I used to think that I didn't get homesick. When I went to Spain, I very rarely felt homesick, and never acutely. After all, I'm so good at making new friends! I love adjusting to new cultures! I just dive right in! Rah rah rah!
I'm only now discovering my hidden ability to be acutely homesick. Even while I'm having a good time, I have to work hard to banish the thought that I would have a better time if people I love from home were with me. Even when I'm doing fun things like going to an English camp by a huge lake in central Pahang, I have to push aside pangs of nostalgia for lakes in upstate New York. After all, there were more skippable pebbles on the shores of Lake Cayuga that time in May when Judah and Kate and I took a mini-vacation to Trumansburg and the falls. And wouldn't it be more fun to walk around a night market and try new foods if all my usual food-trying partners in crime from Philadelphia were by my side? (You know who you are.)
Part of this nostalgia is motivated by an honest and intense affection for the people and places that make up my life in the U.S. Being here has made me realize once and for all something that, at some level, I knew all along: I do want Philadelphia to be my home for the foreseeable future. Provincialism be damned, I like the town.
On another level, though, I think the nostalgia is a reaction to discomfort. I haven't really figured out how to make a life here yet, and I have to keep reminding myself that I really haven't been in Kuantan for very long. Even though I've said a lot of cheerful things here about invitations from teachers and outings with couch surfers, I do spend a lot of weeknights in my apartment reading, staring at a computer screen, skyping friends from home, or making up small errands (usually revolving around food--specifically, Chinese buns) to get me out of the house in the evening. Many afternoons I'm so worn out after school by some combination of the heat, teaching, and being in an unfamiliar place that I conk out for sweaty naps that stretch on for hours. It takes time to form meaningful friendships, and I'm definitely not there yet.
When I was in Spain, I spoke the language (more or less), and the culture was much more similar to the U.S. I guess I should expect to feel some level of culture shock as the "honeymoon period" in a new place wears off. Things just take a lot of effort here, and I never know if I'm acting appropriately. There are a lot of mishaps.
I spent a week texting an ETA with the same name as my landlady before it dawned on us that something wasn't right. I was really annoyed by her noncommittal responses, like "I don't have hot water in my shower, either" and "Have you talked to your mentor?" and "That seems strange" until I realized that she was, in fact, not my landlady at all. Just a poor, bewildered ETA who was randomly fielding all my housing complaints for a week.
There seems to be some kind of god of inefficiency who rules my life in Malaysia. If I try to be too ambitious in one day, it angers him and he shows his displeasure. Yesterday, for instance, I found myself with a lot of excess, nervous energy after my 3 hour drive home from English camp in the morning. I stopped to buy groceries at Giant (what a lovely, western store! with so many things! so clean! Nirwana Hypermarket in my neighborhood pales in comparison). Feeling pleased with myself, I rolled home with a head full of plans for the day. The first thing I did was enter the apartment to realize that my roommate, who was away for the weekend, had accidentally flipped the main fuse when she left. I've done this before, thinking it was an efficient way to turn off all the lights. Unfortunately, it also turns off the power to the refrigerator. Thankfully, the only casualties this time were some weird durian cream puffs. I put away the groceries, dutifully tallied the bill between myself and Kara, and put in a load of laundry. Big mistake. Doing laundry offends the god of inefficiency very much. The last time I tried to do laundry, I discovered that there is a hose connected to my laundry machine that must be pointed towards my drain in the bathroom, or else it will flood part of the apartment. This resulted in an evening call to my landlady, and her arrival at 10:30 pm with her husband and a loud handyman who all laughed at me and hung around raucously inspecting the apartment while I tried to tell them, to no avail, to be quiet because Kara was in bed with the flu. (It would've been nice if she had told me about the output hose when I moved in...)
This time, I got home from English camp with big ideas about cleaning up and doing laundry and writing a blog post and all these wonderful things, only to find out that the water was shut off in my neighborhood. I'm writing this two weeks later, mind you, and I can report that this has become a regular, and very annoying, occurrence. Basically, the water, the western toilet, and the internet can never seem to all be working at the same time. At this point I shoot for two out of three. I was going to spin a long tale about me going to the beach and getting all turned around and going down one ways trying to find parking, then painstakingly rolling down my car window to talk to the parking lot attendant only to find that it takes about 10 minutes to roll back up, etc. but that's not super interesting.
Today I accomplished a lot. I got in a load of laundry before the water cut out, I skyped Kathleen for a solid 10 minutes before the internet slowed to snail speed, and I even made it to the post office where I made a fool of myself in every possible way. (Oh, you need to take a number? Oh, it's gross to lick stamps? That's what that sponge full of water is for? Oh, I shouldn't squeeze it out all over the desk before I use it? Oh, did I park in a spot for motorcycles?, etc.) Basically I need to let go of all my ideas that my self-worth is based on efficiency, and accept that I'm going to do a lot of dumb things that don't make me a bad person.
Briefly, other news since the last update:
-I helped with an English camp in Kuantan with really great, friendly kids. Being well-rested makes a big difference for how well I do with kids. Afterwards, I hung out at the beach with other ETAs for hours until sunset. We scrambled around on the rocks and talked and bobbed in the calm sea. At one point when I was floating and looking at the sunset beyond my outstretched feet, I thought, "All those long nights in the library in college got me here. This is it. This is the pay-off." That may or may not be logical and/or really conceited, but that's what I thought.
-I led the whole school in a rousing rendition of "You Make Me Wanna Shout" today at 7:15 am that had an astounding 15-20% participation rate. (Poor kids. The unfun things I inflict on them.)
-I received the advice to "be more fierce." Probably good advice.
