Holidays in paradise and birthday trips in tiny cars

For all of you who have been asking or are just wondering: the religious teacher Abi will be taking care of Pumpkin when we leave. He has taken care of him when we were on holiday at Pulau Perhentian and gave him an absolute superstar treatment. He bought a cage for us and posted pictures on Facebook every day to show us he's doing fine. Funny how many likes these pictures got. When we came back from our holiday Pumpkin had also grown twice the size from when we left him with Abi. Not sure if he just had a grow spurt or got more food. But he's very well now and gets a lot of attention from the teachers' children who come round every evening to play with him.

I'm a little bit far behind on my blogging, but I'll try and pick it up as from exam period. There wasn't much for us to do that week, but help the pupils during study time or give them some encouragement.
When the exam period was over we were ready for our first holiday in Malaysia! As usual I packed far too much and then complained about carrying such heavy luggage in the pressing heat. We got a ride to Kota Bharu from the maths superteacher (which is what you are called when you have worked with that subject for a long time and are particularly good at it). We met up with Gemma and got a taxi down to Kota Putra. I really do not want to relive that journey. It was so awful. The driver was a real creep, he overcharged us, persistently blew cigarette smoke in my face, kept on talking in Malay to us while it was quite obvious we didn't know what he was on about and then he got terribly lost and tried to charge us even more. When we finally arrived we tried to let the boys persuade the driver to get the price down, but we still ended up paying double the price of what it should be.
Our day did end very nicely with a barbecue on the beach looking out onto the island we would be going to the next day.

The boat ride to Pulau Perhentian was choppy and painful, but all was made good when we arrived at the beach. White beaches, clear blue water and palm trees everywhere. We got our bikini's on for the first time in Malaysia and relaxed for the rest of the day.
This is pretty much what the rest of our holiday looked like. Though we did do a couple of more exciting things. Gemma and I went snorkeling with 2 others whom I didn't know. We saw really big turtles, I was the only one to see sharks and we saw loads of nemo's and beautiful coral.
A highlight of the trip was scuba-diving. 7 volunteers did the 4-day course to get their PADI qualification, but I had never done diving before so I didn't want to spend money on it yet. So I did the Discovery dive with Rosie, Ellie, Rianne and Hannah. It was amazing! We got a short training on how to use all the breathing equipment and not panic when we're under water and then we went in for 45 minutes. We went down to 11 meters and again saw more beautiful coral and saw a massive turtle which got us all very excited. If I get the opportunity to do the PADI course in the future I will definitely do it.
In the evenings we went out to party's on the beach which involved lots of dancing.

Rosie and I left the island a day before everyone else to go down to Kuantan and meet up with Hajar, an English teacher from Tumpat. The journey was 2 hours longer than it was supposed to be and SO hot and sticky. Public transport is always a bit of challenge here. We got picked up in the evening and Hajar brought us to her cute traditional Malay house on sticks and surrounded by chickens. The houses are always a lot bigger than you expect when you go inside. Then Hajar suggested we go to the cinema which got us VERY excited. I LOVE going to the cinema and there isn't one in Kelantan so this was a real treat. We went to Olympus Has Fallen, which was about Koreans attacking the White House. It was quite disappointing to be honest, action isn't really my thing but hey, it was a good night.
The next day we got up early, had doughnuts for breakfast and were off to the beach with Hajar and her sister Ocha. There were supposed to be monkeys in the jungle near our walk along the beach, but I'm so glad they didn't show up because they were so terrifying when we got up close to them at Batu Caves.
Then we had Twistie Fries at McDonalds and then we headed off to the little Kuantan zoo. There was a very shy bear, scary bearcats, cute mousedeers, lazy crocodiles, intimidating ostriches, turtles, alligators and some very noisy ungka monkeys.
After a little break back at their home we were off the waterfall which was incredible! So refreshing and a nice change after being in seawater all week. We paddled around for hours, then had dinner and were told loads of Malay ghost stories and then we relaxed for the rest of the evening in front of the television.
The next day was reserved for our journey back to Tumpat which was 6 hours. This was probably the most relaxing journey we had here. Until the last to hours in the bus when we were bursting to go to the toilet.
Then I tried to get out money from an ATM for our taxi back home and discovered I was skint. Rosie's card got swallowed by the machine so we got in a bit of a panic but then I discovered I had just about enough left.
When arriving back to Tumpat one of the students proved why they are the best in the whole world and gave me Thai food she got in her holiday. That was so good.

