Hi My name is Tina and I began my Asian travels in June 2004
The Star Newspaper (Malaysia) asked children to write in about who their idols were. Dazzlyn wrote" My idols are my two favourite English teachers. Ms Cavita Nathan and Ms Tina Patel. They helped me a lot in my English. Ms Cavita helped me to speak in public with no fear, while Ms Tina
helped me write essays. They are very good teachers. They are my idols."
It's nice to know I've made a difference.
Labels: Star Newspaper clipping
elc British International School, where I was key stage 2 coordinator and primary English teacher.
English Enrichment Classes, primary school children from local Tamil School learning spoken English through fun and games.
As you can see the state run, Tamil primary schools are very underfunded and the ridiculous government policy that they can only teach 1 hour of English a week, makes life very difficult for these children from poor backgrounds, to do well when they get to secondary school, because another one the governements policies is that maths and science must be taught in English in secondary school.
So to give these kids a better chance we are running these classes for free every saturday at 9 Tamil schools.
I'm kept busy coordinating and developing the syllabus and all the lesson plans for different ability levels. The lessons are focused purely on speaking English and only through games activities, stories, songs etc. The kids love it, we have a total of 300 kids at the moment. They are all from Standard 1 (Year 1).
Next year we hope to extend this programme to Standard 2 students too. But as it is, it is difficult to get realiable volunteers and we need to maintain class sizes at 10 students per volunteer teacher. So at present we have 30 teachers, who I need to train and coordinate regularly with.
Me and the Tamil Foundation girls at the CD launch. Usha, Nachi, Ramini, Sunita and me!
Rangoli or Colum at the entrance to our CD launch venue.
In order to raise money for Tamil Foundation, we created and lauched a CD. The songs were based on the poems of the renowned Tamil Poet Mahakavi Bharatiyar. He was a revolutionist and activist during the time of Mahatma Gandhi. He fought for indepence from the Brits and was persecuted for his activities. He used poetry to fight for equality for women and the abolishment of the caste system. And finally he died at an early age - got kicked by an elephant that he used to feed daily, sometimes these creatures have a tendency to have a crazy turn. He died a few months after the accident.
Anyway we were fortunate enough to have famous Tamil film director and actor, Cheran, and a famous music director, Dhina, grace us with their presence for the event. Was a very posh do! Kept us busy for nights and days on end!
The benefits of living 10 mins walk from little India - which has tonnes of lovely sari shops.....beautiful saris at bargain prices! Just can't help myself....buying the shops out!
Yes the spikes, hooks, shaved heads and long pilgrimages are back again for the Tamil Thai Pussam Festival. Crazy as ever!
This time we (Tamil Foundation) had a stall collecting money for the Tamils in Sri Lanka. Also they have now completed building the worlds largest Murugan statue.
Yes another excuse for a week long public holiday - Chinese New Year! And tonnes of amazing acrobatic lion dances and festive oranges.
Thai Pongal - the Tamil harvest festival and New Year. I went to KL tower to join in a mass pongal (sweet rice) making session. Over a fire, which i was fanning and my eyes streaming from the smoke for 3 hours before the rice was finally cooked...managed to burn mine a bit but still tasted delicious!!!
Enjoying hte fresh chocolate banana cake. The most delicious cake I have ever, ever tasted!!!! Yummmmmmmm
Me giving training to 30 volunteers who will be working on the saturday school programme at Tamil Schools. Due to its success at the 2 schools last year, we are now running it at 9 schools this year, hence the extra volunteers...things are taking off!!! Had the volunteers singing and playing lots of fun party games.
My trip to Bali to learn about the culture and religion. They are very much into the Ramayana with statues of Ram everywhere and they are desperate to know more about Hinduism...so any Gurus out there....Bali is the place to be.
MC Tina at the posh Fund Raising Dinner where I got a chance to mix with all the rich and famous....and talk about myself...which never ceases to be a problem..... :-)
Well as is usual over here.....holidays in abundance! Not that I'm complaining although it can get a bit annoying when you are trying to teach an English syllabus and every week you have lessons missing cos of the never ending holidays. So anyway I had 4 weeks off at Christmas, so i went to Bali for a couple of weeks - nice but no tourists, so I got pestered by all the poor locals. But apart from that, was beuatiful and the culture and religion were fascinating.
