Remembering Why I Came Here

So, I have started my second week of teaching with renewed energy and vigor. During my first few weeks in this country, the name of the game was negotiation, adjustment and gaining knowledge. But when I entered that classroom for the first time… why I remembered why I came here in the first place! Teaching is invigorating, exciting and a complete adrenal rush – you are on your toes attempting to control a classroom, help students, answer questions, perform in front of the class and try to get out before you hit the time limit. Today, I had a Form 1 class (13 year olds) that I also had last Sunday, on my first day of teaching. This class was one that I branded as “petrified” and “deer in the headlights”. Therefore you can imagine my delight when I heard the class speaking up eagerly today to define words – heck they even screamed out English words during a game of Pictionary.

Sure, teaching is scary stuff, and this is coming from me, who was absurdly quiet during classes in high school and scared of talking in front of large groups for much of my life. But, ever since I’ve gotten here, I’ve been put on display and watched with delight by all the students and teachers so much that I’ve almost gotten used to being center stage as the loveable, silly American girl from California. So, I figure that I might as well have fun and talk, joke and sing while I’m under the spotlight in the classroom! (I think that the students today were particularly amused when I started dancing around the classroom in an attempt to define the word “ballerina”.)

One especially cool thing about this job is that I’m like the “fun Aunt” when it comes to teaching English. I’m certainly not a qualified teacher, English or otherwise, so I don’t have the heavy responsibility that the other English teachers have – to prepare them for the national exams and get them through the syllabus. I’m the “fun Aunt” that gets to play English games with the students throughout the whole period! Pretty good deal, doing all the fun parts of teaching with little of the stress. To the left is a picture of some of the teachers at my school, taken during "Sports Day" here at the school.

Bless the magic of a routine! There are still some basic things that I am lacking and trying to get, but the beauty of routines and habits to ease chaotic situations has not been lost on me. There are definitely some perks about living on campus, my favorite being rolling out of bed at 6:55am, getting ready in 15 minutes (or even 10 minutes when I’m really sleepy!) and then walking onto the campus about 5 minutes later. I’ve also learned that I can block almost anything (aka high school girls screaming and playing into the night) with my lovely ipod, so I often fall asleep listening to my music on shuffle. Pure awesome.

I have been having a lot of fun learning Bahasa Melayu, and have been practicing with everyone, including my students outside the classroom. I’m even starting to make friends with the workers at the school and they thoughtfully use their basic English on me, while I answer back with my shaking Malay. Today, I even had my first full Bahasa Melayu conversation with one of the lunch ladies at my canteen (the lunch workers are some of the nicest people that I’ve ever met), though it was limited and I had to throw in some English words every now and then. But it was certainly progress!

I think that the kids are really starting to get attached to me. Their faces fall when they realize that I won’t be there tomorrow, or in this case, when I say that I won’t be there for another few more weeks (I’m teaching Form 2 – 14 year olds – next week). It’s hard not to love these students.

Here are two pictures from "Sports Day" at my school, which is like a school olympics in long jump, high jump, and running.

In the Grip of Culture Shock

There are so many things to learn when you come to a new country and are in constant contact with the citizens of that nation. You learn how everybody is, in some way, similar but you also learn how everybody is so incredibly different as well! I’ll give you a few examples of things that have made me go bug-eyed with culture shock here in Malaysia. (This picture was taken during a spelling bee that I was doing with the 13 and 14 year olds).

1) Malaysian people’s inability to understand/accept when bad things are happening to others. This is probably the oddest cultural component and the hardest to explain. This is not true of everybody, but there have been times when I have brought up, in conversation, the frustrations and hardships that I am facing, or the practices of America that I find unsettling (poverty, crime, Walmart labor practices, etc). What’s the appropriate response? Certainly not to smile and laugh with insane glee, though that is a response that I’ve gotten from several people when bringing up these topics! It’s almost like Malaysians want to avoid topics of distress and just desperately hold onto the good ol’ times. No one wants to mention bad things about other people, it seems, or even think about the bad and terrible things that are taking place in our world today. Rather than having sympathy or taking a proactive stance to solve other people’s problems, I think Malaysians prefer to avoid problems altogether and just want to hide under a blanket of goodwill. Now I myself like to avoid having arguments with others in the US, but the avoidance of confrontation here in Malaysia is absurdly high. Yeah, yeah, I know that I’m not supposed to judge other cultures and Malaysians are less direct than people of the US, but I still say this is ridiculous!

