Hello from Kuantan! The group here has just become my favorite ;) We cannot stop laughing with and at them! Despite the tiny ants in my bed, the food here is plentiful and the campus is gorgeous.
More later when I get back to Kuala Lumpur,
Amati
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thursday, June 24, 2010
"be yourself. imitation is suicide."
Pictures from Pesiba:
soaking our feet at the fish spa!
we did a Jeopardy game with the students and one of the categories was "America" and one of the questions asked what our names were. this girl wrote down the answer-- guess melly's got a new last name ;)
the group at Pesiba-- this was taken on the last day so some students aren't pictured
my surprised reaction at how big my tosai was!
newcom bar-- we met Danny who treated us to a few jugs of Tiger beer
soaking our feet at the fish spa!
we did a Jeopardy game with the students and one of the categories was "America" and one of the questions asked what our names were. this girl wrote down the answer-- guess melly's got a new last name ;)
the group at Pesiba-- this was taken on the last day so some students aren't pictured
my surprised reaction at how big my tosai was!
newcom bar-- we met Danny who treated us to a few jugs of Tiger beer
Batu Caves
After being rained out, we went for a second try and went all the way to the end of the LRT line in Gombak and got on a taxi to the caves. Turned out that this trip would become my second favorite adventure! (next to Singapore, of course)
Batu Caves is this spot, kind of like the holy ground for Hindus. Its a hill made of limestone and in order to reach the top, we had to climb 272 steep steps (and more!) There's a giant golden Hindu shrine that overlooks the place. I couldn't look up at it much because every time I tried, I felt like I would topple off the steps and roll all the way down to the bottom. Smells of incense and bat shit filled the place as we trekked through leaky depths. The dripping water helped us keep cool but attracted mosquitoes from what felt like every corner of Malaysia! There was a chapel where Indians prayed barefoot and had red ash marked on their foreheads.
Wild hens, pigeons and dogs roamed the place looking for food, undeterred by the tourists around them. Luckily enough, we went on a quiet day so it wasn't crowded. There are usually several festivals in spring so it was considered off-season by the time we went. We didn't realize that there were hidden trails leading off to other caves but there's no way we could have survived these without a tour guide. Next time, I guess! Even if we didn't get to do that, we were still taken back by the cave's beauty. The details were fantastic-- the age of the place and all the green growing between the crevices. We watched bats fly overhead and then disappear in the darkness. I just absolutely loved it.
The best part? The wild macaque monkeys! I had heard about the monkeys before we went but I had no idea of how many there would be. They were everywhere, hundreds of them. I didn't really think they would approach us but they did. It was nothing like anything you could find in America-- in fact, this kind of thing would probably be illegal! Our first encounter was when a monkey jumped on Melly out of nowhere and grabbed her plastic bag to savor the apple inside. He ran off and chomping on it happily, leaving us in shock. After that, I couldn't resist buying a bag of peanuts to give everybody so we could feed the monkeys. My heart kept pounding because I kept imagining the worst (ten monkeys on me at once fighting over the food-- rabies much!) but it turned out to be wonderful. After all, the monkeys were just there to get food from us and nothing more. There was a king monkey-- slightly bigger than the rest and we could tell that the smaller monkeys were terrified of him but that didn't stop them from trying to beat him to the food. Survival of the fittest! We tried our best and fed as many as we could. They came up to us one by one and took peanuts from us. I can say I never thought I would feel tiny monkey fingers on my hand. This certain monkey kept wrapping his hand around my fingers and holding it as he used his other hand to slowly take the food.
After a hour of entertaining ourselves with the monkeys, we took our leave back to town. We stopped by ABC (Always Best Choice) restaurant for an Indian dinner. Ryan Digovanni is now in Malaysia doing his internship! Its good to have another American around.
Diana and Melly left for Kuantan (far east of Kuala Lumpur) yesterday. I stayed behind to do some observing at a Selangor pre-k class. Yesterday, only one student was present. He was so shy but I was impressed at how well he was able to form letters of the alphabet and some basic signs. There are only four students enrolled in pre-k and most of them often do not show up. Case in point, today no students showed up so my day was cut short. I'll join Sazali later on this afternoon for the four hour drive out to Kuantan to meet up with the two girls. Even if just for one day and half, being alone in a foreign country was quite an experience. I was so lost in my thoughts and actually got several things done (laundry!) Thank god we have a machine in our apartment, but no dryer. Good thing its warm enough in the room so that clothes dry within a hour of being hung up.
So, I'm off for the weekend! I'll be returning this monday alone by bus to continue working at Selangor as the two girls travel up north to another school.