-I did some good lessons and some bad lessons, got really frustrated with kids and was really impressed by them, got 10 kids to show up to writing workshop and actually write for 2 hours, accidentally scolded kids to speak English when they WERE speaking English--only with terrible accents, had a girl cry to me about friends and stress at recess then tell me later she felt "peaceful" now that she'd confided in me, felt like a publicly terrible teacher who can't control a class when the principal walked into one of my toughest classes, and finally found out what happens when the discipline teacher comes to your class.
-I celebrated a lovely St. Patrick's Day Eve with ETAs in town for English camp.
-I accidentally let the battery drain on my car, but had it magically replaced by the kindness of semi-strangers.
-I accompanied a teacher to a yoga class run by an older Chinese Malaysian woman who bobbed around in a leotard and barked orders at us like a drill sergeant. It's so hot here that basically any yoga class automatically becomes hot yoga, and no one really uses mats except for the lying down portion of the class. Aside from being inflexible, I was literally too slippery from sweat to do several of the poses without sliding around on the linoleum like an overeager and uncoordinated puppy. I think I'll go back, despite the fact that it's just one more thing that makes me feel incompetent in this country.
Anyway, now I'm going to Indonesia, so the next update should be about that.
Thursday 21 March 2013
Friday 15 March 2013
A Lakeside Weekend, Part the Second
Now where was I? Right, I had just been having a meal. (Given that it's Malaysia, that doesn't do much to narrow things down.) During dinner, the Malaysian teacher who seemed to be running the camp came over to talk to us about the planned night hike with park rangers. It seemed it was canceled. The hike was supposed to fill 2 hours of the evening's schedule, so this was a kink in our plans. Naturally, we asked why. The teacher seemed very reluctant to explain.
"I don't want to say...might scare."
"The hike might scare the children?"
"No, no...if I tell, you may scare."
"You can tell us, we won't be scared."
"Well, I don't really want to say, but the hike cancel because there are...animals."
"What kind of animals?"
"Elephants. They have find their, how you say, um, their..." (hand motion)
"Their dung."
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes, in the woods."
"Are they dangerous?"
"Not now, with all kids make noise in camp. They know we here. But on hike...it is not advisable. Better in morning."
"Ahhh, of course, ok. So elephants live here?"
"Better not to talk about."
As Colin said, it's a surreal moment in your life when you realize that an actual plan of yours has been cancelled due to, of all things, elephants. Although worried about how to fill the time with activities, we were amazed and amused at the thought of elephants tromping around the jungle near our camp.
After dinner, the kids had to pray yet again, so the ETAs re-retired to our lakeside perch. As we sat there chatting in the dark about what to do when the kids were finally free, two of the main Malaysian organizers of the event came over to talk to us. The theme of the camp was animals, since it took place at a nature preserve. When the teachers came over, it seemed like the perfect chance to float the idea we had been discussing of the teachers performing a brief skit about animals to warm the kids up for creating their own animal skits. Genius, right? Kids love to see their teachers acting silly, and it would be a way for us to show that we wanted the teachers to be involved in our activities. We met with a lot of reluctance, though. At first, we thought maybe the teachers were simply embarrassed about doing a skit, or thought it wasn't appropriate for them, as authority figures and professionals, to run around pretending to be animals. We seemed to get them to come around, but after a few minutes of talking amongst themselves, they asked if they could do skits based on different careers instead. We protested that the theme of the camp was animals, and they seemed even more uncomfortable. Finally, they began to explain.
"Animals, while here in woods...Is maybe not suitable."
"But we thought it made sense to learn about animals while we're out here in nature. There are a lot of animals at Tasek Bera."
"Yes, but you talk about animals and then..." (vague hand gestures, seeming to indicate upsetting something)
"Are you worried the children will be scared if we talk about animals while they're camping?"
"No, is more...because of the animals. If you talk about them while out here...It has to do with the spirit of the animal."
(blank stares)
"It...calls to them. To the spirit. To some people, they think that. Me, no, but is not advisable."
Bewildered, we demurred, and the teachers left us after a little more chit chat.
Left on our own to work things out, we ETAs ultimately reached a hypothesis about a possible explanation. I remembered that when the two other ETAs in Kuantan had a rat in their house, they told me that their Malaysian mentors would send them text messages asking them how things were going with the "r**." The mentors also told them not to mention the word "rat" while in the house. The superstition is that if you talk about the rat by name, he can tell you're talking about him, he knows you're saying negative things, and it makes him want to act out against you even more. (If a rat can tell that he's being spoken about in English, he's ahead of many of my youngest students, but that's neither here nor there.) The girls solved the problem by naming the rat "Louie" and always referring to him that way.
I think that possibly the issue with talking about animals was a fear that mentioning their names would somehow call to them and rile them up. That is, it would be bad luck to have the kids running around on "Team Elephant," acting like elephants and trumpeting while the real things were listening restlessly in the woods beyond. That may be why the teacher was so reluctant to explain to us that elephants were the reason for canceling the hike, and seemed not to be happy when we tried to pursue more of a conversation about elephants.
Of course, like all superstitions, this was hilariously amusing. At first I thought the world would be a better place without superstitions, but it would really be a less entertaining one. And there would be fewer excuses not to do things you just don't want to do. It can be annoying when superstitions keep you from doing what you want, but I wouldn't be in favor of abolishing them all together, whatever all those silly Enlightenment guys may say.
It was so funny to picture ourselves not having this conversation, trying to go ahead with an animal camp, and being completely clueless at the kids' reluctance to participate or constantly shushing us whenever we said the word "elephant." And we came within inches of doing just that! What's more, I STILL don't really know if our hypothesis about this superstition is correct. That just goes to show how easy it is to walk into a cultural booby trap and commit a huge faux pas (or, as the Soltan family likes to say, "fox paws") without realizing it.
