids divided into for different classes, but on friday we only have two. We have the pre-schoolers in the morning and then the older kids after. This Friday, all older kids were divided into groups of three. Each group got a plastic bag (that Keeley and I got from Palí) and in 30 minutes they will have to collect plastic trash from around the neighbourhood. Only plastics, no paper, no leaves, just plastics. Also, they cannot take the trash from their house. Just the one on the street. Sounds fair enough, yea? And the team that fill their plastic bag the fastest will win! To make it more dramatic, I lined them up outside and gave the plastic bag to each...

Te mando esta carta y este corazon. "I send you this letter and this heart" It was sunny and hot in Pantanal, the neighborhood where our school is, and the kids were having their English class with Francis, the beloved teacher. Like other volunteers, I was helping some of the kids finishing their exercise. We went to some tables to sit down and help them if they have some questions. We were doing numbers in English. Francis wrote down some number and the kids had to write it in English. Some kids did know what they were doing, so they came to us to confirm their answers, which mostly were correct. However, some weren't that fortunate. They didn't know how to say the numbers in English, let alone write them down. And José Lopez was one of them. This cute 10 years old boy can write well and understand the what he needed to do to finish the exercise. He can spell 1-10 in english, he can say 100, 200 and other big numbers, but when we mix it, e.g 432 or 215, he ...

"Mucha gente pequeña, en lugares pequeños, haciendo cosas pequeñas, puede cambiar el mundo" -Eduardo Galeano "Many small people in small places who are doing small things, can change the world" Granada is a beautiful town. It has colorful colonial buildings, old churches and lively market. Most of the colonial buildings are now hotels and cafe, which are used by many tourists as getaways from the noon heat. However, some of them are quite expensive and most of the dishes they offer are internationals... or americans. So, I rarely go to the cafe, unless if they have great coffee (which I can refill freely of course haha) or they have something unique that I have never seen before, like this one. Cafe de Las Sonrisas or cafe of the smiles, is the first cafe in the Americas and the fourth in the world that is staffed entirely by people with hearing of speaking disability, or deaf-mutes. I read an article about it in the local magazine. It is said that its me...

Thank you. That's the first thing I had on my mind when I realized that I was actually going to Nicaragua. Yes, Nicaragua. A country in Central America. A country that I swear even my colleagues at work would have never heard before (and this is true... I did a geographical explanation to them when I told them about my plan and until this day, some of them still think I'm somewhere in Africa!). A country without many Indonesians. A country that I have never been. A country at the other side of the globe. I had a dream that I will go to Latin America. Because I love Spanish, I love the culture, the people and the energy. My image of Latinos and Latinas, apart from "they must be dancing a lot" is that they look like warm and nice people. Again, at that time I didn't know. I knew nothing and yet I decided to take a plunge. Yes, it was sudden. I was working in Tokyo and I found this opportunity to work in an NGO, a local grassroots organization that provide...