Hey all. Just a quick note to say I arrived safely+gettin stuck in. Im on an island called Penang, which is attatched to mainland West Malaysia. Im with about 40 other gappers in an international boarding school.Boys are feeling slightly outnumbered as its 35 girls, 5 guys. So far we're learning to teach english as a foreign language through games and various activities. We're also learning the local "Malay" language, which is pretty solid. My gap partner, Aman, is teaching me sign language, as we will be teaching deaf children as well as teaching english to other students in the school we're going to in Sabah. Last night i hada full blown indian meal with all of the gappers and it cost me 20p-rip off. Some of the guys went all out and had like 6 courses which totalled almost 1 pound (notice we dont have pound signs on these keypads). We had our first major downpour yesterday-great fun! Like Forrest Gump said- it was like a sheet of water with tiny gaps in-and was soo loud! We've got hoses for showers but atleast the girls have luke warm water-the guys showers are ice cold-haha. We're treated 2 decent toilets tho-better appreciate them now as most of us are gona have squatting toilets on our placements and a bucket to wash in- we'll soon see. In the centre of our school there's a bunch of palm trees and plants filled with crazy coloured birds-like reeeally turquoise. They keep flying away when i try to photograph them tho. We hava huuuge shopping centre next to the school-9 floors high-heaven. And everything's sooo cheap, but i dont have room to buy anything :-(. Got a sim card for my phone and have managed to phone home loads for pennies, which is fab. Found the most random thing- at the back of the shopping centre carpark we followed a really nice smell into a kinda shed- to find a chinese shrine thing. With candles, burning insense, bowls of petals and things hanging from the roof- was really cool. Will upload my pics as soon as I get to an internet cafe as i am not aloud to download stuff onto the school's comps.