Settled In

It has now been a month since we arrived in Malaysia, James scared me by telling me this the other day. It has gone so fast. Finally I have stopped feeling like its a holiday and realised that I am actually living here for a year.

We have taken our first solo trip away from Pasir Tumboh. We travelled to MRSM Kota Putra to visit Tom, Danny and Dale. We took the most unreliable bus in the history of the world, which caused every single teacher to worry about us. It was an interesting trip, it made me realised how weirdly clean I am for a boy. The boys apartment was lets say, needing a scrub however being the old sick bay and being infested with ants didn't help. So we just lay on the beach for two days, and promptly got sunburnt. James even managed to get burnt on his feet, while they were buried in sand. We also experienced Tom Yam, a Malaysian soup. James experienced this more than the rest of us, when he discovered a full Habanero pepper. Much swearing and gasped followed, along with much laughter from the rest of us. It was an enjoyable lads weekend, however the curse of sand followed us home. It of course it found its way everywhere, including our beds, shower etc.On the way back we travelled through the town of Besut, gateway to the Perhentian Islands. We saw the largest number of Mat Salleh we had seen in Malaysia and felt very local as we stared at them constantly.

During the next week, it was constant spelling revision leading up to the Kelantan Spelling Bee. This was broken only once by a game of football. The teachers asked us to come and play with them, in what they called a friendly. Well, it was rather too competitive for our liking oh and plus we were put on the other playing our own school. We won, so we felt strangely smug. When we were told about the spelling bee, we assumed it would be a small competition with kids spelling words like Cat, Dog etc. Oh no, this is a national competition, with prize money of RM3000 for the state challenge and RM15000 for the national final, insane. The words these kids have to spell, bearing in mind this is theiir second language were unbelievable. We hadn't even heard of most of them, even pronounce them let alone spell them. Some examples (cymotrichous, guetapens, prospicience). We had five pupils who made it to the state challenge, and one of them walked away with 5th prize, a small RM1000. We were so proud, as we felt we had played a small part in helping him get there.

We now have 3 weeks of solid school until our next adventure, a trip to the island of Langkawi of the North-West coast with Helena and Alex from Kuala Krai. We are very excited, however now feel this our home, so will just as happy during the next 3 weeks working with the kids. Oh also I am being allowed to help with science.