Gold Medal Slacking

Three weeks of travel ended last Friday and I'm back at Imtiaz... at least my body is, which is really all they care about. Yesterday my schedule got gutted. Turns out 7 hours of class a week was just too much for me, so now I'm down to 3.5. A good thing too, as I'm sure I was about to crack under the pressure of having to work one out of every 5 hours I was at school. Really, the stress was just killing me. Of course, like the good proactive American I am, I complained to my mentor who in turn took my grievances to the woman who made the schedule, who will take her grievances to the principal, who will get back to me. Since I haven't worked for an organization this big before (more than 10 people), it's hard to know which parts of the bureaucracy are systemic to the country, and which parts are systemic to organizations larger than 10 people. I have a sneaking suspicion I can't blame Malaysia for all of this.

As I was telling Anna's family, the Swindles (Mama Swindle, Papa Swindle, and Baby Swindle), who were visiting from Georgia and are the greatest people ever, I would be more outraged about not teaching if I was in any way a real teacher. Since I'm a fake teacher, it's not that big of a problem that I'm getting paid to blog, watch Top Chef, and eat noodles. And those things are pretty much inline with what a fake teacher is supposed to be doing. On the plus side, some of my more entrepreneurial kids are showing a movie tonight and charging half a ringgit to get in. Sarah and I plan to make an appearance, since it's National Treasure 2, and as we all know, Nicholas Cage crosses all cultural barriers.

The one class that I came to school for today didn't show up. That means that this week there were two days where school was canceled. First we had a planned holiday on Sunday, and then school in the state was called off on Tuesday because Terengganu won 61 gold medals at the Malaysian Olympics. This feat was impressive because they were only expecting 30 or so. I can't say for certain whether or not this should be admired, though, since I have no idea how many medals were actually up for grabs. As far as I know there were an infinite number of them, and 61/infinity is a very small percentage indeed. Still, how great is it that athletic victory is enough for a state holiday? If every professional sports team in California won at once, I still don't think they'd call off school and close down the post office. Malaysia, well done.

So yeah, that left me with 3 days that I actually showed up to school. On Wednesdays, because of my new schedule, I no longer have class, so I took a walk around campus and learned Arabic from my iPod (I know, Malay would be more useful, but let's face it, I'm probably not going to get fluent by the end of my time here. Plus, I want to say goodbye to The Rock in Arabic before he leaves in a week.) Of the two remaining days where I was supposed to have a total of three classes, only one of them actually happened. So I got 500 ringgit (1.67 Sex Fines) for 60 minutes of actual work. I am now paid over $150 dollars an hour. That's impressive enough to declare a national holiday.

Update: The movie, like most things in Terengganu, was canceled. I would've told you about it earlier, but our Internet got canceled also. We're trying to reschedule the movie and Internet for next week, assuming Nicholas Cage will be back from his humanitarian work by then.