2 pictures from my day

I have to apologize for not posting a blog recently. I will admit that the main reason is because I keep thinking the next post I made needed to be something extravagant since I haven't posted in such a long time. However, I am realizing now, that this is a blog and there is no need for that. As always there is no way for me to easily share every part of my life here and I can't always keep everyone up to speed on everything. The main purpose of this blog is just to share fun little stories and reflections about my life here.

So I simply want to share two pictures with you from my day today. The first picture is of Nureen. As you can see she is on the swings at our school playground and she is reading a book. I took the picture at my afternoon tutoring class. I always give the children time to play on the playground, which for most of the kids seems to be the highlight of the afternoon. However, Nureen is usually a bit more quiet and often prefers to sit next to me and read. Today she decided to play and read. She first spent a few minutes sitting on the slide reading and then when I swing opened up, she swung and read for a good ten minutes. It was a cute sight to see.

The picture below is of myself and Alyssa and Yazleen. They are two other girls in my afternoon tutoring class. I typically enjoy teaching my afternoon class but today was especially nice because I only had 12 kids instead of the normal number of 18 kids. It was a relaxed day and I let the kids have most of the time to play with whatever toys they wanted... whether it be play dough, coloring, painting or writing on the white board...which was the favorite today. They wrote English words and then would read to me what they wrote. They I would say a word in English and they would sound it out and spell it as it sounded. They are a smart group of kids and I enjoy spending my afternoons with them.

Friday

The Friday school schedule is quite a bit different from the normal Monday - Thursday school day. On Friday's we spend the first two hours of the morning as a whole school singing songs, doing exercise/dance, and having Bible story time. If I have any lesson planning or grading to catch up on, I will spend this time in my office. Otherwise I will help out with the morning activities. It's fun having all the kids together in one room and I think we all like Friday mornings. After returning to the classrooms everyone has their regular tea break/snack and then go back to their studies for the remaining hour and a half left of the school day. During this time I teach both 4 year old classes (separately). The 4 year old classes are the simplest class for me to teach, so Fridays are a very relaxed and low key days for me.

This Friday (today) I had quite a bit of grading to catch up on so I spent the morning in my office. One of my favorite students, Datu Affif (5 year old), had been absent the previous day, so I had him come into my office to go over what I had taught his class yesterday (the letter h) and have him do the activity in his workbook. He is the most adorable kid and although he knows very little English, he is a fast learner. I have discovered how easily he retains the information I teach so I am excited to see how much I can teach him in the next six months. I don't quite know how to explain this, but I often forget that we don't have a language in common. I think that Datu Affif (or Affif for short) is well aware of the fact that he is one of my favorites, but he has yet to abuse this. He usually sits quietly and pays attention in class. When I walk by his class room and stop to peer in the window he doesn't scream out "Teacher Katherine!!!" when he sees me, like most of the kids do. Often he will notice me before the other kids, and he will give me a cute smile and little wave and then will go back to paying attention to Teacher Pang. I will write more about his progress with English in the months to come.

This morning I decided to teach the 4 year olds the song, Mr. Sun. "Oh Mr. Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me..." It's a great song, but not extremely necessary for us to be singing since the sun has been out all week and has been extra hot! After learning the song, the children did a sun craft. They colored a small paper plate (whatever color they wanted their sun to be... I am working hard with them to use their creativity) and then I helped them tape on sun rays, made out of strips of poster board. Above is a picture of the final product. We ended the class singing the song again with the suns they made. It was a special treat for the 4 year olds to do a craft during my class and they really seemed to enjoy it. They are simply too young to do much gluing or cutting as most crafts require. They really like coloring so usually I will just have them color a picture that pertains to the lesson I teach.

I am now having a relaxing Friday afternoon, catching up on my emails and finishing lesson plans for next week. I will leave you with a simple but important quote from "The Shack" which I just finished reading last night.

"Life takes a bit of time and a lot of relationship."

A New Church Home

I was 18 years old and a freshmen in college when I had the first experience of finding my own church and attending church without my family. Although, I didn’t have too much difficulty attending church on my own, there was something I quickly noticed was missing…. My mother’s wonderful and boisterous singing voice.