The rest of the camp passed relatively uneventfully and quite enjoyably. The kids had to be up to pray the next morning at 6 am, and they were already chattering loudly in their tents at 4 am. (Ugh.) This confirms my hypothesis that Malaysians just don't sleep. The morning started with a brief "jungle trek," a phrase they always use here and that sounds so much more hardcore than "light hike" or, more accurately, "15-minute walk in the woods." Then we spent several hours taking turns kayaking, which was a blast. (Thanks, Kate, for giving me that crash course over the summer!) I managed to get a girl who was too scared to kayak to try it with me, and, as predicted, she loved it and kept asking if we could stay out on the water even longer. I don't want to make it sound like I was an amazing role model, though--I also spent a lot of time sitting in the parking lot watching boys play around with a soccer ball and not really feeling like talking to anyone. Sometimes going up and talking to kids in a situation like this, when they're having fun with their friends, feels like inflicting myself on them. After all, besides having to interact with a weird stranger who doesn't really have much to talk to them about, they have to do so in a language that still requires a lot of effort for them, even when their proficiency is high. If I'm honest, it's also sometimes a lot of effort for me, and takes some social gumption to just go and talk to a teenager knowing it will be awkward. It does get tiring to be "on" all the time, let me tell you.
After the camp, Amy and I planned to stay with Pat and Colin at their apartment, which is right next to their school. En route to dinner in the nearest town, a 45-minute drive, the boys got a call from a teacher saying it was "not suitable" for us young ladies to crash in their spare bedroom. Apparently, the powers that be were already preparing a room for us would-be loose women in the students' hostel next door. It was lucky, really, because all my ladies-in-waiting were otherwise engaged, and I don't know who would have protected my honor. Plus, I'd only packed one petticoat. Really, though, my upbringing had me well-prepared for this sort of thing, and it was easy enough to let it pass with an eyeroll.
The ride back to our respective quarters was something of a rollercoaster. It started out on a high note, with a stop at a gas station to fill up and to grab some ice cream bars. We each ate a Magnum bar sitting out on the hoods of Amy's and my cars, and it felt like summers gone by in America. I love rest stops and gas stations, since there's a comforting sameness to them the world over. Once we got back in the cars, though, with me following behind Amy's car to find my way, things got wild. We drove in and out of and then finally definitively into a torrential thunderstorm. We drove along back roads with potholes turned into miniature lagoons, none of them boasting the modern convenience of streetlights. I was on the lookout for malnourished cows that might step into the road. Amy had a much harder time of it, as the first driver, and she was an absolute champ. Thank God, we made it safely, and Amy and I were bundled into unexpectedly nice digs--the room the principal uses when he has to stay at school for business. The bright purple sheets even had the school's crest on them. After a shower in a bathroom with no real shower head (think showering under a garden hose, basically), we got into bed expecting to be awakened in the morning by the call to prayer. Instead, we woke up around 7 am to the school's loudspeakers blasting Green Day's "21 Guns." I guess we'll never know the explanation for that.
After a quick breakfast of roti canai and teh tarik at a roadside stall, where of course we ran into the boys' mentor, I embarked on my road trip back to Kuantan. It was blessedly uneventful, until I made it home to an apartment with running water working only in the shower. C'est la vie. I think I'll talk about my irrational desires to do things efficiently in a country where I can never seem to get all the essentials working at once (ie, if the internet is going, the water ain't, etc) in another blog post. For now let's just say I threw in the towel (picked up the towel?) and just went to the beach that afternoon to relax.
There you have it, kids. Have a photo.
"I don't want to say...might scare."
"The hike might scare the children?"
"No, no...if I tell, you may scare."
"You can tell us, we won't be scared."
"Well, I don't really want to say, but the hike cancel because there are...animals."
"What kind of animals?"
"Elephants. They have find their, how you say, um, their..." (hand motion)
"Their dung."
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes, in the woods."
"Are they dangerous?"
"Not now, with all kids make noise in camp. They know we here. But on hike...it is not advisable. Better in morning."
"Ahhh, of course, ok. So elephants live here?"
"Better not to talk about."
As Colin said, it's a surreal moment in your life when you realize that an actual plan of yours has been cancelled due to, of all things, elephants. Although worried about how to fill the time with activities, we were amazed and amused at the thought of elephants tromping around the jungle near our camp.
After dinner, the kids had to pray yet again, so the ETAs re-retired to our lakeside perch. As we sat there chatting in the dark about what to do when the kids were finally free, two of the main Malaysian organizers of the event came over to talk to us. The theme of the camp was animals, since it took place at a nature preserve. When the teachers came over, it seemed like the perfect chance to float the idea we had been discussing of the teachers performing a brief skit about animals to warm the kids up for creating their own animal skits. Genius, right? Kids love to see their teachers acting silly, and it would be a way for us to show that we wanted the teachers to be involved in our activities. We met with a lot of reluctance, though. At first, we thought maybe the teachers were simply embarrassed about doing a skit, or thought it wasn't appropriate for them, as authority figures and professionals, to run around pretending to be animals. We seemed to get them to come around, but after a few minutes of talking amongst themselves, they asked if they could do skits based on different careers instead. We protested that the theme of the camp was animals, and they seemed even more uncomfortable. Finally, they began to explain.
"Animals, while here in woods...Is maybe not suitable."
"But we thought it made sense to learn about animals while we're out here in nature. There are a lot of animals at Tasek Bera."
"Yes, but you talk about animals and then..." (vague hand gestures, seeming to indicate upsetting something)
"Are you worried the children will be scared if we talk about animals while they're camping?"
"No, is more...because of the animals. If you talk about them while out here...It has to do with the spirit of the animal."
(blank stares)
"It...calls to them. To the spirit. To some people, they think that. Me, no, but is not advisable."
Bewildered, we demurred, and the teachers left us after a little more chit chat.
