Malaysia: Monday, 31 July 2006

Suria KLCC (Beneath the Twin Towers)

Petronas Twin Towers

With Min Ser

With Mel

With Grandma

With cousins

With Grandma, aunties and uncles

China Trip: Saturday, 29 July 2006

8:00am
A teary farewell as the teaching assistants and some of our students came to the church to see us off. I received some pickled radishes from Sun. The Heyuan specialty – yummy stuff! Elin gave an exceptionally big hug and sobbed till her glasses fogged. Poor thing! I read a letter that she wrote and we bonded like big brother and little sister. I didn't cry until I was on the bus and well on the way towards Guangzhou Airport. We left Jenny and Megan behind as they will be heading towards HK by bus and spending 3 nights there.

Last goodbyes

Megan told me that the night before, Sophie kept crying and wouldn’t let go of her. Poor girl, I had hoped she would come today. Her smile was one of those things I would miss the most:

Smiling Sophie

China Trip: Friday, 28 July 2006

8:00am
There were no classes today, just a full-dress rehearsal for the concert. I put on my geeky glasses and teeth, and crack up the entire school. Jenny started to tear – it was way too much for her! Apparently I looked like some HK TV guy named "Ah Soo". Each class practised their parts and how to get on and off the stage. The students also practised how to receive their certificates and how to move back and forth from their seats.

"Ah Soo"

Class photos

During this second week of our stay, they tore up the road outside the church compound and laid a new pipeline. Whilst it was super-noisy and they annoyingly began at an early time of 6am every morning, they were fast. In less than one week the trench was complete. These photos were taken pre- and post-digging.

Instant pipeline: dug within 1 week!

12:00pm
Jenny, Megan and I took out Felix and the students in the play for lunch. We had "bamboo rice" – some rice, meat and veggies served in a bamboo bowl. There were about 20 of us and it cost ¥205 (~$36.61) in total.



7:30pm
The finale of the 2-week course had arrived: the Students' Concert. The Director gave a speech and presented each student their certificate. Then the Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Special-Advanced classes each gave a performance. Our Special class sang "I Want It That Way", then performed "You Are Special", and finished with "The Power of Your Love". As I watched them sing while I was playing the piano, I could see that they had given it their all. The teachers and TAs sang a Mandarin song: "Amazing Hands" and finished with "Auld Lang Syne". We had a final chat with our students – there were many tears and memorable photos.

China Trip: Thursday, 27 July 2006

8:00am
Class today was a bludge really. No particular topic was planned. We did some word games, and blew up giant balloons to play around with. I managed to over pump air into a balloon and the resulting BANG was loud! Sorry to the students I was standing near to when it happened! We also had a rehearsal on the stage of the church.




2:00pm
We took Sam, David, Albert, Torres, Sophia, Yuki, Fish, Bruse, Vinson, Le, Chris, and James to have drinks and dessert at KFC. The ice-cream with blueberry crust was quite interesting.



6:00pm
We had dinner with the Director of Religious Affairs, and we gave him and his entourage some Tim-Tams.




9:00pm
Our team broke off into two groups. In my group Jenny, Megan, Annie, Kat and Ivy shared words of affirmation and encouragement.

China Trip: Wednesday, 26 July 2006

8:00am
I was greeted many times with birthday well wishes this morning. Even baby Sam gave me a quick headbutt (I think he means a hug!) In class, the topic was honour, and I taught the class about who we honour (everyone!), what dishonour means and its consequences, and how we can honour a dishonoured person (encourage, cheer up, make friends). We then had a little activity where they wrote their names on a piece of paper, placed it into a basket and then picked a random name. Notes of encouragement were then written for their secret recipient. We made the point clear to keep the sender a secret too: when you honour (or love) someone, there is no need to let everyone know what you're doing.

9:30am
We rehearsed our two concert songs again and they are certainly getting better, with the majority having already memorised the songs. They're still pronouncing the word as "nussing" though!

10:30am
We had a class party and coincidentally, they celebrated my birthday. The students chipped in (while Frank, Jenny, Megan and Chan Soon forked out the rest) for this huge birthday cake. That's 2 large double tiered cakes I've had: enough to last a lifetime! The students brought a lot of food to share, including a large watermelon! I also showed them a slide show of photos from my past. They seemed to enjoy it! They also managed to sign their names on a T-shirt, apparently done on one of the half-hour breaks! Awesome present! I'm not one to accept material gifts - but this is an exception! ^_~

















We also had some party games, including "Pass-the-Parcel", with Miko winning the koala keyrings inside. We managed to get everyone to make the longest string using one Minties wrapper. Effi had quite a long string, and then Felix looked to be the clear winner for a while – until I noticed how long the quiet Zhi Xin's Mintie wrapper-string was. When we measured the strings, Zhi Xin's beat Felix’s by a mere 2 inches! I was glad it was her who won as I know that this was an achievement on her part.

Effi - 3rd place

Felix - 2nd place

Zhi Xin - 1st place!! How long is that!?!

7:00pm
In the evening, we dined at KFC. The burger I had was a double fillet spicy burger. The chicken pieces they had here tasted good, but were quite small. I took some burger pictures – what you see is certainly not what you'll get:



23: my first birthday overseas!