A day in the life.

When I talk to some of my friends back home, they all seem to think that Malaysia is a third world country, or that I'm in the middle of nowhere living in a hut. I'm ashamed to say that some of my friends even thought that Malaysia was located somewhere off of the coast of Africa (its not, it's in Southeast Asia). I want to take some time and show you what my daily life is like, and what exactly I do here, as well as show through pictures and my descriptions that although Malaysia is a very different place, it is not by any means a third world country. I happen to be in one of the lesser developed states of Malaysia, but that does not mean that everyone lives in shacks and subsists on coconuts. There are families here, families with minivans, families that like to go to the movies, families that eat dinner together at the table. People here are basically just like people in America, and have the same wants, desires, pressures, and shortcomings. There are a few major differences here, and those differences make Malaysia a really interesting place to live. The dynamics between different races and religions can be quite heated are a subject for an entire textbook, so I'm afraid I will have to leave that one for later. They are quite interesting to follow, on the other hand.

Now, on to my life, my everyday life. I do not live in a village. I do not hunt for my food. I do not wear a loin clothe and track prey with a blowpipe. I live in an apartment building a little bit nicer than my senior apartment at UMBC. It does not have airconditioning or hot water, but then again I don't really need those things. It is hot here, don't get me wrong, but a good ceiling fan takes care of things quite comfortablely. And when the temperature is so high, who needs hot water anyway? So, at any rate, here is a sample of my daily routine. I awake at dawn, shower, shave, get dressed in a button-up shirt and slacks and head downstairs where my ancient 70cc motorbike waits. I drive about 2 miles to work, obeying the speed limit mostly because I can't go faster than 35 mph or so. The obstacles are a little different from American roads. Since I live in a rural area, I sometimes have to watch out for cows, goats, water buffalo, or even monkeys as well as the usual assortment of cars, trucks, and tractor trailers. Sometimes traffic gets backed up both ways as far as the eye can see because a large bull has decided the middle of the road is a great place to hang out. After negotiating through the traffic, I arrive at school, and enjoy a cup of coffee while I check my email from a wireless router set up above my classroom. After that, I usually head to the school teachers' café and enjoy some good Malay food. That's right, a public school that serves good food. There usually some cakes and doughnuts available, made fresh onsite, and my favourite is a mix of coconut milk, glutenous rice, and brown sugar. Breakfast is usually nasi lemak. It's made from rice soaked in coconut milk, cucumbers, dried and salted fish, a fried egg, a piece of chicken or tuna, and a spicy chili sauce. To properly enjoy it, you must use your hands, and take a little of each ingredient in every bite. Malay etiquette does not require the use of silverware, and to be quite honest, it makes things easier to manage. I hate eating fried chicken with a fork and knife anyway.

After breakfast, I head to my classroom, being sure to leave the door open. There are many times when the students have class and the teacher gets called away to a meeting somewhere, leaving them unattended. There is a schedule of replacement teachers, drawn from the pool of all the teachers with an opening in their schedule, but the placements are not followed with sincerity. The result is at least twenty bored students at any given time roaming the school grounds looking for something to do, so I leave my door open in case they want to come in and practice their English. I travel all over Malaysia, sometimes as part of my job and sometimes on my own, and they seem to love the pictures. Everyday, at least four or five wander through my doors looking for something interesting. Sometimes we play games, my personal favourite being chess, and sometimes we just make jokes about anything from my arm hair to English itself. Some of the students have started to call me "Cikgu Bulu," which means, Mr. Body Hair. I am after all, the only person in the area with hair on his chest, and to be quite honest, I think the name is kind of funny. It stuck.

