Things have been a bit hectic today trying to sort various things out. There is a special fare thing coming up where loads of flights in SE Asia are discounted by 70% so I'm frantically trying to decide where I'm going to go in my 2 week May/June holidays. I was swithering between Indonesia or Vietnam and Laos but I've decided on the latter. Fellow Scott, Kirsty, will hopefully be accompanying me and we'll try to round up a few more. But in the mean time I'm just gona have to risk it and buy a flight for my lonesome and fingers crossed, others will follow. Darren has paid for his flights- wooooooo!!!! So I'm oober oober happy. So now I'm able to plan when I'm going to meet him in Singapore and Aman and I are gona book our flights out there ASAP. We're also gona book our flights to the East coast for March. We may have to postpone our departure for the East coast cos we've been invited to a teacher's wedding, which of course there's no way we're missing. We're also all meeting up for a meal with 2 new gappers who are arriving on 11th March to work in an outdoor ed centre. And hopefully some of the other Gappers from West Malaysia and maybe Scottish Kirsty from Sarawaak are gona come up as well so we can all have a nice big yummy meal at my fave restaurant in KK, "Little Italy" and catch up. The other Gappers are coming over to climb the mountain first, then we're hopefully all going to meet on the East coast. All kinda rough plans at the mo tho. I've been spending most of the day (when I hada second to spare) with my nose in my Lonely Planet, looking at the poshest hotels in Singapore to stay at- they look coo-al. Anyway! It was Valentines Day yesterday and wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. The kids all shook our hands to say happy Valentines Day, which was quite cute. We put up a competition on our GAP notice board to get he kids to write Love Poems and we've received some quite amusing ones so far. All from girls of course. We discovered in the evening that some of the Asrama girls had received valentine's presents but it was a big secret (especially for Joyce) cos she's Christian and her dude's Muslim. He got her a cute wee teddy. Our phones chose the worst night to play up. Valentines Day night- both wanted to phone and txt the bfs but the network was down- sooo frustrating!!! They started working in the early hrs of the morning tho. By which time I received the fab news that Darren was sitting in the travel agents and asking me which airline to book with- woohoo. Our shower has now been busticated for a week and I am seriously starting to smell. The whole washing with a tap and your hands just doesn't do it I'm afraid. So we're getting desperate. Ramsey approached us and said he was supposed to fix it, but he blatantly overheard me speaking to Johnston about it so we thought he was just taking the opportunity to come up to our room. So we just told him it was fixed. Then later on, we found out that Johnston really had appointed Ramsey to fix it- long story- so we had to allow him up to our room- no comment incase other teachers are reading. Anyway, it's still broken and we have to get a plumber in and in the mean time, our water stopped completely last night. We're now getting really hot water through- which is a bit odd since there's no water heater thingmy- its just minging hot water from some random pipe. So I really really reeeeally can't wait to get to KK this weekend!! We also hava major infestation of ants under my bed- I've not been vigilant enough about dropping crumbs- my bad. Yesterday I used mum's books that she sent me to teach the class drama. The books are called "The Huge Bag of Worries" and they're used to encourage children to talk about their problems. But I initially used them as a basis for a play. The play part went well, but when I asked them about problems kids face in Malaysia, they didn't have much to say. They said that they only talk to their friends about problems and the school is supposed to have a councilor but none of them have ever seen them. I def couldn't imagine the kids approaching their teachers or parents. There are "Spys" around the school- appointed by the teachers, or teachers themselves, that check that the children don't have bfs and gfs- that there's no handholding (you'd get in serious big time trouble if you were caught) and that the girls all have their hair tied back, their uniforms are ironed properly and that they are walking in an orderly fashion. The kids often rebel outside school though (so I've heard- quite a few of the girls have bfs out of school. But they themselves believe in absolutely no physical contact. They all speak through their friends to their bfs. They don't even speak to their face. Tis just their culture.) Today I held a treasure hunt for classes. Today's been one of the hottest days so far and I've been embarrassingly beetroot all day. The kids kept asking what's wrong with my face- nice. So when I had to stick up all of the clues for the treasure hunt, it made me mega hot and bothered. Think the kids were as well- having to run about in the sweltering heat. Tis days like this I would give anything for a running cool shower. Aman and I are going to Artina's house tonight. Artina's the teacher that has organized the white water rafting for us. She's really nice and her husband is in KL for 2 weeks so she said she'd like the company and she's got Astro- (Malaysia's version of sky)-woo! She's got such a sweet friendly face. The women here mostly have really smiley friendly face. She's really cheery. Don't know if I've mentioned Julie. She's a "hoot" as mum would say. She likes talking about men non stop even though she's married with kids. She told us her life story the other day over lunch. About how her parents used to own a few rubber trees and they had to live off that income and they were stoney broke and then she worked loadsa jobs- like selling fruit on the street and she ran away to live with her aunt and go to uni and she had to live in the school accommodation for 10 years while she taught cos she couldn't afford to keep herself. But she saved money over those 10 years and is now married with kids in a nice house with 2 cars. Which is quite a success. She's a legend tho. Fancies the pants off Darren- well most of the teachers do when they see his pic. Hamish as well- the students love him. I might even slyly ask Artina if I can get a shower at her house- presuming she has one. Other wise it's gona be a hard core 2 days of greasy hair until I reach KK. One of the Chinese teachers has been really helpful giving me loads of advice on what to do in Sabah. She seems to have traveled around a lot with her friends and knows all of the nice resorts. I really wana go to an island off Sabah called La Buan (I think that's what it's called), where they sell loadsa cheap imported goods and real chocolate . Also another island she mentioned has a volcano with mud baths inside, which is a must do one weekend. She also told us about a tour we could go on to Kudat, which takes you through bee farms, and really good handy craft and food markets. There's loads I wana do in Sabah and it looks like we should be able to squeeze some of them in on the weekends. Right, I better be off and get dinner.