Penang Day 9

First order of the day at school today was “aerobics”. The Department of Education is running a health promotion month, so the focus is on healthy eating and exercise. The same man from the Tourism Department, who teaches cultural dancing to the girls, runs the aerobics. The entire school, including the teachers, assembles on the playing field to be led through aerobics. They are not aerobics as you may be thinking (thank goodness, in the heat!), more a combination of different traditional dance moves. It was interesting that there was a combination of Malay music, Indian music and Chinese music, so all of the main cultures of Penang were catered for. Indian music was accompanied by Bollywood dance moves, while Chinese music was accompanied by Tai Chi moves. Erin and I were right in the thick of it, however it became a little dangerous, with me swinging my arms around; every time I spread the girls out to a safe distance, they kept closing the gaps, until I was surrounded. Right at the end, the girls were telling me that rain was coming, and they were all hurrying off the field. All I could think was “thank goodness”, because it would mean I could cool down! Of course, they had the right of it, because by the time we made it back to the classroom, it absolutely bucketed down, and I would have been drenched from head to foot.

I had been given a relief class of mathematics, so I had some time in the staffroom to prepare. I walked into the front of the class, and began speaking to the children – without realising that the teacher was actually there! She was sitting in a seat, next to one of the boys. Oops! She had already prepared a lesson, so I went around marking the addition sums of the children, and helping those that needed help.

Doing Sudoku before school.

I then went for lunch at the school canteen. Today I had Nasi Tomato (tomato rice), along with some chicken curry, and a meat curry. Many people eat their meals with their hands in Penang – luckily I had practice not long after we got here, because there was no cutlery set out today. It is actually a skill that you must learn, like any other. I am not very efficient at it yet.

After lunch, I went looking for some classes that might take me in. I ended up settling on an English class. They had been given a passage with adjectives highlighted in bold. The idea was that they were to replace the adjectives with synonyms, as well as build up practice using the English dictionaries in the library. Some of the words were a little difficult, especially without a thesaurus (give one word synonyms for “clean” farm, “fertile” farm, “hot” day, for example – not too bad if you can use slang, not so easy with standard English).

Today was an early finishing day, as the Muslims have prayers, so we were finished by 12:05. We returned to RECSAM, and I did a bit of preparation for my music lesson next week. I am going to try to teach them the Kookaburra song on recorder. Their teacher says that although they know all of the notes in the song (lucky for me!), they have difficulty stretching their fingers to cover all of the holes. We will see how we go, and we can resort to singing it instead, if we have to.

My drink with dinner. No, I couldn't finish it!
The other is Allan's carrot milk. I have yet to try it.

We headed down to Tesco for dinner, then caught the bus to Jetty. This turned out to be a bad idea, because the bus spiralled around for nearly an hour! At least we got to see some backstreets of Penang, but it took us a lot longer than we were expecting. Erin and I caught the ferry across to the mainland. It is pretty with the lights on at night. We didn’t get off – we just sat there, and turned around and came back again!

Cars and bikes on the ferry to the mainland.

There will be no blog post tomorrow – I have been invited to the home of Puan Ainda (actually, her mother and father-in-law’s house). They live in a Kampung (village), a country area, so I will get to see paddy fields, and a more traditional way of life than the city. It is about 1 hour away, in Kedah, a state next to Penang on the mainland. Here is a Google maps direction link: Gelugor to Pendang Kedah (yay Google maps!) She is coming to pick me up at 9am tomorrow, and we will be staying overnight. Hopefully we will get to go to the Paddy Museum, and possibly to the night markets where apparently they serve a whole manner of different traditional foods, sourced from local produce. I hope to try everything, and then likely not eat for a week!

Inside of a Rapid bus. The company is called Rapid, the buses are very nice.
You must have the correct money each time, however, as no change is given.