Left on our own to work things out, we ETAs ultimately reached a hypothesis about a possible explanation. I remembered that when the two other ETAs in Kuantan had a rat in their house, they told me that their Malaysian mentors would send them text messages asking them how things were going with the "r**." The mentors also told them not to mention the word "rat" while in the house. The superstition is that if you talk about the rat by name, he can tell you're talking about him, he knows you're saying negative things, and it makes him want to act out against you even more. (If a rat can tell that he's being spoken about in English, he's ahead of many of my youngest students, but that's neither here nor there.) The girls solved the problem by naming the rat "Louie" and always referring to him that way.
I think that possibly the issue with talking about animals was a fear that mentioning their names would somehow call to them and rile them up. That is, it would be bad luck to have the kids running around on "Team Elephant," acting like elephants and trumpeting while the real things were listening restlessly in the woods beyond. That may be why the teacher was so reluctant to explain to us that elephants were the reason for canceling the hike, and seemed not to be happy when we tried to pursue more of a conversation about elephants.
Of course, like all superstitions, this was hilariously amusing. At first I thought the world would be a better place without superstitions, but it would really be a less entertaining one. And there would be fewer excuses not to do things you just don't want to do. It can be annoying when superstitions keep you from doing what you want, but I wouldn't be in favor of abolishing them all together, whatever all those silly Enlightenment guys may say.
It was so funny to picture ourselves not having this conversation, trying to go ahead with an animal camp, and being completely clueless at the kids' reluctance to participate or constantly shushing us whenever we said the word "elephant." And we came within inches of doing just that! What's more, I STILL don't really know if our hypothesis about this superstition is correct. That just goes to show how easy it is to walk into a cultural booby trap and commit a huge faux pas (or, as the Soltan family likes to say, "fox paws") without realizing it.
The rest of the camp passed relatively uneventfully and quite enjoyably. The kids had to be up to pray the next morning at 6 am, and they were already chattering loudly in their tents at 4 am. (Ugh.) This confirms my hypothesis that Malaysians just don't sleep. The morning started with a brief "jungle trek," a phrase they always use here and that sounds so much more hardcore than "light hike" or, more accurately, "15-minute walk in the woods." Then we spent several hours taking turns kayaking, which was a blast. (Thanks, Kate, for giving me that crash course over the summer!) I managed to get a girl who was too scared to kayak to try it with me, and, as predicted, she loved it and kept asking if we could stay out on the water even longer. I don't want to make it sound like I was an amazing role model, though--I also spent a lot of time sitting in the parking lot watching boys play around with a soccer ball and not really feeling like talking to anyone. Sometimes going up and talking to kids in a situation like this, when they're having fun with their friends, feels like inflicting myself on them. After all, besides having to interact with a weird stranger who doesn't really have much to talk to them about, they have to do so in a language that still requires a lot of effort for them, even when their proficiency is high. If I'm honest, it's also sometimes a lot of effort for me, and takes some social gumption to just go and talk to a teenager knowing it will be awkward. It does get tiring to be "on" all the time, let me tell you.
After the camp, Amy and I planned to stay with Pat and Colin at their apartment, which is right next to their school. En route to dinner in the nearest town, a 45-minute drive, the boys got a call from a teacher saying it was "not suitable" for us young ladies to crash in their spare bedroom. Apparently, the powers that be were already preparing a room for us would-be loose women in the students' hostel next door. It was lucky, really, because all my ladies-in-waiting were otherwise engaged, and I don't know who would have protected my honor. Plus, I'd only packed one petticoat. Really, though, my upbringing had me well-prepared for this sort of thing, and it was easy enough to let it pass with an eyeroll.
The ride back to our respective quarters was something of a rollercoaster. It started out on a high note, with a stop at a gas station to fill up and to grab some ice cream bars. We each ate a Magnum bar sitting out on the hoods of Amy's and my cars, and it felt like summers gone by in America. I love rest stops and gas stations, since there's a comforting sameness to them the world over. Once we got back in the cars, though, with me following behind Amy's car to find my way, things got wild. We drove in and out of and then finally definitively into a torrential thunderstorm. We drove along back roads with potholes turned into miniature lagoons, none of them boasting the modern convenience of streetlights. I was on the lookout for malnourished cows that might step into the road. Amy had a much harder time of it, as the first driver, and she was an absolute champ. Thank God, we made it safely, and Amy and I were bundled into unexpectedly nice digs--the room the principal uses when he has to stay at school for business. The bright purple sheets even had the school's crest on them. After a shower in a bathroom with no real shower head (think showering under a garden hose, basically), we got into bed expecting to be awakened in the morning by the call to prayer. Instead, we woke up around 7 am to the school's loudspeakers blasting Green Day's "21 Guns." I guess we'll never know the explanation for that.
After a quick breakfast of roti canai and teh tarik at a roadside stall, where of course we ran into the boys' mentor, I embarked on my road trip back to Kuantan. It was blessedly uneventful, until I made it home to an apartment with running water working only in the shower. C'est la vie. I think I'll talk about my irrational desires to do things efficiently in a country where I can never seem to get all the essentials working at once (ie, if the internet is going, the water ain't, etc) in another blog post. For now let's just say I threw in the towel (picked up the towel?) and just went to the beach that afternoon to relax.
There you have it, kids. Have a photo.
 |
| On a motorboat on the lake. Somehow every time Amy and I see each other, we end up in a boat. I like it. |
Tuesday 12 March 2013
A Lakeside Weekend, PART 1
This weekend I helped out with an English camp run by Pat and Colin, two ETAs who live in a remote area in central Pahang. The camp took place at Tasek Bera Ramsar Site, a lakeside campsite. The lake supposedly forms the largest freshwater ecosystem in Southeast Asia. The fact-checkers I've hired for the blog have the night off, so I'll let that claim stand for now.
