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. 

Penang Day 8

Woke up to the sound of thunder and rain again, but I was well rested. Lucky, because today was a long day!

Finally, a picture of the front of the school.
It is dark when we arrive each morning, so I haven't been able to get a picture until now.

Erin was teaching art and craft as her first lesson, so I popped in towards the middle. She was teaching the children about indigenous dot painting. Perfection is very important here in Penang, but as we all know, perfection can get in the way of actually getting things done! The idea was to draw some shapes or pictures in pencil first, then use paint on their little fingers to add the dots. Some students still had blank pieces of paper near the end of the lesson, because they would draw something, and rub it out. Draw something, and rub it out. Others barely managed to begin painting, because they wanted their drawings to be perfect before they started. While the perfectionist in me empathises with this, the idea of the lesson was to experiment with dot painting, not drawing! The children really enjoyed the lesson, and there were some very good artworks created.

This young man did an excellent job.
He has also challenged me to batu seremban (jacks) tomorrow morning.
I do believe I will be thrashed!

I then had my triple English lesson, planned with Puan Susan. This went well. I recapped what we had studied yesterday, then we went out in the school to look at the plants in the school garden. We were working on description, so before we left the classroom, I modelled what to put in a description – what something looks/smells/tastes/feels and sounds like. Of course with the school garden, we neglected the taste, feel and sound aspects. I began by getting a few students up to tell the class about a particular plant, but they were too excited at being in the garden, so they were not paying attention. I then asked them to all stand in front of an individual plant. This worked much better, and I walked around while they described the plants to me.

We then moved to the canteen area, where they were to stand in front of the class and describe the fruit they had bought with them from home. With all of the exotic fruit available, they mostly brought… apples! There were also some oranges, a lot of rambutan, one durian, and one pear. I had purchased a dragon fruit. The idea was that after their descriptions, they could eat their fruit. This activity worked very well, and the Principal also came down and took some photographs. Unfortunately I didn’t get to taste the dragonfruit, as when Puan Susan cut it up, the children descended on it! There’s always a next time :-)

Three of the boys from 3A, after their fruit demonstration.

We returned to the staffroom, and were then invited to the library, where some teachers were creating the costumes for the traditional dance some students will be performing in a competition. Teachers must have many skills beside teaching! I helped a little, but I was mostly talking to 6A, who had a lot of questions for me.

Straight after that, I went to Science with Puan Ainda. I simply helped in the class, as she had a lesson already prepared. The children were investigating the types of conditions that rust will form under. They placed paperclips in test tubes, and then covered them with water, oil, and silica gel. They will have to wait for a couple of weeks to get the results, but they predicted based on the knowledge they gained last lesson.

Girls from 5A performing the experiment.

Boys from 5A performing the experiment.

 Straight after Science was the cultural dance practice for the competition. The girls are practicing for 2 hours after school, twice a week! The teacher is from the tourism department. He was late, so they practiced another dance they had choreographed themselves – to a song called “What the Hell” by Avril Lavigne! I think the video is too large to post, sorry.

Girls in a small part of their cultural dance costumes.

After dancing, there was a 1 ½ hour break before Sport began. Erin and I said we were going to duck across the road to get something to eat (skipped lunch, another thing that teachers do). Puan Ainda spoke to another teacher, who said that over the road wasn’t very good, so she would take us to a shopping centre, where we could grab something. She told the Principal, who then suggested that the four of us go to a restaurant. After we arrived at the restaurant, four of the male teachers also came. So what started as ducking across the road turned into a full banquet meal with 8 people! Apparently this is something that happens in Malaysia. The meal was delicious; I even enjoyed the Tom Yum, which I do not like at home. Maybe I just have Malaysia goggles on, where I enjoy everything that I eat!

We only just made it back in time for sport. We did the warm-ups with the girls playing netball, then did some throwing drills with them. Some of the girls then played a game, while others played poison ball. I also played, but as I hadn’t had time to change, running in a skirt is difficult! Erin then taught them Captain Ball, while I watched the game. After netball finished, we moved on to volleyball, which had four teachers playing as well. It was all a lot of fun, and it was great to see the teachers fully involved.

