So, you were saying you went to Laos, you went to Thailand, by any chance did you go to Malaysia?
00:08
Yeah, I spent, I spent some time in Malaysia. The first stop, we went there from Singapore, just taking a bus and we ended up in Malacca.
00:19
Stayed about five days in Malacca. Malacca's nice. There's a lot of history there.
00:25
We learned a lot about the colinization of Malacca, the Portuguese and then the Dutch, and then the English and then the Japanese, and, yeah, it was a really interesting place.
00:36
There was old St. Peter's Church. There's several Mosques.
00:42
It's a good place to spend for a few days. From there we went to Kuala Lumpar.
00:48
We didn't really spend much time in Kuala Lumpar. We had spent a week in Singapore and were pretty tired of cities.
00:55
so we only spent I believe two or three days in Kuala Lumpar, just visits from shopping malls, the KLCC, the Petronis Towers, and yeah, that's basically what we did in KL, and then we went to the Cameron Highlands, and if you like hiking, the Cameron Highlands is a great place for you.
01:15
I don't know, they might have 16, 17 different marked trails. There's a whole lot of unmarked trails.
01:22
We spent a month there. I think I only went on only six hikes maybe during that month but once again we were being lazy, and yeah, if you're an avid hiker then you're certainly going to enjoy the Cameron Highlands.
01:34
Yeah, actually, I did the hike in the Cameron Highland once, and foolishly I started my hike at about 4 o'clock and I thought I could make the loop of the trail at the time, and the sun started to go down, and I was in the jungle, and I was worried about getting back, and I just made it back, but I was pretty scared for awhile.
01:55
You were lucky. Some people don't make it back.
01:57
Really?
01:58
Well, Jim Thompson. Maybe you've heard of him.
02:02
Yeah, actually, why don't you tell the people about Jim Thompson?
02:05
Jim Thompson was a trader.
02:09
I think he was maybe based in Hong Kong, but I'm not sure. Maybe it was based in Malaysia.
02:14
He went hiking. I believe it was 1967, in the Cameron Highlands, and no one has seen him since.
02:23
He's just vanished from the face of the earth. So, be careful if you go hiking there. Watch your step.
Ann, could you introduce yourself and tell people where you are from?
00:24
Yeah, my name's Ann Hutchingson and I'm from Montreal, Canada. And right now I'm an English teacher in Tokyo, Japan.
00:33
Mm. OK. What's Montreal like?
00:35
Montreal is a really nice city. It's just very cold in the wintertime.
00:40
It is..uh, it has four seasons, and the nicest season is the summertime because it's really warm and people play a lot of sports,
00:49
and there are some parks in Montreal, and you can go swimming and hiking and biking and rollerblading. It's a very interesing city.
00:59
Wow! Were you born in Montreal?
01:01
I was born in Montreal and I can speak two languages. English is my first language but I also studied French in high school.
01:09
So, were you in a submersion program, or all your subjects in French.
01:13
No, I went to an English high school but a lot of people in Montreal are in immersion programs.
01:21
OK. Since you learned French, what do you think is the best way to learn language?
01:25
I think that you have to like learning another language and if you have a possitive attitude then you can find learning another language fun rather than stressful
01:37
so I think that I had a few French friends and we would practice and they would be very patient and I liked the fact that I could communicate using another language cause then you have another identity.
The first time I moved to Poland I wanted to live with a foreign family so that I could learn Polish language.
00:22
I went to live with couple in their seventies whose children had moved away from home.
00:28
They started treating me like a second daughter.
00:30
At first it was really fun because they'd encourage me to speak and they'd act everything out for me,
00:36
including my landlord's experiences during the Second World War in Poland, where he'd stand up and perform,
00:42
but after awhile it got a bit wearing because when I was out the house he would go into my bedroom and start picking up my dirty underwear from the floor, all he used to leave on the bookshelf for me.
00:53
but after awhile it got a bit wearing because when I was out the house he would go into my bedroom and start picking up my dirty underwear from the floor, all he used to leave on the bookshelf for me.
00:58
Sometimes he would cook for me, which is great up to a point, because I got to taste some real Polish home cooked food.
01:04
But when he decided that I really was his long-lost-daughter and started chopping my egg for me and then trying to feed it to me I began to feel that maybe it was starting to get time to move out.
01:14
He would also invite me into the living room so that I could watch the Polish TV and improve my language and then spend half the television show prodding me and getting me to speak to him in very fast Polish.
01:24
He was very kind to my friend Kathy when she came over to stay,
01:28
but unfortunately he wanted me to translate his thoughts on the Polish economy from very fast Polish into English and the same time she was asking me to translate her ideas on English Cricket to Polish.
01:40
Nonetheless, it was an experience I would not have missed!
GLOSSARY
encourage: animar; landlord: the owner of land or houses ; underwear: ropa interior; chopping: cortar;
Nicola, you were talking to us the other day that you went diving in Australia.
00:20
That's right I did.
00:22
Wow, so what was it like?
00:24
Well, actually it was quite scary to be honest. When I first started I did an introductory course, which was just maybe like two days.