Malaysia sometimes feels like an entire nation of concerned parents. My mentor was worried about me driving alone, but she just told me to be careful. Then I went to grab lunch after school at Sri Villhas, the Indian restaurant that I eat at nearly every day. The owner convinced me to try her rice and vegetables this time instead of just alternating between dosa and roti like usual, and it was delicious. Then we had a nice chat about how her friendship with an American expat helped her realize that American women really DO love their husbands and their families, just as much as Indian women do. Apparently, we aren't as heartless as we seem on TV! Heartwarming. I avoided telling her that I myself am incapable of loving others and think only about prestige and material possessions. When she found out I was leaving straight for the camp, she instructed me to get my oil, brake oil, water, and tires checked at the gas station before leaving and took my phone number so she could call me to make sure I made it alive. All good advice--I did get those things checked at the gas station and felt better for it. It was very nice of her to look out for me like that, and I did appreciate it.
But here's the thing: I already have two overprotective and concerned parents. I really don't need to find them at every turn. Guess this is part of culture shock, and right on schedule. The teachers at my school are all very concerned for my well-being, as are all the people I meet here, including strangers. And they all have advice to offer about what I should do. At first I thought this was great, because I obviously have no idea how to do things here. But now it's beginning to wear on me, especially when the advice is conflicting. I have a tendency to be overly swayed by other people's opinions and advice, especially when I respect them and think they have more experience than I do. In Malaysia, though, I have to learn to have more confidence in my own instincts. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the saga of me trying to get transportation, which dragged on for over a month. Everyone had their opinion. "Car is safer." "Better you rent." "Better to buy." "Try to learn a motorbike, then see if you want to buy." "Scooter is better for ladies." "Why don't you lease?" "You're buying a used car? But then you have to pay to service!" "Why not just pay a taxi driver to be your driver?"
Anyway, I drove about 2.5 hours through the Malaysian countryside to get to the campsite at a place called Tasek Bera. The scenery was beautiful and the roads were good up until the very last, pothole-ridden leg of the trip. I ended up arriving about 45 minutes before the bus with the other ETAs and their students did, because, in true Malaysian fashion, the bus picked them up way behind schedule. I wasn't sure where to go, so I pulled into the parking lot in front of the lodge reception. I took a deep breath, internally congratulated myself on making it through my first Malaysian road trip in one piece, and promptly locked my keys in my car. This move is what I would call "classic Liz." In fact, my readers probably saw something like that coming. At the very least, none of you are surprised, I know that.
The weird part is that I wasn't as worried about this as I would've been in the US. Why? 1) My car is a 1991 Ford Telstar with more miles on it than I would like to admit publicly. No one wants to steal it. In fact, the doors only really close properly if you ram into them with all your force. I managed to lock the keys in there AND to leave the front door slightly ajar (but not enough to stop it from locking), a true feat even for me. Somehow this fact was a comfort. 2) I thought, "This is Malaysia. Some strange man is going to figure out a way to unlock this and help this young woman alone. It'll probably permanently damage the car, but they'll do it. I can see two Malay ladies at the reception desk, so they'll have my back and not let anything creepy happen."
And you know what? I was right. No sooner had I broken a pen in an attempt to stick it through a small hole where part of my window should be than a group of Chinese men hailed me from the lodge and asked what happened. When I told them, with an exaggerated face-palm thrown in to ensure effective cross-cultural communication of my utter stupidity, they came over to help me faster than you can say, "Sweaty damsel in vehicular distress." The first thing they did, to my chagrin, was to bump into the door to make it close all the way. "But, but," I spluttered. Then, I saw one of them take something from the back of their pick-up truck. It turns out it was an ornately-decorated, long, silver knife that he slowly removed from a leather scabbard. I had to laugh, and when I mimed pretended fright they all laughed, too. One of the men, who I noticed had extremely long fingernails, slid the knife down between my car window and the doorframe and jimmied it around. Another friend then slid his own car key into my door, and together they got it to open--just like magic! Frightening, frightening magic. The most magical thing of all is that both lock and window still work. (That's kind of an overstatement, since the automatic windows in my car have never really worked, but still.)
Next thing you know, one of the men was inviting me to sit down and have a drink at the lodge patio overlooking the lake. People always invite me to have drinks here, and it never means alcohol. I'm hoping that it also lacks the somewhat flirtatious US connotation, but that remains to be seen. I said that I should be buying them drinks as a thank you, but they would have none of it. I assessed the situation--2 reception ladies, me with nothing to do for an hour--and accepted the offer. I got two whole water bottles out of the deal, and a chance to have a short chat in broken English with the men. Turns out that the one who spoke to me most was an out-of-work rubber tapper in town to pick up some fish from a friend. At one point I left to use the bathroom, and when I returned he was holding a live fish wrapped in newspaper and putting it in the reception waitress's face to freak her out. Lovely. After that he and his friends finished their ice tea and departed, leaving me alone to contemplate the scenery.
The scenery included two medium-sized fish tanks, each one dominated by a huge, ugly fish. One of them had other fish in it as well. As I contemplated, a man who appeared to be working at the site in some official capacity (gardener? maintenance man?) walked over to the tank that had multiple fish and started torturing one of the small fish. He reached in, put his hands around the fish, and squeezed. Then he let it sink to the bottom, waited for it to swim dizzily back up, and squeezed again. Sometimes he would lift it out of the water for a second. This process went on for about five minutes. I was mesmerized and utterly bewildered. I was also surprised at the fish's resilience. It reminded me of a flying cockroach I tried to kill in my apartment once, except more lovable. While I was still gawking at this fish torture spectacle (air boarding?), a Malay family walked in and the woman introduced herself as one of the teachers helping facilitate the camp. While she and her kids were checking in at the front desk, I watched the fish-torturer blithely grab the fish out of the water, walk across the room, and drop it into the other tank with the other big, ugly fish. The big fish immediately snapped open its mouth and ate it in one gulp. The children didn't bat an eyelash, and the torturer walked away. I was the only one stunned. Well, me and the little fish, I guess, but he wasn't stunned for long. Somehow the combination of this incident and me being rescued by a sword-wielding rubber tapper really encapsulated the foreignness of this place for me.