Our first week after the holiday was a bit quiet as we still didn't have a timetable so we just randomly got given lessons. Nothing really exciting happened.

But then it was our BIRTHDAY WEEKEND. I turned 19 on Friday the 5th of April and Rosie's birthday was the next day. Declan, Ollie James and Gemma came up to Tumpat on Thursday and we went bowling in KB Mall. Then we went back to our house and played cards. The next day was my birthday and I got everyone roti canai and when everyone was finally ready we all squeezed into Gemma's tiny car she got from one of the teachers and headed to the waterfall in Jeli. The car was named Boris, because he was inadequate, ridiculous but after a 4 hour journey he got us there in the end. We climbed up the waterfall and jumped off the rocks into the water several times with a big Malay audience encouraging us. When we were back in Tumpat we went into the dodgems at the funfair which was quite a weird experience. Gemma and I - being white-skinned and the only girls to boot- attracted quite a lot of attention so loads of things were shouted at us. The best one was 'WHERE ARE YOU GOING?' Strange question when we're in dodgems.
For Rosie's birthday the next day we went to the Buddhist temples in Tumpat which was very interesting. While we were walking around in a touristic fashion with our camera's we were followed around by some very cute Thai children. After that we headed to Kota Bharu to drop the boys off and then we got all girly and went shopping.
Sunday school started again and loads of students called out 'happy belated birthday!' and all the classes we taught that day sang happy birthday for us. One student gave me a card with a superhero mask that I could cut out and on the back it said 'Remember that you're already a superhero in our eyes'. SO CUTE.
On Monday the 8th our Desk Officer from Project Trust, Chris, came with the head of the English department of all MARA schools, Marwati, to inspect whether everything was going all right with our project here. Their visit was really short, but they managed to arrange more work for us and now we FINALLY have a timetable. It's still only one lesson each a day, but we're getting more and more lessons to fill in for and there are lots of after school activities to join in on. And I might be starting a French class! I don't know why I had not thought of this earlier.

I think this is enough for now, I won't leave my next update for too long now! Such a bad habit.
Here are some pictures:

The Discovery Divers

Tumpat

Form 3 class

Pulau Perhentian

The view from our balcony

Ocha, Hajar and Rosie on Kuantan beach

bearcat

mousedeers

Ungka

Kuantan waterfall

Central market in Kota Bharu

Buddhist temple in Tumpat

Yes, that is a Gangnam Style table cloth

Buddhist graves

First impressions, rabbits and public transport troubles

I am starting my 4th week in MRSM Tumpat now. After delaying writing my blog for 3 weeks I think it's finally time to write one!

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

 Our huge and bland living room

 Bedroom

 Our school

 The drama team

 Gamelan

 The beach

Drama performance of the school who came second

 football in traditional clothing

 Thumper

 Pumpkin

River trekking

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

Three mat sallehs on a holiday

I've been in Malaysia for a bit more than a week now and it is just so amazing here! I have a lot to tell, but I'll try to make it as overseeable as possible . Prepare youself for a very long post!

On Wednesday the 6th of February our flight left at 10 o'clock in the evening from Heathrow airport. My mum and I arrived 3 hours earlier at the airport and met up with Gemma and Rosie and her family. 

