Hi everyone. I hope you are all well. I have been so busy here I have barely had time to sleep but I still manage to get in a lot of eating time. We have been taking classes as per usual. At school Rachel and I rotate through all the classes in the school, so we teach everyone once every two weeks. I thought I would enjoy teaching the upper forms a lot more than the others but I really enjoy all levels across the board. Form 1 and especially form 2 have a really impressive level of English considering they are only 13 and 14 years old. Saying that though there is huge discrepancy between the kid's level of English. There are some who are fluent at the age of 13 and others who can't construct a sentence at the age of 17. On that note we, after seeing how poor a lot of the form 5’s (final year) English was, took it upon ourselves to set them an essay (the topic being “my ideal day”)so I now know the joy of marking essays. Some were amazing but others, URGH were like this “I am was go to beach with my parent” but worse. Others were really funny especially this one in which his ideal day was “to go dating with Rachel and Hannah” in which we went clubbing and I was breaking dancing but singing like “a frog” which Rachel was smoking but had a wonderful voice like “Akon”. We TRIED to learn grammar ourselves and teach it to them. Although we had limited success in teaching the definite and indefinite article, prepositions, plurals and tenses, things like the very “to have” and “to be” were just too complex and so we gave up and have since gone back to “teaching” them through the art of games and song. After all as Dickens points out in Hard times the young mind should “come upon fact and reason through the tender light of fancy (coz it’s super cool to reference your year 12 English text). In class we have done many different activities such as quizzes, Pictionary, taboo, charades, role-plays, singing songs, drawing pictures, writing stories, describing people etc… Overall I don’t really know how much we have contributed to the actual English skills of the kids but I would definitely say have made a difference in the level of English spoken by a few of the really poor students who we have pulled aside as well as the confidence of others who are really good but did not believe in their abilities.
Apart from teaching classes (this is why I have been so busy) lately Rachel and I have been helping the drama team and public speakers who are going to compete in a “language week” competition which is actually less of a week and more of a weekend. So, on Friday afternoon we are going to another school for the weekend. We have been training every night until 12 running through the public speakers speeches and rehearsing with the drama team. There are 3 public speakers, Husana (form 2) Hareez (form 3) and Aizat (form 4) all of who have amazing English and are generally just awesome kids. The same could definitely be said about the drama team all of whom are in form 4. Rachel and I are perhaps less of a help and more of a distraction when it comes to the drama rehearsals. We usually just spend hours sitting around talking and joking with them. In fact on the whole it is mostly the boys we are friends with here. Although we talk to girls as well here, including this girl Ayu who is such a champ and super funny and nice, we mostly hang out with boys in our free time, namely the form 4 boys from drama as well as a boy called Riduzwan in form 5. I’m not exactly sure why, and Rach and I have talked about this and we think perhaps that the way in which we act and think where our position is in society is akin to the boys here and not the girls. That perhaps could be a little harsh but in any case I will miss all the kids here terribly when we leave. In fact one of the drama kids Azam, who has flawless English, made me start to cry last night. Since we are only having his class one more time in about 3 weeks time we have told every class that they can choose what we do in their last lessons. He told me that they have decided that their class doesn’t wasn’t to do any activities but only sit around and talk to us about “what we have liked here, what we will miss the most and what we are looking forward to in the future” because they “are all going to miss us so much”. Hahah then in the next sentence he asked if he could have a photo with Rachel and I to “prove when I'm older that I had white friends”.
It is going to be so hard to leave everyone here. It is not only the kids but also all the teachers that have been so kind to us…taking us places, buying us SOOOO much food and just generally feel so welcome and comfortable. I am simply not going to be able to express to our adopted mother Wan how much I’m going to miss her. She has been so kind and always makes us laugh not to mention driving us everywhere and helping us when we are useless and we don’t know who else to call. This is not to say we have always found it easy here. I still find that the divisions between girls and boys very difficult to accept. Boys and girls are not allowed to touch each other although our school is quite strict compared to other schools and some of the kids also find this strange and hard to accept. There have been times when have felt taken for granted or unable to accept the divisions between races or the excuse that “that’s just the way things are” and I have encountered more cultural difference then I thought I would. However I have learnt a lot and come to love this country. There are certainly things we could learn from Malaysia.
Anyway, we haven’t left yet so I will leave the gushing for another time. 2 weeks ago it was the school holidays so we (10 of the volunteers) went to the Perhentian Islands which are possibly some of the most beautiful in the world. It was nice to just chill out, wear 'inappropriate' clothes which were above our knees and swim in the clear blue water. While we were there we also went snorkeling which was fun but not the most amazing coral reef I've ever seen.
In other news, I have decided to go to Europe straight away after finishing here. So I finish here on the 13th of May then I’m going to Thailand for 2 weeks then coming back here when Mum and Dad come over then flying out to London on the 7th of June. So yeah I’m super excited about that and I’m amidst planning that trip at the moment. I hope you are all well and I will write again sometime before I leave (I won’t say soon coz we both know that probs won’t come true). Love han xo
