The Zoo

On Friday being late for school, which we so usually are, was not an option. We set the alarm for 7.15 so we could press snooze multiple times and still be up in time. We left the house at 8.30 to go and meet the students by the big tree. Everyone was very excited, we're going to the zoo! We crossed the road to the Tescos car park where the coach was waiting. The children excitedly boarded the coach, unaware that up to a quarter of them would be suffering from travel sickness. Luckily Pastor Henry guided us to his van and we would make the trip to the zoo alongside the coach, every now and then waving when we found ourselves next to it. When we got to the zoo some of the children looked very queasy as they got off the coach.

After a quick drink of Milo for everyone we began our walk around the zoo. The first animals we came across were the giraffes. There was even a baby one, very cute. It was quite small, it must've been only a few weeks old. Next we saw some elephants, of the Asian variety. There is a lake in the middle of the zoo where many storks walk free. They remind me of the storks in Dumbo, bringing babies to all the animals. Well they must've been busy recently because we saw a lot of little ones! We then saw some birds, including a cassowary, hyenas and made our way to the ape centre. They had chimpanzees and orangutans, who seemed keen to play to the audience. Despite the playful orangutans messing around in their enclosure, the children had spotted something else in the ditch separating the enclosure from the visitors - a huuuuuuge fish. It must've been about two metres long. Other animals we saw - lions, sponsored by ING Direct, elephants, sponsored by Carlsberg, camels and tigers. We made our way back towards the entrance where lunch was waiting for us.

Someone had brought along a huge tub of rice, some chicken and vegetables in sauce and an egg omlette type dish. There was plenty to eat and everyone ate happily, already tired from the amount of walking we'd been doing in the morning. After lunch and a rest we continued our tour of the zoo. Saw the hippos, penguins, fish in the aquarium and reptiles. Lesson of the day - do not give your camera to a child to take pictures. My main worry of doing this was that he would drop my precious camera and it would smash into tiny pieces, but after a while I realised that he was ok at holding things and this was not really a risk. However, in his helpful nature he was trying to delete the bad pictures as he went along, not realising that he had been pressing delete then, "all from today." Devastation! I lost all my wonderful pictures from the morning's events!! After finally clocking on to what had happened I tried to keep my cool! (After all he was just trying to be helpful bless 'im!) I told him not to delete any more pictures and that I wanted to take some for a while.

We found ourselves back at the elephant enclosure. The elephant was standing by the ditch and could almost touch the children with his trunk. They were so excited and all crowded round reaching out to the beautiful beast! By this point everyone was tired and needed a rest so I took the opportunity to go round and re-take some pictures. We took four of the boys with us. This time round we found the honey tent where we could taste honey and see some bee specimens. The lady there gave us all a lolly as well, very nice. We also went on a bear hunt, and found them in an obscure corner of the zoo. After rejoining the others we had waffles and watched the animal show, consisting of many performances such as sea lion basketball and a cockatoo.

On the way home we got the coach with the children, who were all given a precautionary sick bag. It was a very bumpy ride, I understand why so many were sick on the way but this time I think most people were asleep after a day of excitement and lots of walking.

All in all a wonderful day! We went to bed early and slept for ages!

Karaoke Extraordinaire

Saturday day time was pretty uneventful. Come evening time we headed over to our favourite drinking place. The lady there is called Lily, she is a lovely Chinese lady who I can practise my Mandarin skills on. She knows my name now, yay. So after a few refills of Carlsberg for me, and a "delicious" mixture of Guinness and Tiger beer for Jo, everyone was pretty jolly (at 7.30 pm) and our friend the police officer suggested some karaoke. We answered with a puzzled look of slight worry and "is there actually karaoke in this village?!" Apparently yes. We politely said that we were unable to do karaoke because we were taking the children to watch the football on tv at 9.30, but Policeman tried his best to persuade us. In the end we agreed to go for an hour from 8 till 9. We went out of the pub and crossed the road and walked up the stairs. The karaoke place is split up into separate rooms, each with the tv, microphones etc. that you find in a karaoke. We all did a song each and then the others sang lots of Malaysian love songs. Maybe a few too many? The highlight was definitely belting out Robbie Williams's "Angels" with King on backing vocals.