I was dreading the 12 hour flight, but it was actually quite enjoyable. We all had a little TV in front of us where you could play games with, watch films and series and listen to music. We were also offered loads of food but it freaked me out a little to have a full meal while we were so high up in the air. 

So 12 hours later we arrived in Kuala Lumpur, but it was actually 18.00 their time. In the airport we thought the heat wasn't too bad actually but the moment we stepped outside the heat hit us like a truck. I also noticed it smelt like the rain forest section of the zoos, which makes sense as it was raining. 

We were driven to the Sutera Hotel in Seremban, a little bit outside of KL. We met up with our rep Noraini and her son Adam and we had our first Malaysian meal with them. We didn't know anything about the food so they ordered for us. I will have to write a separate blog about the food here because there's just so much of it! The main cultures here are Malay, Indian and Chinese, so there's a little bit of everything.
We were prepared for the spiciness of the food, but not for the sweetness of the drinks! They quite literally drown all the freshness with sugar, so one of the first things I learnt to say in Malay was 'kurang manes' (less sugar)

On Friday I woke up at 3 in the morning because of the jet lag and couldn't get to sleep anymore so I felt absolutely exhausted for the rest of the day. Noraini brought us to her office and gave us a small briefing on Malay culture and language. In the afternoon two other women who worked at the office and whose names I have completely forgotton brought us to Terminal 1, a big shopping centre in Seremban. They bought us to the Wee Wee Shop to get a mobile phone and Rosie, Gemma and I purchased our first traditional Malay dress, a baju kurung. It's unbelievable how cheap everything is here! The phone and dress cost 70 ringgits altogether which is only 14 pounds. And you can get a full meal for 5 people for only 15 pounds here.

In the evening we went to have dinner with Noraini, her husband Chris, Adam and two friends of theirs. Again I have no idea what to tell you what I ate that day, but I had a Kit-Kat ice cream as a dessert! So nice. This time the drinks were also served a lot less sweet.

We also saw a lot of gecko's and now Rosie really wants to have one in our house. They eat all the insects and they are better looking than spiders so I'm ok with that.

Saturday the 9th of Feb might have been one of the best days of my life! Gemma, Rosie and I put on our baju kurungs and were ready to go to our first Malaysian wedding! Adam picked us up at about 11 and had to bring us to his grandmother first. Until a couple of months ago he lived in Spain so now he has to learn his way around again in Seremban, which means we got lost quite a lot of times. This actually wasn't too awful as Malaysian radio is actually quite good (his car basically turned into a driving karaoke) and the scenery outside is beautiful to look at. 

One and a half hour later and we arrived at the wedding and it was so colourful. We received gifts at the entrance and a lot of people stared at us and gave us compliments on our baju kurungs. 

The bride and groom looked beautiful, but very nervous. But wouldn't you be if there were so many people there to see you, and I think they didn't know half of the guests either.

When we asked to get a picture with the bride and groom they put us on their sofa and they stood besides us. Stealing the limelight there for a minute. And we also met a famous Malaysian soap opera actor. When we asked to take a picture with him he asked us 'Do you even know who I am? To which Rosie smoothly replied 'Err, yeah you're that very famous soap opera actor!' 

We only had rice to eat, because that was the only vegetarian thing we could get and our appetite wasn't huge as it was incredibly hot outside and I was boiling under my black baju kurung.

We went back to Adams grandmothers house and had an amazing nap. Then we were off to Port Dickson and on the way we saw our first couple of monkeys, which was very exciting. 

Port Dickson beach is really beautiful, if only a little bit touristic. It has a beautiful white beach and clear blue water which is very warm. We took the opportunity to go on a banana boat and it was just so much fun! It took some effort to convince Rosie to join us and we decided to call her mum as she definitely is the most 'mature' person of the three, but I think she did enjoy the banana boat a lot!

In the evening we went to see more friends of Noraini's and after that we went to eat at a diner near to our hotel. Everywhere we went that day we got lost every single time and we heard Rihanna's entire back catalogue. Malaysian radio are incredible Rihanna fans. 

