My heart was a poundin'

Here's some pictures of my room that I finally finished decorating!  Some of you may recognize your cards, gifts, and photos of us together. :)

The first week of school was good...except I felt like a freshmen again with the "first day of school" jitters.  Luckily, Meredith and I are taking the exact same classes so we struggled together trying to actually find our classes.  As of now, I am taking 23 hours, but I'm definitely going to drop a few once I get a feeling for which ones I like and don't like.  

Monday 

My first class of the week was Animal Morphology/Histology.  I absolutely LOVED my teacher, and she's even going to make the class veterinarian related since I told her I want to go to vet school!  I've never been so excited for a class before.  

The next class of the day was pottery.  This was funny for many reasons.  For one, there is a rule that if there is an American in any class, it has to be taught in English (I hope my classmates won't hate me for that).  However, the teacher didn't know he was going to have to teach in English.  AND teach two Biology majors.  He joked about that the entire class.  He also said he couldn't understand my "slang" (southerner problems). 

Later that evening, I had Physiology.  I'm not sure if it was because of the fact that it was a night class (my first ever) or the Operation game buzzer sounding air conditioner, the wind from the window clanking the plastic blinds together, the thunder crackling, or the professors phone ringing TWICE with my exact ring tone from my home (minor heart attacks as I thought my phone was going off during class), but I could not focus to save my life.

Tuesday

RAFTINGGGG! I was sooo excited to go to this class.  Since the Tuesday slot only allowed 2 hours, which is not enough time to load equipment, drive to the river, raft, and clean the equipment, we moved our “outing” day to Thursday.  

I also had Metal Crafting class.  In this class, we learned about what we are going to make, and I actually was wishing I was an art major throughout the entire lecture because it seems SO fun.  We are going to use copper, rocks, and wax to make jewelry and a mural! 

Wednesday  

Issues in Biology and Environment was the first class of this day.  The entire class was full of seniors who are taking this as one of their final classes, so it may be too difficult and you have to debate a lot, which I absolutely love... NOT.   

Then I had Batik.  In this class, we will get to “tie and dye” (what they call tie dying) and paint fabric with different techniques and other substances including sugar and salt.  Once again, I was wishing I was an art major.  This teacher was also not informed that she would have Americans in her class, so our handout notes were in Malay.  

Thursday

Rock climbingggg!  In this class, I climbed up a rock wall.  Considering we went two at a time in front of the WHOLE class, my heart was pounding.  I also found out we will get to go to the Batu Caves, and a couple other spots to climb on real rocks!  My muscles are going to be HUGE! Hehe.  While waiting for our first rafting outing, our teacher named Ezzad took us to lunch.  That’s one thing I LOVE about Malaysia.  Teachers will take you to eat AND pay for it!  I hope this trend comes to America.  Meredith and I also killed time by playing tennis and going on a bike ride around campus.  We got quite the stares considering we are the only blonde haired people at this school.  

After a little while, it was time to go to the river for white water rafting!  When we got on the river, we paddled up and down the slow areas, getting a feel for rafting and learning the correct techniques.  There were also some local kids who were jumping off of a cliff (probably about 30 feet high) and my dare deviling little self did it too!  My heart was pounding, but it was awesomeee.  Now as we were walking along the rocks back to our rafts, someone took a fall.  Guess who it was... OPA!!  I screamed. Out loud.  And as he started floating down the river, yelling in pain... my heart started pounding again.  Carson, our lone American guy, went to the rescue and grabbed Opa out of the water.  We made a stretcher out of two paddles and life jackets, carried him up the hill (mostly girls), and Opa and the Americans were headed to the hospital!  The government hospital that is.  While we were there waiting for the doctors to tell us what was wrong, we had to lighten the mood a little.  Not only does Opa not completely understand English, but he was extremely worried.  After saying he didn’t want surgery,  Jocelyn/Hank told him, “Don’t worry, they are just going to sew three cats to the back of your spine to make it heal.”  Then as he was going to get his ultrasound, we also said, “They’re just going to check your siamese twins!” That may have been a little mean, but we were also sweet.  Since they had to cut his bathing suit off, we went to the local night market while he was getting x-rayed and bought him a new bathing suit. After 6 hours of waiting, my prayers were answered, as it was just a deep bone bruise.  Once we were back to our dorms safely, Poor Opa looked at all us and said, “If it wasn’t for you guy, I would be died.” 

Here's a picture of Opa before the trip.  RIP bathing suit.    

Because of the hospital incident, I missed my farm management class so I get to see what that’s like this week!

Friday 

Only one class on Fridays! Woohoo! AND it’s Animal Physiology!  In this class, we spent literally 45 minutes trying to decide on a time for a lab.  That’s something that’s a little different here.  The class decides on a time and day to have the 3 hour lab.  It has been a pain in the bootay.  After classes were done, we headed to the beach to go camping!  We also left Justin Bieber (on his ceiling above his bed) to keep Opa company while we were gone. 

Since this blog is already so lengthy, I will write a separate one about the beach trip with LOTS of pictures!