The First Two Workshops in Jayapura

On July 29, RELO Assistant Kun Herrini went to Jayapura for the first time. The plan was to team up with Gumawang Jati from FKSU program (under DIKTI) to facilitate a 3 workshop on IT in ELT in Universitas Cendrawasih (UnCen) and 1,5 day workshop with Highschool Teachers sponsored by The Manyouri and STIE Otto Geissler on Teaching Communicatively.

A long and tiring trip, leaving Jakarta at 11 PM, transiting in Denpasar and in Timika, arriving in Jayapura at 09:30 AM, in the mids of heavy pour. The drive from the airport to the city, passing amazing Danau Sentani (Lake) on the right side and mountain range on the left side, all still in their pristine state.

I was a little more prepared then when I visited Manokwari for the first time in October 2005. Jayapura is the capital city of a province, anyway. It is a quite big city. And I was relieved when I saw the city skyline and learned that the hotel is right in front of KFC and Gelael Supermarket.

Workshop in Universitas Cendrawasih:
Teaming up with Gumawang Jati, the program of “Maximizing the Use of Technology in Teaching English” at Universitas Cendrawasih, was attended by 23 teachers, split up almost evenly between lecturers of UnCen and highschool teachers from the surrounding areas. It went for 3 days. Gumawang Jati led the workshop Kun was more assisting, especially when the two group of teachers had to split. The Lecturers were trained to use ‘hotpotatoe’, ‘nicenet.org’, and ‘blogs’, while the Highschool teachers were working only with ‘hotpotatoe’ but in details and real practice for their teaching’.

Between the sessions Kun also had the time to present about RELO profile and its services. Teachers seemed to be interested to learn more about RELO and planned on contacting RELO for different professional development activities.

Workshop in The Manyouri
On August 2nd , in the early evening, RELO Assistant Kun was invited to a welcoming dinner at STIE Otto-Geisler. Kun invited Jati and the FKSU people to join, but only Jati could come. To Kun’s surprise, the Manyouri foundation had prepared an ethnic welcoming ritual, where she was fetched by a group of traditional dancers and had to stand in a big bowl as a symbol of acceptance. An unforgettable experience. After some speeches then Kun presented the RELO profile and answered a lot of questions from the audience.

The next day, starting at 08:30 AM, the workshop was attended by 26 highschool teachers, some came from 2 or 3 mountains (their way of measuring distance) away.
The plan was to finish at 3, but they were so enthusiastic and sometimes did not want to stop an activity, so it finally ended up at 4:30. They were awfully thirsty and in bad need of such enrichment programs.