Getting the netball ring.

Netball (hockey in the foreground).

Another action shot.

We then caught the bus to meet the others in Little India, but as we had already eaten, we simply had something to drink, and returned to Komtar before going home. I had lost the lens cap for my camera. I decided that I was just going to buy one from a camera shop, no darn haggling. I went it, it was 90 Ringgit, when I went to pay, he charged me 50 Rinngit! Of course, there was a reason … all of a sudden, it was important that I purchased this for my camera, and that for my camera (all from him, for a good price!). I was very good, and resisted. It helped that I was there with Anthony, and the guy was addressing all of his sales pitch to Anthony!

Anyway, back home now and tired. I learned the word for tired in Bahasa Malaysian is “penat”. This is something I will be using a lot!

Finally, something that has nothing to do with this post - where you are lucky enough to find a pedestrian crossing, they sometimes have countdown timers to tell you how long you must wait on the red, and then how long the light will be green. I love it! Be careful, however, because the motorbikes don't stop just because of some silly red light!

Countdown timer

Penang Day 6

To quote Skid Row “Woke up to the sound of pouring rain.” It cools everything down, lovely. Erin, who is also at my school, was sick today, so she was unable to attend. When I arrived at school, I was greeted by every student I walked past – “Good Morning, Teacher.” The shy ones are funny – they wait until they have walked past, then they say it when they are behind me. If I look around and reply, they cover their mouths with their hands and giggle.

Another view of my school, Seri Relau

As I arrive approximately 45 minutes before school starts, I have some time in the playground. Some boys were playing jacks with white stones taken from the garden. I stood watching for a while, when a girl came up with some jacks of her own. I asked if she would be playing with the boys, and she said they wouldn’t let her, so I began playing. All of a sudden, half of the playground was there to watch teacher, squatting down to play jacks (poorly)! Once I had to stand up, I took out a picture book I had brought with me, and began to read. This drew even more children. I don’t know how many understood, and I certainly don’t think many could see, however they were a spellbound audience. A teacher suggested that tomorrow I would be better to do it on the stage they have in their eating area, because we were crammed into a corner of the school, blocking the pathway.

When the bell rang, it turns out our timetable wasn’t prepared yet, so I spent some time in the Special Education class again. They were meant to be doing PE, but because of the rain were unable to. They got to watch a video instead. The principal called a meeting at 8:30 to explain to the teachers I will be working with, exactly what it was all about. They gave me my timetable, and I will be teaching 8 English, 5 Science, 2 PE & 2 Music lessons.

The first lesson was after the meeting. Again it was meant to be PE, but due to the rain they had to stay inside. I turned up at the class a little late, to find the teacher wasn’t there yet. I began talking to the children about sport, until I finally realised that the teacher wasn’t coming – I had the class on my own for an hour! We began by talking about the sports that they liked, however that topic was exhausted fairly quickly, because they were shy and didn’t want to talk. I then turned to their textbooks, and asked each group to choose a sport, and then teach me something about that sport. They broke into groups, and completed the exercise quite happily – until someone asked if they had to tell me the fact in English or Bahasa Malaysian. Of course I said English, which caused some consternation! They all carry dictionaries, however, and they managed very well. I had completely run out of ideas, sport being a very weak subject of mine. Luckily I had the laptop; I was looking for some sort of physical game we might play indoors. I found one (thank you Australian Institute of Sport Playing for Life cards!) Towards the end of the lesson, the sun had come out, and some parts of the asphalt were puddle free, so instead of moving the classroom around, I took them out in the playground. We played a very simple game of groups, where the teacher calls out a number, and the students must form groups of that number. Anyone who was left had to come and stand by me, and we performed an action together, such as star jumps, or clapping, or hopping etc. The game was met with a lot of fun and laughter, and we certainly gained a lot of attention from other classes as they moved around the school.

