Staying hydrated and hyped

The past two weeks have each faced their different challenges for me to conquer. In some cases it’s been a long, painful battle, but my reward for making it through the last two weeks is making a trip to the Perhentian Islands for scuba diving lessons with the rest of the Terengganu people. It’ll be the first time we’re all together since state level orientation ended and I’m really excited to see everyone.

So last week was solving the issue of staying hydrated. I had caught some sort of stomach virus and as a result was able to keep very little in my stomach at any given time. This caused severe dehydration as well as some truly awful stomach pains. Hydration is always a tricky issue here because of the extreme heat this Michigan body is not built to handle. It’s not even the hot season yet…anyways besides the heat you also need to keep up on boiling your water or get to the store to buy water. With three of us in the house we boil approximately a gallon of water twice a day. We’re getting into a routine with water boiling but we still run out at times which is never good. Back to last week—the virus meant I needed more water than usual, but I was not familiar with the symptoms I was experiencing. For your reference fever and dizziness is a possible sign you need more water.

Now as many of you know I spent the majority of my undergrad studying water policies, but I don’t think I have ever thought about water as consistently as I have in the past month. Again being from Michigan has given me a skewed understanding of water access. Yes, for the last four years I have read more than my fair share of articles on the lack of water,  in Uganda I lived with a family that had to walk to the well everyday to get water, but I don’t think it every really hit home until I was in charge of providing my own  clean water. Malaysia has achieved their water MDG to have the amount of people without access to improved water sources by 2015. According to the 2010 ASEAN MDG report, 100 percent of Malaysians have access to improved water sources and 95% have access to improved sanitation, which is really good compared to many other countries in the region and the world. It makes me wonder, if I’m having this much trouble staying hydrated in a country where it is relatively easy to get access to clean water how much worse can it be else where? Two last thoughts: I wish I would have helped Kaka, my Ugandan brother, with the water chore more and I am grateful for the Great Lakes.

Staying hyped is hard to do, but it’s what the students expect. I’ve know been in Malaysia for two months and life has fallen into a normal routine. Wake up at 6am, shower, breakfast, drive to school, teach, entertain myself between classes, after school class, nap, explore, dinner, hang out, bed by 11pm. With this kind of schedule it’s hard to stay excited at all times but the students still expect me to be the fun, energetic, foreign teacher every time I see them in or out of class and are disappointed every time I’m acting tired. This week was especially hard to keep my spirits up as all of my classes were canceled so that the students could take their exams. I have started coloring with the primary students that get done with classes before the secondary students and really working on my Bahasa Malaysia skills. One of the primary school girls has even taken upon herself to be my personal Bahasa Malaysia teacher. However she is not very patient with my pronunciation abilities. I know that the trip to the Island this weekend will really help to refresh me again and then I will only be teaching for four days before spring break where I will be visiting Burma with a fellow ETA. I’m really excited for this trip because when I was living in Thailand I was on the Burmese border, but at the time US citizens were not allowed across. I’m excited that I will finally get to see the country I was so close to entering but never could.

I’m making you, my readers, a promise so that I will hopefully follow through on it. From now on whenever a class is canceled I will use that time to research my thesis topic! I will. Pinky promise. 

Top 10 from my Similes lesson

1. You are unique like Albert Einstein. 
2. You are original as yourself.
3. You are very cool like my grandfather.
4. You are as fierce as angry bird.
5. This class is wonderful like sunshine.
6. You are like Teacher because you are brave.
7. You are as cool as America.
8. You are as pretty as Chelsea Clark.
9. You are as smelly as rubbish.
10. You are dumb like Sunday.

This was my alternative to teaching about Valentines day, which is outlawed here in Malaysia. They were supposed to be using similes to complement each other. As you can see they succeeded most of the time, but teenage boys and compliments are the same everywhere. 

The good, the bad, and the embarrassing of Week 1

Finished my first week of actual teaching and there have been a lot of ups and downs, but I am starting to get familiar with my way around the school. So here is a brief recap of this crazy week.

Ways I embarrassed my self:

1. I wore a skirt that unknowingly to me became a bit see through in the afternoon Malaysian sun.

2. I held a conversation with my mentor in the office, the loud speaker had been left on and the conversation was broadcast to the whole school. Luckily very few people speak enough English to understand me, but that was actually what the conversation was about...SO maybe not so much. 

3. I tried to shake a male teacher’s hand after being introduced to him while standing in a crowded room. The entire room went quiet and I became the morning topic of gossip. Easily the most embarrassed I have ever felt. 

Crazy things that I never expected to happen in my life:

1. I now own and have been practicing on my very own motorcycle at the stadium near my house. On Sunday I am going to try driving it to school.

2. I have become a minor celebrity here. On Tuesday a national newspaper reporter took me out of class to interview me and then took pictures of me teaching. Wednesday he had me go to the Central Market for a photo shoot. The article is going to be the front page of this Sunday’s paper. 