Something I took for granted growing up was my mom’s amazing and strong voice. I have always enjoyed singing in church and I think I have a fairly decent voice, but it was always comforting to be singing next to my mom. Initially I thought adjusting to the lack of my mom’s voice would not be too difficult. However, it turns out it was actually rather hard. Through out my college years it is something I got used to, but still always noticed was missing.

At the beginning of January, I began attending the BCCM Petagas church. The church service is all in Mandarin Chinese. This was something I was actually looking forward to. Yes, I don’t understand too much, but there is something to be said about experiencing a church service in a different language. You would actually be surprised at how much you can still understand and gather from it.

I have only attended the church two Sundays now but it is already beginning to feel like a home church to me. Surprised to hear this since the service is in Mandarin? The reason the church feels like home to me is because Teacher Wong (class CBlue teacher) has a beautiful and strong singing voice, just like my mom. She sits behind me and there have been a few times where I have actually thought it was my mom singing… you know, aside from the fact that she’s singing in Mandarin. This is also very helpful since I am just beginning to learn the songs. I can try to sing but still am over powered enough that if I completely botch a pronunciation, (which I’m sure I do at least 80% of the time) nobody will notice.

I feel like it is a real blessing to feel so at home in a church that could easily be quite foreign to me. I am really enjoying worshipping with the teachers from school and hope that I am able to pick up Mandarin somewhat quickly. I at least hope I can learn to sing the songs sooner vs. later… understanding will be the next step ☺

Happy New Year from Malaysia

With Li Mei in her home village of Kota Marudu

At the Tip of Borneo

Happy New Year! Today was definitely the strangest time to experience the 14 hour time difference. It is so weird for me to think that when I when I was ringing in the New Year here in Kota Kinabalu it was only 10 am back in the Midwest... and when all of you back home are celebrating, it will already be 2 pm on January 1, 2010 here. I am pleased to tell you that the new year is going very well already! I had a very nice time last night celebrating with the other volunteers and a few new friends here.

Back-tracking a little....

When the school year ended in November I anticipated December would be a very low key month with little to occupy my time. I didn't think I would see the teachers from my school much because it is a long drive from where they live in KK to where I live. Luckily, these two assumptions could not have been more inaccurate. As you may have guessed from my lack of blog posts (sorry!) I have been keeping very busy; December was an eventful month.

Among the highlights were...

-visiting Li Mei's (a teacher at my school) home village, Kota Marudu, twice. It is two hours away from KK.

-visiting the Tip of Borneo with Teacher Hiew and her family... 3 hours away from KK.

-going to see The Princess and the Frog with Leon (one of my students), his little brother and Li Mei

-spending the day Christmas shopping with Jennifer (20 years old, the daughter of the principal at my school)

-spending Christmas in a small village in the countryside (aka jungle)

Through out the month I have developed a strong group of friends and I am very blessed that it is a wide range of friends comprised of different ages and different backgrounds/cultures. I really feel like I am part of a community now. I may have said this before but this has been a gradual process and it continues to grow stronger every day. I feel like everything is coming together now and will just continue to feel more like "normal" life as it continues. In the first three months here I developed different pieces of a puzzle for my life here and over the month of December I feel the pieces of the puzzle have come together.

One of the biggest changes that happened in December... actually just earlier this week... was that I moved to a different district in KK. Before I lived in the district of Likas and now I have moved to the district of Petagas. I moved to be closer to my school. When I lived in Likas someone had to pick me up every morning and take me home in the afternoon. Each way it took at least 15 minutes and that was if there was no traffic. It was a huge hassle for everyone so we decided to find a place for me to live close to school. I now live in an apartment with Li Mei, who taught the 6 year old class ARed last year. It is within walking distance of the school... about 5 blocks. I have only lived here for 4 days now and I am already really enjoying the change. It is so much more convenient and I like being closer to school and to where all of the teachers live.

