Pahang Orientation, Move-in, and First weeks of school

Okay, so I fail at blogging. I can't figure out how in the world to sum up everything that has been happening because there's just so much. I’ll try my best to start where I left off…

We had orientation in KL until January 21^st. As part of the orientation we had Bahasa Malaysia classes everyday, sessions about effective activities, religion, culture, etc. Also for orientation we had 3 cultural visits to the National Mosque, Batu Caves, and Melaka. Here are some pictures from each visit.

We had to cover up to go inside the mosque

Monkeys swarm the stairs going up to the Batu Caves...so cute, but also so aggressive

One of the more memorable parts of orientation was our visit to see the Prime Minister. Like I said before, he is really backing the ETA program so it’s his baby. He invited us to high tea at his office. Security was everywhere you turned, cameras, press...I felt pretty important. 

Here are 2 articles about our visit: 

http://www.pmo.gov.my/?menu=gallery&id=3580&page=1951

http://malaysia.usembassy.gov/program_eta_pm-011912.html

After our orientation in KL ended, we were shipped to our respective states. 16 of us are stationed in Pahang, and for Chinese New Year we stayed in the government quarters north of the capital, Kuantan (which is actually where I will be living the rest of the year). The woman in charge of our program in Pahang, Faridah, was beyond anything we ever expected. She basically told us to tell her where we wanted to go, what we wanted to do, and she would have the bus there to pick us up to take us. We are so lucky to have her! One day she took us to what is called “Panorama Hill”, which we thought was just a simple overlook of the town Sungai Lembing. None of us were dressed in proper clothing for what was to come. I'm calling this thing a mountain (even though it's called a hill); we climbed a mountain that day. There were endless stairs going to the top, it probably took a good 45 minutes for all of us to hike up. Of course, we hiked at the hottest part of the day with the sun beating down on us. I can easily say I’ve never sweat more in my life. The view, however, was worth the grueling climb. 

View from the top of Panorama Hill

We started the orientation in Pahang after Chinese New Year. We met with the state secretary twice, once for dinner on the river and then for a BBQ at his house. Both times there was a live band, karaoke, and lots of dancing (both native Malaysian dancing and also, unfortunately, our American dancing which was very poor compared to the professional dancers).

On a side note, I’ve been noticing more and more ridiculous things in Malaysia. First of all, they eat 6 meals a day. Yes, 6. Breakfast, tea (with food), lunch, tea (food), dinner, supper. For our orientation we had all 6 of those meals at the hotel. One of those days, it was two of the ETAs birthdays, so we had dinner, like we always do, at 7pm at the hotel. Then, we are taken to Pizza Hut to have more dinner, along with a cake (which was the exact same cake, with the same writing, that the ETAs already got for the birthday people). As we are in Pizza Hut about to hurl from eating so much, I went to the bathroom. As usual, the bathroom floors are wet. I’m used to that. What was unusual, however, were the naked children running around the bathroom. As I was walking past the stalls, I saw some of those naked children in the stalls playing with the hose that Malaysians use to….clean themselves. They were spraying the hose all over the stall and having a great time. It wasn’t until I came out of the bathroom and recapped the story for everyone at dinner that I had realized what happened and how weird it was. Well, this is Malaysia, after all.

After stuffing our faces of pizza and cake at Pizza Hut, we were taken to karaoke. Being the smart person I am, I chose a seemingly innocent Lady Gaga song to sing. Well, I didn’t know they would play the music video along with the song. It was……bad. Really bad. Not for Muslims to see, or anything children for that matter (which there were). We stopped in the middle of the song and didn’t finish. I did something similar in Brazil. Sigh.


Our state orientation was pretty great, but there was some work involved. We met our mentors during orientation and we talked about our schedules and what we hoped to accomplish over the year at our schools. My mentor is a Chinese woman named Lynette. She has been SO helpful with everything…taking us to the grocery store, motorbike shopping, keeping me in the loop with everything at school. I’m so grateful to have such a great mentor guide me along! 

Eventually our orientation was over and our handing over ceremony was on the last day, January 31^st. This ceremony represents us being officially “given away” to our schools. We said bye to all the ETAs we had been with up until then, and then left with my principal, mentor, and Holly’s mentors.

