Goodbye & Forever

Sunset behind my house in Malaysia..

I m sitting on my bed, the rains splatters at the window and the weather seems incredible grey and cold. Compared to Malaysia this would be the coldest temperature ever measured but here in Switzerland we just call it Summer. 

I m looking through all my 4000 pictures of my exchange year and get in a melancholic and happy mood if I rethink at all those wonderful moments.

I am back in Switzerland for almost two months now and well adjusting here seemed harder that I thought, it is/was a bit like getting used to something you actually should know.

Actually I wanted to write a Goodbye Post long ago like in…Mai/June or something but I was so busy during my last weeks in Malaysia  and anyway not able to get some good words or conclusion on paper(well it is Microsoft word). So now finally  I m giving it a try.

Almost exactly one year ago I took a flight into a country where I knew barely anything about it. Malaysia was a book with empty pages for me and now I cant believe how filled up with emotions, memories (good and sad ones) and experiences that book became.

Really I remember my first week where I got sick and thought:”Oh god, 320 days seems like an infinity, this will never end!”  ..and then time flew past faster and faster till in the end I couldn’t believe that one year had passed and I had to take the plane to fly back home? It was really the first time where I was leaving and returning home at the same time!

Thank you to all of you, first of all my wonderful family here, all my lovely school friends and AFS friends from all over the world, but also to all the people  I met on the way, had good conversations with, my host family in Cameron Highland, and many many more...

I have felt so much appreciation, love, and friendship that I feel so so blessed, words cant express that feeling and still  cant decide if I should smile,laugh or just cry bitterly about it.

So many reasons to miss Malaysia. Simple things that just belong to my home there…

I miss sitting around the table, laughing with my host family about a stupid joke or funny incident and knowing that we are a family too..

I  miss dressing up with my sisters in Baju Kurung for weddings, listening music and fighting for the best place in front of the mirror.

I miss talking to my Host mom about Religion and Cultures or joking with my Abang about typical Malaysian or Foreigner habits.

I miss just sitting outside in the evening, seeing the sunset and palm trees and listening to the evening prayer which is as familiar as the sound of church bells.

I miss living in a wonderful pretty big house with a pool to swim and having a double bed .

I miss eating all the delicious Malay/ Indian/Chinese/Indonesian/Japanese Food…I really do I haven't eaten any roti canai, nasi lemak, laksa, rendang or kuih since forever..!!

I miss joking and laughing with my school friends ( most awesome Malaysian students ever) , attending school choir and  just being a Malaysian student in school uniform and eating 1 RM school food.

I miss using the KTM to go to KL Sentral, sitting in the Women only Coaches and observing the diversity of people in the train.

I  miss using my Malay or my Malay English Mix... memang suka cakap melayu tau.. and all the terms like alamak, -lah, amboi, or elee …

I miss going out with other exchange students and pretending to be just tourists.

I miss the whole AFS activities and awesome camps and just being an exchange student!

I miss traveling around with my hostfamily and experiencing new things together. 

I  miss even the heat and the sunshine all year through mixed with heavy thunderstorm and rain.

...or celebrating Hari Raya! Everybody keeps sending me pictures of their Raya activities and I feel a bit envy haha

I could just go on and on and on but I guess that s enough so I ll just emphasize with pictures… ...  I start at the end of March... haha so long ago it seems..

with my hostmom and sister in Cameron Highland

2 weeks in the Village in March.

     

with Chiara from Italy and our host"cousins" :)

Selfie .#hijab :)

One day with the Interact Club in a Chinese School

Choir competition!

with my babysister <3

Langkawi..a dream!

Short visit over the border to Thailand

Last meal all together+rice on banana leaf

Ready for the last AFS evening

AFS Malaysia Students 2013/2014

my Farewell ..

at the airport, before the tears stared flowing

<3

This is my last blog post here and well thank you so much for reading.

If you get the opportunity to do an exchange, do it.! It doesn't really matter where to or how long but in any case it will be an enriching experience where you can only learn and grow from.



http://www.afsmas.org/
http://afs.ch/
http://workaway.com/

Take a look, save your money, pack your bag and go..(:

Love, sincerely
Hannah

Finally... New Year, New Post & the Last 2 Months

Hello (:

7 months have passed and I almost forgot that I have a blog which I should update.

4 months since I last posted here, well I finally pulled myself together to give it another try and to update !

