Turtle Beach by Aimee



The day at Turtle Beach was really fun.  It is about a 25 minute car ride and then a 15 minute boat ride from where we live.  We went with the Millers who are people from Dalat.  The boat ride was really fun and fast.  When we got to the beach we started swimming.  The water was really relaxing and warm!  We also climbed on huge rocks and that gave us a really good view.  There was no one else there except us.  But later on in the afternoon people started passing by on the boats.  After a little while swimming I felt a stinging pain on my leg.  I got out of the water and that's when I saw a HUGE jellyfish!  It had died and it had drifted to shore.  I don't know if that dead jellyfish had stung me (Mrs. Miller thought dead ones can still sting) or if it was another jellyfish.  My mom and Mrs. Miller dragged it to shore with two sticks.  It was really gross.  I put some cream on the stinging.  Then we started to be more cautious in the water. But we weren't cautious enough because Elizabeth and Hannah got stung also.  Elizabeth saw the jelly fish that stung her but no one else saw any other jellyfish other than the dead one.  Right after that the boat came and we left. We were lucky because right when we stepped off the pier to go to our car it started to rain!  It was a very exciting and amazing day at Turtle Beach.

Just after I got stung.  Was it this huge dead jellyfish that did it?



This is Turtle Beach. That might be my dad down below.





One of the turtles we saw at the Turtle Sanctuary farther down the beach.

Lizzie got stung the most.  This is taken two days after she got stung on her leg.  She also got stung on her thumb.



Rainy Season by Hannah

Rainy Season

 

In Malaysia, when it rains, it rains really hard.  Right now, we are in the middle of rainy season and it seems like the thunder and lightning and storms will never stop.  Sometimes there can be a storm for the entire day.  It can be fun but at the same time it gets to be a disruption because first of all, in certain places at school there are no umbrellas so we usually end up getting soaking wet.  (The school has a lot of umbrellas but people will be coming and going to certain places and using up all the umbrellas at that place so sometimes there are none left where you want them.)  Also, if you wear nice shoes they get ruined really easily in the rain.  Another thing is that every time it rains the boys go out and play barefoot soccer in the mud and rain so for Social Studies and English, our classes after PE and Lunch, the classrooms smell awful!  Although barefoot soccer does sound fun.

I am pointing to an upside down cockroach.  Come to think of it, we have seen fewer of these bugs since the rainy season started!

 

SCIPS Exchange by Aimee

Yesterday we had a SCIPS Exchange.  That is when Grade 5's from another school called SCIPS (St. Christopher's International Primary School) come and check out our school.  We did lots of fun stuff. We did lots of experiments with nitrogen.  First we did experiments with balloons. We put the balloons in nitrogen and they shrunk.  Then we put some water balloons in nitrogen and they froze.  It looked so cool.  Then we went on a treasure hunt and we had to answer multiple choice questions to get the next clue.  Then after that we went down to the amphitheater and we got a surprise. First we put nitrogen in a coke bottle and it exploded so loud.  It also scared me very badly.  Then we got to eat nitrogen ice cream.  It was better than real ice cream!  It all happened in the afternoon of Friday, October 19th!

 

This picture was taken the next day at the beach beside our school.

 

 

 

SEW (Spiritual Emphasis Week) by Aimee

SEW is a week where we have chapel three times a week.  A special pastor comes and speaks.  Our pastor this year was really funny.  His name was Rudy.   He was from New Jersey, USA.  I learned a lot!  He told a story about a picture.  It was an evil looking guy who was playing chess with a scared looked guy.  The title of the painting was 'Checkmate'.   A person was looking at the picture and he thought it didn't make sense.  Then he figured it out.  ''But the King still has one more move,'' he said.  So it isn't checkmate.  That is the same in our life when we think that it is a 'checkmate'; the King still has one more move.  He told lots of stories like that.  There were also night services.  I went to two out of three night services.  It was a very amazing week and I mostly learned that you should act today instead of saying that you will do it later.  I also learned a lot about how when you are going through hard times it is just bringing you closer to God.  He is also shaping you for later in your life.

 

Elizabeth and I in our living room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fun Things by Elizabeth

We had Spiritual Emphasis Week and it was fun because we got to learn about God.

The new people like me get welcomed a lot.

I have a friend.  She is new like me.  I have one old friend (she is not new this year) and one new friend. The old friend's name is Moriah.  She comes from Canada.  My new friend's name is Kimmie.  She is moving from Batu Ferenghi to Tanjung Bungah where I live.