Happy Chinese New year! Sunday Feb 10th was the first day of the year of the black snake. Adam picked us up at noon and this time we got even more lost than the day before, even though we just had to go to the same place. He took a wrong turning and ended up on the highway towards KL. A trip that should've been 20 minutes ended up being 2 hours. We decided to start a U-turn count, so every time he had to take one he had to give us RM 1. By the end of the day he was up to 9. Lots of singalong songs later we arrived at his grandmothers house and drove from there onwards to one of the Chinese openhouses.

The first family had lots and lots of food and they kept on offering delicious cakes and biscuits and I was so stuffed afterwards. They had the cutest little daughter, I've completely forgotten her name as I do with most people here, but she loved playing with the fireworks and we joined her when she was making little wax artworks from candles. It all sounds very dangerous, but there was always someone on the lookout.
It's a Chinese tradition to give all unwedded people 10 ringgits in a beautiful red envelope on New Years day. We were quite pleasantly surprised to receive one as well!
Reluctantly we left for the other open house , but because we got lost AGAIN we arrived late to the party. They offered us the leftovers, but it was only meat and jelly and I don't like either. The woman who lived in this house was the head director of a sort of girl power magazine for Malay women. It was of course a lot more formal than how I described it, but it was very interesting! I haven't written down the name, which I'm very sad about.
Also in this house we received RM10 each, so we went to Tesco (yes there's a Tesco in Seremban) and we spent it on razors, lipbalm and biscuits.

Monday we went to Kuala Lumpur to meet up with the 12 month volunteers in Malaysia. After a rather uneventful trainride we were picked up by Nick and he brought us to the youth hostel they were staying at in the centre of KL.
The traffic here is absolutely MAD. The best thing you can do is to close your eyes when crossing the road and hope for the best or run and scream and avoid hope the cars bend their way around you.
When arriving in the hostel we were introduced to Ellie, Hannah, Josh, Helena and Rianne (whose from the Netherlands) and we headed off to Chinatown. There we bought a thankyou gift for Adam, as an apology we bullied him constantly about his sense of direction and we got pushed around by a bunch of tourists.
After that we took the monorail to Batu Caves. This is a hindu temple in in a very large cave, but in order to enter it you have to walk up 300 steps. Not much fun when it's 35 degrees and when you're surrounded by hungry monkeys. One of them violently snatched away plastic bags with food in it of children which left them crying hysterically. Monkeys are fun to look at, but only from a distance!
We arrived at the top of the stairs in a sweaty heap and admired the whole thing.
When we came back down again Gemma and I decided to get some henna done on our hands. It took only 10 minutes to make and my hand had never looked so pretty.
Our hands had to dry so we let Rosie rumble through our bags and that kind of stuff. My hand remained untouched but a pigeon brushed its wing past Gemma's hand which smudged a tiny part of her henna. What are the odds of that happening?!
We went back to the youth hostel and just hung around there for the rest of the day. We played card games with on the rooftop of the building and looked out onto the Twin Towers.
On the way back Gemma and I skipped through the tube station and mum did a bit of pole dancing in the ladies carriage of the monorail.

Tuesday we were left to our own devices, so Gemma and I decided to go back to Terminal one to do some shopping. Not much happened really, besides finding an amazing material shop and getting a reduction from a taxi chauffeur because he felt bad for us for going to Kelantan. Oh dear.

