Becoming a Form Teacher at SIS Palembang this year has been one of the most unexpected, heart-warming, and profoundly meaningful chapters of my entire teaching journey. It was a step into the unknown. I walked into this school as a first time international school teacher. hmm of course nervous, excited, and constantly wondering: Would I fit in? Would I connect with the students? Would I even be able to do this well? Then I met Secondary 1B. They are just fifteen students, six wonderful girls and nine dynamic boys. But somehow, they manage to fill the room with enough personality, noise, colour, and glorious chaos to feel like thirty. They didn’t know it on that tentative first day, and certainly, I didn't either, but they were about to become one of the most significant and meaningful experiences of my life. The Dynamics of Our Little Cosmos Our classroom quickly evolved into its own unique cosmos, a space where every student held a distinct gravitational pull. The nine boys of ...
If someone had told me that right after saying "I do," I would be living thousands of kilometers away from my husband, I probably wouldn’t have believed it. But as we all know, life moves in the most unexpected ways. For Khairu and me, our first week as a married couple was also our last week together for a long time. Right after our akad nikah (wedding solemnization), we had to go our separate ways for work. Khairu flew to Myanmar , and I stayed right here in Palembang . That's how our long-distance marriage began. The Reality Check: Tears and the First Farewell The moment he left, the reality hit me—hard. Being a wife who lives far away from her husband is not easy at all. The first week was the absolute hardest. It was filled with tears, a mind that couldn’t focus, and emotions that came rushing whenever I saw something that reminded me of our short but beautiful moments together. Everything felt overwhelming, as if my heart was still trying to understand how quickl...