Saturday, March 17, 2012

Malaysia!

Just this past week I returned from a theme park in Malaysia with my classmates from Mo. 5. We had a great time with roller coasters, rain, the DEAMON DROP and more rain! Unfortunately, the rain kept us from riding many of the rides that we wanted to ride and the indoor park was centered towards small children and shopping sooo... we went shopping! (duh)

Lucky (for us) our trip was mostly covered by the school and we only has to pay for the park pass. The theme park was massive even on the inside so once it began raining we still had plenty of places to go.

* On the escalator with my groupie! (from front to back) Sainy, Me, Tian, Julia and Than*

*There was even cotton candyy!*

While touring the theme park i noticed many Muslim people and Indian people, but i didn't see many europeans or westeners, which greatly surprised be because of the availability of hotels, shopping malls, a theme park geared towared the older AND the younger, restaurants, practically EVERYTHING, and it was all on an exclusive mountain! Yes, a mountain. We had to ride a ski lift type thing to get up there!

This to be exact:


Yea, it was pretty cool :) 

*A glimpse of the theme park*

* This is the theme park/resort on its advertisement sight, if you can tell, its on the top of either a mountain or a very big hill :) There was alot of fog almost the whole time we were there*

I believe the theme park is called Genting Skyway or maybe that was the name of the hotel we stayed at?? Not quite sure. All I really remember from that first day was waking up at 3:30am, driving for like 8 hours on a bus really having to pee and then plopping down on a hotel bed! haha

But something is named Genting Skywayt cuzz, i got a picture with it :) hehe



Did you know that Malaysia has their version of the twin towers?? Me either, but i got a picture with that too!  I'm not sure if they are modeled after the bombed ones in the US but...who knows :)




*My good friend Tian*

Incase your wondering, no, the towers were not at the theme park. We stopped at them on the way back from there.



So, I really am jumping around here but I'm just going in the order that my pictures are from when I put them on Facebook. 

But BEFORE anything, after waking up at 3am, getting to school at 4am and the stupid bus arriving LATE (really pissed me off) we drove off across the sunset, uh, i mean, border and he arrived at this little school in a little part of Malay. I thought it was a Muslim school because the first thing i saw was a lady come out with one of those little hats that they wear, but it was a mixed school.

The first person I met was an exchange student, Yay, from Japan. Do you want to know the truth? I forgot her name :) hehe, but shes a sweetheart soo, lets call her that :)

*The Sweetheart*

We were at the school to have an activity with them. Malay people have their own language and culture separate from Thai and we were there to learn and share. So, we started with an icebreaker:

*Perhaps you can tell that they mixed us up, the school students with their Muslim hats and us in our school uniform. That was a good thing but initially no one sat by me. I tend to look intimidating here with my height and i suppose my demeanor which is a tad different from the submissive like behavior they seem to have.

I don't want to bore you but the icebreaker consisted of us telling our name, country and favorite color. I was the second to last person of about 50 students and I will say that it was REALLY getting on my nerves the quietness of their voices. Like, come on, do you really think that if you WISPER a name that i can bareley pronounce anyway, its gonna help anything. Let me answer that for you, no.
 By the time the turn rolled around to me everyone was talking to the people next to me which made it practically impossible to hear anything at all, but when  I stood up everything went dead quiet. I smiled at the pleasant surprise and said my part, "Hi, my name is Rachel, I'm from USA and my favorite color is purple," and i made a POINT to say it nice and loud :) Second surprise? I got a round of applause!

After the ever so "successful" icebreaker we went to a different location outside where we began learning a traditional style of Malay writting.

*Its basically a mini pot with a dripper hats heated up with a wax inside allowing you to write on any canvas! Then you can color it in with colored water and it the color will stay within the barriers of what you drew because of the barriers of wax!

*Pure art...aaha, right*


I think our instructors were trying to keep us busy because they kept the art stuff out for a really long time. Of course, as always a few of those stupid kids ended up burning themselves with the wax,but, hey, life goes on.
My friends and I began to get bored and when that happens, the camera comes out :)

I'd like you to meet my best school friends, the 4 musketeers!

*Julia, Tian, Than, Me*

Other Pictures we took:



*The School*

*Julia (half thai, half english)

I ended up making alot of new friends that day. Some of them really only think of America of a really far away place but they were interested. Its amazing where a smile will get you...




*This might be my favorite picture :)*


We later got into groups and tried to teach each other our languages (FAIL). Yes, a complete fail.

At the end of our day with them they wanted me to make the 'thank you for inviting us speach' which i expected to also be a complete fail, but it wasn't so! I got up there and said 'hi!' which was followed by a chorus of 'HELLO' which made me laugh and i proceeded to thank them for sharing their language and culture with us and that I hoped we'd see each other again! Their smiles kept me from being nervous so it made for an easy peasy speech :)


Well, thats the end :) Thanks for reading :) Any questions? comment <3





Rach




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