October

In the First week, I travelled to Keris with Denis, and two other teachers: Fahmi, the Mathematics teacher and Hisyam, the History teacher. We travelled to Keris for “Family Day 2019” MRSM Tun Ghazali Shafie. On the way to the hotel, we stopped off at ‘Anak Dol Pizza’ where all the pizza’s were made in a stone oven. This is an event in which all staff members and teachers would come and bring their families for food, celebration, a night at a hotel fully paid for as well as the next day where we went to a water park, mainly for the children. The week ended with us arriving back at MRSM TGS and playing pictionary charades with the Form 1s on the Friday.

In the Second week, I joined the Boys’ Scouts on their hiking challenge. The idea was that the scouts were to walk for 5 kilometers through a very hilly area so that we could end up at a primary school for us to camp out at before we were to get a bus back home. The rules were that you were not allowed to buy anything whilst on the journey, i.e. water, meals from local mamaks. The walk tuned out to be a 21 kilometers long and I was carrying my large 80 Litre rucksack because I wasn’t told that I couldn’t drop it off but would have to carry it along with me on the walk. We started in Kuala Lipis and walked through to Cheka for rest as well as checking out their historical museum within their school. Their school was interesting as it was fairly large, but being a public school it resulted in only having 50 or so students for 5 seperate year groups/batches. This week ended by us being treated, by our Madame Principale, to Secret Recipe which is mainly western food with a Malaysian twist, spice. This food chain has by far the best cakes in my state and joining the students in my first dose of Zumba on Fridays.

In the third week, I had to cover some English lessons for one of the teachers who was ill and wanted me to play Scrabble with them; for each word produced, you must come up with a sentence using that word. This week, their were some friendly competitions between the male staff and teachers in a game of netball, where I was against Denis and came out on top. As well as badminton singles and doubles; for singles, I placed in the top 8 of 32 participants and for doubles, I partnered up with Denis and knocked out immediately. There was also a competition between Homerooms, groups of up to 20 students formed from the same batch group, where whichever group gained the most profit from whatever they were selling wins. This week was also the Form 5 graduation ceremony where we all had to dress up in Graduation robes; the ceremony was taking place now because after the students take their equivalent A-Level exams, they will be on leave until March as that is when they get their results. After getting their results, they have 5 days to decide what subject and university they want if they want to further their education. Towards the end of this week, I attended the ‘JotaJoti Jamboree 2019’ with my school’s Scouts group where i particpated in activities such as archery, scavenger hunts, and radioing scout groups in London, United Kingdom.

At the beginning of the Fourth week, I went with some students and the School’s counselor to a local Middle School to, in a way, recruit students to come and try and get into the MRSM school. The MRSM schools are under their own education government and are private schools but unlike the UK, it’s purely based upon your grades and tests rather than on money. Due to going, I had to teach 30 students that were about to go into high school, and I received a complementary mug. The next day, we had an assembly with all of the students gathered together in their homerooms for the homeroom awards, such as best overall grade and best performance at this ceremony. The day after the homeroom awards was the Form 3 dinner which was under the theme of Disney where if any of the boys wore a suit, they claimed to be Prince Charming. In the MRSM schools, there is a ranking between the 52 schools with the PKPs being the better schools; right after Form 3, if the students grades are good enough they have the choice to move to better school so they can get better educational treatment. Towards the end of this week Denis and I headed to Kuala Lumpur to meet up with the other current volunteers, who live on the Peninsula, for The Deepavali celebration and fireworks. We went as a group to the butterfly garden, the national palace, watched the fireworks from the rooftop of our hostel and tried out different flavours of pizza from Dominoes local only to Malaysia; my favourite pizza of now is the Prawn Passion pizza. Denis and I have now agreed that we have a favourite Donut shop local to KL, Big Apple Donuts with its large variety of Donuts.

In the Fifth week, I went on multiple schools trips: first I went to a forest for part of a geography field trip for botany, the next is the Form 2s trip to the national science museum, the room of phobias as well as the trampolining park before heading home.