The camp itself would further underscore that strangeness. The first thing I did was help the kids set up tents (I wasn't much help, really) and set up the tent I would be sharing with Amy. Things after that are kind of a blur in my mind of activities and breaks for prayer and time spent waiting around. Basically, although Pat and Colin had prepared a lot of activities and kind of thought they were supposed to run the camp, much of it ended up being run by the Malaysian teachers. In Malay. But the activities they put on were a lot of fun, and I think the kids enjoyed themselves.
The first night should give you an idea of how things went throughout the camp. First, the kids had to pray. They all gathered in a lovely outdoor auditorium right by the lake, and the ETAs absented ourselves to the dock to chat and plan. It probably wasn't far away enough, though, because we were still in plain view and soon realized we had to talk in whispers so as not to create an audible distraction. But it was nice to sit and compare notes about the funny things that had happened to us, like how I kept texting another ETA who had the same name as my landlady about problems with my apartment and didn't realize I had the wrong one until she finally said she thought I was mistaken a week later. Then prayers were finally over and we all had dinner. It turned out that some of the teachers had prepared a real feast for us--American style barbecue like hot dogs and grilled chicken, and whole grilled fish, and amazingly good french fries. Delicious, and so kind of them.
To be continued...I kept getting up to this point and losing the will to write more in what is already a very long post.
Malaysia sometimes feels like an entire nation of concerned parents. My mentor was worried about me driving alone, but she just told me to be careful. Then I went to grab lunch after school at Sri Villhas, the Indian restaurant that I eat at nearly every day. The owner convinced me to try her rice and vegetables this time instead of just alternating between dosa and roti like usual, and it was delicious. Then we had a nice chat about how her friendship with an American expat helped her realize that American women really DO love their husbands and their families, just as much as Indian women do. Apparently, we aren't as heartless as we seem on TV! Heartwarming. I avoided telling her that I myself am incapable of loving others and think only about prestige and material possessions. When she found out I was leaving straight for the camp, she instructed me to get my oil, brake oil, water, and tires checked at the gas station before leaving and took my phone number so she could call me to make sure I made it alive. All good advice--I did get those things checked at the gas station and felt better for it. It was very nice of her to look out for me like that, and I did appreciate it.
But here's the thing: I already have two overprotective and concerned parents. I really don't need to find them at every turn. Guess this is part of culture shock, and right on schedule. The teachers at my school are all very concerned for my well-being, as are all the people I meet here, including strangers. And they all have advice to offer about what I should do. At first I thought this was great, because I obviously have no idea how to do things here. But now it's beginning to wear on me, especially when the advice is conflicting. I have a tendency to be overly swayed by other people's opinions and advice, especially when I respect them and think they have more experience than I do. In Malaysia, though, I have to learn to have more confidence in my own instincts. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the saga of me trying to get transportation, which dragged on for over a month. Everyone had their opinion. "Car is safer." "Better you rent." "Better to buy." "Try to learn a motorbike, then see if you want to buy." "Scooter is better for ladies." "Why don't you lease?" "You're buying a used car? But then you have to pay to service!" "Why not just pay a taxi driver to be your driver?"
Anyway, I drove about 2.5 hours through the Malaysian countryside to get to the campsite at a place called Tasek Bera. The scenery was beautiful and the roads were good up until the very last, pothole-ridden leg of the trip. I ended up arriving about 45 minutes before the bus with the other ETAs and their students did, because, in true Malaysian fashion, the bus picked them up way behind schedule. I wasn't sure where to go, so I pulled into the parking lot in front of the lodge reception. I took a deep breath, internally congratulated myself on making it through my first Malaysian road trip in one piece, and promptly locked my keys in my car. This move is what I would call "classic Liz." In fact, my readers probably saw something like that coming. At the very least, none of you are surprised, I know that.
The weird part is that I wasn't as worried about this as I would've been in the US. Why? 1) My car is a 1991 Ford Telstar with more miles on it than I would like to admit publicly. No one wants to steal it. In fact, the doors only really close properly if you ram into them with all your force. I managed to lock the keys in there AND to leave the front door slightly ajar (but not enough to stop it from locking), a true feat even for me. Somehow this fact was a comfort. 2) I thought, "This is Malaysia. Some strange man is going to figure out a way to unlock this and help this young woman alone. It'll probably permanently damage the car, but they'll do it. I can see two Malay ladies at the reception desk, so they'll have my back and not let anything creepy happen."
And you know what? I was right. No sooner had I broken a pen in an attempt to stick it through a small hole where part of my window should be than a group of Chinese men hailed me from the lodge and asked what happened. When I told them, with an exaggerated face-palm thrown in to ensure effective cross-cultural communication of my utter stupidity, they came over to help me faster than you can say, "Sweaty damsel in vehicular distress." The first thing they did, to my chagrin, was to bump into the door to make it close all the way. "But, but," I spluttered. Then, I saw one of them take something from the back of their pick-up truck. It turns out it was an ornately-decorated, long, silver knife that he slowly removed from a leather scabbard. I had to laugh, and when I mimed pretended fright they all laughed, too. One of the men, who I noticed had extremely long fingernails, slid the knife down between my car window and the doorframe and jimmied it around. Another friend then slid his own car key into my door, and together they got it to open--just like magic! Frightening, frightening magic. The most magical thing of all is that both lock and window still work. (That's kind of an overstatement, since the automatic windows in my car have never really worked, but still.)