My first ever class in Penang - 5A

I then sat in on a Religious Instruction class, all in Bahasa Malaysian. At 10:15 I had lunch – some sort of spicy tofu, a curried fish, and rice. After lunch, I had my first English class. They were working from the textbook, and learning about local produce, so in some way it was integrated with Science. I will be preparing a lesson to teach tomorrow. After English, I asked to sit in with a Maths class. Half of the class had been called away to do other things, so the teacher was just planning on doing revision, as she couldn’t teach anything new with half of the students missing. The teacher had some example copies of Malaysian currency, so I pulled out my coins, and we talked about them. Couldn’t tell them why Charles Kingsford Smith was famous, I’ll have to go and look that up.

English class, 3A. I will be teaching them tomorrow.

Finally, I sat in with the top English class in Year 6. I believe their written English was more advanced than the equivalent of students in Australia. They are preparing for a big exam that happens in August.

A school bus (bas = bus, sekolah = school)

Once the students open up, they don’t stop. They might take a little encouraging to begin talking, but they are full of questions and just want to talk to you. They are curious about school and life in Australia, as well as are you married, how old are you, do you have children, do you have a house, what is it like, and many more.

After our meeting back at RECSAM, we hired a taxi to take us back to Batu Ferringhi, so the others could pick up their shirts. We had dinner at a Thai restaurant that was right on the beach, then toured the night markets for a little while. I won’t be doing that again – it is too much after school. More time for lesson preparation, like a good teacher should be doing.

This was the range of seafood they had live to choose from! Poor fishes etc.

The view from dinner. Ahhhhhhh.

Overall, I had a great day, and I’m looking forward to teaching something tomorrow that I have actually had time to prepare!

Penang Day 5

Tried to go to bed early-ish last night, however at some stage someone tripped a switch, so we had no electricity. This meant that the fan stopped working, and not only did that make it very hot, the mozzies had access! The room fans are super efficient, and they blow so hard that they actually help to keep the mozzies away. The fans came back on about midnight, thank goodness. Then, I awoke at 3:30am for no apparent reason (slightly worried about teaching, maybe?) I was actually doing better than someone else, who had forgotten to change their clock to local time, so was up and dressed ready to catch the bus at 3:30am! I managed to doze back off, but I’ve definitely had not much sleep for the first day of school :-(

Seri Relau (My school)

We left at 6:30am to be taken to school by the RECSAM bus. It is still dark at that time. We arrived at school at about 7am. The school is an L-shaped building, 4 stories tall. The guard at the gate directed us to the office, which we were unable to find! Apparently it doesn’t open until 7:30am anyway. With some help, we finally found it. There were a few puzzled looks, but we had been given a letter of introduction, which helped. Later that morning we found out that the school had not been notified of our placements! I must say, they took it all in their stride, and had already taken us on a tour of the whole school, and were working out a timetable for us. I think that shows amazing flexibility, to have 2 foreign students turn up on your doorstep and tell you they will be teaching for 2 weeks, and just go with it!

The guard - the children call him Uncle!

We started the morning with assembly. Although I can’t understand Malay, it was very similar to assembly at home. There was singing of the National Anthem while raising the flag, giving awards for the cleanest classes, prayer, instructions and general information. Erin and I were asked to introduce ourselves, and when we said we would be here for 2 weeks, many of the children clapped and cheered. It is so funny to be walking around and greeted with “Good Morning, Teacher!” School here starts at 7:30am, and finishes at 1:05pm for the lower grades and 1:35pm for the upper grades. They have ½ hour classes, and teachers move around between classes. In this way, it is more like our secondary schools, where teachers are specialists in subjects such as Maths, English, Science, Bahasa Malaysia, Islam, Moral Instruction and PT (PDHPE).  

Children at assembly

Boys will be boys!

They have a dedicated science lab and art room.

Science Lab

This school has non-integrated classes for special education, such as Downs Syndrome, ADHD, Autism and others with learning difficulties. There are 34 of these students, with 9 teachers, a very high teacher/student ratio. There are 470 students all up, with 55 teachers; again, a very high teacher/student ratio. Each class has approximately 30 students, similar to NSW classes. In the Kindergarten class, there is a teaching assistant, who also cooks lunch for the children, which is served in a lunch area in the class. For the older classes, there is a canteen that serves their choice of hot food. All of the food is provided by the Malaysian Government.