2) I just heard what I think will be one of the most memorable quotes during my time in Malaysia. One of the teachers, when discussing food, said to me, “For me, eating rice makes me feel human!” Wow. Wow. Wow. Malaysians and their rice… well what can I say? They are mighty attached to it. (Which makes my life crazy, as I like rice in moderation. The idea of rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner makes my stomach turn…)

3) I have to relate to you a ridiculous conversation. This week, my mentor was sick and did not show up to work. After expressing sorrow and how I hope that she gets better soon, I asked who was going to take over her classes. My foster mom, who is also an English teacher on campus, says, “Why no one of course. Everyone else is busy with their classes.” I then blink in surprise and ask what will happen to the students of her class. My foster mom’s response? “Why, they will sit in the room and study. But we make sure to lock the door, to keep them inside!” The look of horror on my face must have stayed there for quite a while. “Of course we have to be careful when the Ministry of Education comes to visit. That’s when we have to find a substitute teacher!” Wow. I’ll leave you to judge that statement.

4) Oh guess what? I have a fan club! In all seriousness, I do. I was hanging out in the computer lab today talking to the male IT teacher (I have no idea if this was considered slightly odd or inappropriate, an unmarried female purposely visiting a male teacher), when a few girl students that I had met earlier came up to me to talk. Their class was working in the lab, but with the power outage that occurred, they had nothing to do. They asked for my email (everyone asks for my email here) and later declared that they wanted to be part of “Miss Anita’s Fanclub”. So you heard it here first folks! I have an official fanclub in Malaysia. On a related note, a lot of students have asked me for my signature. When I asked them why, they said it was “for the memory”. This sounds suspiciously like an autograph to me… I better not let this fame go to my head, huh?

5) Here’s a huge culture shock – everyone here keeps asking if I am Christian! I have never been asked this in my life, because I am Indian-American and therefore everyone assumes that I’m Hindu (which, I am proud to say that I am). But people here assume that America is a completely Christian country. This is in spite me telling everyone that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US and that there is a cornucopia of faiths in the US (of course I didn’t use the word “cornucopia”; higher level English words, well, I’ve learned it is better to avoid them when speaking to most Malaysians). And many people who were born Christian in the US don’t even consider themselves Christian when they become adults! God, stereotypes are hard to break!

So I hope you liked my random observation blog piece. I am writing this as I try to get adjusted to the school and am trying to make do with limited internet access and begging people for rides (both situations should hopefully change soon, as I’ve been promised an internet router for my room and a motorbike for transportation). I am trying to make do with the populations of mosquitoes, spiders, ants and these weird bugs that look like big ants with wings that keep somehow getting into my room. I’m very thankful for the lack of roaches though. So, I’ve been declaring war on these insects and have been using a variety of bug sprays to keep them away, my favorite device being a mosquito coil that you burn like incense and is strong enough to keep them away for 9 hours. Of course, the old fashion clobber them with a paper towel has been my best weapon against the chaos. I think my measures are starting to work, as I have been noticing a lack of insects and lack of bites on my body. However, my body is still riddled with bites, and it has gotten to the point where my feet are so swollen (the top of my feet resemble a bubble), they do not properly fit into my shoes anymore. It is painfully to wear sandals now, unfortunately.

The teachers are not so scared of me (scared of speaking in English is more like it) anymore, and they are approaching me and are starting to talk to me. This makes me feel less lonely, which is great. I’ve been having the hardest time remembering names, as Malaysian names are completely different than anything I’ve heard before. Some of the teachers are even telling me to call them by shortened and/or more Western-looking names just to help me out! God bless them!

Also, I’ve noticed that I’ve started trying to find more Western food and drink to eat, and that I really crave the stuff. Back home, I hardly ever drink Coke, or eat Oreos, or Potato Chips. But here, I like eating these things, as they are piece of home for me… not to mention a break from the omnipresent rice and fish here in Terengganu! (I’m writing this while eating Oreos… hmm….)