Next thing you know, one of the men was inviting me to sit down and have a drink at the lodge patio overlooking the lake. People always invite me to have drinks here, and it never means alcohol. I'm hoping that it also lacks the somewhat flirtatious US connotation, but that remains to be seen. I said that I should be buying them drinks as a thank you, but they would have none of it. I assessed the situation--2 reception ladies, me with nothing to do for an hour--and accepted the offer. I got two whole water bottles out of the deal, and a chance to have a short chat in broken English with the men. Turns out that the one who spoke to me most was an out-of-work rubber tapper in town to pick up some fish from a friend. At one point I left to use the bathroom, and when I returned he was holding a live fish wrapped in newspaper and putting it in the reception waitress's face to freak her out. Lovely. After that he and his friends finished their ice tea and departed, leaving me alone to contemplate the scenery.
The scenery included two medium-sized fish tanks, each one dominated by a huge, ugly fish. One of them had other fish in it as well. As I contemplated, a man who appeared to be working at the site in some official capacity (gardener? maintenance man?) walked over to the tank that had multiple fish and started torturing one of the small fish. He reached in, put his hands around the fish, and squeezed. Then he let it sink to the bottom, waited for it to swim dizzily back up, and squeezed again. Sometimes he would lift it out of the water for a second. This process went on for about five minutes. I was mesmerized and utterly bewildered. I was also surprised at the fish's resilience. It reminded me of a flying cockroach I tried to kill in my apartment once, except more lovable. While I was still gawking at this fish torture spectacle (air boarding?), a Malay family walked in and the woman introduced herself as one of the teachers helping facilitate the camp. While she and her kids were checking in at the front desk, I watched the fish-torturer blithely grab the fish out of the water, walk across the room, and drop it into the other tank with the other big, ugly fish. The big fish immediately snapped open its mouth and ate it in one gulp. The children didn't bat an eyelash, and the torturer walked away. I was the only one stunned. Well, me and the little fish, I guess, but he wasn't stunned for long. Somehow the combination of this incident and me being rescued by a sword-wielding rubber tapper really encapsulated the foreignness of this place for me.
The camp itself would further underscore that strangeness. The first thing I did was help the kids set up tents (I wasn't much help, really) and set up the tent I would be sharing with Amy. Things after that are kind of a blur in my mind of activities and breaks for prayer and time spent waiting around. Basically, although Pat and Colin had prepared a lot of activities and kind of thought they were supposed to run the camp, much of it ended up being run by the Malaysian teachers. In Malay. But the activities they put on were a lot of fun, and I think the kids enjoyed themselves.
The first night should give you an idea of how things went throughout the camp. First, the kids had to pray. They all gathered in a lovely outdoor auditorium right by the lake, and the ETAs absented ourselves to the dock to chat and plan. It probably wasn't far away enough, though, because we were still in plain view and soon realized we had to talk in whispers so as not to create an audible distraction. But it was nice to sit and compare notes about the funny things that had happened to us, like how I kept texting another ETA who had the same name as my landlady about problems with my apartment and didn't realize I had the wrong one until she finally said she thought I was mistaken a week later. Then prayers were finally over and we all had dinner. It turned out that some of the teachers had prepared a real feast for us--American style barbecue like hot dogs and grilled chicken, and whole grilled fish, and amazingly good french fries. Delicious, and so kind of them.
To be continued...I kept getting up to this point and losing the will to write more in what is already a very long post.
Monday 4 March 2013
Words that Are Opposites
I've been wanting to write a blog post about the ups and downs of life in a new place, and I got an idea from a children's book I saw called Words That Are Opposites (subtitle: Titles That Are Wordy and Unoriginal). I'm going to write some anecdotes in pairs that include one positive thing and one negative thing. They're organized by category, as well, a new OCD-friendly blog format.
Wildlife:
-Getting to release baby turtles at a beach and spot snakes, monkeys, and monitor lizards on a river cruise in the tiny nearby resort town of Cherating.
-Encountering flying cockroaches in my apartment and killing them with my copy of the book Culture Shock! Malaysia.
Food:
-Enjoying $0.60 roti canai and $0.80 dosa at a family-owned Indian restaurant right next door.
-Being commended for a teacher for trying new foods at the school canteen, only to subsequently find out that I was unwittingly eating "how you say, uh, cow...stomach, yes, stomach."
Teaching:
-Coming up with a "drawing on the board" lesson that goes swimmingly and involves having students take pictures of their classmates' drawings.
--Dealing with a completely uninterested and rebellious teenage Malaysian boy sporting that weird fauxhawk thing they love here. Ultimately getting so frustrated with him that I sarcastically asked him, "C'mon, I'm just asking you to draw a picture of your family. How old
are you? Three years old or four years old? I think by this age you can draw." Eliciting this comment from a student sitting at a nearby table: "Teacher, there's no need to resent us!" Groan. Can only hope he has a poor grasp of what "resent" means.
-Belting out "Lonely Boy" while the kids do a fill-in-the-blank exercise with the lyrics. Watching in amazement as a a group of 14-year-old boys enthusiastically sings along to the song on the third listen, completely unbidden by me.
-Sweating in my flower-print baju kurung and looking like a crazy woman in front of bemused teenagers while I try to teach them the dance to "You Make Me Wanna Shout" and fail to convince them that anyone my age still dances to this at parties. (But, but, I do! And with great gusto! Anyone remember that great Motown band playing the song at Telluride?)
-Dealing with female students who are so painfully shy and/or so lacking in confidence/ability in English that they will hide their faces and refuse to answer a simple question no matter how long you let the awkward silence while you wait for their answer drag out. A teacher told me, "Shy is good here." Well, it may be good here, and I may be a cultural imperialist for saying this, but it just makes my feminist blood boil when girls won't participate.
-Unintentionally (but gleefully) providing a forum for students, including girls, to debate the merits of early vs. late marriage and women earning more money than their husbands in a conversation class on "Where You'll Be in 10 Years." I KNEW they had opinions after all.