After that we left the karaoke and went to meet the children from school, pretending that we had not been drinking beer and singing in the karaoke all before 9pm.The football was boring, I think I'm starting to like it less the more games I watch. Maybe I'll keep trying.

On Monday night we went to visit Simon and Bibiana again and their dad Bruno. Their cousins were also at the house, very busy! We managed to persuade some of them to become new recruits at adult class, go us. We sat and drank beer with Bruno and the others until quite late. We had lots of fun trying to pronounce lots of English words, especially those with the "th" sound - "THUUUURSDAY!" Lots of laughs! He then went on to tell us that he feels like we are his daughters, Simon and Bibi's older sisters, very nice! He also wanted to tell us a lot more but couldn't because of the language barrier, but we got the message. After a nice evening we went home at about 1am to plan our lessons for the next day, and sleep.

Today is Wednesday. With class A we started filming some videos that I'm going to put together and send to Gunnersbury. Hopefully they'll be able to make one to send back to us. The filming was very funny, some of them are naturals infront of the camera. We're now at the internet cafe because our dongle (internet stick) that we have at the flat is so mind numbingly slow that whenever we plug it into our laptops we lose the will to live. So now I'm watching some Neighbours online, and planning tonight's adult lesson and something for Class A tomorrow.

Adult Classes and Beers

Wildlife Count: Many wonderful lizards; a jolly frog; a giant cockroach; a threatening looking wasp thing; a beautiful and massive moth; many many many mosquitoes. I hate them! Only the mosquitoes, the rest of the animals are awesome in their own special ways, even the papa cockroach! Jo does not agree. She was the one to find it just chillin' in the bathroom, and alerted the rest of the flat with a scream. When King came to the rescue he attempted to chase it down but those things are fast. After a few attempts to stamp it to death and shouts of "Don't kill it!" from Jo it disappeared, never to be seen again... yet. But Jo is still living in the fear of when it might show its face again.

On Tuesday we started giving the adult lessons. We weren't sure how many people would come but there was a very goot turnout, so on Wednesday we split the class into two levels. Jo took the upper class, where they are able to talk about job interviews and CVs. My class is wonderful, we are learning "hello" and "goodbye" and making simple offers and requests. I spent much of the lesson teaching them how to say Thursday. They are all very enthusiastic and I hope my teaching skills are at least good enough for them to improve a little bit while we are here.

After class on Wednesday evening, King took us to meet some of the Malaysians of the community at a Chinese beer shop/bar thingy-ma-place. They were very welcoming and seemed very appreciative of what we are doing here. The people here are so warm hearted that they make us endless offers, such as "you are welcome to stay with my sister-in-law in Borneo" and "my wife and children will take you swimming".... "give me a tinkle if you ever need anything, I will sort it out for you." Definitely something we are not used to at home. After getting to know these people a little bit, King took us to visit the flat of some of the refugees. They run a little shop selling Burmese snacks and food from their flat. They laid out various things for us to try, such as a salad of dried nuts, lentils, sesame seeds and peas, with wet tea leaves. The bitter taste of the tea leaves is intended to balance out the saltiness of the salad. It was like nothing I've tasted but I think it was quite nice. Jo kindly said it was very tasty but I'm not sure they believed her on judging her facial expressions. We stayed in the flat talking to the girl there for a long time, and left at about 1.30 am, still needing to plan tomorrow's lesson at this point, oh dear! Late night ahead.

Yesterday (Friday) was yet again activity day, so naturally my morning consisted of playing three games of Scrabble. Lucky I like Scrabble. Jo's class had the pleasure of watching Toy Story 3 and then learning learning some fabulous songs. We about music class after school but the teacher didn't turn up this week. Nevertheless we stayed behind to have a practise, I'm starting to remember some of the songs I know on guitar and Jo's drumming skills are near expert. After that we came back to the flat to chill for a while. Later, we were excited to cook dinner because we have now been provided with a tin opener from Pastor Henry. We can open our tuna! But, unfortunately this proved to be harder than we expected. This is no normal can opener. After googling how to use it the tuna still refused to let us in. After half an hour of carving around the outside of the can and prising open with a fork, we finally made contact with the contents. And was it worth it? Oh yes. After a week of tofu, tuna is like the food of heaven.

