I’ve been in Malaysia for nearly 4 months now, which feels crazy to say because it doesn’t feel like it’s been that long. And yet, at the same time, I feel as though I have experienced a whole world of new adventures and skills.
I have been teaching a steady class for two months now, and I feel as though I have perhaps finally got a handle on it. While I believed that I was good at multitasking before I got here, teaching a class of 7–14-year-olds of different ethnicities, nationalities, cultural backgrounds, first languages, English levels, math levels, school experience, and more has been a new kind of challenge.
There are so many things happening at once in a classroom. Here’s an example from last week: I was trying to explain a new concept to one student, answer another student’s question, stop someone from distracting the person beside them, stop someone else from drawing on the table, and remember which student is on which worksheet, and then suddenly the lights go out because one of them turned on the bathroom light and it was too much for the breaker, and now there’s no air-conditioning, Wi-Fi, or light. All this chaos, and yet it has only cemented my wish to become a teacher after I graduate.
I am slowly learning how to teach these particular kids, rather than just teaching a class. And this is probably my favourite part. When I first started teaching them, I was still trying to figure out their personalities—who I needed to keep an eye on, who was trying to read their library book instead of listening to the lesson—and their English levels—if the kids sitting silently in class understood me, or if they were just shy. And if their nodding meant that what I was trying to explain made sense, or if they were just being polite.
Now, I am beginning to know them.
They open up, say hi to me on the street, write me little notes, tell me about their days, make me artwork, and now—finally—tell me the truth when I ask if they understood what I just said. While this might sound insignificant, it feels like a huge accomplishment knowing these kids trust me enough to be honest. Their progress is also something that I can actually see now. The strides these kids have made in their work are amazing. And while it really is the students who are the reason they are succeeding—they are the ones putting in the work, doing the homework, paying attention to lessons, and continuing to try—I still feel as though I am making at least a small difference. This feeling means a lot to me, as I struggle with only being here for 6 months—a period that when I got here felt like so long and now is more than halfway finished.
Some photos with fellow interns we’ve seen recently 🙂
Outside of school, I have also started to develop little routines that I never expected to have.
One of them is going out in the evenings.
I have made a goal to get a minimum of 10,000 steps a day. And so far, I have been pretty good at accomplishing this. I go on walks by myself or with my coworker, or I do the stairs up to our apartment. But sometimes, this translates to going out for dinner when I’m too tired for a walk—being outside counts for something, right?
This is something I do once in a blue moon in Canada, but here it has become a fairly normal part of my week. I love seeing the neighbourhood come alive after dark. In Kuala Lumpur, people seem to come out after 7pm in a way so incredibly different from my hometown. The streets get busier, the food stalls fill up, people gather together, kids go out to play, and suddenly the neighbourhood feels completely different from how it does during the day when it is hot and humid and people are scarce. I like to head out alone, eat at a food stall with one headphone in—or none at all—and people watch.
People watch me too. That is pretty much a given, especially whenever I am alone. Being a woman, white, and half a head taller than most of the men probably makes me even more noticeable. While I still find the attention strange, I don’t feel unsafe. Sometimes these stares turn to conversations or some sort of inclusion in a culture I am still unfamiliar with in many ways. One such moment of inclusion came a few weeks ago when I went out around 8pm for shawarma.
There’s a stall that I frequent right near our apartment—so close that sometimes I look out of our 26-floor window to see if anyone is sitting in the plastic chairs outside because that normally means they’re open—that sells shawarma, and they are REALLY good at it. After ordering I realized that they didn’t have any open tables, and so I told them that I would do ‘take away’ and they could just pack it up for me, but I was refused. Immediately, the man I’m speaking to yells at one of the cooks, who yells at a younger man who immediately clears a bright red plastic table off that was sitting in the corner of the kitchen—this whole time I am trying to get across the idea that ‘it’s okay, I can take my dinner home’ but no one will take that as an option at this point. This bright red table is then wiped down and set directly in the middle of the kitchen—keep in mind this is a large, covered stall with seating on the street. There is no seating inside, and definitely not in the kitchen—and then a chair is placed beside the table and I am ushered onto it. The man who I believe is in charge—possibly the owner—puts his hands out to me, as if to say stay, and then everyone goes back to cooking. I then sat there for a long minute wondering what was going on. A few minutes later, they brought me my food, not in its takeout container, but on a platter with a napkin. Eventually, I realized that they were not confused about what I wanted at all. They simply did not want me to leave. Apparently, taking my food home was not an acceptable solution to their full dining area. And so, I sat there, in the middle of a busy kitchen, eating my delicious dinner while everyone around me continued working.
It was such a small interaction, and I doubt any of them thought much of it afterwards, but I remember it. There was something really nice about being included without asking. I was still the obviously foreign woman sitting alone in a food stall kitchen, but they acted as if it was normal, as if I was a regular customer who they recognized and wanted to make space for.
Some fun memories over the last few months 🙂
I still don’t think of myself as a local of Malaysia, nor of KL. I don’t think that my short 6 months here will make me one. Yet, I feel somewhat like I am becoming a local of my neighbourhood. I have routines here, I have people who recognize me, students who have become genuinely important to me and expect to see me, and coworkers who I now consider friends. I still feel very Canadian and very foreign, and that won’t change. But I also wonder what will happen when I do go back. Will I miss going out alone to food stalls in the evening, people watching? Will I miss being part of the evening food stall atmosphere? While I am visiting Malaysia, and I am a tourist in the giant city that is Kuala Lumpur, I do feel that in the last few months I have become a local of my little neighbourhood.