Heating and Cooling:
-Realizing that Kuantan has a lovely sea breeze at night.
-Realizing that my fan doubles as a mosquito vortex machine. No mosquito is tough enough to make it through the breeze pointed directly at my bed. This means the fan can never be turned off.
-Extremely effective combo of air conditioning and fans in the teacher's lounge.
-Perpetual wind tunnel effect that means I spend about 5 minutes each day running after papers that blow off my desk. I find myself doing lots of activities that involve notecards and pesky little slips of paper.
Publicity:
-Having reporters come to do a nice fluff piece about you for the paper.
-Gritting my teeth while said reporters visit my rowdiest class to take pictures, make the class even more excitable, and snap photos as I fail to manage the students well.
-Since I'm clearly a foreigner, people are extremely helpful to my clueless self and likely to give me leeway for doing everything wrong.
-I get it, I look different, enough leering!
Reading:
-Pro: Remembrance of Things Past just never ends.
-Con: Remembrance of Things Past just never ends. (Still on vol. 3.)
-Pro: My beach reading is The Rasputin File.
-Con: My beach reading is The Rasputin File.
-Common Knowledge about Chinese Culture, a publication of the Chinese government's overseas outreach office (or something like that, is a very nice book that helped me learn a lot about China in my spare time in the teachers' lounge. The Chinese language teacher lent it to me.
-I realized how truly ignorant I am of "common knowledge" about China. There's always so much to learn.
Hope your positives outweigh your negatives this week, my dear, distant readers.
Wildlife:
-Getting to release baby turtles at a beach and spot snakes, monkeys, and monitor lizards on a river cruise in the tiny nearby resort town of Cherating.
 |
| My sister, Kathleen, is dying of jealousy right now. |
 |
| Monitor Lizard. This is how I feel after a day of teaching. |
 |
| Time to reflect. |
 |
| Finally putting down some roots in Malaysia. |
-Encountering flying cockroaches in my apartment and killing them with my copy of the book Culture Shock! Malaysia.
Food:
-Enjoying $0.60 roti canai and $0.80 dosa at a family-owned Indian restaurant right next door.
-Being commended for a teacher for trying new foods at the school canteen, only to subsequently find out that I was unwittingly eating "how you say, uh, cow...stomach, yes, stomach."
Teaching:
-Coming up with a "drawing on the board" lesson that goes swimmingly and involves having students take pictures of their classmates' drawings.
 |
| I made this photo large so that you can see that the student's drawing of Ms. Liz is also giving a peace sign. As an American, I don't just spontaneously throw peace signs in pictures as often as Asians do. |
 |
| Teaching action shot. Note how scared the boys look of their crazy American teacher. Also note that this baju (which I think is really a sarong, or something) is probably my nicest one. A teacher gave it to me along with tons of other hand-me-down bajus, which shows how generous people are here. |
 |
| This is an illustration of the line, "There were many cats who lived outside our house, but we did not let them in. " |
 |
| I just love this one, especially the little pizza eater. |
are you? Three years old or four years old? I think by this age you can draw." Eliciting this comment from a student sitting at a nearby table: "Teacher, there's no need to resent us!" Groan. Can only hope he has a poor grasp of what "resent" means.
-Belting out "Lonely Boy" while the kids do a fill-in-the-blank exercise with the lyrics. Watching in amazement as a a group of 14-year-old boys enthusiastically sings along to the song on the third listen, completely unbidden by me.
-Sweating in my flower-print baju kurung and looking like a crazy woman in front of bemused teenagers while I try to teach them the dance to "You Make Me Wanna Shout" and fail to convince them that anyone my age still dances to this at parties. (But, but, I do! And with great gusto! Anyone remember that great Motown band playing the song at Telluride?)
-Dealing with female students who are so painfully shy and/or so lacking in confidence/ability in English that they will hide their faces and refuse to answer a simple question no matter how long you let the awkward silence while you wait for their answer drag out. A teacher told me, "Shy is good here." Well, it may be good here, and I may be a cultural imperialist for saying this, but it just makes my feminist blood boil when girls won't participate.
-Unintentionally (but gleefully) providing a forum for students, including girls, to debate the merits of early vs. late marriage and women earning more money than their husbands in a conversation class on "Where You'll Be in 10 Years." I KNEW they had opinions after all.
Heating and Cooling:
-Realizing that Kuantan has a lovely sea breeze at night.
-Realizing that my fan doubles as a mosquito vortex machine. No mosquito is tough enough to make it through the breeze pointed directly at my bed. This means the fan can never be turned off.
-Extremely effective combo of air conditioning and fans in the teacher's lounge.
-Perpetual wind tunnel effect that means I spend about 5 minutes each day running after papers that blow off my desk. I find myself doing lots of activities that involve notecards and pesky little slips of paper.
Publicity:
-Having reporters come to do a nice fluff piece about you for the paper.
-Gritting my teeth while said reporters visit my rowdiest class to take pictures, make the class even more excitable, and snap photos as I fail to manage the students well.
-Since I'm clearly a foreigner, people are extremely helpful to my clueless self and likely to give me leeway for doing everything wrong.
-I get it, I look different, enough leering!
Reading:
-Pro: Remembrance of Things Past just never ends.
-Con: Remembrance of Things Past just never ends. (Still on vol. 3.)
-Pro: My beach reading is The Rasputin File.
-Con: My beach reading is The Rasputin File.
-Common Knowledge about Chinese Culture, a publication of the Chinese government's overseas outreach office (or something like that, is a very nice book that helped me learn a lot about China in my spare time in the teachers' lounge. The Chinese language teacher lent it to me.
-I realized how truly ignorant I am of "common knowledge" about China. There's always so much to learn.
Hope your positives outweigh your negatives this week, my dear, distant readers.
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