Coming to Chukai

So my orientation has finally come to an end and the real part of my Fulbright experience has finally begun. I realized that when my orientation ended there would be major changes, but I never expected… this major. It appears that within the last few days I have gained the celebrity status of Michael Jackson and Julia Roberts combined! I tell you, when I walk down the hallways of my school, students simply just stop and stare in awe. "Teacher!" "Miss!" They wave at me with glee and I wouldn't be surprised if some of the boys had crushes on me. I was never uber-popular in school, though I was always well-liked, and I feel as if I have gained some sort of semi-divine status overnight. All because I'm from America and know English. Go figure.
I'm beginning to realize that on trips to foreign lands, such as the one that I am on, it is the little things that can drive you insane. I am staying in the girls hostel and, to quote the Grinch by Dr. Seuss, "The noise, noise, noise, oh the noise!" Last night, I could hardly sleep as a result of all the noise of girls yelling, slamming doors and, my favorite, setting off the door alarm at 1 or 2 in the morning. The noise is starting to tense up my nervous system. By the time I rolled out of my bed at 6:30am, well, I was mighty tempted just to roll right back into bed again.
More little things are grating on me. I do not get any cell phone reception in my room, and the phone reception tends to be low in any of the buildings on campus. Therefore, I am missing my parents' and other people's phone calls and text messages. The internet does not work in my room, though I am being told that someone in the IT department is looking into fixing that problem. I remain rather skeptical as to the result. It would be such a pain to have to lug my computer onto campus everything I want to check email and I really don't want to discuss important graduate school information with my parents on Skype with 30 students wandering in the background.

Basically, one area that I am struggling with is how to separate my time with the students with my own personal time. This was easy to do with the last ETA, David, as he lived off-campus, but I am forced to be on campus 24/7. In many respects it is great, as I have nervous and shy girls come by my room all the time asking me out for dinner or even to play ping pong and volleyball with them (that was so much fun!). But, it is hard to separate myself from the school, as the cries of the students echo from outside my room even as I type this off-line. I think I'm also frustrated as I want to start teaching and getting into the groove of things, but I'm getting the impression that this may not occur until after Chinese New Year, in MORE than a week. I have to keep telling myself that things work differently here and that even when I've started new jobs in the US, I've been frustrated by having a lack of direction and having a lack of understanding of the organizational structure in the beginning. However, here in Chukai, those problems feel 10 times larger because of problems with accent and language and culture (and few people understanding my culture or needs as a newcomer and foreigner).
Perhaps the hardest thing about being here in Chukai is that I can't look around Chukai (the school is 5km away from anything else)! The school has provided me with no form of transportation (because I live on-campus) and I have no way to get off-campus unless I beg for rides from my foster mom. There is a cab service that can take me into town but it is a bit pricy. Plus, it doesn't allow me to simply explore the town on my own terms. I don't want to leave Malaysia only having visited the various sites at my school, Mak Lagam. I want to be able to know Chukai, especially when my mom comes to visit. More importantly, I want to be able to have a way to get my own food and other items that I might need. Therefore, I think I'm going to try and insist on buying a moto (a motorbike). Maybe I'll ask my foster mom to take me shopping for a cheap one, or better yet rent one. I really don't want to be cooped up at Mak Lagam every single day of my time here!

The things that I have accomplished in my two days of being here have made me so proud, though they may seem terribly trivial! (you have to take what you can get). I was smart enough to buy tons of toilet paper for my room and a stick-on toilet paper holder (though it keeps falling down…). Getting my suction cup towel rack to stick to the wall was one of the most difficult things that I've ever had to do in my life. My favorite make-do invention has to do with my curtains. One set of curtains that looks into the hallway of the hostel does not close properly, letting anyone peer inside my room and making me feel like I have no privacy. Solution? I used a "Visit Terengganu" button that I had received earlier and clipped the two ends of the curtain together! Magic, privacy!

Sickness 2

I hope no one reading here ever has to experience what I've been going through for the past 7 days! Allow me to finish my coverage on the healthcare system in Malaysia.

I wanted to let everyone know that the stomach flu/food poisioning (which I would have loved to name the "never-ending-rollar-coaster-of-horrors") may have finally passed through its worst stage. (Yeah!) And I'd like to tell you as to how I survived the crazy tropical bugs - by being suspicious of, and asking a lot of questions to the doctors.

So, I did manage to feel better, after taking the medications prescribed to me by the state hospital that I mentioned in my last post. However, it certainly wasn't helping with the worst symptoms, namely the immense loss of fluids due to my body not being able to even hold down water. The "oral rehydration salts" was the nastiest solution that I had ever tasted. And I was beginning to suspect that my getting better had more to do with a placebo effect than anything else.

So here's the smartest thing that I've done on this trip - I asked to be taken to see a doctor again. Again soliciting Len's help, we went to a clinic in Chinatown, with a Chinese doctor that has seen a number of my friends in the last few days. And he was the one who pointed out that I was taking medications for a fever I didn't have then, and for stomach cramps that I have never had on this trip! By this point, I was so sick, that every few minutes I needed to lie down on the bed. Then I would be asked to sit up to drink some hot chocolate. Then lie down. Then sit up. And that continued... for a while.