Here's an article about our handing over ceremony (I was interviewed in this one): http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/fulbright-scholars-excited-to-share-their-passion-1.40123


So after the ceremony, Holly and I were taken to our house. Everyone who took us there was so impressed with it. It's a nice house, with more space than we'll ever need. But it's still funny because Malaysian standards and American standards pretty different. We had been told all along our house was over furnished, but that is quite the understatement. Clothes, blankets, pillows, appliances, dishes, stuffed into cabinets and drawers. There was no room for our things. We still have a ton of cleaning to do, but we’ll get there one day. We have to take everything out, clean it, then put it away somewhere else so we have room for our things. Our kitchen is huge, we have 2 stovetops in the kitchen, but neither of them work. Only the stovetop that's half inside/half outside works.

Our first day of school was the day right after we moved into our house. My school had an assembly to introduce me  and I said a short speech I prepared to let them know what I'm doing there . There are 500 students in my school and 20 classes, so thankfully I'm able to see all the classes over the course of the year.

 I teach anywhere from 3-5 classes per day, and on Fridays school lets out at 12:30 since it is a prayer day where Muslims must go to the mosque to pray.

 

At my wonderful school - SMK Teluk Chempedak!

My principal on the left and mentor on my right

As far as my goal for eating one new food per day goes….I’ve far surpassed it and continue to do so. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m eating. I do try to stay away from things that look fishy (which is so hard, because fish is in EVERYTHING). I try most of it, but don’t like it. It’s too salty and the texture is just not appealing to me.

Also, here is a random list of some gross things I’ve encountered thus far...

•      Spiders. I walked into my bathroom the other day and turned the light on to find a gigantic spider crawling into the toilet. By gigantic, I mean the size of my palm. I yelled some things I should not have yelled, walked out of the bathroom to gather my thoughts, and then went back in to flush the toilet to make sure he was long gone. A few days after that, the same sort of spider flew out of the AC in the guest bedroom when we turned it on. It was dead, but still. It’s still on the floor behind the bed and it will stay there for a long time because I’m not touching it.
•    Our neighbor took us out to dinner last weekend weekend and after a very long car ride to his favorite restaurant, I ordered roti arab (Indian bread) with chicken curry only to find chicken feet in my curry. I had already been suffering from an upset stomach that whole weekend…so that just did it for me. Needless to say, I lost my appetite and struggled to finish eating my bread. And I love bread so that's saying a lot.
•    While eating lunch at school, I was cutting up my fried egg to eat when I noticed a dead ant in the egg. No big deal. I discreetly took the ant out of the egg and put it on the side of my plate. Then I noticed another dead ant in the egg. I took that one out and put it to the side. But then I found another one. And then another. I was sitting with other teachers and I didn’t say a word, but they asked what I was doing and I told them there were ants in my egg. I never know what is normal in Malaysia, so I didn’t think this was a big deal at all. We have ants in our kitchen, so it’s probably normal for them to be in food, right? I’ve forced myself to live by “what doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger” so a few ants in my meal means more protein…or something. Well, the other teachers said it wasn’t normal and took it back to the kitchen for me.
•     You always take off your shoes before going into a Malaysian’s house, so when I was at someone’s house having dinner outside, I went inside to use the bathroom. However, this was a typical Malaysian bathroom (squatty potty, hose, floor soaked). I failed to see the flip flops in front of the bathroom, so I just went in the wet bathroom, barefeet and all. I was convinced I’d contracted a million diseases, but it actually turns out I contracted 0.

Okay, next post will be about motorbikes, school,  neighborhood, and other random happenings. I promise it will be sooner than the last one! 

Here is a link to a collective blog that all the ETAs are a part of. It has various news stories and random anecdotes that happen to us. It's worth checking out! http://fulbrightmalaysia.wordpress.com/

This article was just published about me today in the News Straits Times, they came to my school to interview me yesterday.
http://www.nst.com.my/local/general/games-stickers-bring-classroom-to-life-1.47230#ixzz1mVQkzq3h

These are 2 links to my two Facebook albums that have all my pictures :) 

Pahang Orientation pictures

Life in Teluk Chempedak