Wednesday we went to help Noraini in the flower shop. I would have loved to do the flower arranging, but she wanted us to dethorn the roses.
After being pricked by many thorns Noraini released us from our chores and gave us some free time to walk around the shopping centre. There wasn't much to see because it was new, but we found a cafe where they gave us a sugar percentage chart when we were ordering our drinks which I will now use everywhere.
In the evening Gemma and I couldn't resist going into an Indian clothes shop to buy some traditional clothing. I found a salwar kameez pretty quickly, but Gemma struggled with finding one that fit over her calves, as she is quite muscular. After many tries of taking out the seems and refits she decided to look for a saree, but that ended up to be too expensive. Right when we were about to give up she found a salwar kameez with very wide trousers and they fit! We were all cheering, but as she tried on the top part she got stuck in that. I think every woman can imagine this being a complete nightmare, but Rosie and I were quite literally crying of laughter. Fortunately one of the shopkeepers came to save her and untook the seems around the waist. And she even gave all of us a free pashmina!

Valentine's day was probably the worst day yet. I was wearing my salwar kameez and when we were getting ready to leave for Kuala Lumpur my trousers ripped horribly when I tried to pick up my luggage.
After an uncomfortable trip later we arrived at the Quality Hotel, which luckily lived up to its name.
It was pouring with rain outside so we didn't do much for a couple of hours, but we got bored and decided to look for a post office. I know Malaysians are all about not 'losing face', but if they don't know where the post office is, they could just tell us. We had to ask 8 people until we eventually found it and because of the hour of running up and down in the heat and rain my espadrilles turned my feet bright pink. A good reminder to never wear them in the rain.
We cheered up a little by finding a beautiful wedding dress shop, but we quickly decided to go back to the hotel and stay there until our dinner with Marwati.
Marwati is responsible for all the MARA volunteers and I don't quite know how to describe her. Maybe a little bit crazy? She's all over the place, loves to say 'swag' and tends to not finish her sentences. Her daughter was very charming though, again I've forgotton her name but the English translation was Gentle. She took us to the Twin Towers in the city centre which just get prettier and prettier the darker it gets, and on the tube we taught Gentle how to dance the Macarena, Ketschup Song and Gangnam Style.
The day ended quite nicely, but I was very happy to be in bed with my mint sented sheets.

Friday we went to the MARA office and had a meeting with some of the teachers who will be working at our school. A lot of them tried to secretly take pictures of us , but I don't understand how they wouldn't think we'd not notice an enormous tablet peeping out of the table.
We met a lot of people whose name I've completely forgotten again and at noon we got into the minibus and left for our 12-hour trip to Tumpat. Our holiday was over!
Many toiletbreaks, snackbreaks, praybreaks and a vomitbreak (poor Gemma) later we arrived at our new home which was filled with cockroaches, spides and centipedes. Fun.

I will blog about my first week in Tumpat next time, but I am absolutely loving it!

In other news:
- A lot of people, mainly children, point at us and call out 'mat salleh', which literally means white person. We've been assured this doesn't have any negative connotations.
- The most worrying thing I've seen so far is people carrying their baby's on their laps when driving a motorcycle. And every taxichauffeur we've driven with has stopped us from wearing our seatblets or there just aren't any seatbelts. Malaysian traffic is just wild in general.
- Women have a special ladies carriage in trains

If anyone would like to contact me:

You can email me on : anoukbakker2@gmail.com

And my post address is:

Anouk Bakker
Maktab Rendah Sains Mara Tumpat
16200 Tumpat, Kelantan,
Malaysia

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!

