Hard Work in a Beautiful Place

It’s been busy busy here in the last month! I can’t believe how time has started to fly! The second week of May, I was invited by a fellow CDO, Annie, to visit her center and help out with the Mother’s Day party she had for her class of housewives. Annie is one of the other two American teachers here, and she was very helpful while I was making my decision about moving to Malaysia. She has been here about four months longer than I have. Her center is not too far from here, distance-wise (Google tells me it is less than 50 kilometers away), but unfortunately her small town, Paloh, is separated from Chaah by the plantation, and the buses don’t run through it. My trip over there required three buses, and about three hours. It was my first experience with a local bus, and I was pretty proud of how well I handled it. While not nearly as comfortable as the express buses (like the ones I took to and from KL at the end of April), they weren’t too crowded, and one of them, at least, was air conditioned. We decided to meet in Kluang, the larger town near Paloh (“large” means there is a shopping mall and a movie theatre) for lunch and a day of western food shopping, before meeting one of Annie’s friends for dinner and returning to Paloh. From what I could tell, Paloh looks a lot like Chaah, but maybe just a little bit bigger (there was at least one restaurant with actual glass doors) and with a few more places to eat. Annie has a trainee with her, a Malaysian graduate of our program who is working toward becoming a teacher, learning from Annie and helping to teach the classes. The three of us spent the weekend visiting their adult students and being fed tons and tons of food, and walking around to see the sights of Paloh. The Mother’s Day party was Sunday morning, and it was so fun to be in a class of adults. I hope that in my next batch of students I can organize at least one or two adult classes. It’s clear that they really enjoy the class, and they absolutely adore Annie.

The following weekend, the whole family and I traveled to Johor Bahru, the state capital of Johor, about an hour and a half from here. The city sits on the Singapore border, but I still have yet to make it across the bridge. On Thursday night, we attended a birthday celebration there, for one of the priests that Anita and Dominig are close to. The party was in a reception room of a hotel, so it was much dressier than other gatherings I have attended here. We had a good time, chatting to the friends sitting at our table, and listening to the outrageously loud singers entertaining us, as we were served eight courses of various Chinese food (noodles, rice, chicken, fish, etc.). The following day, I went into the city, just to walk around and see what I could. There isn’t a whole lot in terms of tourist attractions in JB, but it was worth the 60 cents I paid in bus fare to get to the city center and just see the buildings. I walked a bit along the river, and looked at Singapore, just because I could.

Festive streets in JB - would have loved to see it when the lanterns are lit!

Singapore from afar

In the evening, we attended the wedding reception of a politician, held in the ballroom of yet another hotel. The event was so elaborate and extravagant, with beautifully decorated tables (including one long table along the back wall, for the bride and groom, various ministers and important people of Malaysia, and the Sultan of Johor), violin dancing, traditional dancing, and whopping eleven courses. Did I mention the Sultan of Johor was there? 

Anita and I dressed to the nines, at our table at the wedding. Actually this is the wrong table - we were told to sit here, but then quickly ushered away as it turned out to be the ministers' table. Whoops.

The entrance to the ballroom - look at that elephant made of fresh flowers.

Traditional dancers on the stage

On Sunday afternoon, we returned to Chaah to rest up and get ready for another week of teaching – the last week before a long (two and a half week) school holiday.

The following Thursday evening, we held a community movie night, in the community hall close to the house where I am staying. I wasn’t expecting such a huge turnout, but just about all of my students came, as well as a couple other members of the community, including some teachers at Dominig’s school as well as members of his organization (who were a great help to me, lending their laptops and other technology, and helping to ready the hall) and students’ younger siblings. In an effort to choose a movie that would be both easy to understand and entertaining to people of all ages, I showed Despicable Me, which got a lot of laughs from everyone. I chuckled a bit too, when I asked my secondary students to write a few sentences about the movie as a portion of their exam. More than a few wrote about the “banana people” (I assume they were referring to the minions) and a couple wrote about Gru’s wife and two children, not realizing, I suppose, that the three girls were adopted, and the oldest was certainly not his wife. One of my most dedicated students really outdid herself and researched the names of all the minions, and became incredibly distressed when she could only find about ten recognized by name. I assured her that she had done enough.

After a quiet weekend (my first in Chaah since Easter – how did that happen?), I spent the first few days of the school holiday holding review classes. As only a few students were coming to each, due to being away, or just not wanting to come to class during their break, I couldn’t really move along in the curriculum at all, but the students who did come were more than willing to play some games to go over what they’d already learned. After a few days of games, I traveled to Mersing, where one of my friends, Natasa, is teaching. Mersing sits on the beach in the southeast of the peninsula, so I was more than happy to go and help out there for a while. We spent two mornings painting the center completely yellow (a perfect beach color!) to make it beautiful and festive for their upcoming graduation. It was hard work – especially in the Malaysian sun – but it came out really well, and everyone was really pleased. The students were so excited to see their new center so nicely painted!

Painting aside, I also helped Natasa and her trainee, Bibi, teach a few classes – mostly to adults and youths. It was, again, really fun to work with adult students, who require a lot less stress and patience. Natasa is also teaching a couple motivation classes, which were nice to see, as mine will start as soon as my secondary students finish the English course (hopefully by the end of July, but we’re trying not to rush them!). It was good to see how they go, and what works and what does not.

After some time in Mersing, Natasa and I took the ferry over to Tioman Island, one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The center on Tioman was also having their graduation, so the two of us, as well as the person in charge of the East Coast centers, and one person from HQ, went over to help out however we could (okay, we also went to enjoy the island). We spent the whole day Saturday rushing around the island getting ready for the ceremony that evening – making a slideshow of photos, ordering food and drinks, calling students and community members to make sure they were going to come, and decorating the hall. Somehow everything came together, and the event went really smoothly – the students were thrilled to get their certificates, and about forty people showed up.

After working so hard on Saturday, we all thought we deserved a day on the beach on Sunday, so we spent the morning in hammocks near the sea, before heading to Renggis Island (more of a small rock than an island) just offshore to snorkel there. The fish were amazing – there were so many swimming near the boats (I have a suspicion that people were feeding them there) that you couldn’t move without touching them. We circled the island to see what we could see (supposedly there are sharks around, but we weren’t so lucky) and then came back to the platform where the boats were anchored, and sat there in the sun for a while, before the heliophobic Malaysians in our group (not kidding – every time we went to the beach they ran for the shade) begged us to go back to the tree line for lunch.

 

Amy and Veena in hammocks on the beach.

All of us after snorkeling: Veena, me, Natasa, and Amy.

After lunch we returned to the beach for more swimming and admiring of the view. The island is absolutely breathtaking. The water was so, so clear and blue, you could see the bottom and even (if you looked carefully and stood still) fish swimming around you. The rocks at the bottom were even visible when we went swimming at night, only by moonlight. How is that even possible? Just behind the beach, the jungle rises in a bright green mountain of palm and coconut trees, and getting across the island, or even between beaches, requires either a boat taxi or a motorcycle ride through the trees (I promise we were really, really careful, Mom!). A couple times, we ate lunch while monitor lizards stalked around – they are some of the weirdest animals I’ve ever seen – they move like dinosaurs, with tails that are too long for them trailing behind.

Palm trees on our way to the beach at ABC

Jungle over blue water - the view from the floating platform at Renggis Island

 

This is the outside of the Tioman school.

This is at the beach near the Berjaya resort. Look at that water, those clouds, that sky, those trees, that sand, just everything beautiful.

Can't even hope to capture how gorgeous this sunset was - bright, bright red sun, literally sinking into the sea.

Sunset on a cloudier day - no less gorgeous.

Beach near ABC, looking back toward the town of Tekek, where we stayed.

I also attended one of the classes at the Tioman center, trying to explain the difference between all of the tenses in English. For people whose first language doesn’t conjugate its verbs at all (no tenses at all, except for a word meaning “will” and one meaning “already”), the sheer number of English tenses is mind boggling. It was hard enough to explain “I have eaten” versus “I did eat” versus “I ate”, but when we started talking about “I am going to eat” and “I will eat” and “I will be eating” and “I have been eating” and “I eat” and “I am eating” and “I had eaten” and “I will have been eating” all I could think of was Latin class, and the thousands of conjugation charts I filled out over the years. I guess the tenses weren’t too exciting, because when someone spotted a python climbing on the wall, all concentration broke down.

I hope that I was able to make some kind of impression, and help the students to, at least, somewhat understand when to use each tense, and I wish CDO Amy – the Malaysian guy working at the Tioman center, who is a former student of the program and has decided to become a teacher – all the best with the upcoming lessons on the passive voice.

I said a sad goodbye to beautiful Tioman and headed back to Mersing on the ferry, to help Natasa get ready for her graduation. We spent a day cleaning the inside of the center (including sweeping a room that was literally crawling with ants) and moved all the boxes of books and computers that had been delivered for the Mersing Library and computer class into a small room to make space for the graduation, which would include performances by students (and Natasa herself). With the help of a couple of Natasa’s students, we decorated the classroom, and were ready when everyone else arrived. Most of the students brought food, so after the student presentations, we ate a lot – noodles and curry puffs and fruit, and one enormous chocolate cake. I hope that everyone had a great time – I sure did, and it just made me more excited for my students’ graduation (scheduled for the end of August, fingers crossed!).

Now I’m back in Chaah, holding a couple of review classes and conversation practice sessions until school resumes on the 15^th of June. Hopefully then students will start coming to class regularly again, and we can push ahead with our program! In other news, we have another CDO training in KL next weekend, and I am very excited to see the other teachers again!