Selamat Hari Raya!

I'm currently back in KL for a week of rehearsals with the Fallen Leaves group from WCH before going back to stay there and do some more work with them so taking full advantage of things like working internet!

Our last few days at WCH were very hectic but great fun! This weekend was Hari Raya - a big holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan so we were in charge of organising a party at WCH on Sunday night. It was such a good event and hopefully everyone enjoyed it as much as we did!

We spent most of Friday and Saturday preparing, getting the residents in House 1 to make decorations and the ones in House 7 to put together some entertainment. Some of the guys are really good musicians so they put together a little guitar group and learnt some traditional Hari Raya songs which were great! They were all in Malay so for the whole day before the party we were trying very unsuccessfully to teach the rest of the group so they could all sing along but not knowing the tune or understanding the words proved a bit of a problem!

They also asked us if we knew the words to 'I Just Called To Say I Love You' by Stevie Wonder so we could have an English singalong. So off we went to find the words not realising that no-one else knew them and we would be expected to stand up and lead the singing in front of everyone! As I'm sure everyone knows being made to sing in front of people is one of my least favourite things ever, especially Stevie Wonder which isn't exactly easy! But we very bravely did our best - as I have photos to prove - and managed to drag in a few others to help even though they didn't know the tune and had everyone singing along by the end so I think it was a success!

After all that and more food than I've seen in a very long time we were in charge of the party games so had everyone in on some English classics like pass the parcel, musical chairs and pin the tail on the donkey which all went down surprisingly well!

It was really nice to have our 2 groups together because I think all the members of House 1 really enjoy seeing the House 7 guys because they're all so full of energy and really brighten the place up.

So after rehearsals on Friday finish we'll be travelling back to Batu Arang to carry on our English and drama work which should be really good as despite struggling for ideas we've somehow come up with lots of lesson plans we didn't get to use before leaving so it will be really good to spend a bit more time there.

It has been a nice break being in KL for a few days though as you can walk around without being stared at all the time as the only white person in the town. We seem to have had a bit too much interest in Batu Arang as last Friday night when we arrived back to the house we stay in after our class I heard very heavy footsteps as we came through the door. When we stopped to listen we heard it again, sounding much too heavy for an animal and coming from the ceiling as there's a gap under the roof. We tried making lots of noise and throwing things at the ceiling to get it to move again but nothing. Then we noticed one of the bedroom doors which we had definitely left closed (to keep the cockroaches out!) was open and started to get very freaked out!

Ivy, the wife of Alex who runs the centre, has a house just down the road from ours so out we went into the pitch dark and spent about half an hour wandering tiny little roads trying to remember where it was! When we got there, after getting past several scary dogs, she was really nice, called Alex and sent him over to investigate with some of the guys. They didn't find anything apart from a gap that would have been big enough for a boy or a thin man to get through if they really tried so it seems like maybe one of the local kids had climbed up there to have a bit of a look around and wasn't expecting us back as we were early that night.

We stayed with Ivy that evening then Alex went over the next day to board up all the gaps so nothing else exciting has happened since that little adventure! The most worrying thing in a way was that no-one suggested it might have been an animal and all kept saying 'Well this is Batu Arang...' so obviously it's not unheard of for people to have unwanted visitors! Everyone was really kind about it and now everyone who gives us a lift back waits around outside or comes in with us to check it out so we're being very well looked after and have nothing to worry about spending more time there...