• To further international understanding and friendly relations among people of different countries and geographical areas
• To promote international goodwill and peace
• To promote Rotary’s ideal of Service Above Self
• To develop humanitarian leaders
• To impact all areas of the world through a balanced geographical distribution of scholars.
1) Give 10-15 presentations to Rotary Clubs and other groups about "my culture"
2) Be involved in Rotary service projects and attend the district conference
3) Be a full time student
Sounds pretty simple, but we were chosen as Ambassadorial Scholars because we are involved in our communities and try to take every opportunity to participate in the world around us, and its a great way to learn about the culture.
So in the past 48 hours I gave two presentations, and was involved in 3 different Rotary activities. On Friday I took the train out to a suburb of KL call Nilai. I was invited to speak at the school that the children of my Rotary "host" attend. It is an international school and so they thought having me come an speak with the children about geography and community would fit with their mission. So I spent Friday afternoon with 160 school children up to the age of 14.
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| Geography presentation to the school children. |
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| Everyone tells me I look like I teacher. Even at the university campus, many people ask me if I am a professor. Am I really too old to be in college still? This is the principal of the international school (she just got back from a cruise to Alaska) and my host Kirenjit (right). |
From there I spent a few hours with my host and her children shopping and exploring around. She is so kind got me an "early birthday present." I am the proud new owner of a beautiful kebaya- a traditional Malaya outfit.
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| No the best photo, but trying to show off my beautiful new kebaya. Thanks Kirenjit! |
I was scheduled for another talk that evening to a Rotary Club in KL. I hopped the train back to the city. Little did I anticipate that on Friday evening, many people use the train and it was much longer and way more crowded then on the way out. It was standing room only, if that, so many people crammed in, and because of this, getting on and off was very difficult and stretched the train ride to 1.5 hours. Once I finally reached KL, I had to then transfer to a lightrail train, and then scamper across many blocks and lots of traffic to make it to my meeting a half hour late. So is the life that is based on public transportation...thankfully, the club I was presenting to was very laid back and all was well.
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| You'll see a lot of these official hand shake photos over the course of my ambassadorialship. This photo isn't actually from the club that I presented to Friday night, its from a presentation I gave earlier in the week. But you get the idea. |
Public speaking is definitely not my strong suit, but giving presentations about my love for Alaska and all the neat an unique aspects of the life and culture there is a lot different than giving presentations about my thesis topic, so I'm doing OK so far, and everyone loves the pretty pictures.
At 6:30am (yes, on Saturday), I headed out the door to join in on another "training" for my up coming Mt. Kinabalu climb (seea few posts back). It was pretty laid back as we spent time jogging around a nice park and lots of working out on the stairs. A nice way to spend the morning, but being drenched in sweat by 7am makes the rest of the day really sticky. Straight from there I met up with the rest of my host Rotary Club and went on a tour of a bread factory, because October is Vocational Service Month in Rotary world so the club took the effort to arrange to learn about this profession and where our food comes from. The tour was interesting enough, as it took us through 5,000 years of "bread history."
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| At the bread factory with my host Rotarian, her son, and her nieces. |
This all took place before noon, and after the tour a Rotarian from our club invited us all to his house for lunch and some fellowship and to meet his first and brand new two week old baby granddaughter. I always enjoy having the opportunity to visit people's homes here to see how typical Malaysians live. They are always so warm and welcoming. From there I was whisked away again to visit the grand opening of a boutique that was being launched by one of the Rotarian's nieces. There I tried on and got a feeling for some Indian clothing as I'll soon have to purchase an Indian outfit to wear for my attendance at celebrations at the end of the month for the Indian holiday of Deepavali.
Lastly, the day was topped off with a non-Rotary activity, but I thought I'd include it anyways. My roommate Tomoko and I attended some championship matches for professional tennis at the Malaysia Open tournament. This wouldn't normally be something on my radar, but Tomoko, in her previous life in Japan, was a sports journalist, and is now pursuing her Master's degree in Sports Sociology at UM (same university as me). There was a Japanese player that had a chance to make it to the finals, so we decided to see it live. We ran into a little bit of misunderstanding at the box office though. When we looked online, we saw options for "free seating," which we interpreted as "you don't have to pay for a ticket, if you sit in these specific seats, its free!" But, what it turns out in meant was that it was "open seating/unassigned seating" and the tickets were 30RM each, which is only about $9.41USD, but was a little disappointing when we were expecting it to be free of charge! The funny thing is that this confusion was not due to a language barrier- English is my native language and I still misinterpreted it- but was merely due to the difference of perspective of us as the consumer and the people selling the tickets. We kept saying "we want the free seating" and they kept telling us "60 ringgit please." Haha, unfortunately the Japanese player was beaten in the end and did not advance to the finals.
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| Malaysia Open international tennis tournament. |
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