Settling In

We got our internet connection last Thursday. Getting it hooked was typical of how things tend to work here. The internet service providers mainly use telephone to provide the service. So we had the phone hooked up on Tuesday night. The fellow came over about 8:00 in the evening and basically plugged in the phone. I had to pay a deposit (around CAD$300). I guess they want to make sure I don't skip the country with an outstanding bill. I also had to provide a copy of my passport. The internet guy then came on Thursday. He called after I got home from "Back to School Night" around 9:00 and asked if he could come over then to hook it up. He left about 11:00, after clearing up some glitches, along with another hefty deposit and copy of my passport. There are so many copies of my passport out there I'm not sure how many people will be travelling around with my ID.
We got our car on Friday night. It is a little 2 door 1998 Satria. It is a locally made car. I filled it up today for RM100 or a bit less than CAD$30. It is nice to get wheels but the roads and driving around here really are unbelievable. Someone described the road system as being like someone dropping a bunch of spaghetti on the floor. There are as many overpasses as people in the city. Today we went to get some plants for the condo. The place really wasn't too far away and I did manage to get there no problem. Coming back was a different story. In most cases there are not intersections to cross to the other side of the road. One has to turn into the flow of traffic and eventually you find a place to U-turn around the divider and go the other way. I knew we had to do this to get back to our place the only thing was I had no idea which way to take when I got on to the highway and there were 10 different choices for roads off the freeway. We ended up way to heck gone in the opposite direction with no opportunity to turn around and when we did eventually turn then road back was filled with many different options. It doesn't help of course when one is driving on the opposite side of the road and everything in the car was opposite. I kept turning on the window wiper when trying to signal a turn. Most couples have resorted to buying a GPS to save their marriage.
I went for a bike ride today with a group of locals. We pedalled through a rubber plantation. The picture shows how they collect rubber. Looks a lot like gathering maple syrup.Yesterday we took part in a dodgeball tournament at school. We were part of Team Canada and of course we brought home the gold. It was fun. There were a lot of teacher teams representing a few different nationalities and then parents also took part so there were Swedish teams etc. We played in the high school division. Boy those kids can throw the ball hard. Maureen was to be our coach only because of her knee but, of course, couldn't hold back and was in there diving away from balls like the rest of us.
I've added a photo of one of her grade 1 classes. She has been having a mini Olympics with her classes. The kids are having lots of fun with this. All the Korean girls came dressed in their country costume.

Week 3

Blog August 17th

This was our first weekend in our new ‘home’. I’ve included a couple of photos of the place and our view. The sunrise was taken yesterday, if you look carefully you can see the Petronas twin towers in the background. The Indonesians are burning their rainforests to make way for palm plantation and the smoke drifts over Malaysia for a month or so for each year apparently. I think this accounts for the reddish glow.
Maureen got a bike this weekend and I had mine put together so we had a little more freedom of movement. Our internet is still not hooked up and so we rode down to Starbucks last night to use their wireless. We met some locals at the bike shop and they have been taking care of us. There are rides every Sunday morning we plan to take part in. They leave early so we slept in this week because we were beat. We did go for a ride after. We rode to the closest park and found a steep hill to ride much to Maureen’s chagrin. Lots of people were either hiking or riding. There were a number of trails to head off of but we stayed on the main one. We didn’t run into any cobras (my biggest fear) but there were some rather unfriendly monkeys blocking the trail at one point.
Speaking of monkeys I’ve included a photo of one hanging outside of my classroom window. There weren’t too many around before the kids came but the monkeys do know where to get a free lunch. The Grade 5 PE teacher had a zippered pouch where she carried her bug spray, sun screen, and also had glucose tablets for one of the students from my class. She put her pouch down on the bleachers outside and went to set up her area for students. One of the monkeys came and grabbed the pouch and hightailed it up a tree where he then carefully unzipped the pouch and began to explore the contents. He unscrewed the tops of the sunscreen and bug spray and realized rather quickly that these were not very tasty. He then squirted the contents of each all over and dumped the containers. The glucose tablets were another thing however. He ate all of these and then began to get super hyper and this got all the other monkeys excited and they had to come over and have a look.
Maureen went to the Wet market in the area early Sat. morning with the other Elem. PE teacher, who also lives in our condo complex. A wet market has fruits, veggies, and also fish and meat. I think that it is called “wet” because of the fish especially, since it is wet around the fish section. She got introduced around all the hawkers, and bought much the same as Melanie who has 3 teenage daughters. She came home with a ton of food!!!!!!! We did have a nice stir fry last night, which is our second home cooked meal.
We also had a power outage yesterday afternoon in our condo for about 40 minutes.. Maureen was not too happy as she was worried how to get down and out. There are stairs, but they are taped off, which we could get through. But you can only go down to the bottom floor. We used the cell phone to call others in the building and no one was worried, but she did get her ativan out.
There are many teachers living at our condo, so they now have a Friday social here, taking turns hosting. We ended up at the big mall down the road on Friday after school, and could not get a taxi home. It was too busy and a huge lineup for a taxi, so we walked about half way, and stopped at the bike shop as we were hot and sweaty. We chatted with them and waited for a taxi driver who was next door watching a Malaysian play badminton in the semi finals of the Olympics. There was a big roar as the Malaysian won and then he quickly gave us a lift. We almost missed the social, getting their last as you always need a shower after walking in the heat and humidity.

