Halloween, River Rafting, and Terry Fox Run

Another eventful and hectic week and weekend has come and gone. I think the highlight was the river rafting trip we did on Saturday. (I say I think, because it was all pretty good.) We traveled about an hour and half out of KL to Sungai(river) Selangor. It is actually hard to believe but we haven't had rain for about a week now, so the river was a little low. Just high enough to be navigable for rafting. We spent a lot of time leaning to the left, leaning to the right, charging to the front of the raft and then to the back to get over and around the rocks in the river. It was quite exhausting actually. There about 12 of us from the school who went and we were joined at the river by about 15 Malays. The whole trip took about 4 hours to complete. The first part was pretty rough but the last was fairly calm although the river moved fast. Most of us spent the last kilometer or so lying back in the water and floating downstream. It was great fun although we came out of the water looking rather like shriveled prunes. At the end of the trip we were treated to a rather delicious Malay lunch of Nasi Lemak. I've included a little video clip of my raft crashing down one little rapid.






Friday was Halloween, of course. I love how they do it at this school. Nothing, except for the K and pre-schooler classes, happens during the school day.(The pre-schoolers, by the way, attend school from 8:30 to 1:30. The K students go all day) The parents arrive at the school right at 3 o'clock and get to work. Because most of the kids live in condos, making trick-or-treating problematic, the school event is the main thing for them to do. The kids come to school at 7 pm and wind their way through the hallways and get treats at each floor or area of the school. Between 3 and 7 the parents have transformed the school into a Halloween heaven for kids. Each grade level is located in a different floor or wing of the school. The grades go from Pre-school 1 (3 year olds) to Grade 5. There is quite the competition among the moms to create the best Halloween hallway and so the decorations are something else. Most of the moms are well-educated with professional backgrounds who are now stay-at-home moms while their husbands work for multi-national corporations based in Malaysia. They're bright and energetic and know how to get things done. After the kids were through with the trick-or-treating they could then go to the breezeway (best way to describe this is the big open area inside the school entrance where parents drop-off and pick up kids) for games the parents had set up or go to the courtyard where they had a hip-hop artist doing his thing. Maureen and I dressed up. She was a gypsy and I was a pirate. Our only duty was to wonder around and talk to the kids and their parents. The middle school was having a dance so we checked that out also.


Twister was one of the games the parents had. Kids and parents get involved in it all.

Today was the Terry Fox Run. Maureen had spent all week showing the Terry Fox videos to her students, having them do a mini-run in class (at 32 degrees and 85% humidity they don't run for long) and encouraging them to come out to the TF Run at Lake Garden Park in KL. Lots of them showed up to run with their PE teacher. Last year there were over 5000 participants in the run and there were at least that number again this year. It is very well organized and lots of fun.




The rest of today, Sunday, I am spending doing report cards. I suppose that explains why I'm filling in the blog earlier than usual. Maureen is off to some kind of line dancing event. There is a group of women, about 25 I think, who practice line dancing at our condo 3 days a week. Maureen joined up with them. There is some kind of big extravaganza event today with all the line dancing clubs in KL. Line dancing is a big thing here for some reason, along with karaoke. I'll probably take a miss on both of those experiences. Anyway the local dancers have been after Maureen to make it to practice regularly so she doesn't bring shame to the club. I'll let you know what happened with that next time.


This raft didn't quite follow the chute. Believe it or not they survived the landing.


Maureen the Gypsy queen.The MKIS Sr. girls Basketball team at the Terry Fox Run.