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Published: March 16th 2008
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It has been an interesting week..!
I didn't have to start working at the YWCA Vocational Training Opportunity Centre until Monday, so I had last weekend to just settle in. Good job too, as I was feeling decidedly tired and miserable, missing the comforts of home, and just feeling a bit lonely! I also started to get a cold and sore throat, and got absolutely covered in swollen mosquito bites on my arms, hands, toes, even my face. But I asked them to put up a nail and I was able to hang the mosquito net I bought so am relatively unscathed now finally!
The accommodation is basic (as expected I suppose!). For now I am on my own, but at some point I will be sharing my room (if/when another volunteer arrives). It is on the same corridor as all dorms in which the girl trainees stay. I also have to share a large bathroom with them all. I get my meals included, and I eat in the canteen with all the girls which is good for getting to chat to them. All the staff repeatedly ask me how I am finding the meals, so trying not to
lie I just say "ok" or "fine". They seem to mean do I find the meals too spicy, but normally that's not the problem, it is more just the institutional blandness of the food that is getting to me!! And anyway after 6 weeks of almost every meal with rice or noodles I am getting a little bored! It is all part of the challenge!
Obviously I was also a bit anxious about how the teaching English would go. So now that I have made it through the first week I am very proud of myself!!!!!
All the girls here study 1 of 5 vocational courses, and for the whole of my first week because their teacher was away I was with the 14 girls in the Culinary & Baking class (i.e. they all hope to work in a bakery, a restaurant or in the hotel industry). A couple of times other volunteers came and cooked with them, but a couple of days I had to do baking with them (obviously it had to be very basic but fortunately they wanted to do cookies and cakes!). For the rest of the time we just did some very basic
work around customer service, planning a menu, descriptive words for food, revising in a more fun and active way the long list of Nutrition notes they had copied (they seem to do a lot of work just copying...) etc. It was hard to come up with ideas for what to do all day from 8.30-4!!
Most can speak English quite well, although there are a few who can speak just a few words and phrases which is difficult. There are quite a few rules and they seem to have a fairly set way of doing most things, and also they all started off quite shy. But at least once a day I have been getting everyone to say something to me and to get up and write on the board. Gradually as the week went on, an increasing number of the girls were answering my questions, enjoying volunteering their ideas on the board and asking me more questions about english words or about life in London etc etc, which is really nice. Some of them have asked for my e-mail address and even asked me to go away on a weekend with them, so hopefully most of them like
me and are enjoying the novelty of having me around to help them!
Next week I will continue with C&B for 2 hours each morning (8.30-10.30am) - just teaching English thankfully! Then I will be starting to work with the girls in the Sewing & Tailoring class for 2 hours in the afternoon (2-4pm). Apparently more of them have a lot of difficulty with English. I have to come up with lots of activities to do in the evening to keep them occupied and active! Some girls taught me to play a local board game called Carrom last week, and I have bought a few cheap indoor games and some table-tennis balls to play indoors when it rains - which it tends to do a little bit every day! (They have a big games room which has Carrom boards plus lots of table-tennis tables and bats but no balls, what a waste!!). I am also going to be doing some group singing (teaching them some easy English songs, and maybe learning some local songs from them). Not sure what else to do yet!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Last weekend I saw a bit more of KL, including out of town to Mid-Valley for shopping and Bangsar for food and shopping. This weekend I went to
Melaka, a historical city a couple of hours south of KL, which still has lots of signs of it's Dutch past as well as a vibrant Chinatown area. I thought it was really lovely. Unfortunately when I tried to buy a bus ticket back at about 4pm today, all of the bus companies had sold out for the day!!! This is the first time I've had trouble getting a bus as they are so frequent, and even my Rough Guide says no need to buy in advance! I ended up bumping into two ladies from Australia and New Zealand also trying to get back to KL and we shared a taxi and it was nice to chat to people for a couple of hours. It was expensive but I suppose it was only GBP10!!!
Sorry for the very long entry! Hopefully it will give you all a good idea of exactly what it is like!
Any news from the UK gratefully received!
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