If your knees aren't green by the end of the day...

I had an amazing weekend! Since classes start next week, a whole bunch of new exchange students came, so I met a ridiculous number of new people from all over the world. Most of them are only here for 5 months though, so I will have a huge group of friends, who will then depart, and a whole huge new one will come. They all have very diverse backgrounds and majors and reasons for being here, and I am really looking forward to getting to know everyone better. It seems we'll all be spending a lot of time together, which will most definitely be a blast.

Thursday after work, Andrew, Omar, Asa, and I went to Batu Feringgi (northern part of Penang) and had dinner, bought some more DVDs (of course), and went to this bar that's right on the beach. We sat with our feet in the sand and drank beer and wished it was less cloudy so we could see some stars.

Friday evening, I went and had dinner with Charles, one of Kit's friends. He brought me a can of pepper spray (my very first one), so don't worry everyone, between that and the "Kick Butt" work-out video I found in my apartment, I can now defend myself from attack. After dinner, we met my friends at the bar to watch the Germany - Argentina game (World Cup). Most of the people I was with that night are German - they wore matching Germany tshirts, brought a German flag with them, and sang German cheers. It was tons and tons of fun, and of course there was an insane amount of cheering and jumping around when Germany won, after a long long game.

Saturday I slept in and then spent the entire day by the pool, completely glued to my book, taking swim breaks in between. In the evening, Andrew and I went to "Little India" (still my favorite part of Georgetown) and had a delicious dinner. Then we went to the bar by our building and met a whole bunch of people and watched the England - Portugal game which lasted forever. The game ended at 2am and the next one started at 3am, so we went swimming in the pool to pass the time and get refreshed, and then came back to the bar to watch the Brazil - France game with a bunch of French people, and there was much rejoicing.

Sunday, 10 of us went to this island that's a short ferry ride away because one of my friends heard that it's a fun place to visit, but none of us really knew much about it. It was great! All that is on it, is a hotel, a restaurant, a pool, and tons of fun things to do - archery, paintball, a climbing wall, volleyball, a swinging bridge, etc. It made me want to spend the weekend and run around in the woods and do random activities. The island used to be where they sent prisoners; the prison closed in 1976 (I think). We played on the bridge (which was actually fairly long), and then broke up into teams for a few games of paintball. There were many injuries; the massive bruise on my leg keeps getting more and more colorful. We had lunch and went on this hike in search of the prison, which we found, after getting lost. It's completely abandoned and overgrown and creepy. It's weird to think that there were all these murderers and drug dealers and whatnot there, and a fairly good number of executions. That night we swam in the pool and had dinner together and watched movies.

As far as this job thing I'm supposed to have - I finally got my class schedule, although I still don't know much about what these classes are and have yet to see a textbook. Most of my classes are in the afternoon, which is nice. I am teaching several sections of second year English...I think each may have a different focus but I'm not sure yet. I am also teaching third year English for humanities majors, which should be really interesting...perhaps I can bring in my art history knowledge! This is registration week for the students, so it will be hectic and filled with administrative stuff. Classes start July 11th.

Happy 4th, everyone!