MST 2012

My new school mkis (aka mont kiara international school) has an annual trip called mst (malaysian studies trip) where every grade goes on vacation from school for a little while to just chill and bond with your classmates. this year the 10th grade went to Gopeng which is somewhere in malaysia 2 1/2 hours away from KL... dont ask me where. we stayed at a some random golf course resort but it was so gorgeous since we all had rooms with balconys over the lake. the first day we went through some cave thing that really wasnt that interesting and much to humid for my comfort.. but afterwards we got to jungle trekkk which would have actually been fun except there were leeches everywhere and i was compleatly terrified. leeches here are disgusting theyre not really harmful cuz all they do is suck out the "bad" blood from your system... but theyre pretty gross. most of us got at least 1 leech but thank god i did not. i was a little over careful i guess you could say. one thing about going into this jungle is that it was like a 30 minute truck ride from our busses, so we were all hauled into the back of trucks like animals and then driven through the jungle while random trees and branches hit our face. the branches hurt. alot. the 2nd day we went back to the activities place which was about a 30 minute bus ride from our resort and we split up into 2 groups for the day. one group went to white water rafting and another went to propelling down a waterfall and then the groups switched at lunch. that evening the teachers forced us to do "group activities" which was mainly just dancing and making a fool out of yourself. (see the video below) the 3rd day we headed home and once i got home i was so happy. i got my bed again and all of that beautiful food in the kitchen :D i love food.

outside the rooms

class picture :DDD

me and monicas room with nataly

me and michael playing ukulele in the bus

all us girlsss

view from our room balconys

ukulele in the bus

party on the balconys :)))

morning faces

waterfall propelling dayyy

hiking day

the last day.....

uniform!

so ive been having some requests from people(*coughcoughflorafattahicough*) to see my school uniform... bleh. so anyway i felt bad since i promised so here are some pictures. dont worry i had fun camwhoring :))

FYI *changes made to uniform* shorts rolled up, long socks added, tie added, expression made entertaining.

spirit week

spirit week last week! so much fun  cuz we could ditch the uniforms for a whole week and pretty much wear whatever we wanted :)))) monday was pajama day, tuesday was sports day, wednesday was wacky wednesday, thursday was superhero day, and friday was tiger day (since were the mkis tigers). so i just thought id include some pictures from the week.

wacky wednesday! 10th graders

wacky wednesday :D

wacky wednesday me and monica

superhero day. yes i went as a cowboy.

MELACCAAAAAA

 sooo we took a trip to melacca last weekend and it was way to humid. and hot. evidently, hotels in malaysia wont let you have more than 3 people to a room.... so we checked in with 2 people in our  hotel room and then found a spare bed in the hallway. GO CREATIVE THINKING! im pretty sure the hotel people found out because they keep looking at us like we were freaks but thats ok i think they just need to be exposed to some more of us wonderful americans :DDDDD anywayyyy we had fun and learned some cool stuff i guess but i dont really remember it since i had about 20 years worth of homework to do. you gotta love homework.

riverside art

cart thingys people sit in! they even have music

last day

new bag from a street vender

me and gabeyyy

by the kampungs 

english speaking

i feel so bad because everywhere i go here people are fluent in at least 2 different languages. and then they ask me... "what language do you speak?" "oh. umm.. just english" hahaha even when i cant understand peoples english its better than i can speak any other language.  and if you reading this and you dont think its that impressive ill give you another example... i was talking to one of my friends in english and i was complaining about how i sucked at english and he just looked at me like i was crazy. hes like "at least its your first language!" and then it hit me that many people in my english class didnt learn english as their first language. then i just felt quite smart....

why i fell asleep on the bathroom floor

ok so i have this thing where sometimes i forget everything. especially when im tired. so a few days ago  gabe handed my the doorknob to our bathroom door and i was like whaaaaaaa? but apparantly it just fell of. so later after school i went to find my headband in the bathroom and i accidentally closed the door. dun. dun. dunnnnn...... yea. i locked myself in the bathroom. and i got reaaally bored so i sang practicly eery song i knew. and i got so tired i just feel asleep on the floor... probably ot very clean but it was a well needed nap. 1 1/2 hours later mom opened the bathroom and i expected sympathy but she was laughing her head off at me. and thats how cool i am. the end.

"the rice isle"

I've now officially had my first experience at a huge malaysian grocery store i guess you could call it.... it seemed more like costco and pretty much just as big and scary. it looked pretty normal at first.. ya know just everything in bulk, until i got to the food section. some food sections were pretty normal and stuff but i got to the rice isle and it was like something id never seen before in my entire life...

yes folks. this is "the rice isle"

asians

everybody here seems to be asian. I'm not kidding. the ratio of us very pale white californians to malaysians looks somewhat like this... 

its so weird!!!! i get random people just staring at me on the streets as i walk by and i want to stare at them back but i feel like its just awkward. just like how i never wave at people in other cars when I'm not on the freeway because you come to a stop light and who do you see but the people you just stupidly waved at.... but thats not the point... me and my mom were watching these 4 girls in a car the other day who just were staring at us so much they missed the green light and everybody was honking at them. i felt like we should have been doing some kinda of crazy dance or something. all we were doing was standing there...

short people

something I've noticed over my 7 days at school is that people are pretty short here.... like for example... I'm now average height and its weird. like really weird... most of the girls are 5'1 5'2 5'3 or 5'4 here and suddenly I'm not so short. its weird looking at somebody in the eye and not up at the sky. kinda nice i guess but i still have to get used to it.... who knows how long that will take :PPP

over friendly people

well I've successfully completed my first week in school. its been like hell sometimes and other times pretty relaxing. people here tend to be waaaay over friendly. the first day of school I'm pretty sure over 50 people came up to me and asked me all the standard questions (who are you!!!! where are you from!!!!! do you like it here!!!! have you made lots of friends!!!! ....etc...) a little too enthusiastic... a few times i almost pushed people out of my personal bubble but i felt like that would have been a bit rude... one girl i haven't even met yet and she sent me a message on Facebook saying "i can't wait to meet you!!!!!" who does that? evidently not me.... but i am kind of a loner so that may be the problem there....

the "tower of power"

there is that one problem about the outlets. good thing we brought adapters otherwise i think we'd all be in computer and iPod withdrawal (which would not be very pretty). mom likes to call our stack of chargers "the tower of power". interesting... anyway i guess here in malaysia they like to switch on everything because there are about 4 switches per little switch thingy (if that makes any sense). there is literally a switch in the bathroom if you want hot water for your shower and a switch in the kitchen so that you can use your oven/stove. it took me a little while to figure out the hot water switch so we've all been taking pretty short cold showers.

breakfast

so me and gabe were dying for breakfast food that wasn't rice or noodles so mom attempted to make pancakes for us. little did we know, instead of a non-stick pan, there only thing here is a "stick pan" which made our pancakes a little bit crumbly. but its ok since we made it all better with a little coffee.

don't judge our morningness. please. just look at the beautiful coffee.

first home

so this is the view from our temporary home right now which is kinda like a hotel/apartment type thingy . its mostly high-rise buildings all around and theres almost no people. soooo were trying to find somewhere else to live but we have no idea how successful we'll be. hopefully we can find somewhere to live by a grocery store where milk doesn't cost 10$ per gallon.

singapore airport

early morning breakfast in singapore airport! after 11 hours from sf, a 6 hour layover in beijing, and a 6 hour flight to singapore we finally found something to eat in the form of rice and noodles :)))))