After that went to Penang, north Malaysia, for a few days to stay with my friend and her family. Wonderful, relaxing time, and Penang was beautiful. Went to see this huge temple complex, with Asia's biggest Kuan Yin (female Buddha) statue.
Still working with Tamil Foundation. And because of my wonderful ever impressing accent, I had to be the MC at the Tamil Foundation Fund Raising Dinner, talking about myself in front of the 100 rich and famous guests we had.....never seems to be a problem :-)
Also am organising English teaching voluntary classes to start up in Feb, at 10 Tamil Schools...taking up a lot of my time, got to prepare all the teaching methods, syllabus, lesson plans, training, funding etc.....
Still working full time at the International School, with ever increasing roles and responsibilities - they seem to have a lot of faith in me!
Had another festival recently...Pongal, the Tamil Thanksgiving festival. Was fun but eye watering. I went to KL Tower to join in a mass pongal (sweet rice) making day. All thousand of us were supplied with materials to make a fire and cook sticky sweet rice. Should have seen me...made a bit of a mess of it. The fire kept going out, needed to use twice as many fire lighters and wood and constantly fan the fire to keep it going, then I put the rice in before the water and milk had boiled! and it made my eyes sting and water for ages, anyway eventually after a few hours! my rice was prepared. It was delicious although mine was a bit burnt. They had the press there too. All the women dressed in their best silk saris, (Tamil women use any excuse to wear all their richly coloured silk saris!) lots of entertainment, classical and cultural dances and music, and I even got a certificate for participating.
Anyway was my birthday yesterday and had a great dinner at a restaurant with some of my friends here, delicious north Indian food and chocolate banana cake!!! Yummmm.
And as I'm getting quite famous over here, well the government has given the country the week off to celebrate my birthday...very nice of them I must say.
(Just happens to Chinese New Year too).
And on my birthday, they had the opening of a huge (well the largest in the world) statue of Murugan (Ganesh's brother) at Batu Cave Temple. Painted in gold, it was as big as the hill, opening in time for this year's crazy Thai Pussam Festival....remember the one where people go into a trance and sticks spikes into them...millions of people.......and they all go to Batu Caves for this.
So the holidays continue....and the hot season is back...34 degrees....Well it seems to be hot season all year round...I don't really notice the slight variations between rainy season (one hour of heavy rain a day) and hot season (one hour of rain every week).
So I'm off to enjoy the sun...still haven't got sick of it......
See ya
Well I had a wonderful relaxing, fun filled 5 weeks back in UK, cute babies, ice cream, friends, the beach, family, home cooked food, washing machines and surprise yes the weather was wonderful too!
So the day I returned to KL (30th August), well they must have missed me, they had a huge firework display for me in Central KL, like I've never seen before and the next day was yes, yet another public holiday with parades an all!!! (Oh yes, by the way, a small historical fact of interest, it also happens to be Malaysia's Independence day from the Brits that day).
Then last Tuesday, was another Hindu festival....Ganesh Puja...so all the Tamils went to Temple to pray for good luck for the following year....they do go quite mad over religion here, and they are all so tolerant of each other at the same time. That's what makes the place so colourful. :-)
So started back at school, with even more responsibilities now, mentor for all the English teachers for key stage two (8 to 11 year olds), coodinator for key stage 2 English, in charge of the primary library, discipline duty leader!! Homeroom teacher for class 4R, and on top of that I have even more lessons and only 20 mins break a day!
Also still working with Tamil Foundation and doing sunday classes at the local Tamil school. I spent the weekend writing a musical for them to perform, an Indian version of Cinderella, when it came to practicing it, I found out that none of them could sing at all!!! So I have a bit of work on my hands and I'm hoping to perform in front of all the parents and other invited guests in 4 weeks time!!
I'm also taking singing lessons...Hindustani classical ragas....loving it!! Our teacher has the most amazing voice!....so with a bit (or a lot) of practice, maybe I'll get there too one one day.
And the best news of all is that I now have a microwave, fridge and water filter in my room, so I can eat cheese sandwiches, make pasta and porridge, instead of eating greasy 'roti channai' every day! I actually look forward to eating again now!
So that's all the news for now.