Batu Caves is this spot, kind of like the holy ground for Hindus. Its a hill made of limestone and in order to reach the top, we had to climb 272 steep steps (and more!) There's a giant golden Hindu shrine that overlooks the place. I couldn't look up at it much because every time I tried, I felt like I would topple off the steps and roll all the way down to the bottom. Smells of incense and bat shit filled the place as we trekked through leaky depths. The dripping water helped us keep cool but attracted mosquitoes from what felt like every corner of Malaysia! There was a chapel where Indians prayed barefoot and had red ash marked on their foreheads.
Wild hens, pigeons and dogs roamed the place looking for food, undeterred by the tourists around them. Luckily enough, we went on a quiet day so it wasn't crowded. There are usually several festivals in spring so it was considered off-season by the time we went. We didn't realize that there were hidden trails leading off to other caves but there's no way we could have survived these without a tour guide. Next time, I guess! Even if we didn't get to do that, we were still taken back by the cave's beauty. The details were fantastic-- the age of the place and all the green growing between the crevices. We watched bats fly overhead and then disappear in the darkness. I just absolutely loved it.
The best part? The wild macaque monkeys! I had heard about the monkeys before we went but I had no idea of how many there would be. They were everywhere, hundreds of them. I didn't really think they would approach us but they did. It was nothing like anything you could find in America-- in fact, this kind of thing would probably be illegal! Our first encounter was when a monkey jumped on Melly out of nowhere and grabbed her plastic bag to savor the apple inside. He ran off and chomping on it happily, leaving us in shock. After that, I couldn't resist buying a bag of peanuts to give everybody so we could feed the monkeys. My heart kept pounding because I kept imagining the worst (ten monkeys on me at once fighting over the food-- rabies much!) but it turned out to be wonderful. After all, the monkeys were just there to get food from us and nothing more. There was a king monkey-- slightly bigger than the rest and we could tell that the smaller monkeys were terrified of him but that didn't stop them from trying to beat him to the food. Survival of the fittest! We tried our best and fed as many as we could. They came up to us one by one and took peanuts from us. I can say I never thought I would feel tiny monkey fingers on my hand. This certain monkey kept wrapping his hand around my fingers and holding it as he used his other hand to slowly take the food.
After a hour of entertaining ourselves with the monkeys, we took our leave back to town. We stopped by ABC (Always Best Choice) restaurant for an Indian dinner. Ryan Digovanni is now in Malaysia doing his internship! Its good to have another American around.
Diana and Melly left for Kuantan (far east of Kuala Lumpur) yesterday. I stayed behind to do some observing at a Selangor pre-k class. Yesterday, only one student was present. He was so shy but I was impressed at how well he was able to form letters of the alphabet and some basic signs. There are only four students enrolled in pre-k and most of them often do not show up. Case in point, today no students showed up so my day was cut short. I'll join Sazali later on this afternoon for the four hour drive out to Kuantan to meet up with the two girls. Even if just for one day and half, being alone in a foreign country was quite an experience. I was so lost in my thoughts and actually got several things done (laundry!) Thank god we have a machine in our apartment, but no dryer. Good thing its warm enough in the room so that clothes dry within a hour of being hung up.
So, I'm off for the weekend! I'll be returning this monday alone by bus to continue working at Selangor as the two girls travel up north to another school.
Summer book #2
"Still, I wish I knew more. When I was in seventh grade, I had a teacher who loved astronomy. He had this way of talking about stars that made you remember them forever."
"What did he say?"
"That staring at stars was like staring backward in time, since some stars are so far away that their light takes millions of years just to reach us. That we see stars not as they look now, but as they were when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole concept just struck me as amazing somehow."
The Choice, Nicholas Sparks
"What did he say?"
"That staring at stars was like staring backward in time, since some stars are so far away that their light takes millions of years just to reach us. That we see stars not as they look now, but as they were when dinosaurs roamed the earth. The whole concept just struck me as amazing somehow."
The Choice, Nicholas Sparks
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
a diamond in the rough
Pictures from our Singapore adventure:
discovering Little India
our hotel room lights/ac wouldn't go on until our room key was inside this adapter. so when we left the room with the key, the power went off in order to reduce power waste. very energy-efficient!
we checked out Bugis street, one of the largest outdoors market
one of the many colorful fruit stands
fried squid, anyone?
the architecture in Singapore is beyond amazing
Anna admiring the riverfront
we got there just in time to see the sun set
mandatory flower shot
us with the mini-Merlion (later we passed by the big one located in Singapore Universal Studios)
that thing up in the air actually has restaurants and buildings! we could make out tiny ant-sized people walking around.
i spy a bird spying a glass of champagne ;)
one of the many statues around
our hotel at night
walking to....