One difference between Malaysia and Australia is that they begin teaching about drugs very early on in school. In Australia, we start teaching about alcohol and cigarette smoke in Year 3 & 4; that gets expanded to prescription drugs and caffeine in Year 5 or 6 – no real mention of hard drugs at all.

The school takes all opportunities to educate the students in some way. There are signs hanging from the ceilings, lots of noticeboards on the wall, as well as lessons placed under the clear plastic tablecloths where the children eat.

The Headmistress very kindly purchased our lunch for us today, as it is the custom for Malay people to welcome others into their homes with food and drink.

We attended a teachers’ meeting after school, although it was all in Bahasa Malaysian, so we were unable to understand a word. It did, however, seem to follow a similar pattern, and get the same reaction from teachers, as do meetings at home.

After school we all came together at RECSAM to talk about our days. It was interesting to hear others’ experiences, and talk about what we had seen. After the debriefing, I went in the pool! RECSAM has a brand new pool, which is beautiful, and after a hot day at school, it was nice to swim. Notice I didn’t say relax? That is because we were sharing the pool with approximately 9 boys of varying ages. At first they were simply bombing, as boys do, but when I was trying to learn my colours, they suddenly became interested, and were talking to us. They were very enthusiastic about adding to my vocabulary; unfortunately my memory is not what it used to be, so I’m afraid I retained very little.

Dinner was at the RECSAM cafeteria, a type of fried rice wrapped in egg. You won’t be hearing about my breakfasts for the week, as we are making do with items purchased from Tesco, because we have to leave so early. I really like a school day that finishes at 1:30pm!

Penang Day 4

I am very tired, and school tomorrow, so this must necessarily be short.

Breakfast at Komtar bus station. Unsure what anything was – it was guessing games as to what was sweet and what was savoury!

Bus to Batu Ferringhi. Very touristy area of the island, beaches and hotels.

Penang Spice Farm – don’t know what this tree is; it is green when you look at it normally, but turns silver when you photograph it with a flash.

Butterfly Farm – wonderful experience, and worth every Ringgit. Not only butterflies, also other creepy crawlies, such as millipedes, scorpions, snakes, tarantulas, frogs, beetles and bugs.

Millipedes

Got to hold the millipedes!

Didn't have to hold the scorpions...

Back to Batu Ferringhi, some people ordered tailor made shirts

and got their feet cleaned by fish!

Penang Day 3

The day started with a small hitch – we were going to have breakfast in the canteen here at RECSAM, however it turns out to be not only a public holiday, but they are holding a wedding there as well, so the canteen was shut! We went to Gelugor, just down the road, instead. No picture of breakfast due to the sudden change of plans.

After breakfast, we caught a bus to Penang Hill. This involves a bus to the Komtar bus exchange, where we change and catch another bus. Penang Hill was beautiful, and we were very spoilt, as not only were we able to catch the funicular railway, but we were high enough up that it was cool. Can I say that again? It was COOL. We looked out over Penang, and we were able to see the bridge that joins Penang Island to mainland Malaysia. It felt strange to me to be able to see where the island ends, and see the mainland on the other side. Can’t do that in Australia! As well as the amazing views,

One of the view from Penang Hill. You can see the bridge and the Mainland.

we saw an Indian Temple;

Apparently this has a meaning that I was not privy to - a couple walked around to see this, and cracked up laughing!

an aviary that mostly contained birds rescued from traffickers (the spruiker from the aviary wins quote of the day “G’day mate! Every day is mating day!”); ate lunch;

Nasi Goreng Ikan Masin - Fried rice with dried, salted fish.

and had a Devonshire tea at David Brown’s at Strawberry Hill – served in beautiful English style gardens, outside a colonial style house. Oh, did I mention – the temperature was cool!

The lily pond in the English Gardens.

On the way back, we passed a sign for the Bats' Cave Temple. I couldn’t resist, so three of us broke from the main group, and headed into a few back streets to find the temple. The front is a brightly coloured and decorated temple, with a small cave at the back, which did indeed contain bats hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately we were unable to take photographs (we imagined what a flash would do to the bats), but it was worth the detour.