Malaysia is fun.

At Dalat library we are only allowed three books.  That is not fun.
 
We don't have a T.V.  We only have a computer.  We can put CDs and DVDs in our computer.  So we can all watch one movie at the same time.

In Computer class I am learning to type.



Here I am eating a Ham and Cheese Waffle sandwich which is my favorite dinner at Tesco's.

Lantern Festival

This weekend there was the celebration of the Mooncake Festival.  For us, it meant a day off school (Monday) and the chance to enjoy really good food and a night walk around the neighbourhood.

The festival is based on Chinese mythology and centres around the story of Chang'e who is the moon goddess of immortality. The legend goes back about 2000 years ago.  It is one of those tough questions about whether to participate or not because it is a holiday based on mythology.  However, we decided to go and participate with our church; they organize a gathering every year.  This year was a bit different though because they teamed up with a pre-school in the neighbourhood and worked together to organize the event.  The pastor himself told me that the church wants to show that they can be part of this festival with its long history and social traditions, but also that it does not have to be about pagan religion; it is about building relationships.

It was a fun event at a park across the street from the church, with outdoor carnival games (eg throwing wet sponges at youth, toy bow and arrow shooting, stacking up toilet paper rolls as high as you can, face painting, throwing frisbees at a target, bouncing ping pong balls into buckets, a tic-tac-toe game, etc.)  Children won tickets that allowed them to "purchase" mini ice cream cones.  The games continued until the sun went down and it got too dark to see.

A Carnival game where Elizabeth is being shown how to  bounce the ping pong ball on the table and then hope it goes into one of the buckets.

Kate is throwing a ball to try and knock down the bowling pins.

Aimee is throwing a sponge at one of the youth.  Hannah (in the background) helped out with the game. 

Elizabeth enjoying her mini ice cream cone (with a fancy lantern hanging on the fence behind her) after playing the Carnival games.

Then we walked across the street to an outdoor patio beside the church.  Church families brought food.  There was a lot of it, both sweet and savoury!  We were asked to bring 50 cream puffs which we did.  We also brought a mooncake (a jade kind - a yellow centre with green around it and then a biscuit type cake around the outside of that) that was cut up into bite-size pieces.

This is what a typical mooncake looks like.  Different kinds of mooncakes have different kinds of designs on them.



This is the most similar to what the jade mooncake looked like that we brought.  It didn't have too much distinct flavour.  We had about two other mooncakes during the last 2 weeks, just to try them.  One was a charcoal mocha mooncake that Garth and Kate liked, but Hannah and I liked the chocolate cheese mooncake the best.  Aimee and Elizabeth didn't like either of them.  The chocolate one tasted like a thick, dense, chocolate cheesecake with less sugar and with a biscuit cookie exterior.







Chicken satey - one of the yummiest dishes. Usually served in a peanut sauce.



This was one of my (Eileen) favourite foods - a savoury, soft, cold perogie -type ball with cabbage and carrot (I think) in it.

Like the pink dessert at the very top, this was like a chewy, rice and gelatin -type dessert, with a sweetened coconut milk topping.

There were a lot of people, maybe 300-400 people including children, which a friend said was about double from the year before, because the pre-school was involved this year.  At the conclusion of the event, everyone took a walk around the neightbourhood - you could choose the short walk or the long walk.  We choose the short walk, which still took about 20 minutes.  The walkers who took the longer route were another 15 minutes behind us.  We carried lanterns we borrowed that are made from paper and had a candle, like a small birthday candle, inside them.  Other people had lanterns that were made of hard or soft plastic.  Some of the hard plastic lanterns even made sounds.

Before we headed out for the walk around the neighbourhood, the crowd sang a song in Bahasa that we obviously did not know.  Then we did the Chicken Dance (in English).  Below is the Congo Line we did after that.



This was a really cute monkey lantern we saw. All the lanterns are carried by holding a stick. This way your hand is removed from the heat of the candle inside the lantern.

We are about to set out on our neighbourhood walk.




This is a lantern that has "crashed and burned". You could hear children crying in the crowd when this happened to their lantern.  All that was left was ash and a melted candle.  With the crowd bumping into each other and children "playing" with fire, this event would never be allowed to happen in Canada - a fire disaster waiting to happen.   But it was all part of a wonderful evening here in Penang, Malaysia.