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May 18, 2006
avoiding the australian tourists
so earlier this week i said goodbye to all the friends i made in KL and took the bus to Penang. when i got here i already had a family to stay with since my friend As and her family (who i stayed with for my last weekend in KL) were so concerned about me coming to Penang alone that they called all the relatives they knew in Penang until they found a "keluarga angkat" (adopted family) for me to stay with here, which is good since there are a lot more tourists here, so staying in a hostel wouldn't have been ideal, especially for practicing language. now i'm staying at a house in Georgetown (downtown Penang) with As's cousin's mother, grandmother, their 13-year-old nephew/grandson, and their maid from Indonesia. i feel sort of guilty about staying here, since people in America aren't normally this generous, but everyone has told me not to worry about it, all i have to do is be nice, maybe take them out to dinner, and make sure everyone knows that they can stay with me or my family if they come to America
i miss my friends in KL and its hard to have to adjust to a new city as soon as i started to get used to things in KL, but i think its good that i came instead of staying in KL. for one thing, i'm speaking a lot more Malay. with my 20-something year-old friends i had gotten into the habit of speaking "rojak", so although there were a few Malay words or phrases that i would use all the time, it would always be mixed with English. but with my family here i speak pretty much only Malay
i'm still worried about my research, though. there is a factory right next to my neighborhood, but i'm worried about starting anything until i've talked to an NGO over here, which is easier said than done. i had to wait almost two weeks for the NGO in KL to get back to me. they gave me references in Penang, but they didn't give me any solid advice for my research, and i'm not possitive that any of the contacts they gave me will be able to help me that much either, so i could easily spend all my time here just waiting to find someone to give me the advice i need. and although before i came i wasn't that worried about just going out and talking to people on my own, i really feel weird about that now. for instance, although i'm pretty sure that the maid in the family i'm staying with would be willing to talk to me about my project and maybe introduce me to other people she knows who are here from Indonesia, at this point i really don't feel like i should do that, especially since i'm already making life harder for her just by being an extra person in the house
at any rate, if things really don't go well here in terms of my research i have a standing invitation from the NGO in KL if i want to spend a week or so just hanging around their office and seeing what they do. i could probably learn a lot that way, although it would definitely be a different kind of project
i don't have time right now, but i promise to make my next post more interesting and tell a little bit more about the things i've seen (or eaten) so far
Posted by diparker at May 18, 2006 05:12 AM