Wednesday, December 20, 2006

We have been having quite the rain storms here. If one were to venture outdoors, one would become drenched in seconds. Today we had a thunderstorm that was so close that the lightening and thunder were virtually simultaneous. It was incredibly loud!
In this country they are much more formal than we are with regards to what you call eachother. In Canada we adults just use first names unless we are speaking to an elderly person or a member of parliament. Children of course use the terms Mr. and Mrs. for grownups. Here, it is quite different. If you don’t know each other yet you must use Ibu for a married woman or Nona or Mbak for an unmarried woman. You may say their first name after the title though. Once you get to know each other and know who is older, the older person may call the younger by name only but the younger person must always use the title. Sometimes an older person will call the younger person Dik which is short for Adik which means younger sibling (even though they aren’t actually related…) At school we must call all of our teachers title first and then name. We must use Ibu even for the unmarried female teachers out of respect. Outside of school we can call them whatever they tell us to as some of them are a bit more modern… All the above rules apply to men as well except they are addressed as Pak if married or Mas if not married. In Canada we use the word “you” when talking to someone as well. Here it is more polite, at school especially, to use the proper title (don’t have to use the name too). It is actually very polite to use your own name when talking about yourself too. That’s weird to do so I’m not really doing it… At school before going home, the teachers must go to the head of the school and ask permission to go home (even though some of them have worked there for almost 20 years…). When asking permission, they must say their title, first name and then ask. Like, “Boleh (may) Ibu Erica pulang (go home)?” I never imagined that there would be this many little things to learn here!

No comments: