Saturday, 28 September 2013
Monday, 23 September 2013
some pictures
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| Chinatown in Malaca |
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| some strong man from Malaca |
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| the joys of our current shower system, it takes about twenty minutes to prepare a warm shower |
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| a cat with massive gentleman vegetables that always comes and lays like this whenever we visit the cafe, he's a serial flasher |
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| a cockroach cannibalizing another cockroach |
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| Kota Bahru basar at closing time |
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| traditional Malay store |
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| a bundle store, pick a t-shirt from the pile for the equivalent of 60p i got six :) |
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| a spot of light malaysian rain |
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| sleepy Dale on the bus |
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| sleepy kitty |
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| playful kitty |
Sunday, 22 September 2013
one month in
Month one
So I have officially been in Malaysia now for just over one
month, and it has been a crazy month. Full work days stared on the first of
September, I really have to get used to getting up at 6 for work on a Sunday,
at the moment my body is in denial and just tries to go back to sleep. I have
been working with my first batch of classes all month, at the moment there are
some big important exams on so half the school’s students spend their time
buried in a book, but I have been teaching forms 1 and 4 so far, I’ll start on
the other forms in January.
Teaching came as a bit of a struggle for the first two weeks
as I found out that we weren’t teaching any actual syllabus, rather we would
have to spend the next year thinking up ingenious ways to encourage our classes
to “get active with English”. At first this seemed terrifying and a little
disappointing, but now I’ve got into the swing of it and I now realise that I
have the freedom to try whatever I can think of to get these kids speaking.
Work time, from 7-4:30 Sunday-Thursday, is normally a pretty
similar day, with lessons or exam marking to do one way or another. In the down
time after work tends to vary slightly more. Our school backs almost directly
onto a pretty awesome beach, so I spend about one afternoon per week just
chilling in the sea, I’ve seen a variety of wildlife ranging from a jellyfish
which I’m told could kill me, to a meter long barracuda (not gunna lie, I saw
the barracuda and I ran like a girl for the shore, I’ve seen the opening to
finding nemo, those things are mean!). At the moment monsoon season is coming
in about a month so there is quite a lot of storms and rain, so beach trips are
becoming less frequent.
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| my camera isn't really capturing it but the sea is actually a really nice color |
On non-beach days we like to try and explore the local area
as much as possible, by this point I have developed a list of preferred food
and drink places, so there is always somewhere to get some food. The scenery
around the school is pretty badass. I’ve got a awesome jogging route that takes
me along a great beach and then up a mountain trail, so hopefully I’m going to
be able to stave off becoming fat from all this food. No promises though.
We’ve ended up getting involved in quite a few sports, Sundays
and Mondays are tennis days, Tuesdays we play ‘Futsal’ with all the staff at
MRSM Besut, and Wednesday we play with the staff from our school. The skill
level for causal players out here is ridiculous, and I’m far too slow to keep
up, so I end up as keeper most of the time which I’m pretty good at so it’s
cool.
On Wednesday me and dale went for a bike ride out to the
supermarket to see if they had some coffee so I could start handling the
mornings a little better. We saw that they were selling a wedding cake for a clearance
price of RM4, which is the equivalent of 80p, so we bought a wedding cake and
went to town on that bad boy at the side of the highway like some really posh
tramps.
Last weekend our fellow vols from Pasir Tumboh came down for
a visit, we didn’t really do anything particularly special, just showed them
around the area and all the hotspots. They stayed around for 2 days and then headed
back incredibly jealous of our beach location.
Last Saturday the three of us got into a spontaneous mood
and caught a bus to Kota Baharu for the day, which basically resulted in us
being lost for a long time, we ended up in a fish market where there were rats
the size of cats running about. We got some traditional Malay food from McDonalds
and I bought 4 bottles of cough medicine to treat the truly awful cold I’ve managed
to contract (that’s right, a cold in a country where the coldest temperature so
far has been 32°C) we thn caught a rust-bucket of a bus back. We got into Kuala
Besut at about 7pm it was at about that point that a torrential storm broke out
just as Fahmy told us he would be unable to give us a lift. So we decided to
run the 12km back to the school through the rain wearing sandals (got some
serious blisters from that). We got back at about 9, drenched through and miserable.
The one good thing about the rain here is that it’s like 20 degrees, so you don’t
really get cold, but It didn’t really go all that well with the cold/cough I already
had.
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| soggy dale |
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| damp dan |
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| wet me |
There has been a slight development in our home lives in the
last few days, a tiny little kitten, of unimaginably cute propitious, has just
decided that she is going to start living with us. She wondered in on a Saturday,
and since then has just stayed, normally in my pants draw. We’re loving the company
and have opted to name her Millie. She really just plays, sleeps and poops (but
only of dan’s stuff J)
we sent dale cycling to the ‘super-mas’ to pick up some kibble and now we all
but own her. She is incredibly clean and healthy so we’re confident she isn’t
carrying anything. So yeah…..free pet!
I’ll try to keep this blog a weekly thing so I keep people’s
interest, but I can’t guarantee I’ll do something interesting every week. I'll do a picture post tomorrow for a more visual aid, the Internet her really doesn't play nicely, I think we're still on dial up.
Ciao for now
xx
Sunday, 1 September 2013
Week one
Friday
After the two and a half hour drive to London, I arrived at Heathrow. I found a group of fellow project trustees almost as soon as I arrived, some people had flown in from various locations throughout Britain and had already been there for hours. Check in and security all went pretty smoothly and before i knew it I was boarding the plane.
Now with a name like Etihad Airways I already had some preconceptions in my head about the quality of my first 7 hour stretch of the journey, I imagined crappy felt seats and stale air conditioning. I was pleasantly surprised then, to find that the whole plane was kitted out with individual televisions filled to the brim with current blockbuster films. 7 hours flew by with the help of 'Oblivion', 'IronMan 3', 'G.I Joe 2', X-Men 3' and two episodes of family guy. Although I'm fairly confident that this contributed heavily to my jet lag. we arrived in Abu Dhabi at 11:00 am local time, there was quite a lot of options for stuff to do at the airport but we all looked like the walking dead, so we headed straight to our gate and just chilled there. It was there that I made friends with a solid gold camel who's name I forget, so we'll just call him Duncan.
We then boarded our second Etihad flight, which involved walking about 17 steps in the hot desert 48 degrees, which was fun....sort of. The next leg of the journey took just under 8 hours, and it was on this flight that I tried to catch up on my sleep, with a short interval where i forced myself to consume some plane food, if food is the right word for it, personally I'm not sure.
we landed in KL at about 23:00 and after sailing through security, and after a navigating a slight hitch at customs, I had arrived at my destination. we were taken to our hotel by bus, and then taken straight out again by Adam an Noriani for our firs taste of Malay Cuisine.
We spent the next few days sorting out mobile phones, getting over jet lag and having a nice day trip to Malacca.
On Monday we drove into the center of KL for the night, where we went shopping, and in the evening went to see the Petronas Towers. I had a glass of dragon fruit juice which was nice, but turns your we a worrying shade of red.
The nxt day we walked across the street to the Mara center, but even that short walk was not without incident. A parade of 4000+ soldiers doing a rehearsal march for the Independence day parade saw us and stared cheering at us, it was surreal to have thousands of the Malaysian army cheering for a bunch of pasty British kids while they were celebrating their Independence from Britain. at MARA we met up with Fahmy, our representative from our school and had a discussion about our placement. Once we were finished it was straight onto the bus for a 10 hour drive up to Terengganu.
Wednesday was our first day at Kota Putra, our accommodation is at the old sick bay, there is a fain smell of something in the air that suggests it was the quarantine zone, but its fine, its spacious and well lit. the on problem is the air conditioning, or rather the total lack of. there are fans, but all they really do is take the really hot, humid air, and blast it at you. the shower started out as just a pipe sticking out of the wall, but I managed to accidentally 'improve it', which basically means that instead of a pipe in a wall that spits water at you, we now have a hole in the wall that spits on you. Our bathroom (even though it doesn't have a bath i think its still technically a bathroom) now looks like a scene from Fawlty towers.
We spent the rest of the week just learning our way around the school and the staff, the school is massive it houses 876 permanent students, who we were forced to speak in front of in an assembly without any warning, fun. we have been treated to plenty of free food and drinks though so that is always a plus.
On Friday, Me, Dan and Dale got a Taxi up to Callum and James in Pasir Tumboh, we stayed there for the holiday weekend for Independence day, and visited Kota Bahru on Saturday. we went shopping for Batik shirts and bought some sarongs (man-skirts) and then we were given free tickets to go to a Kelantan football match, which was great fun.
currently back to work and Kota Putra now, but we're looking at a trip to the Perhentians this weekend so should be good.
After the two and a half hour drive to London, I arrived at Heathrow. I found a group of fellow project trustees almost as soon as I arrived, some people had flown in from various locations throughout Britain and had already been there for hours. Check in and security all went pretty smoothly and before i knew it I was boarding the plane.
Now with a name like Etihad Airways I already had some preconceptions in my head about the quality of my first 7 hour stretch of the journey, I imagined crappy felt seats and stale air conditioning. I was pleasantly surprised then, to find that the whole plane was kitted out with individual televisions filled to the brim with current blockbuster films. 7 hours flew by with the help of 'Oblivion', 'IronMan 3', 'G.I Joe 2', X-Men 3' and two episodes of family guy. Although I'm fairly confident that this contributed heavily to my jet lag. we arrived in Abu Dhabi at 11:00 am local time, there was quite a lot of options for stuff to do at the airport but we all looked like the walking dead, so we headed straight to our gate and just chilled there. It was there that I made friends with a solid gold camel who's name I forget, so we'll just call him Duncan.
 | |||||||||||
| Duncan was a true friend for a full five minutes |
we landed in KL at about 23:00 and after sailing through security, and after a navigating a slight hitch at customs, I had arrived at my destination. we were taken to our hotel by bus, and then taken straight out again by Adam an Noriani for our firs taste of Malay Cuisine.
We spent the next few days sorting out mobile phones, getting over jet lag and having a nice day trip to Malacca.
On Monday we drove into the center of KL for the night, where we went shopping, and in the evening went to see the Petronas Towers. I had a glass of dragon fruit juice which was nice, but turns your we a worrying shade of red.
The nxt day we walked across the street to the Mara center, but even that short walk was not without incident. A parade of 4000+ soldiers doing a rehearsal march for the Independence day parade saw us and stared cheering at us, it was surreal to have thousands of the Malaysian army cheering for a bunch of pasty British kids while they were celebrating their Independence from Britain. at MARA we met up with Fahmy, our representative from our school and had a discussion about our placement. Once we were finished it was straight onto the bus for a 10 hour drive up to Terengganu.
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| Accommodation in Seramban |
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| Dragon fruit juice |
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| Me and Dale try out Baju Kurungs. swag |
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| Petronas Towers |
Wednesday was our first day at Kota Putra, our accommodation is at the old sick bay, there is a fain smell of something in the air that suggests it was the quarantine zone, but its fine, its spacious and well lit. the on problem is the air conditioning, or rather the total lack of. there are fans, but all they really do is take the really hot, humid air, and blast it at you. the shower started out as just a pipe sticking out of the wall, but I managed to accidentally 'improve it', which basically means that instead of a pipe in a wall that spits water at you, we now have a hole in the wall that spits on you. Our bathroom (even though it doesn't have a bath i think its still technically a bathroom) now looks like a scene from Fawlty towers.
We spent the rest of the week just learning our way around the school and the staff, the school is massive it houses 876 permanent students, who we were forced to speak in front of in an assembly without any warning, fun. we have been treated to plenty of free food and drinks though so that is always a plus.
On Friday, Me, Dan and Dale got a Taxi up to Callum and James in Pasir Tumboh, we stayed there for the holiday weekend for Independence day, and visited Kota Bahru on Saturday. we went shopping for Batik shirts and bought some sarongs (man-skirts) and then we were given free tickets to go to a Kelantan football match, which was great fun.
currently back to work and Kota Putra now, but we're looking at a trip to the Perhentians this weekend so should be good.
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