Moved In

Blogging without an internet connection presents certain difficulties. Sorry for the delay between posts. We should have our internet hooked up within the week hopefully.

Well we’ve moved in. Right now I’m sitting on our balcony, pecking away. We chose to live a few clicks from the school. This has ruined our good intentions of living within walking distance to the school but it is a better choice for us. There is at least a kilometer or so between our condo and the next one. Near the school they are very close together and they are building dozens more around there. From my seat I can see the twin towers and a large part of the city. The view is quite spectacular. Between us and the school is a large hillside park which breaks up the city view and also has a lot of hiking and biking trails.

Quite near to us, within a couple of kilometers, is more shopping than Maureen even wants. There are two gigantic malls, one called One Utama, and the other called the Curve. Name any store and they are there along with thousands you haven’t heard about. (OK, they don’t have a Bay) We walked to IKEA on Saturday after we moved in. The store is much bigger than the Coquitlam done but 10 times more crowded. It was almost impossible to move in the aisles.

We are on the 29th floor. This is a big adjustment. However, the first 8 floors are parking underground and they do not use 13 or 14 or 24 so I guess we are on about the 18th or 19th floor. The Malaysians are security crazy. Our place and pretty well any other is surrounded by security guards. We need special cards to get into the building and to go up the elevator. All the suites have special doors with padlocks. Maureen is not so keen to be locked in tight for the night. She is worried about getting out!!!!!!

Our place is large, 2000 sq. ft. Big. It came furnished but all the stuff is pretty cheap. We get a moving in allowance so we’ve bought a few necessities like a coffee maker. Maureen is looking for prints to make it look more like a home. We did bring a few photos but now of course are thinking about all the things we should have brought.

There are many other couples that teach at MKIS and live in the same condo. Most are however, about 20 years younger. Many have small children and also have live in maids. We just may get one only 2-3 times a week and get a meal waiting for us when we get home from school. Our condo comes with a maid’s room, but we are using it for storage at the moment. No live in for us!!! The teachers living her have a Friday night dinner party and we all take turns. W will need to do more shopping to fill up the condo before they come over though. We will avoid any stores on Sat. or Sun. though as it is nuts shopping at those times. A favorite pastime for Malaysians is to shop with their families enjoying the air conditioning!