Farewells, adventures in Wiltshire and more waiting around

2 weeks ago on Monday I was buzzing after a great weekend. I had a very successful leaving party and received some lovely leaving-gifts which touched me a little. I was to leave on Thursday the 17th of January but my backpack was all ready and I only had to say a few more goodbyes to some close friends. The only nagging doubt was that I still hadn't received my flight itinerary, so I called Project Trust. Just when I wanted to pick up the phone, it started ringing and it was Jonny, my desk officer, from PT! He asked me how I was and I told him how excited I was about leaving on Friday and that I was all ready to go, that my backpack was full to the brim and that I had said all my goodbyes, to which he timidly replied 'Yeaah, about that...'
To cut a long story short, whoever it was at the Department of Education in the Western Province of Sri Lanka who was meant to put a stamp on our visa/work permit, was off huntin', shootin'  and fishin' (or whatever) instead of sitting behind his desk helping the poor in his country to get 3 brilliant English girls(and one Dutch/English/Belgian girl) to help out in schools. So we received the unwelcome news that our departure date was delayed and it was uncertain when the visas would be ready which would mean we could leave. I was more disappointed than angry really, and probably remained a little too laid back about it all, but my mum knew much better how to handle all of it and called the project every day to get an update on how the visa's were getting on.
As we had planned, in the expectation that I would be flying to Colombo on the 18th of January, we left for England on the 17th. Because of heavy snowfall the Eurostar was delayed by two hours (grrr), but my mum and I had a nice chat with a lady who was working for a Belgian Count and Countess who lived in a castle near Brussels and paid her absolute peanuts for washing, cooking, cleaning and driving the children for tennis, golf  and swimming. When it was our turn we raged to her about how annoyed we were with the project. Good fun that.

 When we arrived in London, my mum had another stiff talk with Jonny and it became painfully obvious that I wouldn't be leaving the following day. My parents had planned on meeting friends in Wiltshire for that weekend (having said goodbye to me at Heathrow) so I accompanied them there too. I had a great time actually. We had lovely long walks in the thick snow, we went to a curry restaurant (to make up for the fact that I wasn't in Sri Lanka yet), played with Bonny the Spanish waterdog (best dogs ever) and just relaxed (but my mum was relentless: Jonny couldn't escape her daily call). On the Sunday we heard that our flight had been delayed till the 9th of February, and that it still  wasn't certain yet whether we would actually be leaving. I wasn't sure whether I wouldn't actually prefer staying in England rather than going back with my parents to Belgium. After all I had said goodbye to all of my friends and it would be a little awkward to see them again. But we decided that if I was going to hang around somewhere for 3 weeks, I best to do it at home.
Again because of all the heavy snowfall on Monday 21st of January, I couldn't travel back to Belgium together with my parents. I didn't have a return ticket (thanks to PT!) and the Eurostar wouldn't sell any tickets for travelling on that day. So I had to stay in London for another day. To cheer up a little I decided I would go to Covent Garden for a couple of hours. Such a lovely place, but I didn't hang around for too long because dragging around my heavy luggage caused some awkward encounters. I bought myself a book on Buddhism and went back to my aunts house and had a wonderfully long bath (we don't have a bath at home, only a shower) had a great chocolate cake (it was my cousin Tatum's birthday), watched the cousins and their friends having loads of fun ,I was too tired to participate. And finished off the day by watching an exciting episode of Coronation Street and Miranda.
I've been home now for a bit more than a week and Jonny still isn't very confident about our visa's coming through. The absolute latest we would leave is February 9th, but it might be (very likely actually) that we, Rosie, Gemma, Josie and I, will be going to Malaysia instead. I was really looking forward to Sri Lanka and I am a little sad that we won't be wearing sari's for class or have an elephant in our garden, but I'm tired of waiting around and just want to leave. A 3-week goodbye is pushing it a little. I've only heard positive things about Malaysia, and there are 5 more volunteers that I know over there so I'm definitely not dreading going there.
To be continued with either a confirmation of me going to Malaysia or even that my Sri Lankan visa has come through!

The countdown can begin!

Hello everyone!

It's been two weeks since my training on the Isle of Coll (see photos below), and I still miss everything about it. The people, the island, the fresh air.  I left on the 30th of November and spent a couple of days with my family in London. We went to a couple of Christmas markets, which made me feel very festive. And London looks amazing with all the christmas lights! They really go for it, don't they?

I continued my long trip to Coll on December 3rd. The train to Glasgow was about 5 hours, but combining it with reading, sleeping, listening to music and looking at the landscape outside (when we got into Scotland the views were incredible!) the time passed by quickly. In Glasgow I met up with a couple of the volunteers I knew from the selection course and we all got the coach to Oban together, We arrived at 9 o'clock, and it would've been more sensible to go to sleep straight away because we all had to catch the ferry to Coll at 5 o'clock the next morning, but we ended up staying up a bit too late chatting about the past 10 months and our project. Luckily the ferry provided loads of space for sleeping!

