Wedding:
Last things first. I went to a wedding with the canteen operator at my school. Wait, canteen operator is not a real English phrase. The lady who runs the lunchroom. Anyway, it was in a small town outside KL. She reiterated to me over and over that the wedding was "kampung" (village) style, which basically means out in someone's backyard with invites sent to everyone the family knows--think about 2,000 people who mill in and out all day--and the family works together to do a huge amount of cooking. This wedding was staffed by my friend's nephews, the cousins of the bride, who all wore teal wedding-themed T-shirts with the bride and groom's names on them and did things like clear plates and scoop ice cream. It was awesome, although the Malaysian way of trying to make you comfortable at an event is to treat you like a VIP. So of course I was summoned to sit at the bridal table and eat all the nice food and to appear in pictures with the family. You can surmise my feelings about this. I imagine a Malaysian coming as a guest to an American wedding would feel very ignored, whereas we'd think we were making them comfortable my treating them just like everyone else.
I'll let pictures say the rest!
Archway with a decoration called bunga manga. Bunga manga is my new favorite thing in Malaysia, besides edible things. It's a fake tree type decoration. I got to watch students very earnestly poking those silvery tinsel sticks into a styrofoam block to prepare for a school parade. Bunga manga means business.
The bridge being fanned by her cousin while she waits for the groom to process in. He rolls in several hours into the day-long celebration, in true Malaysian style.
Bride and groom together!
I can't stop with the bunga manga shots.
Chronological order is all messed up and I'm too tired to fix it. Wedding favor. Egg on stick. Soft-boiled, it turns out. ....for fertility? Who knows.
Vat of yummy beef with banana leaf to keep flies away. One of many vats.
Groom processes in surrounded by bros.
Groom's bros beat drums to announce his arrival.
Seat of honor for bride and groom. The right-hand corner has a vase full of the egg things.
Some rice, spices, and water in a little silver thingy for dousing that you sprinkle over the new couple for good luck. I even tried it.
The lovely family I went with (plus aunt). The two younger kids are my students.
The scene.
Procession with umbrellas! And bunga manga! What more can you want!
Teaching
-I'm getting better at not sucking so much at it. I'm also learning to be able to throw up my hands gracefully and, frankly, to lower my standards--more for myself than for my students. I decided that my goal is just for them to speak English. Period. Is a boy telling his small group a possibly dirty joke instead of working on their dialogue? Sure, whatever, but is it in English? Then I win. It's important, I find, to continue to be amused even when your sense of control is being constantly challenged. Here's a dialogue from class that I really got a kick out of (sorry, this has already been on FB):
Patient: I think I have a food allergy.
Doctor: What did you eat yesterday?Patient: Fried rice. Doctor (earnestly): Are you allergic to fried or to rice?
I think in the past I may not have been able to find that as funny. My sense of humor would have been somewhat quenched by my annoyance that some kids in the back of the class weren't listening, and I couldn't force them to. But that's the key--sometimes you just can't make people do things, right?
Exercise
-Still going to the yoga class that I already mentioned. Found out the yoga teacher has an uncanny ability to tell when it's that time of the month for you. This is creepy, yet also makes me respect her. Apparently she can also detect a pregnancy before Western medicine can, but I only heard about that one second hand.
Volunteering
-I've been volunteering for an hour a week with kids whose parents are in treatment at a drug intervention center here. It's a lot of fun to interact with kids who are younger than my students and therefore a lot more affectionate and enthusiastic. (Sadly, I also think they're a little starved for attention in general.) The age range is about 3 to 12, which means that they are easily entertained by silly songs and drawing pictures and other activities that would leave my older students cold. It's also pretty nice to have a 3-year-old clinging to your leg and chattering away at you in Malay after you've just stared down a class of 15-year-old class clowns with attitude problems. I don't know how much English they're necessarily learning, and I'm not great at crowd control with little ones, but I hope they're getting something out of me being there.
-Island Adventure
My dive buddy (and just general buddy) Amy and I spent a weekend at an island called Kapas. It was wonderful beyond belief. We lucked into a great $10 guest house at the ferry departure point. Here's a picture of our view in the morning. That's the island out there. It's a 15-minute boat ride, or, according to our hostel receptionist, a 2-hour swim.
According to others on our dive boat, the diving on the island was "not spectacular." Could've fooled me. You see colors underwater that you just don't see on land, and the underwater scenery is all still so new to me that I'm enthralled every time. I hope it stays that way. We stayed at a very calm, beachfront longhouse-style hostel, read our books on the beach, and ate delicious food served by an outlandish and endearing Dutch woman. Total win.
Being or Not Being a Martyr/Unnecessary Ascetism/A Nice Hotel
-I realized at my mid-year meeting with other Fulbrighters that I was making my experience here in Malaysia an unnecessarily ascetic one. I realized this, of course, while staying in a really nice hotel that's within walking distance of my house and gorging myself on burgers and shakes and fries (thanks, Fulbright!) at a restaurant also near my house. You see, I hadn't made the effort to go to this burger place yet, even though I knew they had totally legit burgers. Seemed like cheating, and plus I was in the comfortable rut of going to the Chinese outdoor food court and getting a barbecue pork bun nearly every day. (No regrets on that front, really.) Some people are placed in really, really rural areas with few amenities, but I’m in a pretty big city. I’m realizing that it’s not such a bad thing if I occasionally retreat to the air-conditioned mall or even the Starbucks instead of, as my friend Hannah put it, “sweating poetically” in my room. Epiphany: No one is grading me on my time here. It's my life, and it's not a sign of weakness if I do some touristy things or retreat into AC. I don't need to pressure myself to MAKE THE MOST OF IT ALL THE TIME PLAN THE BEST TRIPS DO THE BEST THINGS MAKE EVERYONE LOVE ME TEACH THE STUDENTS TO BE FLUENT IN ENGLISH WITHIN 9 MONTHS EAT ALL THE WEIRD FOODS I POSSIBLY CAN ACHIEVE ACHIEVE ACHIEVE. I'm turning off that tape in my head, and it's working. I feel a weird sense of inner peace after coming back from English camp and the Cameron Highlands, which partly has to do with night markets and winged ants and my ability to nonchalantly sweep a coating of them off my floor in the morning. It's hard to explain without sounding like a nut, so just ask me personally if you dare.
Ahh I haven't even gotten to my latest trips! Will have to resign myself to being perpetually behind.
Reading:
Kafka on the Shore, finished and enjoyed though found a bit overdone.
Up to Vol. 6 of Remembrance of Things Past! By golly I'm going to finish one day.