After dinner we went for a walk to Tescos, to get some money, and then past the beer shop where we found King and our new friends from Wednesday evening. We joined them for a few beers and I discovered that I now have people to practise my Mandarin on. And discovered that my memory of languages comes to me more willingly after a beer or two. We then visited the flat of Simon and Bibiana, two children from my class A at school. We met their dad, Bruno, who is paralysed and has to stay in the flat all the time. He was such a nice man and seemed so happy to meet us. We promised that we would come and visit him often. We showed Simon and Bibi our houses on google maps, and some sights of London. They provided us with a dish of tomato, onion and beef, very delicious, then listened to some of their favourite music including One Direction, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber. Bruno was also a fan, such a cool dad! By 2am everyone was tired so we thanked them and went home to sleep.

Fun things! And serious things...

 Amongst some scandal of certain pictures being printed in a French magazine, Will and Kate had already continued on to the Solomon Islands and left Kuala Lumpur on Friday. We missed them! So instead, on Saturday we went back into KL to conduct a non-jetlagged tour around the city. We visited the Lake Gardens, home to many beautiful orchids, and the royal palace (from afar) amongst other sites. The bus journey home is very long and a changeover in Rawang is required. At this point a seemingly endless crowd of teenagers got on the bus. They decided that it would be fun to talk at us in the little English that they knew. Next thing we know the whole bus is staring in our direction. It was definitely a very awkward bus journey. Later that evening we took some of the children from Class A to meet
Pastor Henry and watch the football at 11pm. They were very excited. We all ordered food and drinks and most had a good time watching the match. I'm trying to like it but I have to admit that I think it should have been over in about fifty minutes rather than ninety. Maybe it will grow on me gradually.

We have also been learning a lot about Myanmar and the life of a refugee here. Myanmur, or Burma as some people know it, seems to be a very rural country where the people live a very primitive lifestyle. If they want to make food, they have to go outside and cut it from their crops. Their houses are made from wood and there is no electricity in most of the towns. We've heard stories of families being split up and the dangers of trying to cross borders into another country. Even here the refugees don't feel completely safe, with accounts of being robbed outside their flats and the police being less than helpful to deal with any conflicts.


On a lighter note, we have three school trips in the pipeline. The first will be a trip to the zoo, then a science centre in KL, and a waterpark just outside the city. Three very fun days ahead! Tonight we start teaching the adults. This will be a challenge but we are going to give it a good go! I have lots to do so I'll leave it for today's post. More to come in a few days!

One Week On...

We have been teaching the children for 4 days now. It took a few attempts to plan lessons to their level of English but we're getting there. Fridays (today) are activity day where we play games and stuff. There was also a TB vaccination drive going on so we had to have 2 classes each crowded into one room. Mine were happy playing an advanced version of catch and I was able to enjoy an intense game of Scrabble with the older kids, or, as it is know in Malay, 'Sahibba'. Very fun!

The Scrabble game was so gripping that we overran school time by half an hour. I then walked into another room to find Jo rocking out on the drums while three of the children were having a guitar lesson. The teacher said she had some kind of natural talent... for a first attempt at playing. He allowed us to come back next week for some drum and guitar tuition. Jo is "like beyond excited".

The other day we cooked for ourselves for the first time. In our flat we have a rice cooker and wok, so all meals must adapt to this equipment. I was in charge of the Chinese knife and Jo the wok. I expertly chopped the chicken and vegetables which Jo adeptly knocked together in the wok with some oil to create a culinary sensation. Success.

Yesterday after school we decided to go and sit on the field outside our flats. Promptly two Malay Indian boys came over to make friends. They seemed funny and we convinced them to stop smoking as they were only thirteen years old. Another guy got out of his car to come and take some pictures of us. We then played some games with them and races while the other guy who spoke no English sat next to me taking pictures of us on his phone. Who knew we'd be so famous! Running in the heat is hard. We came back to our flat and left them at the field. About five minutes later we heard a knock on the door. They found us! Not sure how. Timwei was very wary of the Indian children and we managed to persuade them to leave. A serious chat about the safety of Malaysia followed.

Tomorrow it's the weekend wehay! Plan A: operation Find Will and Kate. I believe they depart from KL tomorrow so this may involve a trip to the airport. Plan B: operation Stay Awake on the Tourist Bus. And take more photos. Should be good! Then Chelsea are playing at night, FACT. So we'll go and see our good friends at Restoran Salam.