When arriving on the island we were collected by some of the Project Trust staff and were driven to the other side of the island to the Project Trust centre. All the volunteers agreed that it seemed like it was only 2 months ago since we were on selection, not 10! We were all very giggly and excited, yet we didn't know what to expect when we would arrive at the centre. Nic Smith, who drove us, could hardly bear our excitement any longer when we saw the end of a rainbow! A childhood dream come true!


When arriving at the centre we all had to settle down in our rooms. I was together with my three Sri Lankan partners, Rosie (whom I'll be living with), Gemma and Josie. (from the first day onwards the three of them had very bad colds so they snored really badly in their sleep, which meant I hardly could sleep at all. But my tiredness only kicked in when I arrived back on the main land!)
We were told what to expect from training. There would be sessions about health, dealing with problems with our partner, dealing with problematic children, learning more about the culture, learning how to teach, and many other things. Our first day wasn't too busy, but the following three days were packed from 9 o'clock in the morning until 10 in the evening! It didn't feel nice to constantly be inside, so whenever we got the opportunity (we usually tried to eat our lunch very quickly, so we would have about half an hour free time) we got outside to have a quick walk. The first day we went up onto one of the cliffs and the sea below uswas very active and it just felt really epic to stand looking out onto a wild and choppy sea.

These pictures were taken on the first day, we had quite a lot of time to walk around then, but the following days were really busy, so we would only have about half an hour to go out. Another unfortunate thing was that the days were really short. The sun came up at 10 in the morning and went down again at about half past 4. But look how incredible it was in the hours when the sun did shine!

(The beach was my absolute favourite place to go to)

I loved the lighting in this one as well. From left to right this is Gemma, Josie (both going to Sri Lanka), me and Amy.

So, more about the course. In all the sessions the staff tried to apply different teaching styles, so we could get inspiration from it. I enjoyed the sessions we had with our Desk Officer the most. We would sit together with all 4 Sri Lankan volunteers and an Indian volunteer, Jess. It was important that we get to know our Desk Officer, Jonny, well, because if we're in trouble or need any kind of help, he will be the first one we should contact. We talked about our expectations and fears about the country, we learned more about the culture and religion. Jonny warned us that we would get many marriage proposals if we went to the city, and that pointing your feet to someone (when you're sitting down in a relaxed way you might not notice that your feet are pointing to someone) is highly offensive! We did a lot of sessions on teaching, and we ourselves had to prepare 2 lessons (that's why the days were usually packed until 10 o'clock). The first lesson I did had to be 10 minutes and I taught the other volunteers how to introduce themselves in Dutch. It went alright, but I did feel a bit nervous. I also should have timed it more, because I finished two minutes earlier. I didn't expect them to learn so quickly! But while observing the other volunteers and receiving tips from the staff I made a lot of notes and did much better the next day. This time the lesson was about describing people and it had to be 20 minutes. It went really well and now I feel a lot more confident about teaching in Sri Lanka.
In Sri Lanka we will have to eat with our hands. Food with te right hand, drink with the left! One evening we ate our supper with our hands. Having rice and falafels was fine and actually a lot of fun, but it got a lot more unpleasant when we had our ice cream for dessert!
All in all the sessions were long and hard, but a lot of fun as well.