Then it was on to the next hospital, a specialist hospital and a private one. Zaini, Len's boss, drove me by car there and I saw my third doctor in two days. By this time, I had been poked in my belly, had my heart beat taken and had my blood pressure taken three times. By this point, I knew what I wanted and desperately asked the doctor to be hooked up to an IV drip. Due to language difficulties, I thought that he wanted me to take an IV back to my hotel and do it myself! I was just about to break down before I got my wish... look below....

Happiness! An IV drip feels weird but when you are severely dehydration, it's a gift from the Heavens.

Thank you IV Gods!

My "roommate" during my stay. Notice the orange and pink curtains? I felt like I was at Baskin Robbins sometimes. :)

I woke up this morning feeling a lot better, though I have to take it very easy for the next few days. People, be glad that you have a functioning digestive system!

All my friends at the program literally just now gave me a sweet Get Well Soon Card! How sweet....

And I promise, my next post will be about something other than illness. I will leave you with a funny image for the road.

Sickness

So, travelling abroad is nothing as glamorous as you might initially think. I have no idea why, but I always fall deadly ill with some nasty illness or another when I'm abroad for an extended period (despite my precautions and being in perfect health back in the USA). Tropical bugs seem to be the deadliest and, considering that tropical environments also usually correspond with not the best of sanitation conditions, they seem particularly easy to catch. Today, I begged Len, our ETA mentor, to take me to the hospital today, which he was more than happy to do. While waiting at the front table, trying to explain my symptoms (try explaining diarrhea and fever in a foreign language that you've been learning for a week!), I got so incredibly dizzy, my vision blurred, and I was two steps away from collapsing when they brought a stretcher and wheeled me into the hospital ER. After asking a lot of in depth questions, the doctor diagnosed me with having a virus in my gastrointestinal (GI) track. (If you can believe it, this picture on the left was during the first few days of my illness.)

I'll save everybody here the trouble and not go in depth as what my symptoms have been for the past five days. But allow me to describe probably one of the scariest moment of the experience. Yesterday, I had a fever which was probably the hottest fever in my life, though I don't have a thermometer with me to give you a an exact measurement. However, the fever was so hot, I felt like my brain was being cooked alive! Thank God for TV, as it was at this point that I remembered that sick patients with fever often have wet towels on their heads. Indeed, it was only by doing that that the fever broke. (Who says you can't learn anything from TV?) I call it one of the scariest experiences in my life because all of my ETA friends were an hour away visiting a beach and a village and I was all alone.

I'm going to focus on the positives now. I got to see what a hospital room looks like in Malaysia. I can't really compare it with a hospital room in the US, because except for check-ups and the time I fractured my ankle, I haven't visited a hospital as a patient. But, it seems that US hospitals have private rooms for most of their patients, and a couple of a double room where the patients are separated by a curtain. However, in KT, the hospital room I went to contained about 10 beds all revolving around an island in the center which the doctors and nurses seemed to congregate around when they weren't helping their patients. Interesting huh? Individualism and communalism philosophies can even affect how a hospital room is designed. The separator curtains were all pink, which I found to be an unusual and a way too cheery color choice.

Another interesting thing was that all the doctors and nurses in the ER were women. Islam wins against the West in this regard. Cultures who practice Islam have always had women doctors, unlike the West. During the medieval era in the West, witch burnings of local medicine women occurred on a large scale, and universities that produced legalized and certified doctors banned women from their establishment. It seems that only very recently has the gender ratio in the doctor profession become somewhat balanced. Compare that with Islam. Even at the height of some of the most oppressive measures seen against women, after the 1979 Revolution in Iran, women were still doctors during this era. I think that having women as doctors may be written in the Qu'ran. Actually, it sort of makes sense in Malaysia, with its large focus on gender-separation.

Here's one good thing that happened today because of my ill health. One of the hotel workers has gotten slightly frustrated with our room because we use the latch to prop open the door for each other (this hotel has given us only one key for a double room - how inconvenient is that?). Usually, he comes by 11pm to give me such a speech, though it is in such broken English that I think a 3 year old (actually, younger than that!) can best him. Today he came by much earlier, at 6pm, and was trying to get me to understand something in Bahasa Melayu. Needing to get away from the funny little man, I replied with a phrase that I've learned remarkably well over the past few days "Saya sakit" (I'm sick). These were the magic words because he looked sad and then left! I guess you have to be thankful for the little things.

My Orientation in KT

Hi everyone! I decided not to write during my first two weeks here in Malaysia because I wanted to gain a bit of perspective on Malaysian society instead of writing a rather superficial assessment. Granted two weeks in a country will still make me have superficial opinion. Oh well, you can't win them all...