this place was the absolute opposite of the city life we had been living in malaysia so it was definitely paradise
me and Melly discussing the possibilities of swimming to the other side
see how far away we are!
gettin pumped before our big ride
the view from the top of our zipline hut- we started here and landed on the bottom (white tents)
discovering Little India
our hotel room lights/ac wouldn't go on until our room key was inside this adapter. so when we left the room with the key, the power went off in order to reduce power waste. very energy-efficient!
we checked out Bugis street, one of the largest outdoors market
one of the many colorful fruit stands
fried squid, anyone?
the architecture in Singapore is beyond amazing
Anna admiring the riverfront
we got there just in time to see the sun set
mandatory flower shot
us with the mini-Merlion (later we passed by the big one located in Singapore Universal Studios)
that thing up in the air actually has restaurants and buildings! we could make out tiny ant-sized people walking around.
i spy a bird spying a glass of champagne ;)
one of the many statues around
our hotel at night
walking to....
this place was the absolute opposite of the city life we had been living in malaysia so it was definitely paradise
me and Melly discussing the possibilities of swimming to the other side
see how far away we are!
gettin pumped before our big ride
the view from the top of our zipline hut- we started here and landed on the bottom (white tents)
I arrived before Melly ;)
see you again someday, Siloso! <3
Monday, June 21, 2010
Pesiba
We spent last week working at Pesiba deep in the city of Kuala Lumpur. We took the LRT and then took a long walk in the city, weaving through sleeping bums on the street and hundreds of Chinese shack restaurants with skinned ducks in their windows.
When we finally got to the office, we ran about three stories up the stairs and I got a mean bruise on my leg. Their railing ends are sharp! Who knew.
Unfortunately, when we came in, we saw.....teenagers. Upon more observation on our part, we found out that we would be teaching English to students OUR age. Not only that, this class had a huge variety in terms of age. It ranged from a young boy of 9 years old to a 25 years old married man. That was certainly something. We automatically knew that the curriculum we developed for the previous camps was not going to work for this certain group. Quickly, we had to improvise a brand new lesson plan. Lucky for us, Anna was there as well and gave us a few ideas of what to do. Since the group had a good foundation of English (they were already aware of basic vocabulary and sentence structure because they graduated high school) we decided to go through the 5 W's with them (who, when, why, what & where) and past vs present words (ran, run) until they were comfortable enough to proceed.
From that point on, I can't really remember exactly what we did but it was largely improvised. Because of the big difference in levels, one of us worked with the 9 years old boy while two of us worked with the older group. This part gave me a chance to work one-on-one with a young student which I did enjoy. By doing this, I was able to practice certain skills. Interestingly enough, this boy comes from a Deaf family and still had trouble expressing himself. Every time I spelled out a new vocabulary word for him to write down, he would have no problem. But when I asked him to repeat after me, he would just make up the spelling as if I didn't just spell it out two seconds ago. His motivation level wasn't too high which is the major problem of Deaf students here. They do try but then give up when it becomes too hard.
I decided to write down the vocabulary words on the board, use flashcards and so on. Then when I wanted to test him on word recognization, I decided to write each vocabulary word one by one and have him draw a picture next to it. For example, when I wrote down "pencil" he would draw a pencil. He did this with absolutely no problem but when I erased the word "pencil" he would struggle with the spelling and make up something.
But after a half hour, I was happy to see that he had learned and memorized about 7 of 15 vocabulary words. A success on my part.. and his, I would say.
The entire time I was there, I kept reciting this to myself: "Teaching is teaching nevertheless." Not the learning experience I wanted but a learning experience nevertheless :)
We frequent the IOI mall right around our apartment for dinners at night and to kill time by walking around food and clothes stores. Its about a fifteen minutes walk from our place and is a good spot for us. There are so many malls here! Muthu took us to Times Squares mall in Imbi and wow, I take back what I said about the mall inside the Twin Towers. Times Squares is huge. It has ten floors and is complete with a movie theater and Cosmo's World, an indoor amusement park.
We checked out Cosmo because we found out we would get in for only 10RM (about 4 dollars!! We often get discounts here, thanks to our disability). It is the largest indoor amusement park in Malaysia. After that, we went and got a fish massage! If you haven't heard of one, its when you go into a spa and put your feet inside a fish tank and allow hundreds of fish suck away at your feet (yes, even between your toes!) to clean off dead skin cells. It actually sounds much more disgusting than it really is. It just felt like bubbles against my feet.
