First of all apologies again this blog has taken so long to set up. Second of all, if I was supposed to be emailing you blogs during February then sorry. I’m totally useless. I know.
Instead of filling you in what happened I’m just gonna go from yesterday.
I got a lift up to a language “week” yesterday. But it only ran from Thursday till today (Sunday) so it was more like a language 4 days. It was in the state to the north (Kelantan) at another MRSM school. All 10 of us Matsalehs (“foreigner”, not sure of the spelling) were there. 3 more volunteers joined us up here in north east Malaysia during February. They were supposed to be going to Sri Lanka, but there was a bit of mix up with their visas so they ended up here. So there’s ten of us now. And this language 4 days was a sort of camp thing for all the schools in Kelantan and Terangganu.
So each school sends a group of students to play in scrabble contests, drama contests, public speaking contests… They really know how to let loose at the weekends here! Kidding, it was actually a good couple of days. We didn’t really do very much. Just sat and watched most of the time. It was great to spend time with the other volunteers. A good laugh and all that.
As usual we all got celebrity treatment. Loads of photos were taken – we were in about half of the photos in the slide show in the closing ceremony – we were given rankings as to who was the best looking volunteer, and met lots of new people and forgot all their names. (The name remembering is still a nightmare. What’s worse is when you can’t tell which students go to your school).
Saturday was just a good laugh but not much to report. Or nothing you’d be interested in. It’s astounding how many words people try to make up during a game of scrabble.
Today was a bit more interesting though. Unfortunately due to the high volume of people at the school (camp) the water for the showers kind of ran out after a while. This morning we had the closing ceremony to go to, so this was a bit of a dilemma. Then Ollie make the discovery of the year . Short of a really good hot shower – and I would like to stress the really good part, not just some mediocre hot shower – washing from a bucket and stand pipe is the best way to shower. Its actually liberating. It’s maybe not advisable in somewhere like the UK cause you might freeze to death but on your next holiday to Spain or the likes you should try it. The waters just warm enough to bear but cool enough to wake you right up. And standing in an open field washing the cobwebs off is just brilliant. You feel free. So much room to move around. Such good views. Your not confined to some tiled cubicle. Quality.
The second only notable thing that happened today was that we left two children behind on the bus journey home. They stopped on the way back at a mosque to pray. And we then proceeded to leave with two less kids than we stopped with. I’ll make clear I wasn’t in charge, but the teacher who was didn’t notice. And we got about 200m down the road when the students all started shouting (and laughing) to stop the bus. It was quite funny. But don’t worry. We brought them back safe and well.
I’ll leave it hear for today and I’ll blog again soon.
N.B, red ant bites hurt. A lot.
Much love to everyone back home. X
H
A blog from Besut. 