The Party, by Elizabeth

We had a party and it was fun. It was yesterday,on Thursday, the last day of school before Christmas. I had a lot of food.  It was a class party with my teacher, Ms. Frans. We ate jelly and cake and cookies. My favourite food was the cake. It was chocolate cake with icing.  We got our stockings and some of the presents I got were molding clay and a card from the school in Butterworth (mainland Malaysia).  My favourite thing in the stocking was the mechanical pencil and the pencil case.  The mechanical pencil had a giraffe on it and the pencil case was pink.  We got a goodie bag.  Overall, I liked the food the best.

Wet Market

About twice a week we go to the Wet Market to buy our fruit, vegetables, meat, and eggs. The Wet Market is about a 10 minute walk from our house. It is usually very busy on Saturdays.  When we first arrived, our host, Jasmane, took us to the Wet Market to show us some of the better vendors to deal with and so we remain loyal to those ones.  We use a certain vendor for our vegetables, a different vendor for our fruits, etc.

The entrance to the Wet Market

Here is the vegetable vendor we use at the Wet Market.  It seems like a husband and wife team.

This is where we buy our fruit.  Kate (in the foreground) was helping that day. This is operated by a mom, dad, and daughter working together, I think.

They also sell a lot of fish and seafood at the Wet Market.

Sometimes there are other stalls selling miscellaneous things that are set up around the Wet Market.

Stall selling dresses

"La Senza" at the Wet Market

Tuesday nights they also have a night market from 6:30 p.m. to quite late.  The Wet Market is closed but there are many other stalls set up outside the Wet Market selling food, clothes, and other miscellaneous things. There is even a stall selling pets like goldfish and mice.

How I Spent My Birthday - By Garth

December 4th was my birthday. Being in Malaysia, my birthday was a lot different than it usually is in Canada. The biggest difference was the weather. Growing up in Winnipeg and living in Vancouver, my birthdays were usually very cold (Winnipeg) or very cool and rainy (Vancouver). This was the first birthday that I wore shorts and a short sleeve shirt. My highlight from the day was spending my lunch drinking coffee and looking out to the Andaman Sea from upper campus of the school.

View of the Andaman Sea from upper campus of Dalat

For supper we went to Sri Ananda Bahwan, known here as SAB [sob], an Indian restaurant across the street.

The restaurant is across the street from the school

For supper we had tandoori chicken, curd rice, lemon rice, and a mixed vegetable dish. For dessert / birthday cake we had a roti canai cone.

Crispy wafer covered with syrup

The Philippines

            On November 8th , I went on an honour band trip to the Philippines.  It was a very busy week in which I did that.  On the Monday and Tuesday, I tried out for basketball and I made the team on Wednesday.  Then very early in the morning (way too early), I got on a bus to the Penang International Airport.  It was quite a long flight but I got a beautiful view of Malaysia and the rising sun.

        The flights to Manilla were about 5 hours with a 2 hour layover in between.   When we got to the Manilla International Airport we had to pay a tax because we were not with our guardians and we were under the age of fifteen.  It was about 3000 pesos.  Which is about 80 USD, we paid the tax and continued through customs.  We had to go on a 1 and a half hour long ride through Manilla and I had to try not to throw up because the roads are awful and very busy.  People would come out in the middle of traffic and try to sell you stuff while you are in your car.  After the hour and a half ride we got to the Faith Academy School and met our host parents.  Our host family had three little kids all under the age of four. They were all really cute.  

I was staying with another girl from my school

         

           Our honor band practices were at the school-Faith Academy- and they were all day Friday and all day Saturday and then we had a concert on Saturday evening

Honor band practice on Saturday.

     

   

   Honor Band final rehearsal.

The people from Dalat with the conductor on the right

         

         After the concert we went to the mall for about an hour and instead of going back to our host parents we went to the guesthouse where the high schoolers were staying and we where asleep by 11:00.  We had to get up at 2:00 to go to the airport.  So I was quite tired.  And at two in the morning there where many interesting creatures out at the time outside the guesthouse and I saw a huge toad hopping around.  It was quite a shock because I was half sleep walking around and then we see this huge toad hopping around.