Get ready Malaysia! Here I come!

Hi all,

Well... the news is... my visa for Sri Lanka did not come through. So I am off to West-Malaysia, leaving from Heathrow London on Wednesday evening. I will arrive in Kuala Lumpur and stay there for a day or two. Our introduction to our project in Tumpat (near the Thai border on the east coast) will be on Friday the 15th so we'll have some time to explore Malaysia and get acclimatised. In actual fact I've got quite a bit of catching up to do. I only just discovered that Malaysia is split up into two parts. Western Malaysia which is bordering Thailand, Singapore and Birma and Borneo-Malaysia which borders Indonesia. There are lots of exciting animals including elephants, tigers and 12 kind of monkeys. It has the oldest, and most undamaged,  jungle in the world. So Malaysia, here I come!

I will be working in a secondary school helping the English teachers and stepping in for them when they are ill. I'll be a conversation coach. I will also be organising some after-school clubs and I've already had some ideas of what I will be doing. It seems like a great opportunity for a creative writing club or forming a choir.

In the part of Malaysia where I'll be going to most of the people are Malay. They are socially much more disadvantaged than the Chinese and Indians who live in Malaysia. It is the policy of the Malay government to remove that disadvantage by promoting the education of Malay children. That's the reason for my project.
I will be living and working with 2 other girls who were also supposed to go to Sri Lanka and like me have been diverted to Malaysia. There are 5 more volunteers over there whom I know from the training.

Anyway, I'm really really excited about going. On Tuesday morning I am leaving to London. I shall reunite with my backpack which was left there two weeks ago when I realized that I would not be going to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately it's going to have to be unpacked and repacked as I have to have different equipment and clothes for Malaysia and more malaria tablets! And then on Wednesday we'll spend my last day in Europe. Probably that will be a visit, with my mum (possibly bumping into the 4th years of my old school who have a school trip to London this week) to Covent Garden and Soho for a nice lunch and perhaps a forage in a couple of book stalls for a book on creative writing or something else which will be usefull for my after-school clubs.

I'll keep you posted. Next blog will be from Tumpat!