I’ve Finally Arrived in Aceh!

Hello! My name is Luci Ostheimer and I am an English lecturer at Pusat Bahasa and FKIP. I want to share a bit about my first month teaching at USK. My first year at USK in 2021 was spent in my “home office” (A.K.A. (also known as) the guest bedroom of my home in America). As I’m sure you are know, teaching on Zoom is an interesting experience. Though I could only see my students inside their tiny Zoom boxes, I was still able to get to know them, and Aceh, through our check-ins, homework assignments, and weekly office hours. Landscapes came alive when Zilla wrote about her grandmother washing clothes at a waterfall by her village, or when Wahdina described the peaceful rice paddies across the street from her house. I heard pet birds in the background of Denny and Salawati’s video feeds, the rush of traffic outside Dara’s house, the staticy cut-ins and -outs of mengobrol  when someone forgot to mute themselves. Around Halloween, we talked about the Salem Witch Trials and Hocus Pocus, the word spooky, and all the things that scared us. My students introduced me to the ghosts that haunt Indonesia like kuntilanak and pocong, entities that put western vampires and werewolves to shame. I learned how to make mie Aceh and nasi goreng from cooking video finals, how issues like gender equality, labor rights, and deforestation are as important in Aceh as they are in the US during presentations, and that BTS, One Piece, and Taylor Swift are global phenomena in the purest sense of the word during office hours.

Being able to come to Aceh to teach in person has been a wonderful experience and I am so grateful to finally be here! It has been full of surprises, from trying sambal for the first time to seeing some of the most breathtaking sunsets at Lhoknga Beach or on the road at Lamnyong Bridge. I think the most powerful experience I’ve had so far is getting to meet my students for the first time. It’s difficult to put the feeling into words. Although the fact that we were finally together was momentous in itself, it didn’t feel bombastic or tearful, it felt like reuniting with old friends. We went shopping for stationary, out for tea at riverside coffee trucks, and sat in the park and reminisced about how weird Zoom classes were, among other things. One of my favorite “reunions” was going to a live music show with two of my Pusat Bahasa students and being surprised to hear one of my favorite songs, “I Don’t Love You” by My Chemical Romance, a song I would never imagine to hear all the way in Banda Aceh.  Each week has included adventures with new friends and meet-ups with students, which has made adjusting to living in a new place easier than I was expecting. The welcome I’ve received here has been amazing beyond words, and I am so excited to spend the next year here.