Rainy Season

So rainy or monsoon season started the week before last. So far, I don't think it has been that bad. It will rain on and off during the day and night. Sometimes there will be a huge downpour and other times just a light rain. Luckily, I haven't had to go through the gate at the end of the driveway when it is raining and there is that huge puddle. I know when that time comes it will be a pain in the butt. I will probably have to roll up my pants and wear shower shoes and carry my socks and shoes so they don't get wet. I think that the way they did the grate for the water after the gate and put it on level ground rather than on the slope was not a smart idea. I will probably have to start waiting sometimes under the front balcony for rides rather than outside of the gate. It is cooler now and so people have started wearing jackets, but not me. It is not cold enough yet. It is more humid thought now.

I can tell I am not going to enjoy doing laundry during rainy season. It was hot earlier today when I started and so by mid-afternoon most of my clothes were close to dry. Tonight when I got ready to head back home all of the clothes were really wet and that is just from the humidity. I have to hang my clothes back in the closet with the door open and drape clothes around the room, so that they can dry. I have both the fan and air con running. It feels like a sauna in my room.  A couple weeks ago I had to take my clothes to a laundry place to get them cleaned. It turned out ok, but I don't know if I want to do it on a weekly basis. I am kind of nervous that something will happen to my clothes. People just drop their clothes off, and they are washed and dried and even ironed there. So, it is not like I am doing the laundry myself. I probably won't sleep well though tonight. So we shall see how long I hold out before I take my clothes and have them done for me. There are some clothes that I don't want dried and they said that they would put them in a bag wet, but I don't want them in a bag all day being wet.

I am sure things will get more interesting as we get farther along into monsoon season. Right now I don't really miss the snow and cold, but I am sure as I get closer to Christmas I will. I have only spent one Christmas with no snow and that was because I was on a cruise, and it didn't really feel like Christmas.

Malay

I would like to learn Malay so I can better converse with people. I know a few greetings and a couple phrases but that is it. It is hard to know what I want to learn to say. Plus, at school we all speak English since it is an International School and not all people speak Malay. It is hard to practice during the day since I am busy teaching and working in an English speaking environment. When I am talking to people though sometimes it is hard, and we have to have another person come help translate some of the words. On the other hand I feel like sometimes people can switch to Malay when they have something private that they want to talk about and don't want me to understand. Sometimes I am glad I don't know what it going on. Just like at other school I have taught at, even though we all spoke English I am not one of those gossiping people, and I was left out of the loop, which was fine with me. I have to also remember that it will take me probably a couple years to speak, read, and write another language fluently, so I must be patient with myself.

Library Thing

So, in my cataloging class I learned about this cool website called Library Thing. It allows people to become members and catalog their own library. I am excited. I started just going off of my reading list for the last few years, and I have started with some of the books I had in an Excel document. I will have to wait until I get back to America to add the rest. Besides having my books cataloged finally I hope that I can share my library with others and get ideas of books that I should read and friends and family can also look at books I have read to see if they are any good. If I wanted I could do like an International book club. That would be kind of cool. Where I was reading the books that friends and family are also reading. Just one more way to connect to those I miss. I am doing one for the school, and I thought that maybe I could connect my student here with some of the students back home. Anyway right now my brain is just swimming with all these ideas that I have.

School Library

So, now that I am almost done with the cataloging class I am going to start revamping our library. It is small and not well managed. There is another teacher who kind of takes care of it, but she is grateful for the help. I got good ideas from my class and also from working with people at my old school. 

I am going to create a website which I can do with a gmail account. I am going to enter our books into the website Library Thing that I learned about in class. I am going to decorate the bulletin board and have a monthly theme. I think I might do half the bulletin board like that and the other half book of the week or month. I am spreading the books out so they are not packed so tight into the shelves. I am going to have at least one book every few shelves facing forward. They have not many books but lots of shelves; I think, the library at one time might have been bigger. I hope to have a small display of books to go with the monthly theme. I want the students to start adding reviews to the books on Library Thing.

I am hoping to come up with some sort of incentive program. I am trying to increase their reading. People here are not big readers. The idea hasn't fully percolated yet, but I am think they have to read like so many books on a list and add a review and then they get a prize.  I don't know what kind of list I want to have yet.