The new school year begins on Monday, January 4th and so this weekend I am very busy preparing for the first week. We have two new teachers so I will spend the first week helping one of the new teachers in her classroom. The second week of school I will start teaching English in all of the classes again. I will also start my afternoon tutoring class on the second week in January.

I hope you are having a wonderful Christmas season and a very happy new year!

With Leon (on right) and his brother at The Princess and the Frog

Beautiful sunset at the beach in KK

Graduation Week - part 2

Top picture: ChewJia Li, Me and Vyshane. Middle: Me and class ARed watching the slide show I made for them. Bottom: Russell (wearing my sunglasses) and Ikhwan goofing off in my office

Thursday, Nov. 19, was a day of celebration. It was the end of the year class parties and it was full of food, sweets and games. I mainly spent the day in class ARed (6 year olds). As I have mentioned before this is the class I got closest with since I was teaching them twice as much as any other class. I also floated around briefly to the other classes and spent some time in classABlue (6 year olds) since they would not be back next year.

For the class parties, I believe most of the children brought some kind of food or treat to share with the class. Li Mei (teacher for ARed) had a list of games on the board that the kids would play through out the morning. One of the games was similar to the game I know as Hot Potato. The kids put their chairs in a big circle and pass around about 6 water bottles. Music is playing as you pass the water bottles and when the music stops then you must go in the middle of the circle. After about three times of this happening, all the children in the middle have to sing a song or recite a rhyme that the teacher tells them to do. I did get stuck in the middle of the circle once. I was a bit worried because I don't know any of the songs or rhymes that they say. But when it was time for us to "preform" Li Mei asked us to sing Pharaoh, Pharaoh, a church song which I had taught the kids a couple months ago. The kids, of course, thought it was great that I was in the middle.

On Wednesday night I was trying hard to think of something I could do for the children. I thought about buying them all small treats and would have loved to buy them all graduation presents, but obviously it's not really in my budget to get gifts for 60 kids. As I was uploading the massive amount of pictures I had taken that day, I got the idea to put together a slide showof pictures for the kids. I have taken many pictures at school just over the past three months, and I know the kids love seeing pictures of themselves (when I take pictures of them, they often ask to see the result after I take it). So I made a slide show especially for ARed of all the good pictures I had taken of them up through graduation day. Unfortunately, I didn't have many pictures of the other 6 year old class, class ABlue, but I did show them a slide show of all the pictures I took on graduation day.

So after we spent an hour playing games, I sat the kids down and showed them the slide show I had made. No surprise, the kids really enjoyed it! While they were watching the pictures, Li Mei and I prepared breakfast for them. While the kids were eating I took some time to visit the other classrooms and see what different foods had been brought in. They were fairly similar and involved lots of candy and sugar but there was one classroom that topped them all. In ClassCRed, Teacher Ivy had a small stove top set up and was making french toast for her kids (See pictures at end of post)! I was pretty amazed by this since I've never seen a teacher cook for her kids like this. The kids were sitting in front of the table very quiet just watching and eating their french toast. It was pretty adorable. I will write more about Teacher Ivy at another time but from what I have observed so far she is one of the most talented teachers at our school.

By the end of the day it was pretty evident that the kids were all hyped up on sugar. There was difficulty keeping structure to the games. The children were having more fun just jumping and dancing around. Luckily, this day was all about the children enjoying themselves so the teachers didn't mind and just let the kids have their fun. The day was very enjoyable for me but definitely took the energy out of me. I'm pretty sure I went home and napped that afternoon! That day as the kids were leaving school I tried to make a point to say "bye" to each 6 year old. I was told that many kids did not come to school on Friday, so to prepare for this to be my last time seeing them. I made a huge point not to let my mind wander to the fact that none of these wonderful children would be at the kindergarten next year. Instead I put all my focus on the present and the fact that I was able to spend some very fun, quality time with them that day. I feel so blessed that I was able to spend so much time with them (over the past 3 months) to the point where I really got to know their different personalities. I often forget that I can only hold a simple conversation with a handful of them. It truly is amazing what can be learned just through observation and how much can be communicated through actions and quite simply through eye contact...instead of words.

