NYE Malaysia Edition

I had an amazing time traveling to Malaysia to celebrate New Years and explore a city that I had been hearing about since I arrived 8 months ago. Penang is an island just off the border of Thailand & Malaysia and is a common destination for travelers looking to renew their tourist visas, a journey known by expats as a "visa run".

2 of my coworkers were also interested to explore the culturally diverse island and eat some good Indian food; but what had really struck my interest was the rumors of street art in the small historic district of George Town! After riding in a mini-van for over 11 hours we arrived at the overwhelmingly huge Prangin Mall and grabbed a taxi to our hostel in George Town.

We dropped our stuff and b-lined it to Little India and enjoyed a family-style dinner. As we finished our meal we heard a commotion outside and it turned out to be the annual Hare Krishna Festival. Locals insisted we join in and taught us their dance moves & songs. Everyone was clapping, dancing, laughing and cheering in the streets as this would be the one day of the year that Krishna would come out to see the people!

 

Sunday we enjoyed coffee and bagels (!!!) at The Mugshot cafe before renting bicycles and spending the day exploring.

The waterfront was beautiful and we walked one of the larger jetty's - which was like a small pier with shops, home stays, vendors, boats, and a temple at the very end.

We also made our way through a few floors of the mall, a fancy hotel on the water, a cemetery, Chinatown, and many other historic buildings and interesting street-scapes, sculptures, and art along the way!

Monday we headed out of town on a local bus to the National Park where there are many trails and beaches you can hike to. We ended up taking a boat out to the farthest beach, Monkey Beach and then hiking for about an hour up to an old lighthouse! It was quite a trek up there through the jungle trail, but the view was amazing!!

Tuesday we had a more relaxing day, more coffee & another bagel :) Haley and I went back to Little India on a mission for chai tea and henna work and I spent the afternoon following the George Town Exploratory Map which highlighted the street art in the district.

It was interesting to see how many other people were also there to see the art and the locals were happy to provide maps and directions to the tourists! Many of the pieces I had to wait my turn to photograph as there were lines of people waiting to pose with the artwork! It was really interesting to see how excited people got about finding them and interacting with them. A little different than graffiti hunting, but fun in a different way. Also, there were still lots of uncharted small paintings, stencils, stickers, tags, and scrawls to find!

Then I spent the evening enjoying draft Guinness, hookah, conversing and sharing with 2 intelligent & inspiring women, and feeling grateful for all the experiences of 2013 and the culmination of contrast that brought me to this amazing opportunity to live abroad, travel, and cross paths with some of the most interesting people from all over the world! 

And the greatest part is that while I consider 2013 to be my best year yet - 2014 is setting up to be even more expansive and more abundant! 

~ gratitude ~

Time Flies When You're Living The Dream

The end of 2013 absolutely flew by! After a month long break in October I found it challenging to get back into my rhythm in class and I am still enjoying the daily challenges of working with twenty-seven 5 year olds! I still find myself caught off guard with moments of overwhelming love for my students, it is so magical working with kids and getting the opportunity to develop bonds with them and get to know each of their little personalities! I often feel completely unqualified to be teaching, which - let's be honest, I really have no formal training at all. But I would like to think that what I lack in training I have been able to make up for with passion, creativity, and patience! My kids are completely crazy and I often have to remind myself that its OK because they're FIVE! :) This has been the most transformative year of my life and I am so grateful to be here. I learn so much from my kids every day its unbelievable how much impact these little people have on me!

Thus, as I have continued to be immersed in all aspects of life here I realized how much has happened in the past 2 months that slipped past my blog! So while each of these experiences has been so amazing and they each deserve their own story, I'm going to have to give the abridged version!

In November we celebrated Loi Krathong - a beautiful traditional festival on the full moon of the 12th lunar month where they float lanterns into the river into the night sky to worship the footprint of the Buddha in the river. The lanterns are handmade from banana leaves, lotus and other flowers, candles, incense, and paper. There is also a feeling of renewal, forgiveness and good luck in the symbolic act of letting the lantern go. There may have been a few mishaps and lanterns in the palm trees, but no one seemed worried and everyone just pointed and laughed as they burned out eventually :)

I also continue to frequent one of my favorite beaches, TonSai - one of my trips I went with 2 other teachers and as we were on the beach waiting for our mini-bus back we came upon a group of monkeys. Eager to photograph them up close in the wild we all grabbed our cameras and just moments after setting down my backpack I heard my housemate Joel shout, "He has your wallet!" and as I turned to look the monkey was taking off towards a big tree! Our attempts to bribe and/or shout at it only made him climb higher, until finally he perched on a branch long enough to get the zipper open and then proceeded to take each item out of my wallet one-by-one and throw it to the ground. Only one 20 baht bill fell down into the water and I was able to retrieve the rest of my things sprawled across the sand and rocks!!

In December Nikki & I were invited to visit the farm of a family who owns a restaurant near our school that we often eat lunch at. The owner is an amazing woman and has been so kind to me ever since we arrived! I have met her grandchildren and go to yoga with one of her daughters. They took us on an amazing day trip to the farm!! On the way we stopped for a short hike to see the amazing Angel Buddha statue. After a tour of their fruit farm and another quick hike up to a lookout spot we headed out to a lake where we ate lunch motoring around the water on a pontoon raft!!

Christmas is celebrated here, but the Thai people are much more into New Years' and we actually had to work on Christmas Day! We led Christmas activities for the whole school throughout the day and then in the evening the teachers organized a potluck dinner! Many of my students brought me gifts throughout the week and I was overwhelmed by how many presents I was given! It was truly so kind to be given so much by these families! Towels, pants, headphones, a scarf, a purse, picture frame, coffee mug, cookies - it was crazy!

I also received several cards & packages from home with more thoughtful gifts! I feel truly blessed this year for my birthday and for the holidays I have felt an outpouring of love from my friends & family!! Thanks to everyone who made me feel the love from 8000 miles away as well to my friends here that helped make the holidays special in a foreign land!