I usually have two eighty-minute classes per day, but since everyone is usually late, they wind up being more like an hour. I see a total of roughly five hundred students on a two week rotating schedule. I think this is much different than almost every other teacher at the school, but the benefit is that I get some exposure with a large group of students. I don't know how much tangible teaching I do, but at least the students can look forward to my class as a certain break from their usual routine. Because I only see each class every two weeks, my lessons can have very little continuity, so I'm not really able to teach anything that takes more than one session to accomplish. I usually fill the time with various games and puzzles with candy as a reward. I try and pick activities that are group based so the strong and weak students can mix and help each other out if necessary. One of my particular favourites is a game I call "Draw the Teacher." After a basic review of the major parts of speech, I divide the students into two groups and give each team a piece of chalk. One person from each team comes up to the board and waits for instructions. I say, "Draw Mr. Len's....EARS!" and after they have drawn something, usually ridiculous, I make them use an adjective to describe whatever they've created. They can ask their team for help if they like, and no repeating adjectives. The students have a great time since they're encouraged to make fun of their teacher (a truly rare opportunity) and broaden their descriptive capabilities.

After class, I head back to the school canteen for a light lunch, almost always with rice. I eat with the students on occasion, but most of them are so shy they spend most of their lunch staring at their food and praying that I don't ask them a question. At most, I can get two words out of the shy ones, whereas the interested ask to borrow books. Indeed, I just lent my copy of The Hobbit to one of my better students. He loved it.

After school gets out, I head to my moto, hustle home, and hop on my bicycle. The hottest part of the day has passed, but I still load on the sunscreen before heading out and roaming the town or countryside for a few hours as fast as my legs will let me. Exercising is not exactly part of the local culture, so I am sure to get plenty of stares as I meander through narrow roads or weavie through busy streets. Often, I can keep up with cars and motorbikes, and the surprised looks I get from the drivers are priceless. The thought of being passed on the street by a sweaty white guy on a bicycle is the last thing that they expect. I try to take my iPod with my and listen to my downloaded news podcasts to stay in touch with affairs in the U.S. from a U.S. perspective. The local news outlets are a little too government influenced for my liking and my body is worked by the bike while my mind stays busy processing whatever National Public Radio has to say. Its not a bad combination.

After I am dehydrated enough so that I can't go much further, I head back to my apartment, shower, and go out to a café (warung) to eat dinner. Believe it or not, it is actually cheaper for me to eat out than cook for myself. And since I don't have air conditioning, firing up the stove is something that I save for only special occasions. When I have a craving for pasta or a real hamburger, sometimes I light it up, but not very often.

After dinner, I head out for some extracurricular fun. When I first arrived, I would go for lessons in Silat (Malaysian martial arts), but I have lately been going back to school to work with a group of students that have expressed a particular interest in working with me. I seriously feel like my most successful exchanges have been with these kids, and I think it is mostly because they are completely free of their usual classroom environment. WIth them, I act like myself, answer anything they ask (within reason of course, I don't think its my place to explain to them anything related to drugs, sex, or alcohol). And you know what, with me, they act like real high school age students as opposed to the quite, shy, and obedient façade they take up during the day. They laugh freely, make dirty jokes, talk openly about almost anything, and ask questions that they would never dare ask of teachers. Some of them have even had the courage to ask, "Mr. Len, what do you think of Islam?" I answer honestly, "I think it is taken very seriously here, and can be quite beautiful." More on that subject later.

So what exactly do we do together? Well, I have been doing stage theatre since the age of four. I am proud to say that I was in fact Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in my pre-school Christmas play. I've seen old VHS tape, it is very cute. I have played many different roles in many different types of plays, everything from a Broadway musical to Shakespeare, and some of my most precious memories are of being backstage, waiting for my entrance and listening to the audience find their seats on the other side of the closed curtain. I thought that I might be qualified to share this experience with some of the more outgoing students here and provide them with a much-needed way to express themselves. The kids spend so much time preparing for hugely important national standardized tests in tightly controlled classroom environments (when the teacher is present) that they rarely get a chance to really push themselves or explore any aspect of their personalities that falls outside the regimen of school activities. Don't get me wrong, there are art classes and sports teams, but the participants don't really get to do what they want to do or set their own agenda. If you ask me the combination of teaching chiefly to the national exams as well a culture that seems to value unity rather than individual expression leads to a gross lack of creativity. So, I wanted to give some of the most independent and outgoing students a chance to do something completely different.