00:34
And so they just sent you out with all of the equipment, put you in the sea, and guided you, but then when I did the real course we started in the swimming pool, which was fine and it was all great fun, although there were two men on my course who completely freaked out and had to leave.
00:51
Oh!
00:52
Yeah! so that was fine but then they took us out to sea which was a bit different.
00:56
Yeah, because they made us set up our own equipment, I mean they still checked us and everything so we didn't die, but we had to put on our own equipment.
01:05
We had a diving buddy who I was with, and I was with my friend Graham, who I was traveling with anyway, and we went down into the sea. We went down maybe fifteen meters.
01:18
And they always say like 'Don't Panic' just keep breathing normally and everything. But I did kind of panic a bit.
01:24
Oh, no!
01:26
So then I rose to the surface really quickly, which you know, you're not supposed to do in diving.
01:31
So I went up really quickly. Luckily we weren't deep enough to do any damage but my diving buddy Graham was having a great time down there looking at shipwrecks and didn't even notice that I was missing.
01:41
What a terrible guy!
01:43
Yeah, I know. so, then...
01:45
Wow! Did they fail him? I hope he failed the course?
01:47
No, he passed. He paid enough money. He passed. But it meant that I couldn't go diving for the rest of the day cause I had gone down quite deep, so that was a shame, but.
02:01
That's terrible. But you didn't hurt yourself, you didn't come up to fast?
02:08
No, I was fine in the end, but it was a shame because that was the end of my diving day. But we had a few more days to do it.
02:12
So now you are comfortable diving. You don't freak out anymore?
--:--
I don't freak out anymore, but I couldn't go diving now on my own because it has been so long. Yeah!
GLOSSARY
diving buddy: compañero de buceo; come up: subir; rose: subi; you're not supposed to: no debes;
No, actually, I started out as a French teacher. That was my first job.
00:24
Wow! So tell me about your first job!
00:27
My first job! I was working in Central West Queensland in Australia so it was a remote place.
00:34
Sure
00:35
For example, the nearest supermarket was about 100 kilometers away from me.
00:39
That's amazing.
00:43
And, so of course the students lived, some of the students lived a long way away from the schools, so they had their lessons by teleconference, actually, school of the air.
00:53
Wow, so when you had a teleconference for example, how many students would be on the air at the same time.
01:02
I guess around eight, in two different locations. And I would be in the third location
01:11
Wow, that's amazing!
01:12
Yeah!
01:13
Yeah! And how often would you be teaching like this?
01:19
Well, the students were aged between 9 and 12 years old. They had two French lessons a week by teleconference.
It starts out sickeningly sweet. I was in am musical, Cinderella, and I was Cinderella
00:27
and the guy who played the prince and I started to date
00:34
and we got pretty serious and then he was trying to get rid of an ex who kept bothering him and so he decided to come to Japan to teach English and we, all during the summer we had plans you know.
00:48
I would come and visit and that kind of stuff.
00:51
We were really excited about it and he was a model at the agency, at the same agency where I was an actor and....
00:58
so we had the same agent. He went to Japan and was teaching and we were writing back and forth
01:05
"looking forward to seeing you" all that kind of stuff and I was having lunch with my agent one day
01:13
and telling her that I had started taking Japanese and I had been planning out my trip and I was very excited about this whole thing and she says,
01:20
"JJ, I don't know how to tell you this." And I'm thinking,"Oh, my god! What?"
01:25
And she says, "Yeah, um, Richard's ex-girlfriend flew out to Japan and they got married."
01:32
Oh, my god!
01:33
Married!
01:37
Oh, no!
01:38
Yeah! Yeah!
01:40
How did you feel?
01:44
Like I needed a ladder to get on a piece of paper, really, I mean it was, it was a devastating, you know that first broken love kind of thing, but..
01:54
Did you hear from him afterwards?
01:57
Yeah, we were always just friends apparently.
02:00
Yeah, so not only adding the "insult to the industry", "insult the industry",
02:08
is that what I meant to say "insult to injury" was him just saying that we were always just friends.
GLOSSARY
sickeningly: asquerosamente; get rid of: deshacerse; back and forth: From side to side; afterwards: after a while;
So, JJ, I hear you've got a good living arrangement.
00:21
I love it, and of course, you know, like any person, I was a little bit leery of living with roommates but at the same time I thought living in a foreign country
00:30
I didn't want to isolate myself completely, especially since I don't speak the language
00:35
and I first met Jessica at the airport and when we were close to tears from laughing so hard on the train ride from the airport to Matsudo Station
00:46
I realized this is going to be a good living arrangement, and we got here and the Brits had taken one half of the apartment and so we Americans moved into the other half and
01:00
have gotten along brilliantly, even the little squabbles that tend to come up seem to be solved fairly quickly,
01:06
maturely and I love it. This is the best living arrangement I've ever had.
01:12
At the same time I think it's kind of something that's,
01:15
that can be expected when you come to teach abroad. It takes a certain kind of person
01:22
to decide to leave everything familiar behind and meet new people, have new experiences. You're not taping any of this are you.
01:31
No, I am actually
GLOSSARY
living arrangement: an arrangement to allow people (or ideas) to coexist; leery: openly distrustful and unwilling to confide; squabble: A discussion;