On Friday, I was quite pleased with the number of 6 year olds that came to school. Li Mei was not able to come to school that day so I was technically in charge of class ARed that day. I say technically because they spend half of the morning with class ABlue watching a Disney movie. About a month ago I had promised the teachers I would bake them a chocolate cake at some point before the year ended. I had not yet had free time to make one so we decided I should do it on Friday. The teachers wanted me to show the kids how to make the cake, but I didn't think this was such a good idea since they wouldn't be able to eat any of it... so I made it in the kitchen. It was so nice to get the chance to bake. I don't have an oven at my apartment, so this was the first time I was able to bake since being here. The only hitch was that I didn't realize our school kitchen does have any measuring cups or spoons. I was a little nervous about how the cake would turn out since I just estimated on everything but I was lucky and the cake was quite delicious (if I do say so myself)! After I put the cake in the oven, I helped serve the children breakfast. Then, as requested by many of the children, we spent the rest of the morning playing Heads Up, 7 Up... a favorite game of mine, which I had taught them a few weeks earlier. It was a very good day and a perfect ending to a wonderful week.

Through out the week I tried my best to talk to the children about the fact that they were graduating and going to primary school next year. I knew it would help me to hear that they were excited to move on to the next school. From the little that we were able to communicate it seemed that yes, the children were very excited to go to primary school. I also made a point through out the week to tell the children how great I thought they were. Again with the language barrier this wasn't quite as easy as it would be at home but I still think they understood me. On Friday evening I received a text message from Li Mei asking how the morning went. She went on to tell me that she thought I was a wonderful teacher and that she could really tell how much I loved the kids and how much they enjoyed me. I wish I had saved the text or at least wrote it down, but unfortunately it got deleted when my inbox was full. Regardless, it was one of the best compliments I have received since being here and it meant a lot coming from Li Mei. She can not speak English well at all and until two weeks ago, she was one of the teachers who I talked to the least. So this observation came more from her seeing what I was doing and not necessarily understanding everything I was saying.

Last week was a kind of tough transition. Myself, Kelsey and Erika taught English to the teachers of three of the kindergarten schools in the area (including my school). The teachers loved having us there to help improve their English and it was fun spending more time with the teachers at my school, but it certainly wasn't the same as teaching children. Several times through out the week when I was feeling a little sad, I looked through my pictures of the kids from the past few months. Although, it still makes me sad to look at the pictures and realize I probably will never see some of these kids again, the happiness that comes from looking at a picture and remembering the child, their story and their demeanor... remembering that moment in which the picture was taken... greatly over takes the sadness and always brings a smile to my face.

When I started working at Kindergarten Petagas in September I realized that the end of the school year was in a few short months. I (ignorantly) thought I would be better off if I tried not to get close to any of the 6 year olds since they would be graduating. Of course, that proved impossible, but I am so glad that was the case. I can not imagine not getting to know these children. Although I wish I had more time to spend with them, I feel quite lucky that I was able to spend the past three months with them; to get to know them and to learn from them. I feelprivileged to have been given the opportunity to mold their brains, and I am only hopeful that they did learn something a little something from me, too.

Top picture: Teacher Ivy making french toast in her classroom for her kids. Middle: Teacher Ivy's class watching her cook and enjoying their french toast. Bottom: Class ARed taking a goofy picture.

Graduation Week - part 1

First off I would like to apologize for the delay in this post. I had every intention of posting at the end of last week but it turned out I need a little more time to digest everything before I could write about it.

Last week concluded the school year here in Malaysia. As I suspected, the week went by much too quickly, but I did make a point to absorb every last minute of it. With the graduation program on Wednesday, our entire school spent both Monday and Tuesday mornings in the small auditorium rehearsing for Wednesday’s program (see bottom picture at the beginning of post). We all enjoyed having the opportunity to see each class’s dance which everyone had worked hard to prepare over the past month (Class A Red's dance in the top picture). After being gone in Brunei for a week, I especially liked having all the kids in one room as it made it easier for me to see them all and spend time with all of them.

