Mid Term Break

Spring sunrise from our balcony. It is a little different from the photo taken in the fall. The sun is about 10 degrees to north and comes up on the other side of the twin towers. It means about 1/2 hour difference in the amount of daylight we receive. It is still pretty nice. Last night we were able to play tennis in natural light until close to 7:30, then we had to turn on the lights.

The past few weeks have been incredibly busy for us and we are really ready for a break. Our mid term break starts for us Tuesday after school when we fly off to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo or Eastern Malaysia for a conference first of all and then holiday after.

I'll list what we have been doing here over the past couple of weeks:

1. 2 afternoons of parent teacher interviews
2. School 'Fun Fair'
3. Maureen had 2 basketball games and 3 practices
4. Al had 3 soccer games, 3 practices, and an all day tournament
5. School spring production 3 performances- we work as head ushers or bouncers(nice ones)
6. Social gatherings on the weekends- a baby shower BBQ on one and a Spring Equinox and 60th birthday party on the other
7. Maureen squeezed in line dance one night and book club on another
8. Tennis matches a couple of times a week
9. Work
   

It doesn't seem too bad listed but it seemed busy.

The conference we're going to in KK is the EARCOS (East Asia Regional Conference of Overseas Schools) conference. Teachers from schools from all over South-East Asia attend. We'll see if we can touch base with some of the Nelson contingent from other schools in the area.
After the conference we are booked to climb (well hike actually) Mount Kinabalu. It is the highest peak in south-east Asia at 13,500 feet. I'll let you know how that goes in the next blog. After this we thought we'd kind of treat ourselves so we booked into a exclusive island dive resort on the east coast of Borneo. It is small resort with 14 chalets on Lankayan Island. On our way home we will stop at the Orangutan Sanctuary outside of Sandakan.
Soccer munchkins. Team international, a Swede, 2 Kiwis, an Aussie, a Korean, an Indian, a Filipino, a Singaporean and a Swiss with a Dutch assistant coach and a Canuck coach.Yahoo!! The dunk tank. The kids in my class lined up early to have a go at me. The organization of this event was incredible. All done by the parents.



Baby shower for Carmen and Ryan. You can see the demographic of the international teacher in this picture. Maureen and I are the exception at our age.

Pulau Kapas

View of Pulau Gemia from Pulau Kapas. The coral between the two islands is teaming with fish.

Our 4th long weekend between our Christmas break and the start of the March break just ended. Maureen and I thought we should spend some time exploring Malaysia and so we loaded up the car and headed off after school on Friday to the east coast of Malaysia. After school, means after we finished coaching our basketball and soccer teams and so we left about 5:00. Travel is always an adventure and the 4 hour trip ended up taking us about 7 hours. Getting lost has become an expected part of the journey and adds to the experience(at least that's what I say to myself as I try to calm the rage). The roads really are quite good here and North America could really learn a thing or two from the rest stops they have. These tend to be spread out every 40 or so kilometers with every second one providing the full meal deal. They will have large clean washrooms, snack stands, small restaurants, gas stations, and pretty well everything else a weary traveler might need. The one thing that does not work so is well is that the restaurants all serve exactly the same local menu. The only exception to this is that the rest stops closer to KL tend to have a few of the palaces of grease, like McDonalds or Burger King. We got take away coffees at one point. I remembered to have a mug with me but Maureen didn't. Her take away cup was a plastic bag with a straw.
Pulau Kapas is about 3 km off the mainland about midway up the east side of peninsular Malaysia. We stayed the night at a small market town called Marang and took a speed boat over to the island in the morning. The island is only about 2 km across and only has a half dozen small 'resorts' on it. The word resort is loosely used here. They are mainly backpacker type places with pretty basic accommodation. We managed to find an exception to this, a nice little secluded place run a Dutch couple. They have room for about 20 guests in their various chalets. The place has its own little private bay and the chalets are situated on the cusp of the jungle and beach. The woman, Sylvie, is a fantastic cook and we managed to relax and eat very well for our two days here. It was a great place to unwind after report card writing. We read, snorkeled, ate, kayaked around a bit and read some more.


This shows the restaurant and dining area of Turtle Valley Kapas, the resort we stayed at.


We paddled one of the kayaks around the island and rested on this rather nice beach and did some snorkeling.





We wondered around a bit looking for secluded beaches. They weren't hard to find even on a long weekend.



Boats just biding their time in the bay.



Al at the climbing wall at Camp 5, Asia's largest climbing facility. Getting old sucks though because after going twice I've tendinitis in my elbow so bad I need to lay off for a bit.