Getting into the Swing

So the football wasn't even on, turns out it's next Saturday. But instead we got to watch wrestling for a few hours until 11pm only to discover that the restaurant were going to show Ice Age instead. Oh well! We've made friends with the Indian restaurant now, I think they find us very entertaining. On the way home the police decided to stop us while we were crossing the road. They seemed interested in what we were doing in the area, they probably thought we were lost. A lot of people find it weird that we're here, lots of stares and lots of hellos.

Sunday was mainly a sleeping day and then lesson planning for Monday when we would start school.

School is from 9-12, two one and a half hour periods. I have two classes, A and B! Class A is the oldest class, they range between the ages of 11 and 16. Their English is quite ok so they usually understand what to do. Class B are younger and a lot more shy to speak. I've learnt about half their names, but a lot of them are really hard to pronounce. When you walk into the class in the morning, all the students stand up and shout "GOOD MORNING TEACHER!" It's great! And at the end they shout "THANK YOU TEACHER!" If only children in the UK were this nice!

There's a lot of wildlife here, some very big beetles and moths fly in and out of the room. Also, lizards! I love them! Jo is not so much of a fan.There are also MANY MANY mosquitos. My "maximum plus" strength insect repellant does not seem to be doing the job. I'll just have to be itchy for these few months I suppose!

We'd been looking forward to going into KL again at the weekend to see William and Kate on their tour of Malaysia, but today we found out that they're leaving the area on Friday. Very sad, we'll have to think of a plan B!

We Made It!

We arrived safely in Kuala Lumpur after an 11 hour flight to Hong Kong, a two hour stopover and another flight which lasted 3hrs and 20 minutes. After Jo commenting loudly on how bad it would be if we were to star in the TV show 'Banged Up Abroad', we safely made it through immigration, no questions asked. We were picked up at KL Central train station by two ladies, Saradha and Kala. They took us to lunch. "You must be so hungry," they said. We replied with a yes, although we had had a total of three meals plus various other snacks on the plane. We went to a nice Chinese restaurant where we met Pastor Henry, who took us to our village, Bukit Sentosa where the school and our flat is located.

We arrived at the flat and our flatmate King, another teacher, was waiting. Some children from the school swiftly picked up our heavy bags with absolute ease and took them up to our flat. We chatted with King and our other flatmate Timwei for a while, then had a little tour of the village. We live right next to the big Tesco, very useful! Our block of flats is where a lot of the Myanmar refugees live and many of them go to the school that we will be teaching at. The next day we went to school to meet the children and so on. We also met Hannah, the previous volunteer. It was her last day at the Agape School and she gave us lots of tips for when we start on Monday.

In the evening Pastor Henry took us out for dinner with his wife Serena and a few of the children from the home. It was delicious, we had some Indian curry with a varity of breads. Also got to sample some traditional Malaysian tea, very tasty!

Today we've been into Kuala Lumpur, I think we are now experts at getting the bus. The city seems cool, we went up the Menara tower and then took a tourist bus around. I kept falling asleep, I don't think the jetlag has fully left me yet. Now we are just passing the time before we go out for dinner. I think we will go to the same restaurant as last night as they will be showing the Chelsea game. One of us is a big fan, and the other not so much... but I'm sure it will be fun anyway!

Bye Bye UK

Tomorrow I'll be leaving the country with my good friend Jo and jetting off to Malaysia. We'll be there for 3 months, then we're going to stay with our bestie Tombo in South Korea at Christmas time. The nervous/excited combo is going on, keep switching between the two. I think it'll be amazing once we get there. I've got plane activities planned such as colouring book fun and making friendship bracelets. The time should fly by!

Yesterday would have been my first day back at work after the summer holidays, so I'm going to take this opportunity to shout out to the Gunnersbury crowd. The most amazing group of people; Jay, Fem, Ben, Suzette, Sonje, Joan, Julie, Nick, Toyah and our super-boss Julian. I had a great 2 years working with these people but it's exciting to be doing something new. Maybe it will be a stepping stone to other cool things in life.

Obviously I'm writing this instead of packing, and Neighbours is on now. Ultimate procrastination. There's still time!

Back in a few days with the first impressions.