Woaaaah, WE'RE HALF WAY THERE!

I now have been in Malaysia for five months. That is longer than Donald Trump has been in the White House. I don’t mean to brag, but I think I’m doing a better job at whatever I’m supposed to be doing than he is.

I can’t believe I’m already halfway through my Fulbright grant. There were times in the last few months when I didn’t think I’d make it this far. Now, I am worried that my time here will not be enough to accomplish my goals and to make strong connections with my community.

Without realizing it, I have become more adapted to life in Malaysia than I had imagined. This surprising realization of my adaptation came when I arrived at the mid-year meetings that the Malaysian American Commission on Educational Exchange (MACEE, aka my Fulbright Malaysia bosses) put on for us last week in Kuala Lumpur. Speaking with other ETAs about our shared and completely different experiences made me realize how truly unique my placement is. My life is especially different when compared to the experiences of ETAs in Kelantan and Terengganu, far more conservative states on mainland Malaysia with nearly 100% Muslim communities. My school in Sri Aman, Sarawak is about 40% Iban (a group indigenous to Borneo), 20% Malay (Malaysian Muslim), 20% Chinese, and 10% other (other indigenous groups, Indian, Indonesian). I can show my elbows at school. I can drink beer in my house and even in my town, where other teachers and the parents of my students see me out and often insist on buying a round. Pork exists, but sadly, no bacon.

While I am thankful for my relatively diverse and liberal community, there are some things that I envy of the ETAs who live in Peninsular Malaysia. Many of them live within an hour of each other. My roommate and I live two and a half hours from the closest ETAs, and 4 hours from all the other placements. I am isolated, more so than I initially realized, but I mostly appreciate how that isolation has forced me into getting to know my community. Sometimes I laugh to myself about how if someone could live in two of the most remote parts of the world, I’ve already lived there. Kodiak Island, Alaska and Sri Aman, Sarawak on Borneo are pretty far out there. But I got this. I can handle the isolation. For now…

At the mid-year meetings, I found myself feeling homesick. Not for Alaska or Abu Dhabi or Oregon, though. I was homesick for my students in Sri Aman! Instead of being in an over air-conditioned conference room with 97 other Americans all I wanted was to be in one of my school’s hot, stuffy classrooms, playing a game with my students. Luckily, Sebastian is visiting Malaysia, so after those long days sitting in the conference room, he was able to distract me from missing my students by exploring new parts of Kuala Lumpur and watching Anthony Bourdain episodes about Borneo and Chiang Mai, Thailand, which is where we are going in a few days!

This blog, "Uprooted", is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations. 

Guitars for my students

Most of the time I fill my blog with personal stuff: happy feelings, stories, and sometimes grumbles. I don't ask much of you as a reader, but just this once I want to use this platform to share with you a project I am fundraising for. To sum it up (you can read the long version below), I am raising money to start a guitar loaning program at the secondary school I teach at in Malaysia. There is no music education here, and I really want to start a program at my school because my students are so passionate about music. Do with it what you will, but it would mean a lot to my students and I if you could help us out by donating or sharing the Go-Fund-Me page! Thanks for reading, I promise I won't make a habit of spamming my blog with fundraising requests!

As many of you know, this year I am working as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant (ETA) in Malaysia. My placement is on the island of Borneo, in a rural town called Sri Aman. The secondary school I work at, SMK St. Luke, sits atop a hill and from the classrooms, you can see the surrounding rivers, jungle, palm plantations, and rice paddies. While Sri Aman is in a stunning location, it is very remote and is a four-hour drive to the nearest city, Kuching. 

All my students are amazing, but I have become particularly close to the 120 or so students who live at my school’s hostel. These students’ families either live in villages too far to drive them to or from school each day and/or they don’t have the financial means to feed and send their kids to school. The hostel students are almost always around so I get to spend a lot of time with them. The students are all genders and range in age from 12 to 18. They are smart, hilarious, and eager to engage. We eat dinner together at the dining hall and they teach me how to say funny things in Iban, their native language. Their absolute favorite is when I bring my guitar and we sit around and sing songs while we take turns playing the instrument.

The hostel students cannot leave the school grounds unless it is one of the 2 weekends per month that they can to go home. So, it is no surprise that these kids are super bored when they aren’t studying or in class, and they need something productive to do in their free time. They are always asking me to come to the hostel to teach them to play the guitar, and I do, but there is only one guitar and limited teaching resources.  I want to raise money to purchase 10-20 guitars to create a free and sustainable guitar loaning program for the students. If I can raise enough money to buy even a few guitars, students will be able to borrow a guitar for free and they will be able to practice the skills that I teach them, and after I leave, they will be able to continue practicing and they can also teach themselves to play.

I am also applying for grant funding through the US Embassy of Malaysia to create guitar guidebooks for and with the students. The guitar guidebooks will have information about how to care for and maintain a guitar, as well as chord diagrams, and the chords and lyrics to songs that the students enjoy singing and playing. The guitar guidebooks will be available to check out along with the guitars. After purchasing the guitars, I will begin holding guitar classes with the hostel students. The classes will teach them about the guitar loaning program and we will talk about how to care for a guitar. Then, they will get to learn the basics of playing the guitar! They must attend at least 1 class to be able to check out a guitar on their own, which will ensure the longevity of the program. Eventually, I will identify a few students who will be responsible for passing down the knowledge of guitar care and making sure the guitar loaning program continues even after my departure.

