I am starting to get into a cadence which is so nice. We finished our last bit of orientation in Kota Bharu which included a 40 minute time frame to plan ALL activities from a general level with our mentors for the year. This was a bit hectic however, so nice to get some ideas out there and a rough sketch of my yearly plans. I can now start to get into the nitty-gritty details of how thing work in the Malaysian school system and do some awesome things with my students. I am visiting more classes but also have a set schedule of which classes I will continuously work with so I can start making goals and units with the teachers for those classes. The students are beginning to visit me in my office to practice speaking English with me when they have recess… or the teacher is not in class since the students stay in the same room all day. I share an office with two other teachers who are some of the more popular, young teachers of the school. They get frequent visitors and I speak with them (usually making them speak in English with me which slightly embarrasses them and we laugh about them being “shy shy cats” a silly phrase they say in Malaysia for a shy person). However, Thursday… I finally had form 5A girls, who I have only met once, come to see ME! I felt so special and they could probably tell how lit up I was to have my own visitors.
I also took my first road trip to the neighboring state of Terangganu which was awesome! I reunited with other ETAs after being separated in KL on our departure day so it was nice to catch up and compare our current lives. It is also a fairly conservative state with its own unique dialect. Our friends on the border close to us were learning some Kelantanese, the Terangganu dialect, and BM since they live in an in between area. We saw lots of sand on their beaches which was nice since a lot of the Kelantan sand was eroded or washed away from the flooding. We had some awesome Western food (shamelessly). We took artsy photos since this arts group does a lot of alleyway work around town. We celebrated three birthdays and found a cat! Overall, successful first road trip! The capital city Kuala Terangganu is a cool town which we just got a taste of so I will be planning several weekend trips back. Also maybe getting scuba certified near our friends’ house on the border at these luxury islands called Redang and Perhentian Islands coming soon- I hope!
After another week or two has passed since my last blog yet since I was living things day by day and just getting settled is almost seems to be a blur. My brain is on full speed almost all the time as I try to adjust, learn my place, learn the language, pretend to learn all 500 student names at my school and the 150 names of the hostel girls where I live, remember the foods I have tried, and memorize directions since road signs and maps are not really a thing around here. Thank goodness for Google Maps on smartphones! As I take more vacations and vary my schedule more will begin to stand out to me. I did attempt to go to church on Sunday but got stuck in three hours of traffic because an opposition religious leader from Kelantan passed away the night before. I also discovered Tesco which is like a Wal-Mart equivalent in Malaysia. Those were highlights that stuck out this week. I leave for Penang a state on the West coast of Peninsular Malaysia on Tuesday for Chinese New Year break and I just booked a trip for our March break to Myanmar so lots of excitement to come!
Things I look forward to for this year… Getting close with my community (school where I live, school where I live, and neighbors around us in our Melor area), building confidence in English skills in my students, meeting amazing people, seeing incredible sites in South East Asia (SEA), having growing experiences, slowing my pace of life down, finding more “me time,” staying active each week (more outdoorsy things if possible), jumping further outside my comfort zone, learning how to make some local foods to take back home to share with others, and creating memories that shape me as an emerging adult in the real world outside of educational life and my future career. I am now feeling slightly more settled so I feel that the growing pains and excitement will begin! #Malaysiaboleh
Kelantanese word of the day: mangis = to cry (I was singing very dramatic BM karaoke music and had to fake cry at the end of a song which I did not understand at all but the hostel girls made me sing any way) A typical occurrence on a weekend afternoon.
On My Malay Way 