We've used the city bus everyday for about a week now. It's pretty easy to get around especially using the monorail. Using public transportation used to be a pain for us because we would constantly get stares from people. Men especially would stare at us for as long as we stood there. At first, we would challenge them by staring back in hopes of making them feel uncomfortable enough to look away but nope. They stared anyway. So after three weeks here, we've reached a point of ignoring it-- sometimes to the point of not even noticing it! We sure are getting used to their culture.
Another yummy find for us! We love this Indian dish-- Tosai. Guess we traveled all the way to Malaysia to discover our love for Indian food ;) Certainly will be checking out Indian cusine when we get back to DC.
Monsoon season is starting! We went all the way to Gombak to check out Batu caves only to be bombarded with this ongoing rainstorm. But no amount of water will stop us! We're gonna go again today. Batu caves is a popular Hindu site surrounded with animals and a giant stairs made up of 257 steps! Am sure we're about to learn some more information later today.
Macaque monkeys, here we come! :)
When we finally got to the office, we ran about three stories up the stairs and I got a mean bruise on my leg. Their railing ends are sharp! Who knew.
Unfortunately, when we came in, we saw.....teenagers. Upon more observation on our part, we found out that we would be teaching English to students OUR age. Not only that, this class had a huge variety in terms of age. It ranged from a young boy of 9 years old to a 25 years old married man. That was certainly something. We automatically knew that the curriculum we developed for the previous camps was not going to work for this certain group. Quickly, we had to improvise a brand new lesson plan. Lucky for us, Anna was there as well and gave us a few ideas of what to do. Since the group had a good foundation of English (they were already aware of basic vocabulary and sentence structure because they graduated high school) we decided to go through the 5 W's with them (who, when, why, what & where) and past vs present words (ran, run) until they were comfortable enough to proceed.
From that point on, I can't really remember exactly what we did but it was largely improvised. Because of the big difference in levels, one of us worked with the 9 years old boy while two of us worked with the older group. This part gave me a chance to work one-on-one with a young student which I did enjoy. By doing this, I was able to practice certain skills. Interestingly enough, this boy comes from a Deaf family and still had trouble expressing himself. Every time I spelled out a new vocabulary word for him to write down, he would have no problem. But when I asked him to repeat after me, he would just make up the spelling as if I didn't just spell it out two seconds ago. His motivation level wasn't too high which is the major problem of Deaf students here. They do try but then give up when it becomes too hard.
I decided to write down the vocabulary words on the board, use flashcards and so on. Then when I wanted to test him on word recognization, I decided to write each vocabulary word one by one and have him draw a picture next to it. For example, when I wrote down "pencil" he would draw a pencil. He did this with absolutely no problem but when I erased the word "pencil" he would struggle with the spelling and make up something.
But after a half hour, I was happy to see that he had learned and memorized about 7 of 15 vocabulary words. A success on my part.. and his, I would say.
The entire time I was there, I kept reciting this to myself: "Teaching is teaching nevertheless." Not the learning experience I wanted but a learning experience nevertheless :)
We frequent the IOI mall right around our apartment for dinners at night and to kill time by walking around food and clothes stores. Its about a fifteen minutes walk from our place and is a good spot for us. There are so many malls here! Muthu took us to Times Squares mall in Imbi and wow, I take back what I said about the mall inside the Twin Towers. Times Squares is huge. It has ten floors and is complete with a movie theater and Cosmo's World, an indoor amusement park.
We checked out Cosmo because we found out we would get in for only 10RM (about 4 dollars!! We often get discounts here, thanks to our disability). It is the largest indoor amusement park in Malaysia. After that, we went and got a fish massage! If you haven't heard of one, its when you go into a spa and put your feet inside a fish tank and allow hundreds of fish suck away at your feet (yes, even between your toes!) to clean off dead skin cells. It actually sounds much more disgusting than it really is. It just felt like bubbles against my feet.
We've used the city bus everyday for about a week now. It's pretty easy to get around especially using the monorail. Using public transportation used to be a pain for us because we would constantly get stares from people. Men especially would stare at us for as long as we stood there. At first, we would challenge them by staring back in hopes of making them feel uncomfortable enough to look away but nope. They stared anyway. So after three weeks here, we've reached a point of ignoring it-- sometimes to the point of not even noticing it! We sure are getting used to their culture.
Another yummy find for us! We love this Indian dish-- Tosai. Guess we traveled all the way to Malaysia to discover our love for Indian food ;) Certainly will be checking out Indian cusine when we get back to DC.
Monsoon season is starting! We went all the way to Gombak to check out Batu caves only to be bombarded with this ongoing rainstorm. But no amount of water will stop us! We're gonna go again today. Batu caves is a popular Hindu site surrounded with animals and a giant stairs made up of 257 steps! Am sure we're about to learn some more information later today.
Macaque monkeys, here we come! :)
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