First Day of School

We had our first full day of school today.
Al's experience:
My class has 21 students. It's the big Grade 5 class. The students are from 16 different nationalities ... but no Canadians.
I took an idea from Harry Wong's book 'First Day of School' and provided the students with 'bell work at they entered the class. They all had a worksheet on their desks as they came in. They entered, put all their new school supplies in their desks and started to work immediately. Not a sound was made.
The rest of day pretty well went the same way. The students worked hard and quietly throughout. All of them are great kids. No breaks though as supervision was required throughout recess and lunch. The pace needs to change up a bit. We got to school at 7:00 and left after 6:00.
Maureen's experience:
Maureen had a more interesting start. She was pretty nervous with the idea of teaching 6 to 8 years old rather than 16 to 18 years old. They had given her a bunch of unlabeled keys for her various teaching areas. She spent a large amount of time first thing trying to find the one that would get her into the equipment room with no luck. Before class started she had to find someone to clean up the monkey feces and urine from the gym floor. The morning classes went well but in the afternoon there was a torrential downpour. They had just done some renovations outside and somehow the roof drain got directed into the gym and within minutes the gym floor had inches of water in it. Maureen had Grade 2 students at this time and they started to cry because some of them thought a tsunami had hit the school. On top of it all she developed some stomach problems and had to run to the washroom frequently.

The photos are from our trip to Chinatown on Sunday.

Looking for a home

It is hard to believe we've been here a week. It's been busy.

1. We've looked for housing
2. We saw a soccer game- Chelsea vs the Malaysian National Team
3. We've looked for housing
4. We spent 3 days at school orientation sessions
5. We've looked for housing
6. We attended a social for new staff (there are about 25 of us)
7. We've looked for housing
   
8. We went downtown on a Saturday night
9. We've looked for housing

Perhaps you noticed a theme here. We've looked at lots of condos but haven't settled on one yet. I think we are the last of the new teachers not to get accommodation yet. We got things narrowed down to two options and hope to decide today.

The soccer game on Tuesday night was an amazing experience. Getting there was even an adventure. The traffic was something we've never experienced before. Besides traveling during rush hour there were 80,000 fans heading to a stadium not serviced by mass transit. Fortunately we had Albert, the taxi driver, in charge. We weaved in and out of traffic all the way there. Within about two kilometers from the stadium people were literally parking all over the place, on the freeway, on the highway dividers, and stacked up 10 to 15 cars deep in every gas station and pull out nearby. Apparently they don't park in the stadium parking lot because it is a fast exit doing it this way. The game was fun although Chelsea were playing at half speed. They ended up winning 2-0.

The orientation to school was a bit overwhelming. Everything seems new and different but I'm sure we'll get the hang of it soon. The positive factor is all the people seem very nice and helpful. Al's classroom was a bit of a dumping ground for everyone at the end of last year so there will be a lot of cleaning up to do to get ready for school. Maureen has a nice new office but right now the air conditioning isn't working. When the temperature is always 30+ degrees and humid, AC is a must in order to do anything.
On Friday they was a social for all the new teachers and department heads. The food, like all over, was incredible. Maureen is concerned because it is all so good and nothing of course is low fat. We closed down the social, as usual, and then headed over the local square to catch some jazz. We lost track of the folks were supposed to meet there but ran into some parents and another teacher from the school and spent time with them. They identified us as new teachers and were very welcoming.

Saturday night we went down to city centre. Wow. There was an unbelievable number of people wandering around. What really surprised us were the number of ladies in burkas because we had not seen any around the hotel or school. We found out today that a large number of folks from Arabian countries holiday here because it is a Muslim country.


Today we got a taxi driver to drive us around the town a bit so we could get the lay of the land. We then had him drop us off at the Central Market. This is a market sight that dates from the 1800's and has thousands of little shops selling all sorts of things as well as restaurants etc. From there we walked into China Town and had a look around. Here are hundreds of hawker stalls selling watches and leather bags and pretty well any other knock-off one might want. We weren't shopping but it was fun asking for the price of things and then having the price of things drop in half in seconds as we began to walk away. On the way home the cabbie told us not to pay any more than 20% of the initial asking price.

Next blog: Our decision about housing and what's up with school.