On both Monday and Tuesday evenings, the teachers all came back to school to work on the backdrop for the stage. As you can see in the picture, it had the school’s name in Malay and Chinese and then we decorated it with balloons and graduation caps. This was one of the many highlights of the week for me. It was nice to get to spend more quality time with the teachers and especially outside of the regular school routine.

When Teacher Hiew and I arrived on Monday evening I was pleasantly surprised to see Leon sitting in the back of the auditorium. I had completely forgotten that he would be there. During the weeks he stays with his aunt who is one of our teachers, so naturally if she had to be there, he would be there as well.

Before walking in I slowly peeked my head around the doorway and whispered his name. It took a few times of me whispering for him to look up and see me and when he did he came racing toward me and jumped into my arms. That small moment flew to the top of my best experiences here thus far. The look on his face when he saw me and the excitement he had as he ran towards me still makes me a little teary eyed. I didn’t do too much to contribute to the actual backdrop on Monday night because I was happily keeping Leon entertained. I don’t think I have ever met such an attention-deprived child. We were at school from 8pm – 11:30 pm and he never slowed down… and typically this is when children his age should be getting tired and going to bed. One of the “activities” we did consisted of Leon jumping off the top step of the risers on the stage (there were only three steps and this was not high) and into my arms. I think he would have been very content doing this the whole night if it were not for my arms getting tired. He also really enjoyed rolling a roll of masking tape back and forth. I was amazed at how easy it was to keep him entertained. Why do we think we have to buy children all sorts of toys when they can be entertained with something as simple as a roll of tape? When I did decide to take breaks (from playing) and help the teachers, Leon would sit down nicely next to me and try his best to help too. I think it is safe to say that this night goes down as one of my favorite evenings here in Sabah. I was happy to be around my teachers and was able to give Leon the attention that he desperately needed.

4 of the boys in my ABC dance goofing off

Christo and Daryl (A Red 6yr. class) dressed for their dance

When Wednesday arrived I was a bit tired from late nights and early mornings of preparation and wasn't completely mentally prepared. However, I was excited to see everything come together. Since my third day of being here I had known that November 18^th was graduation, but it always seemed a long way off. Now all of a sudden it was here. It had completely snuck up on me. Teacher Hiew and I arrived at school around 7 a.m. The students were to be to school by 8 a.m. as normal and then the program started at 9 a.m. Up until the start of the program I kept busy making sure all of my boys got their "costumes" on and that you could see the letter or number on their shirt clearly. Once the program started I sat by the 6 year olds and attempted to keep them quiet as an introduction was given and the chairman of the school board gave a speech (which lasted a good 10 minutes or so as he said it in both Mandarin and Malay). My 6 year old boys were 3rd in the line up to preform. Not only did they look adorable in their costumes (which consisted of a white t-shirt that had either A,B,C or 1,2,3 on the front and blue shorts) but they did the best I'd ever seen them do. I was so proud of them and I could tell they had fun doing it. The whole graduation program consisted of the following: A welcome from one of the board members, a speech by the board chairman, a speech by three of the 6 year olds (one child gave the speech in Mandarin, one in Malay and one in English), a dance by each class (some of the classes did one dance all together and other classes split in half and did two dances), awards for the top three students in each class, recognition of each 6 year old... and the program closed with a song by the graduating 6 year olds.

Although it was sad for me to know that I wouldn't be teaching the 6 year olds next year, it was fun to see how excited they were about graduating. I especially enjoyed seeing all of the children with their parents. Several of the parents made a point to introduce themselves to me and gave me the ultimate compliment, saying their child often mentioned me at home and enjoyed having me as a teacher.

The graduation program was a success. I was pleased with how my 6 year old boys had done and felt blessed to be part of such a wonderful school and community. I enjoyed the day and didn't let myself get a little sad until it was all over. Not only did the 6 year olds graduate but it was my last day seeing Leon. Although I am sad, it is for purely for the selfish reason that I will not have him as a student anymore. Leon is going back to live with his family (he has two younger brothers) and next year he will go to a kindergarten that is closer to his house. He is so excited about this, as like any kid, he loves being with his parents and his brothers. Teacher Hiew has told me that he has very loving parents so I am hopeful he will now get more of the attention he deserves.

