The Big International Seminar at Nommensen

Sorry, no additional tales of Nancy and wildlife encounters to report. I believe she is being a bit more careful now!

This is a congratulatory signboard for the seminar planners from a principal fro a school in Papua. Perhaps the principal is a Nommensen graduate. 

This is a “brief” summary of the International Seminar that was held on Saturday.We’ve decided that the university evaluation sheet for Indonesian schools includes a category named “International Seminar”. Because not only did the English Department go to great lengths to put on this seminar, but the Math Department put on a similar seminar within the last months. We don’t think they would do this on a whim, or just as a nice thing to do. The powers that be here had asked us to speak at the seminar about a month before we came. We really didn’t know what we were getting into (what’s new!) so we agreed. Then they started mentioning an academic paper we were to write. Luckily our schools were still in session when I found out the subject was “Language Acquisition”. I begged my teaching colleague from HVA, Dr. Frank Chen, to help us, and he came through with important texts, papers, and his own personal summary of current theory. Without his help the paper wouldn’t have happened, so thank you Frank!

The auditorium seats about 1,000 and includes an incredible
Biblical themed stain glass wall.

We had to get up early for the seminar even though we weren’t speaking until late afternoon. We were told that many people would be recognized in the morning, so we had to be there. So we showed up at 7:15, knowing that the scheduled start time was 7:30. There were about 50 people there at that point, and that included a dozen members of the Batak dance squad and members of the planning committee. Our friend Herman, the MC, was dressed in suit and tie, as we most of the speakers and committee members. Since I didn’t bring a suit, dress shirt or tie, I felt a little out of place in my polo-style golf shirt and very dirty light colored pants (about time to wash them I guess). But we have this theory that we look so strange already, as tall white folks in a country of shorter brown folks, that nobody really notices what I am wearing.

The dance team was ready to go at 7:30! The girl
in the back, far right, with the big hat, is the
centerpiece of the Singalegale performance.

We sat in the back of the room and took advantage of the wi-fi connection while waiting for the event to get started. That really bothered the organizers, who asked us to move up front to the couches in the front row, the row for the “keynote speakers”. We put them off for about 15 minutes and then gave in. We moved to our cushy seats but kept working on the internet. By the way, these cushy seats looked familiar, because the moving men showed up at our house after we left and took all our living room furniture. It is now Sunday night and we hope it comes back to us on Monday.

The event finally kicked off at 8:30, an hour late. With a full agenda for the day, we didn’t know how the time would be made up. But there we go again, silly Americans, worrying about time and schedules.

The Tortor Singalegale

There were some welcomes and little formal speeches, then a brief worship service, Batak dancing (Tortor Sombah, the general version of dancing with the hand motions and finger movements), singing of the National Anthem (we do know it includes the word “Indonesia” several times) and despite the fact that the organizing committee wanted to play the Star Spangled Banner also, some higher up vetoed the idea. At least they didn’t go ahead and play the official song of Sumatra and North Sumatra. We likely would still be sitting in the auditorium. There were a few people commenting on the importance of the seminar, and then the Batak dancers returned to perform the Tortor Singalegale. This dance has a story: the king and queen don’t have an heir so they create one from wood, and everyone dances around it to bring it to life. Perhaps this is the origin of the story of Pinocchio. The dancing was great and the 770 students in the auditorium really loved it. They can make some noise!

The first speaker with his chart of the education process.

So the fun was over and it was time to get down to “Character Building in Learning”. This seminar will not be appearing on HBO anytime soon, let’s just say that. The first speaker must be brilliant because he used charts that hurt my head trying to figure out. He seemed to understand them well, and talked (in Indonesian) about them for a long time. 


Then the second speaker begin, and he was much more interactive with the crowd. He also spoke in English, which I found helpful but I bet it make it challenging for some of the students. When he asked the crowd questions he waited until someone answered. He had a few tricks in his questions so that was good to keep the audience on their toes. 

The second speaker was more animated and spoke in English.

His charts were less challenging to understand that the first ones. Flow charts seem to be big in academia here so we were going with the flow. As he concluded I mentioned to Nancy that this guy must be the best speaker of the whole lineup, and I was right. These first two were big guns from universities in Medan.

Before you knew it, time for makan siang (lunch)! All of us VIPs went to the Dean’s office to eat. I was a bit disappointed, as I had been told the students were getting a box lunch containing buffalo meat. We had to settle for some well done cuts of fish and fried chicken (of course I helped out the vegetarian Nancy by removing the meat from her lunch.) In addition we had apples, grapes and jack fruit on the table, quite a lot to eat. Though it tasted great going down I began suffering that evening so something didn’t agree with my system (the first time for this trip after the initial adjustment time).

Next it was time for Nommensen instructors to present papers. There were four locations for these presentations, and Nancy wisely chose to stay in the auditorium and sent me out into the rain to one of the other buildings. We were now out of the spotlight and back to normally Nommensen. The presentations were good but little details like the screen were not taken care of (yes there was a screen but it was so crooked that the edges of each slide required some guesswork.)

This is part of the auditorium crowd for our talk. We walked
up and down the aisles, which was challenging due to
the many many steps. But we survived without tripping.

Then it was back to the auditorium and it was showtime for us. We had rehearsed our presentation to the point of know who was going to say what about each slide, and we agreed that we needed to give the presentation while walking up and down the aisles of the student section. Otherwise they’d just talk and we’d get distracted and we’d lose them. I had the air mouse in my hand and the distance it worked was remarkable. I imagine the aisles are about 30 yards long, and several times I was at the back of the auditorium when I advanced a slide. We required students to talk to each other, we walked around and asked for answers off mike, and then asked for volunteers to give answers on mike. We ended with the singing of Beautiful Savior, first in English, then in Indonesian, finally in English. We noticed in our Sunday School teachers workshops that they would sing the hymn in English and go through a phase of trying to figure out the words and the music (they use a faster rhythm). So the first round is pretty quiet. Then they see the words in Bahasa Indonesia and it clicks. They sing with great gusto. This enthusiasm carries through to the second singing in English, and they seem to know all the words at that point.

It was another powerful moment for us, and I hope Jacob’s recording captured the emotion and passion of the assembly. By the way, there is an interesting mix of Christians and Muslims here, even at the Christian Nommensen school. For instance, Nancy asked the guy who was playing the keyboard for the National Anthem if he would play Beautiful Savior. He politely declined due to two factors….he didn’t know the tune and he’s Muslim. I think we ended up going acapella and it was powerful.

We were followed by Megan Ross, a fellow American who works as a Deaconess at the Diaconal school in Belige, located on the south side of Lake Toba. Her talk included many good basic ideas for teachers. At that point the event wrapped up, pretty much on time (within a half hour). The auditorium was a disaster area, given that everyone had been provided three boxes during the day, two snacks and lunch. There was no plan or demand that students carry out their boxes and dispose of them, so all these boxes were simply left in the auditorium. A mountain of them. On Sunday late afternoon we saw the workers carrying them out in big piles and burning them by the front fence (where most of the campus trash is burned). Some of the students ate their lunches outside the auditorium, and these boxes were dropped everywhere around the building. Not blaming the students, there were likely no obvious trash barrels and the culture doesn’t include a silly rule like “take care of your own trash”.