I wrote a short skit about an American teacher coming to a Malaysian school (original, yes?) and held auditions. I made several announcements over the PA system, both in English and apparently hilarious Malay, and when I arrived at the appointed time and place, there were nearly 120 girls waiting for me. They all seemed lost and confused, so I explained once more what an audition was and why I asked them to come here. Some of the students with better English nodded their heads and explained it to the rest, after which nearly everyone got up and left. Almost no one really wanted to be in it. Of those that had come, there were roughly twenty girls left, and not a sign of the boys, who wound up strolling in late. As usual. Upon arrival, they started to disrupt and interrupt what we were doing. My first impulse was to tell them to get lost. If they couldn't come on time for auditions, could they handle coming to rehearsal? But I needed boys, I couldn't be left alone in a room with a group high school girls and not get come uncomfortable looks from teachers and administrators. And I don't think it was because I am an American, but instead because I am a young man. When it comes to sexual matters, people here are, at least officially, quite conservative. So I explained again what was going on and most of them left after yelling obnoxious things in Malay at me, I think mostly to compensate for their shyness and unwillingness to stay and speak. Most of the boys that stayed and auditioned got in.

At the end of the whole process, I had twelve talented and wonderful kids, all of whom could speak decent English, and all of them with vibrant personalities and only a few traces of shyness, which mostly disappeared after the first rehearsal. There were fourteen total: three boys and eleven girls. Unfortunately, two of them were banned by their father (they are sisters) from participating when he found out what we were doing and when we were meeting. I'm still not really sure why as I was not given the privilege of speaking with him, but I think that it was because he simply did not want his daughters to be out at night. To me this sounded ridiculous, and I believe it sounded ridiculous to their mother as well, but she was unable to argue with her husband, from what I gather, out of fear. I would like to think that this type of decision making is the exception rather than the rule, but it is not the first time I have heard parents "protecting" their daughters by forbidding them to go out in the evening. The whole concept, although I understand the logic, is still hard for me to swallow. It also not the first time I have heard of a dominating patriarch making rather extreme decisions.

Anyway, now down to twelve, we had a few rehearsals, and then performed for an audience of school children gathered from around the state. Each of the seven remaining Fulbright English Teacher Assistants hosted some type of performance, everything from choral speaking, to a short skits, to small vocal ensembles. We performed, and we rocked. I'll try and see if I can get ahold of the video footage, but I think we stood out from many of the other performances because, well, I think the audience thought we were hilarious and the group of kids that performed did so at the very best of their abilities. And so, I would like to publicly and electronically congratulate the students involved: Sharul, Zam, Fazrin, Aim, Iran, Wawa, Umi, Arin, Neesa, Waheeda, Eda, and Fatin. I would also like to thank Puan Nor Azahan and Puan Aminah for coming to rehearsals after their evening prayers and helping me in any way they could, as well as Puan Tan for driving us to Kuala Terengganu. I would not have been able to get things done without their help and coordination. I had the privilege of being in the show with the students, as a schoolboy, and from what I gather, students, teachers, several American visitors, as well as many government officials sincerely enjoyed what we did. Thank you everyone!

The students and I celebrated afterward with a traditional pizza party, which believe it or not is insanely expensive here. I think they have to import the cheese from halfway across the world or something. You know, I thought that getting close to students might not have been the best idea, simply because when I leave saying goodbye to them is going to be extremely hard. I was right, it is a bad idea. I don't know if I'm ever going to see any of these kids again, but if they are reading this, I want them to know that my best experiences teaching in Malaysia were with them. I'll miss them dearly.

NOTE: Before I end this post, I would like to invite all of those who read this blog to freely comment on my entries. Please, be open and honest. I want this to not only be a way for me to update everyone at home on what I'm doing, but also to create an open environment where any issue can be discussed, as well as provide a way for people in both Malaysia and America to open up a sincere dialogue about ideas generated by the content of my articles. I will gladly post responses under the name "leninmalaysia" every few days if a response does in fact result . If, however, your comment is rude or disrespectful in any way to Americans or Malaysians AS PEOPLE I will delete your comment. Examples of comments that will get deleted: (1) Why are all Americans so fat? (2) Why are Malay girls so hot? (3) anything insulting religion or culture. I do, however, welcome criticism of government policy, on either side, as long as things are kept fairly civil. I know that I do not wholeheartedly agree with every policy from either country.