In her final month, ETA Hannah Semmes welcomed new faces and said goodbye to familiar ones.

Amid Iftar (breaking fast) celebrations with friends and the community, Hannah and her English Club visited an orphanage to celebrate Iftar with the children living there. SMAN 10 students demonstrated leadership by teaching the children how to introduce themselves in English. They then taught the children games they had learned in English Club, like “Duck, Duck, Goose,” or Bebek, Bebek, Itik, a particular crowd favorite. To finish, they entertained the kids with animated readings of bilingual Islamic folktale books, which the English Club donated to the orphanage.

After saying goodbye to the children, Hannah and her co-teacher, Rita, stopped by the opening festival of Balai Bahasa’s new building, a language office in the area that provides language training to both Indonesians and international visitors. Here, Hannah learned to write her name in Rejang (a pre-colonial script from Bengkulu province), played educational games with newly arrived students from Ghana, Kenya, and Thailand studying at Universitas Muhammadiyah Bengkulu, and even chanced upon an opportunity to chat—unbeknownst to her—with the Indonesian Minister of Education!

Never a dull moment… SMAN 10 cemerlang! Bengkulu, camkoha!

Hannah Semmes is currently teaching at SMAN 10 Bengkulu, Bengkulu.