The school supports this idea because it means that the hostel students will be practicing their English more by learning guitar from me and by playing their favorite music, much of which happens to also be in English. The school wants to see the hostel students’ test scores go up; the students want to learn to play guitar; and I want to be able to leave SMK St. Luke knowing I have helped provide an opportunity for creativity and continued learning. It is a win for everyone!

I have worked with a music shop in Kuching to give me a 20% discount if I can purchase 5 or more guitars. This makes each guitar cost US$40. Please consider contributing a little bit, for every dollar counts and the more guitars I can purchase, the more students get to learn to play the guitar! 70% of the money raised (hopefully US$700) will go to purchase guitars, and the remaining  30% (hopefully US$300) will go towards strings, cases, tuners, picks, and capos that the students can use with the guitars.

Think of it like this: You probably spend $10 to $40 every week on stuff like beer, happy hour, brunch, or dinner.  Would you be willing to give up one week of spending that money on you in order to donate to these kiddos who really, really want to learn to play the guitar? Please consider it!

In case you missed the link up top, here it is: https://www.gofundme.com/guitars-for-students-in-malaysia

Some of my hostel students and I take a break from singing
"All of Me" by John Legend. I love these kids with my whole heart!

This blog, "Uprooted", is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations. 

Eating with my hands

Moving to Malaysia has forced me to confront many norms of eating. First off, there is little distinction between the types of food one might eat for different meals here. Breakfast is not milk and cereal nor is it French toast with bacon. Lunch is not a sandwich with soup. Dinner is not chicken enchiladas with roasted vegetables and it's definitely not thin crust pizza topped with arugula and goat cheese. Breakfast here is noodles or rice. Lunch here is noodles or rice. Dinner here is noodles or rice. Of course, there are different variations of these dishes. Kolok mee is a ramen style noodle with pork often eaten at breakfast time, mee goreng is generic fried noodles, and mee goreng ayam is fried noodles with chicken. Then there’s nasi goreng, which is fried rice, nasi goreng ayam, which is fried rice with chicken, and nasi ayam is chicken rice. I could go on, but you get the theme: noodles or rice for all meals.

In addition to the altered variety of foods, modes of eating are different. If using utensils, one always has a spoon in their left hand, and in the right is either chopsticks or a fork. Whenever I am out with teachers, they always ask the server to bring me a fork because I am too slow (and embarrassing to be seen with) while eating with chopsticks. Over time, my ability to eat with chopsticks has improved, but the teachers still insist that I use a fork.

To me, the most interesting part of eating culture here is that it is extremely common to eat with your hands, especially when dining at home. My mentor tells me that eating with her hands allows her to enjoy her food more than she does when eating with silverware. The textures are felt not only with her tongue, but with her fingers, too. She thinks that eating with her hands tricks her brain into thinking the food tastes better, since she is experiencing it with her touch, smell, sight, and of course, taste.

Initially, eating with my hands intimidated me and frankly, it grossed me out. I was raised in a Westernized world in which eating with one’s hands is considered “low class”. In the States, we think that eating with your hands makes you a slob, and it is definitely abnormal unless you are eating a designated “finger food”. I didn’t really realize until coming here that your mode of eating – whether with silverware of chopsticks or only with your right hand or with both of your hands – says heaps about your perceived socioeconomic and cultural background.

I have been eating dinner with the boarding students about twice every week and since I am constantly forgetting to bring my own utensils from home, I have gotten to try my hand at (ha!) eating with my hands. My first time I was nervous: What if I do it wrong and all the students laugh at me? What if I drop all the food before it reaches my mouth and I look like a sloppy baby? But somehow the tin tray of (you guessed it) rice and chicken had to make it into my belly, so I pinched some rice between my fingers and nervously shoveled it into my mouth. I looked around, expecting the hostel students to be giggling at me like they always do, but no one paid any attention to the way I was eating. All the students sat there quietly eating their chicken and rice, some with spoons and some with their hands, but no one seemed to care that I had forgotten my spoon.

Then it occurred to me: eating with their hands is completely normal for these kids. Of course they didn’t make fun of me; touching one’s food with one’s fingers before putting in your mouth is not completely ruined by stigma here like it is in the States. The kids had no idea of my internal debate of whether or not I should eat with my hands because they had absolutely no clue that that norm in their culture is not a norm in my culture. They assumed that for me, an American, eating with my hands is identical to the act of Dayak (umbrella term for people indigenous to Borneo) Malaysians eating with their hands. And here’s the thing: whether you are American or Dayak or whatever, social stigma aside, eating with your hands is an identical act that is and should be a part of the human experience! It’s just that some us find so much wrong with it because we are so obsessed with defining our social class via the way we put our food in our mouths. So, here’s what I think you should do if you’ve never eaten with your hands: try it! Here’s how: 1) wash your hands free of germs and negative stigma 2) eat with your hands 3) wash your hands again. Enjoy!

This blog, "Uprooted", is not an official Fulbright Program site. The views expressed on this site are entirely those of its author and do not represent the views of the Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State, or any of its partner organizations.