Look at the models of bats on the roof!

We then made our way back, and caught the bus back to Komtar. Komtar is a very tall tower in Penang, that was once the pinnacle of shopping. We, however, were unable to find our way to it! We could see it from the outside, but actually getting in appeared to be impossible. This was disappointing, in that we managed to find a bat cave (insert batman theme tune here), but were unable to find the tallest building in Penang! Well, it turns out we weren’t quite so hopeless. We were there already, we just didn’t know it. They are doing so much renovating that we didn’t recognise it for what it really was.

Komtar Tower - the tallest building in Penang.

Dinner was walking to Island Glades, a popular local eating place. I had Claypot Chicken and Egg, along with an iced watermelon juice.

Left: As it looked when delivered. Right: As it looked after I got to it!

I also saw the following can, and simply couldn’t resist. Enjoy!

Penang Day 2

Breakfast this morning was a doughnut and banana, steamed inside a banana leaf.

After breakfast we were taken on a tour in the RECSAM bus to see where our schools are. We simply drove past them, so no photographs yet. The school that Erin and I will be teaching in is the furthest away from the complex, possibly about ½ hour drive.

When we returned, we caught a local bus, and headed off to visit the Kek Lok Si Temple. The buses in Malaysia are quite easy to catch, however you must have the correct money – no change given! The temple was amazing. I will let the pictures do the talking, although my photograph can’t capture the sheer immensity of the statue of Kuan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy – it is 36.5 metres tall. Apparently it used to stand on the hillside on its own; they are constructing a pagoda for it now (“in the future 16 ornately decorated bronze columns supporting a roof over the statue, as well 1000 two-metre high statues of the goddess are planned to be built.”)

Bottom of the Kek Lok Si Temple

Dragons!

The enormous, splendiferous, statue of Kuan Yin

On the way up, we stopped at the turtle pond, and fed the turtles some sort of green vegetable that was for sale for that purpose. Much like feeding the kangaroos and emus at Featherdale! Although the day wasn’t necessarily hot, ascending the mountain in the humidity was very draining; literally in the case of the amount of water I was losing in sweat! Luckily it was decided that we wouldn’t walk up the hill – we caught an incline lift.

Incline Lift - no walking, phew!

We had lunch down in the town at the foot of the Temple, and as it turns out, the timing was fantastic. We made it just before the skies opened and the rain absolutely pounded down. I will try to get a photographs of the drains surrounding the roads here. They are all at least a foot deep, if not deeper. This is to be able to cope with the sheer volume of water that is dumped when they skies open. We caught a taxi back to RECSAM. On the way we drove past an accident. We saw 4 motorbikes and a car pulled over. There was a man in a blue suit (policeman?) waving people past. There was also a man laying on the road, covered in blood. I don’t think it was good news, because no-one was down tending to him. Apparently this is not an unusual occurrence, and it is easy to see why. Although they aren’t as crazy drivers like other countries I’ve heard about (a friend took a video of a Vietnam intersection – insane!), the road rules seem to be pretty loose, and all bikes, cars and buses change lanes at the last moment, seeming without regard for other vehicles around them.

The thunderstorm at lunch. I had some of those hanging chickens and pork, with rice.

When then returned in order to attend a formal afternoon tea, where we would be meeting our teachers. Some members of the State Education Department also attended. Unfortunately my teachers couldn’t be present, however I spent the time talking with teachers from the other schools. It was very interesting to be talking about the similarities and differences of the education systems, although I must say that there seem to be more similarities than differences at this point. I am really looking forward to attending my school on Monday.

Finally, we caught another bus to Sungai Dua for dinner. Sungai Dua is about 2 suburbs away from RECSAM, and I’m pleased to report that three of us went for a little exploration on our own after dinner, and managed to make it back home! Apparently the idea is that our lecturers spend the first couple of days showing us how things work in Penang, so that we can become confident enough to be independent, and get around the island on our own. Baby steps, but we are getting there.

Time for bed – even though I am sleeping like a log, we are fitting so much into each day that I am really tired.