Holidays galore

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