Sometimes…Malaysia

Sometimes, in Malaysia…

 

…it takes two hours for you and your teachers to locate a student’s house during home visits.

 

…you sleep on the street (literally, on the street) so that you can go hiking the next morning.

 

…a student gets upset with you when you can’t help them with their Bahasa homework.

 

…you work up a sweat teaching. Oh wait, that’s just the Malaysian heat and their refusal to turn on the air conditioning.

 

…you start walking up a broken escalator, and it starts to move…the wrong way.

 

…you’ll hear the word “Teacher!” more than 1000 times a day.

 

…you are assigned to be a receptionist for Parent Teacher Conferences, and can’t pronounce any of the children’s names.

 

…you get to go on a field trip to a musical production that’s all in Chinese…with terribly translated English subtitles.

 

…the highlight of your week is going to McDonald’s.

 

…you ALMOST escape from the Escape Room!

 

…you coach a soccer team, and all the players are better than you will ever be in your entire lifetime.

 

…you coach a soccer team, and you don’t actually know how to play soccer.

 

…you ask the kids how to say “thank you,” and they teach you an obscenity instead. You find out about it later when you use the obscenity while trying to thank your fellow teacher.

 

…the school lunch includes chicken feet.

 

…“Perry the Platypus” is a favorite insult of the eight-year-olds.

 

…the car enthusiast kid in your class becomes upset with you because you’re an American but you don’t have a nice car.

 

…you have to have a Mean Girls talk with the girls in your class because you are sick of their drama.

 

…you go to the mall because you want to ride the indoor roller coaster, only to discover that an amusement park pass will set you back $15. 🙁

 

…you entertain the students in your class by making Batman masks for them.

 

…you have an interview for a school district in the US at 1:00 pm their time…which is 1:00 am your time.

 

…your co-teachers try to take you bowling, but when you get there you discover that it’s closed. So you go batik painting instead.

 

…you have to tell a kid that the dead roses in the vase that he has been faithfully refilling are not going to come back to life.

 

…you learn that you co-worker’s family members are headhunters in East Malaysia.

 

…you learn to use the word “La” for emphasis.

 

…you go to Times Square, Central Park, and the Twin Towers.

 

…you go to a craft museum and your co-worker talks about how all of this stuff is still used in her village.

 

…the children infect one member of you team after the other with their various colds and stomach ailments.

 

…you teach a baker what American-sized cookies look like, and that it is ok to eat raw cookie dough.