3. On a lesser crazy scale, but still high on the scale of things I never thought I’d have is an ant sponge. In our kitchen we now have an ant sponge and a dishes sponge to clean with. I have been massacring ants everywhere in the house, but their numbers seem to be growing.

Things that frustrated me this week:

1. Most of my classes are great and I am excited to teach them more, but a couple of my classes are extremely weak. It was really frustrating when I was standing in front of a class for 80minutes trying to get them to say a few just a few words and the all stared at me blankly. In conclusion, teaching is hard and I now respect even more what my mother does on a daily basis.

2. At times I have become frustrated with not being able to show the Malaysians who I really am. There is a lot of pressure on me to fit into the Malaysian notion of what a teacher should be that at points it means contradicting what I actually believe. Hopefully as the community becomes more comfortable with me I will slowly be able to introduce them to more parts of who I am. 

Things that made me smile this week:

1. After the really frustrating class I walked into the cutest and most excited class I had all week. During the ‘Get to know Miss Chelsea’ activity one of the boys asked me why I came to Malaysia. I told him that I liked adventures. After a few moments he whispered into my ear, “Miss Chelsea, I think you are very brave”, and then he ran to the back of the room. 

2. A primary school girl came to the teacher’s room to see her mom. She ended up hanging out with me drawing pictures back and forth learning their names in English and Bahasa as well as their sounds. She then gave me some math problems. When I got the answer to 408+2 correct she was so proud of me that she told all of the other teachers in the room. It was adorable. 

3. I received a letter from Will and several emails from other friends this week. I love hearing from all of you and being connected to everything back home.

Settling in

The past month has felt like a dream that I’ve been floating through meeting lots of people and experiencing a new culture, but not reality. Not the job that in reality it is. It has been a month long vacation in a tropical paradise. 

Wednesday we moved into the house we will stay in for the rest of our stay. Our numbers have dwindled from 50 the first 2 weeks, to 17 the last two weeks and now we’re at 3 (and a possible kitty). Hannah, Nazeeha and I are sharing a two story house in a suburb of the capital of Terengganu. It’s a great location. Still pretty rural but only a 10 minute ride from the conveniences of the city.

The first two days at my school have been pretty overwhelming. There are a lot of people to meet and places to figure out. It doesn’t help that everyone is very busy and barely anyone speaks English. I am managing though and all of the teachers are trying their best to help me out where they can.

The students are great although most of them are to scared to say more than a few words to me. I have yet to teach a class on my own. Next week I will take on that adventure. So far I have sat in on two classes. The teacher reviewed the question words and then they all took turns on asking me questions. Revelations from that exercise include: my blue eyes are a source of many complements, I need to learn more about K-pop music and famous soccer players, and the only Mexican food Malaysians have heard of are nachos. 

Virtual Tour of the house

Incoming news...Angry birds takes over Malaysia

So I have been meaning to write for a while, but I have been extremely busy with the state level orientation, meeting my mentor and moving into my new house. When I last left you, my readers, I was in my last days of orientation in KL and I was meeting the Prime Minister of Malaysia. For those of you who are up on their movie references and those who know how to use  imdb.com you may be interested to know that Zoolander is outlawed here due to seditious content. It was a very fancy tea and he gave a very nice speech about how important English and teachers are to continuing Malaysia’s development. My favorite part was the painting that was hanging in the entryway to the dining room. The painting depicted four woman gathered around a bench. The colors and design were all very subdued and formal, but one of the women was carrying a hello kitty shoulder bag!

I’m actually surprised that Hello Kitty isn’t bigger here than it is. Maybe its more of a northern Asia phenomenon. What is huge? Angry birds. They have taken over Malaysia. I literally have not gone a day since arriving in Malaysia without seeing some sort of Angry birds merchandise- usually it’s by the wall full.  

I moved to KT just in time for Chinese New Year weekend. The weekend wasn’t as festival filled as I thought it would be because Terengganu has very few Chinese compared to the rest of the country. However, we did get to go to a New Year’s open house that had a lot of cultural dancing and food. Additionally, after the open house we got to attend a Malaysian wedding feast. It was a very colorful affair and the couples outfits were awesome. It’s traditional for the couple to wear matching clothes and dress as royalty including crowns and a wooden sword. 

State orientation was more of the same: language lessons, cultural sensitivity training, and teaching lessons. It was all pretty good but nothing that we hadn’t heard in KL. The one thing that I really got out of the state level orientation was closer friendships with the people who will be living with me in Terengganu. It’s much easier to get to know the 16 others in my state rather than trying to meet 49 others in Malaysia. I also got to meet my mentor during orientation. Her name is Ena and she’s super sweet, but she’s also afraid to let me do much because I might die. 

Tomorrow I’ll post pictures of my new house and stories from my first two days at the school.