So, after a few days in Kuala Lumpur, we headed over to Kuala Terengganu (KT), the capital of the state of Terengganu, which is in northeast penisular Malaysia. One of the few things that we have been constantly told is that Terengganu (along with its northern neighbor Kelantan) are the most underdeveloped parts of Malaysia. This includes the usage of the English language. In fact, this particular Fulbright program is the pet project of the Economic Minister of Terengganu to try and dramatically improve English language skills (learning English is coupled with development process here). Bearing these facts in mind, the big shock for me when wandering around Kuala Terengganu is that all the shopkeepers speak basic English! Indeed, I have not found anyone yet that didn't understand basic English! Granted, the basic English here can be sometimes rather... basic. My favorite example is when me and my roommate unplugged the TV and couldn't plug it back it (the plug wouldn't go into the outlet at all!). I called up the front desk of our hotel and asked during the conversation, "Is someone from maintance coming to my room or are you transfering me to maintance?" The response? "Yes." Perhaps I shouldn't equate shopkeeper-english with the english ability for the rest of this state...

This orientation involves having a lot of class. Our schedule starts at 8:30am and starts with 4 hours of language class... everyday. With a rotating group of language teachers, the lessons have a tendency to be, well I'll use the euphenism of "repetitive" (there was one teacher, Sauri, that happily broke the mold). After lunch, we have a rather fun 3 hour class on teaching english as a second language (ESL). Around 7-8pm we usually all meet up for some dinner and socializing. That gives us precious little time to do other activities, as class eats up so much of our time. And half the group have gotten badly sick with one thing or another (including me), which can be good in that you can miss some Bahasa Melayu class and some of the "repetitive" teachers. (In case you wanted to know, I had horrible allergies to mosquito bites when I first arrived and now, recently, I'm suffering from an iron definiceny, which makes you extremely fatigued and lethargic all the time - not fun.)

After a lot of nervousness in our whole group, yesterday we were finally told which schools we will be stationed at and where we will be placed (finally!). I'm being placed in Chukai, which is down south in Terengganu and is a large town/small city. Wikipedia is telling me that Chukai means "taxes" in Malay because taxes were imposed on the river traffic, especially during the British colonial period. You learn something new everyday! I'm actually pretty excited about my placement, and not just because of what I learned on Wikipedia. :)

Despite me living in an American bubble, as I'm around the other ETAs (English Teaching Assistants) the whole day, I'm definitely coming into contact with some interesting cultural and social practices of the people that live here (90% of the people here are native Malays). For instance, there is a strong separation between the sexes. We have been told by a number of people that, when meeting someone, you shouldn't place your hand out first to shake the person's hand. The reason? Several people are uncomfortable with shaking hands with people of the opposite sex. That's very different from the US, where it would be rude not to shake hands will all that you meet.

One thing that is very different here in Malaysia is the concept of time. Our morning class is supposed to start at 8:30am, but it has been delayed to 9am. Malaysian culture seems to be rather relationship-oriented, and therefore the social interation is more valued than the inconvience of waiting for a late party. It is not considered unusual to start up a conversation with a stranger in the street and then give them your phone number while you are departing. Indeed, that happened to me while I was waiting for my pizza at Pizza Hut...

Another interesting cultural aspect of KT is the way people stare at the "mat salleh", the white people. I'm in an interesting position in that I'm the only non-white person within the group and my brown skin color allows me to blend into the crowd. When I go out with the rest of the ETAs, man, do people stare! People will lean out of their cars in utter fascination, dumbfounded to say the least. I've been told that the people in Terengganu do not realize that 1/3 of the people in the US look like me and not like my white friends. That's one of the uphill battles that I alone here will have to face here, because I need people to accept my American identity and not label me as an Indian, a culture that I only have contact with through ancestry and my own hard-earned knowledge. So, you can bet that this blog will contain the unusual perspective of a non-white American travelling abroad in Malaysia! (I say "unusual" here because you see more white Americans abroad than you see non-white Americans, unfortunately... that's food for thought.)

Today our Bahasa Malayu language teacher told us (more like browbeated us) on not wearing mini skirts to formal functions. Since when does anyone around the world wear a mini skirt to a formal function? I have a strange feeling that I am going to have to break a lot of stereotypes about American here. Polite and decent behavior for a woman is more restrictive and conservative here. The last thing that you want is for village gossip to infamously label you a "loose woman".

I actually really like all the other ETAs in my group, so it will hard when I have to say goodbye to them in a week, and when we all get carted away to different parts of Terengganu. Thank God for the internet and cell phones! Check out some pictures below...

I love this shot!