It’s been another wonderful week of enjoying the city of Kuala Lumpur. Just because my feet have been in the same city for more than a week, doesn’t mean that it’s been a quiet one. Contrary to popular belief, I am actually studying here. I’m enrolled in classes at Universiti of Malaya, and amazingly with all the travel I’ve been doing, I’ve managed to only miss two classes. Next week is the last week of classes before we have a “study week” with no class, and then final exams the first week of January. Then I look forward to freedom from January 6th all the way through February 12th when the second semester begins. I’m really looking forward to not having to think about university, because starting January 6th I have many visitors. My good friend Janelle from Alaska will be coming to KL for a few days before we head (back) to Bali for 12 days of yoga, beach, and generally enjoying the good life. Then my folks show up January 25th and I’m excited to show them around what I’ve been experiencing! After that I look forward to meeting some friends in Vietnam in the beginning of March, then hopefully Nepal/India in early April, Bangkok in early May… !
I find that the best way to meet people in a new city and help make it feel like a smaller place is to get involved in the community. Of course I’ve been doing a lot of this, since it’s the main basis of the scholarship, so on Friday evening Tomoko and I joined on a Rotaract (similar to Rotary for the 18 to 30 age group) distributing food at a mobile food kitchen in two locations. It was amazing to see how many people lined up for what was probably their only hot meal of the day. Meeting the other volunteers (both Rotaract and otherwise) was great and we enjoyed getting to know some of the Rotaractors after the activity over a quick bite including a German girl who is here working for the UN Development Office who we met up with again today for dinner and fresh produce at the night market.
This morning I joined on non-Rotary service project. Being the environmental scientist that I am, I’ve been looking for eco-activities to get involved with and a tree planting service project provided just that. Any semi-strenuous activity that takes place outside in this part of the world must be done early in the morning or evening to prevent heat exhaustion. So at 7am I left the house to meet up and carpool to the tree planting site. I joined this project through a group called Eco-Warriors Malaysia, a group that mobilizes volunteers for environmental projects like this one. Our group of 25 volunteers (one of six groups!) planted over 300 fruit trees at a lake site in an area just outside KL called Shah Alam. It was great fun, but very muddy as it had rained the night before.
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| Malay children getting ready to perform an adorable skit about taking care of the environment before the tree planting began. |
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| Good to teach them to respect the planet at a young age! |
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| Our group planted 300 trees, but with all groups combined it was 3,000! |
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| Doing my part. |
On the more social side of things, Tomoko and I were invited to lunch by an alumni Ambassadorial Scholar who studied in Massachusetts in 1986. It was great to hear her stories and about her experiences since her tenure over a great Japanese lunch. She is now the executive director of a regional advocacy organization in the field of HIV and AIDS. After lunch we enjoyed exploring the painted bears some more…I warned you that you would be seeing more of the Buddy Bears on this blog! They are just such a wonderful site and it’s so fun to see everyone enjoying them while wandering around.
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| Current and alumni Ambassadorial Scholars. |
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| Out of all the creative things they could have painted on the USA bear, this is what they came up with?!?! |
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| Malaysia bear, yay for multiculturalism! |
Since we were downtown, Tomoko and took the opportunity to do a little shopping, since it’s one of things KL is best known for after all, and taking in the holiday decorations. This is when the inevitable happened, not to me but... In KL, being a city of shopping malls and tall buildings, you are never far from an escalator. In a jam packed mall on a Saturday afternoon, we were about to step on an escalator when it came to a dead halt. Thankfully, it didn’t take too long for people to remember that you can actually walk down the escalator stairs, and by the time we got to the bottom, we figured out what the problem was. A woman’s burka had become entangled, security guards had to come with a knife and cut her free!
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| DANGER: Christmas tree. |
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| Quick! How many Christmas trees can you count in this photo? |
Lastly, we did something else that I’ve also been wanting to do since I got here, which was attend a concert of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra. It was a joint performance between the orchestra and youth orchestra with some amazing young soloists. The show was in the Dewan Filharmonik Petronas, which is a beautiful venue in the base of the Petronas towers. We are looking forward to attending a Christmas concert by a junior string ensemble later this week at the KL Performing Arts Center. I've been trying to keep my ears open for local musicians, and there are two very talented young Malaysian artists whose music I've been listening to a lot. One is called simply Yuna, and the other is Zee Avi. Both are in the pop folk singer songwriter musician genre, look out for these up and coming artists in America, I first heard of Yuna there before I came!
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