There is way too much to write about so I just decided to describe the last few bigger events... Lately I was able to get an inside look of two other cultures, the Indian and the Chinese one. Both experiences where very interesting and something new since I normally live in a Malay family. One of the reasons why I love Malaysia: to get to know so many cultures in one country is awesome!

The longer I live  here the more I love it  and I couldn't be happier with my host family and my whole environment. I am so blessed to be here and just..thank you to everyone who makes it possible.

What I have been doing the past two months..

2014 started with some dazzling firework in Putrajaya where my family and me went for New Year and soon after that school began again. I was probably rarely so happy to go to school again ! Holidays were long and I missed friends and school. Well okay after one week I had already to ponteng sekolah (skip school) for the AFS Mid stay-Camp where half of all exchange students of Malaysia met up and stayed 3 days together at the West coast in Sekinchan. We had lessons about Intercultural Learning, a lot of talking about our own experiences and playing games and it was so good to meet up again (some of them I hadn’t met in since Arrival because they live way further up north). Exchange students are mostly open minded, interested and maybe little crazy people from all over the world and if about 30 meet up together in a camp, it is totally awesome. We danced and sing and talk, talk, talk a lot you learn often some random facts about other countries  , you can exchange your good and bad experiences and just have fun (;

We are from : Germany,  USA, Italy, France, Belgium, Canada, Argentina, Austria, Czech Rep., Costa Rica, Spain and Switzerland. 

Sekinchan, the beautiful setting (:

Feed backs

         

Visit to a Kuih Shop

At 17.1.  we had another free day because of the Hindu Festival Thaipusam. I went with some other AFS Students  to the Batu Caves a big Hindu Temple near KL and well that was just overwhelming and totally different from everything I have ever seen... On Thaipusam the Tamil Community celebrates the occasion that their goddess Parvati gave her son Murugan a spear, (called vel) which made him invincible forever. He is the God of the victory and of war, this celebration is one of the most important festivals for the Tamil. Believers who have made their vows and prayers to Murugan will subject themselves to sacrificial acts in exchange for an answered prayer. They will mostly ask for help, to recover from sickness, seeking forgiveness or childless couples will pray for a baby. For that they have to do a sacrificial act like carrying a  kavadi, weighing several pounds which is attached to the body by skewers and hooks, that pierce through the body. Acts like this are normally undertaken by men, but their also smaller kind of sacrifices like shaving the head or carrying milk on their head all the 272 steps up to the Temple Cave.

We didn’t go for the long march in the night but went in the early morning to the Temple and could barely enter the train because it was so full of people but that was nothing against the crowd we met  in front of the Batu Caves. Thousands of people, so close packed that you always have to move with the whole flow of the crowd , it was soo hot and loud so that we could not  hear each other and the air full of very weird and unknown smells.

 I have never seen so many people at one place, there were Indian men carrying their heavy burden,some of them in trance with hooks in their backs or tongue , the women in colourful saris with pots of milk on their head and little kids on the hand and all walking slowly up to the Caves while screaming or saying loud  :”Vel,Vel, Vel”. This is to appeal to their god for an easy steps . For me this was the first encounter with Indian Culture and hence I got totally carried away by all the impressions! It was so amazing, weird, tiring, scary and wonderful to see and experience that and well I think here pictures explain more than words! We had like two hours for just climbing up and down all the stairs and hold each others hands to not get lost in the crowd. When we came down the steps we even got interviewed by a Malaysian TV who ask us questions like why we are here and how we like Thaipusam..well it is overwhelming and the most…different festival I have ever seen. Actually I wanted to post a video but well my videos are all quite shaky and so I ll only show some pictures...

Batu Caves

View from Upstairs

    

      

Our Interviewers

               

Inside the Cave

    

Kavadi

 On more normal weekends I will normally stay at home or follow my host mum to a Malaysian wedding… I have already been to at least 20 weddings since I m here and a Malaysian wedding means for me normally to dress in Baju Kurung and sometimes Hijab, I will for sure eat Nasi Minyak or Berani and I salaam a loooot of people .. The best weddings take place in the hotel and are really fancy and expensive with at least 500 people! Once I even got to be a flower girl on the wedding of our cousin and it was quite nice to dress up for that. Lately I mostly wear hijab when I follow my family to a wedding or occasions because I really really like it and it is fun to try it. There are  many different styles how to wear tudung and my host mum has like the hugest collection of hijab I have ever seen so she allows Kate and me to borrow them all. My host sister started wearing hijab this year and so I also started to wear it sometimes .