Before training I didn't know too much about my project, because my Desk Officer was in Sri Lanka and China to arrange them. But he has been able to tell us quite a lot during training.
I will be working and living in a big village called Mirigama, in the Western Province of Sri Lanka (I told everyone that I would be going to Galle, but I was wrong, the other volunteers will be going there). I will be teaching  English in two schools, when we're there we'll have to talk about which age we would like to teach. And in the afternoons I will probably get involved in social and charitable ventures. Again this will have to be talked about on arrival. Throughout the week my partner and I will have to cook for ourselves, but in the weekends we were welcomed by our hosts. We have seen pictures of our accomodation and it looks very nice. Quite spacious, but apparantly the people in the neighbourhood will just come in and settle down with you for an evening. It's rather small, but very cosy. Jonny showed us a picture of the garden which was absolutely amazing, it's full of pineapple bushes. And when we thought it couldn't get any better he pointed out an elephant!!! (it was a really big backyard). He said that he thinks one of the people who lives on the same estate might own it, so that means we sort of have a pet elephant! I haven't been able to get hold of these pictures, but next month you will all be able to see mine!

To close off the training we had a formal reception. The boys and girls all got dressed up, Gemma was very happy to do my hair and we all had time to get group photos of all of us together.

When the reception was over we had a lovely dinner. The only bad thing was that the acoustics in the dining room were so bad we all had to shout to the people sitting next to us. We all gave a short speech to thank the staff and they did so in return as well.

After having filled our stomachs and had a couple of glasses of wine, it was time for the ceilidh! This is a traditional Scottish dance which we also did at the selection course. This was definitely the moment I was looking forward to most! It all went much easier than last time. Last year we even had a session at the beginning of the week to teach us some of the dances, and even then everyone was stumbling over eachothers feet on ceilidh night. This time everything went perfect!

So after two hours of ceilidh dancing we danced to other music and had a really good time together. 

This week was definitely one of the best weeks of my life, and has prepared me and made me really excited for probably some of the best months of my life. All thanks to the staff not treating us like the nth group of volunteers who come in for their training, but just as individuals wanting to get to know us, and thanks to all of the other wonderful volunteers, having been able to bond with them much more since selection.

Yesterday I also heard I will be leaving on the 18th of January! Time to start counting down!

Hope you all have a very very happy Christmas and wonderful new year!

Hi everyone,

I found a way to send every update to everyone automatically without having to type every email address. The annoying thing was that it sent back loads of emails, so I couldn't keep track of who received it and who didn't, so I really hope this works out now and everyone can finally view my blog.  I've already made a couple of blog entries, so you can just scroll down to read the other stories.  I have very good news: all the money is in! I sent it in on Monday and it's such an enormous relief. I said it in my last blog entry as well, but I would like to thank everyone again for all their support. It means a lot to me and I wish I could give you all something back. 
I started my first aid lessons last week. It's twice a week for two and a half hours and it's quite intense, but enjoyable. So far I've learned how to deal with insect bites, head injuries, electricity accidents and hyperventilation. There are only 7 others who are following the course, which is a lot nicer than being in a big group.  Now I turn to my own first aid problems. I need to have the injections for typhoid and rabies, but I'm having a lot of trouble finding the latter injection in the chemists! They don't know when the enterprise is going to deliver the injections and they can't reach them either. There might be another injection which will arrive one of the following days, so I hope I will hear from the chemist soon.
Another problem with the injections is that I always faint whenever I get them. I'm not scared of the needle, but every time after I had an injection I have fainted. My doctor and I have not found a way yet of preventing this. For this reason one of my parents have to come along as well, but they are both also very sensitive to injections. A couple of years ago they went with my brother to get his teeth pulled and before the dentist arrived both parents were lying flat-out on stretchers. The nurses were talking about it for weeks afterwards. 
My training is from the fourth until the eighth of December, but I have to allow a couple of days to get there. I'm going up on Friday the 30th to stay with my family in London for the weekend. On Monday I will take the train up to Glasgow and then I quickly have to catch the coach to Oban. I will stay over in a youth hostel near the ferry together with other Project Trust volunteers and we'll all have to wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the first ferry to Coll. I am really looking forward to this and I hope I will definitely have a lot more to tell you about my project in my next blog!