Friday, January 6 - First night out on my own

This is typical after-school traffic in Bandar Utama; it's probably the best time of day to try to get anywhere. The traffic here is nearly always terrible, and the way people drive is totally unbelievable - and scary!! If you think drivers in the States are bad, just wait until you've been on the roads here. U-turns are the norm at literally every intersection, and the motorbikes are constantly weaving through stopped traffic. Quite often, drivers will be in the farthest lane from the turn lane and then merge at the last second and still turn from the wrong lane! The rules are totally out the window here. There's just no way to explain how truly frightful it is navigating the roads here. I'm glad I don't have to do any of the driving!
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Today has been a very interesting day! It was a half day at school, so we let out at noon (after finishing up the weekly school cleaning). I sat in on the older kids' Bahasa class (the Malay language), but I didn't learn much. I wrote down a long list of words, but not many of them would be very useful! The students had to describe a photograph using several sentences in Bahasa. I picked up what I could, but basically the whole class was conducted in Bahasa. Next time I think I'll sit in on the beginner class!

After school let out I worked a little on next week's lessons, and then I had my co-teachers drop me off at 1 Utama. I walked around for a long time, bought some earrings for myself (only 5 RM - less than $2!) and a couple rings, and then found a place that does reflexology. So I had my first reflexology treatment in Malaysia! It was only 35 RM for forty minutes; that's less than $10! I was able to communicate fairly well with the reflexologist, and it turned out that he was a Chinese Christian and goes to a Baptist church here. How cool! After that I went to Just Thai, a restaurant on the bottom floor of the mall. My dinner - chicken with cashews, rice, and Chinese tea - cost me about five dollars U.S.! It was kind of spicy, but still it was quite good. I'll definitely go back there again.

I'd better head to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to Sunway Lagoon with some people, and I need to be well rested!