With my host siblings

My Birthday (:

Kampung Wedding in Pahang

Family (:

Our Cousin's wedding

What was next…? From the 29.1 to the 2.2.  I went to Roxanne's family, she is an AFS Volunteer from my Chapter,  to experience Chinese New Year together with another exchange student from Spain. CNY was again a very different kind of culture and traditions. We learned how to do simple calligraphy and how to eat with chopsticks (still not very skilled) and had so much fun together!  We were welcomed so friendly and nice from Roxanne s family that I was amazed once more how hospitable, nice and interested so many people in Malaysia here are! Through being an exchange student I mostly depend on people showing me around, helping and teaching me about their lifestyle and it is incredible how many, many kind and caring people I have met on my way here!

On the evening of Chinese New Year we went to see two beautiful Chinese temple and for a really good family dinner. Chinese Food is for sure as good as Malay and Indian food and I really loved the Chinese tea they offered everywhere. Back at home we played with a lot of firework and prayed together with the family to celebrate the start into the new year. To pray we had to burn the joss sticks and to give 5 different fruits to the gods. Roxanne s family is Taoist and well I didn’t know much about Taoism myself but BBC has a pretty good definition of it:

“Taoism is an ancient tradition of philosophy and religious belief that is deeply rooted in Chinese customs and worldview.” 

Taoist have a lot of different gods and goddesses, to which they pray and each god has his special field in life. The temples are really really beautiful and worth seeing!

On the next two days we went to visit a lot of relatives where we enjoyed a lot of good food, learned how to play Blackjack 21 and collected amazing amounts of Angpow, which is money the married people give to all the kids in pretty red envelopes for Chinese New Year... We even got visited by a lion dancer group!

My Chinese Host family, all in red.

Chinese Dinner (:

Lion Dance

So these were some of the bigger events of the last two months...I did not include the Travel to Ipoh last week but I am probably gonna catch up with that later :) I hope you enjoyed reading and looking ...

Sincerely

Hannah

PS: Not all of these photos are my own, some of them are taken by friends, because, well, I am not that much of a photographer.

Last 3 weeks in pictures / September 2013

Hello (: 

as always,  i apologize for not posting anything for a few weeks but now i finally found time to write...mostly because i m not experiencing much at the moment since I m sick and spend my time in bed. But don’t worry I am already feeling a little better (you won't pity me anyway after you see all the Island pictures)  and I have lots of time to read, watch movies or update this blog... (:

Soo I don’t want to loose many words and let instead the pictures speak… the past few weeks altogether  were quite awesome and it was so difficult to decide which photos I should take because I have about over 600 only for the last three weeks.

... three weeks ago we went for the family day of my mom' s office to Perhentian Island... one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to.

Arriving :D

the normal visitors while eating breakfast

Nemo *-* (my host brother has an underwater camera)

with my wonderful host mum and sister Kate

2nd place winner of family day games ;))

adorable baby turtle

snorkeling and swimming

like in these holiday magazines..

ouuu and now to a total different experience which is actually just something we did in school but it was pretty fascinating to me so I feel like I have to share this... we had to do a dissection of a frog and a rat and I guess it was the highlight of all biology lessons I ever had.
Please don't assume we are cruel people and enjoyed killing an animal, we did this in school in the name of Science. ;)  It was interesting and exiting to see and touch all the organs, how it works, to cut the frog and rat open and to see the still beating heart...

with my schoolfriends and the poor but dead rat.

the frog...we called him Frodo.

yes. I had fun.

Then two weeks ago ... Family  Cooking, everybody of us cooked something and in the end we had heaps of delicious homemade food.*-*

food*-*

behind the Candy buffet... where else ;)

..and another weeding...














last weekend :  our first AFS Camp... awesome days with awesome people :)

just AFS, I guess ;))

icecream on a bread is still icecream

with bunga (flower)  klantan; actually they use that for cooking

our Damansara chapter :D

Soo that were a lot of pictures and I hope you enjoy "reading"...

Have lovely fall holiday (everybody in Switzerland)
and to those who have neither holiday nor fall, just a good time :))