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.

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. 

--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.