We were very warmly welcomed by all the teachers and especially by the students. They all looked at us in amazement, because outsiders rarely come to the school and it's even more of a big deal because we're white! Many, many pictures were taken and whenever we waved at a group of students they would cheer loudly. Even now we still get bright smiles whenever we pass them. Most of the students are pretty shy though, so it took them a lot of courage to come up and talk to us and sometimes when we would ask them something they'd giggle and shyly walk away. Usually a group of students would come up to us and there would be only one person who had to the talking while the others whispered questions in his/her ears.
Remembering the names is still one of the biggest challenges and I always feel horrible when I can't remember it. Trying to learn a couple a day, but all the names are so similar. Atika, Afika, Syarifah... I'm pretty safe with the boys as most of them are either called Asri or Syazwan and they don't really seem to mind as much when I can't remember their name.
My Malay is also slowly improving. Keeping it at one word or phraze a day and it amuses the students a lot to hear me and Rosie speak Malay. Saying 'suka hati kau la' (it's up to you) drives them WILD.
We haven't done much teaching yet, the first week we did some observing and assisting which was all good fun and in the afternoons we helped in drama class and I joined in in the gamelan lessons in the evening. Gamelan is an Indonesian musical instrument. It's got 10 gold nocturne bells that only have 5 tones and make a very warm sound when you play them.
Rosie made a time table to give you all an idea of what a normal day in the life of a Tumpat student looks like. It's packed!
4 am up for a shower if you don't want to have to cue for hours!
6 am first set of prayers
7 am breakfast
7:20 am role call
7:40 first lesson
10 am break
11 am lessons
1/1:20 pm lunch
2-3 pm prayer
s3-6 pm extra curricular activities/ homework (compulsory)
6-7 pm dinner
7-9 pm prayer
s9-11 pm homework/extra curricular activities (pretty much compulsory)
11:30 pm lights out
I can't blame then when they tell me they sleep in class and usually they pretty much sleep through the whole weekend.
The students who we've been getting to know quite well have decided to call us Ka/Kak/Kaka Rosie and Anouk. Quite amusing for a Dutch girl as the last two means poo. But here it's a form of respect and literally means 'big sister', so I actually find it quite heart-warming.
One of my favourite moments of my time here so far was during the welcoming speech of the school principal. She had looked up how Project Trust worked and told them where we came from. When she asked the students what they knew about Belgium hundreds of students called out CHOCOLATEE. I know it's really silly, but I just couldn't get the smile off my face for the next couple of hours.
Another one of my favourite moments was when the form 5 boys took us to their dikir barat practice. This is traditional Kelantanese music thing. There are about 5 boys playing drums , one singer and a big group of about 20 boys doing synchonised dance moves. They played two Malay songs and also sang Carole by The Beatles and instead of singing Carole they said Rosie and Anouk. Such charmers.
I've been trying to put my recording of this and the gamelan up on youtube, but I can't handle the struggle with loading up videos on these computers any more so I'll just have to wait until I find a place where the internet won't constantly fail on me.
A week ago we went to Kuala Krai for language weekend. This was a sort of competition between all of the MARA schools in Terenganu and Kelantan.We had 40 students from our school who all did different things. There was the drama group (that we coached!), the scrabble team, public speakers in Malay and English, singing prayers, story telling, spelling bee, forum, quizzers and a debate team.
We also met up with 8 other PT volunteers so it was nice to spend the weekend with them.
Our school won two prizes! One for the singing prayer and we got second with scrabble.
Last week was activity week. The first two days they had to tidy up their class rooms, the staff room and paint the walls. Not much fun. The next three days were better though. The girls had a masterchef competition and made some very impressive carvings from watermelon and the boys had a football competition in their traditional baju melayu (I got into trouble for calling it a skirt).
The next day was sports day which involved a sack race and shoe throwing.
Last weekend we planned on visiting Gemma in Jeli, but Rosie wasn't feeling too well so I had to brave the public transport on my own! I got a ride from one of the superteachers (that's what the teachers are called here when they're specialized in their subject) to Kota Bharu and from there onwards I had to take the bus. In Tanah Merah two lovely girls helped me find my bus to Jeli in return for me singing happy birthday to them in Dutch.
4 hours later I finally arrived at MRSM Jeli and a group of 7 boys helped me with my bags and took me up to Gemma's lovely appartment.
The next day we went to a market and I bought peanut butter biscuits, deepfried bananas, mangoes and a rabbit. Gemma bought one as well and we spent the whole afternoon oohing and aahing at every little thing they did. Gemma's is gray and called Thumper and mine has a browny orange colour and named her Pumpkin.
The next day I got onto the bus back to Tumpat with Pumpkin in a box on my lap. After 30 minutes the inevitable happened and she peed on me. The passenger next to me thought this was very amusing, but was eventually very helpful and gave me some pages of her newspaper. In Tanah Merah I waited an hour for a bus that was supposed to come every half hour. When I almost gave up hope the bus finally arrived and got pushed my way in. Malaysians don't do queueing. 45 minutes later the bus FINALLY left and when I arrived in KB I decided I had enough bus stress for the day and got a taxi instead. I had a massive argument with the driver because he tried to raise the price from RM 20 to RM30 when we arrived. I was very very happy when I finally arrived at the house and could fall into Rosies warming arms. Pumpkin is enjoying being able to run around the whole house, but we're bit terrified of her falling down the squat toilet, because we can't close the door.
This week we finally started teaching classes on our own and it's so much fun! I will tell more about it in my next blog.
Lots of love to all of you xoxo
I'll end off this blog with the amazing MARA song we get to hear at every assembly. So catchy I know the lyrics already.
ghttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUza3wyzoRg