Believe it or not, I still have more to share about the week... however I am going to pause here and post Part 2 of this blog in a few days.

The 2009 graduating 6 year old class

Refreshing Week Behind - Bittersweet Week Ahead

This past week myself and the 4 other Malaysia YAGM spent the week in Brunei. It was our first retreat of the year and we will have two more through out the year (every 3 months). Going into the week, although I was excited for the opportunity to travel and visit another country, I was honestly a bit sad about the time away from KK and specifically the Kindergarten. Upon arriving in Brunei I realized it was nice to have some time to relax and reflect on the past three months. The week was much needed. It was a very good opportunity for us YAGM to get to know each other better and it was especially good for all of us to get to know Laura (our country coordinator) better and vice-versa. We had bible studies every day and spent time discussing our time here thus far; what was going well and what could be improved. Then we spent the rest of our days touring the capital city, Bandar Seri Begawan where we were staying. Click here to see a picture of the Sultan Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque we visited. This picture doesn't do it justice... it was stunning.

Thursday was the highlight of the retreat for me. Myself, Erika, Ellen and Kelsey took a day trip to Ulu Temburong National Park. The park covers about 10 % of Brunei. It was just so nice to get away from any type of city and spend some time in nature... the jungle! To get to the national park itself we had to take an hour long boat ride, a 20 minute car ride, and then another 20 minute boat ride, through the jungle. It was absolutely beautiful and quite impossible for me to describe. When we arrived at the national park we climbed up over 1000 steps and then climbed up even further into the canopy walk way. This walk way was on three different levels. When you got to the first level you were near the top of the trees. You walked a bit on the walk way and then went up again, this time you were at the top of the trees. Again walked on the walk way and then up to the top level which was above the trees. On the top level as I turned around I was completely surrounded by the jungle. For miles and miles it was all I could see. Again, the image is indescribable. We were on no time constraint so I took a little bit of time just to take it all in; breathe in the smell, listen to all the different sounds, and look into the jungle.

After descending from the canopy walkway and then the 1000 steps we took another short boat ride into the jungle and then walked a short distance to a small waterfall. Right before coming to the waterfall we came to across many, many butterflies. They were not like any butterflies I had every seen and were bright purple in color. They were flying all around us as we walked through. Quite magical, really. We were prepared with our swimsuits and were able to swim in the waterfall. After leaving we then spent at least an hour tubing down the main river back to our home base where we had lunch. The tubing was lots of fun and relaxing. We had good conversation and enjoy the beauty of the jungle that surrounded us. There was a good current that carried us down stream and we even came upon some baby rapids, which was fun.

The week left me refreshed and happy to return home to KK. It was a week of many stories, many laughs and smiles and even a few tears. It was a week of many prayers and great sharing as we all journey through this year together, depending on God but at many points still unsure of our direction. It was a wonderful week.

Now, this week will be different... both happy and sad. I can't wait to go back to work tomorrow and to see the children. However, the sad part is, this is our last week of school. Our graduation program is on Wednesday and the last day of the school year is Friday. The graduation program will be lots of fun. Each class has prepared two dances (one of which I have prepared with the 6 year old boys) and will preform them for the school and the parents that are able to attend. Thursday and Friday are fun celebration days but Teacher Hiew has said that not all of the kids come to school. So potentially Wednesday could be my last day seeing some of the 6 year olds. I still have yet to come to terms with this and am staying very much in the present, trying not to dwell on that too much. At the same time, these past couple weeks I have spent every free minute in the 6 year old classes playing games with them and doing activities. Last week (Monday, before I left for Brunei) I taught my ARed (6 year old class) how to play Heads Up - 7 Up, one of my favorite games from when I was that age. It was a bit difficult to explain at first but once they got the hang of it they really enjoyed it.

I will be sure to post a blog at the end of the week to tell you all about how the week went, especially the graduation program.

Here is a bible passage we discussed this week that I found quite meaningful.

"As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

-Colossians 3:12-14

I hope you all have a wonderful week!