final week...

I'm halfway through my final week... with only four days to go (busy days though which is good)... I'm going to work my way backwards to bring you up to date...

...so today (wednesday) Chuen Hoe and I have just got back from having lunch with Siaw Chian and Ching Siew in campus (in the Science faculty cafe - which i hadn't eaten at before - good stuff). It was a fun lunch as we ate slowly and chatted lots... we talked about some of the stuff we went over last night in English Class and we talked about why we like to study our respective degrees (Ching Siew and Siaw Chian - chemistry, Chuen Hoe - Engineering, Myself - psychology)... I'm glad Chuen Hoe came with me as it would have been a little strange meeting people on my own without Todd I think...

Earlier today kelvin and I marvelled at Psalm 73 (possibly my favourite... click here) and how relevant it is to our lives... verse 28 is actually going to be our vision verse in Leicester Uni Christian Uni until next easter... we also talked about different issues and temptations that we face as students in our differing countries... I told Kelvin that the writer (a guy called Asaph) goes through three different thought processes in the pslam - envy, bitterness and thankfulness... After reading through it Kelvin corrected me and informed me that there area actually five - envy, bitterness, acknowledgement of guilt, thankfulness and desire to tell others... all in all a good study :-)



Last night I had my last English class (but not the last english class, Keng Yin has found someone to teach after i leave... Praise God for this as we weren't sure what was going to happen) and although I had to lead it alone (as Todd has gone) and although it was a little frightening... it went really well, we had 15 people including myself and had some really good conversations... I invited everyone along to alpha on thursday, please pray that they would come...



So my time in Redang... redang is a paradise island, and in the opinions of a lot of people I've spoken to, the most beautiful island in Malaysia... we (me and JR) arrived at about 11 o'clock on Sunday morning, and all of the tiredness of the sleepless night on the bus was forgotten as we both got very excited to see the white sand and turquoise water... we checked in and went for a swim... then got ready for our first snorkelling trip (as it was a package deal there were organised trips)... so we went to a place on the boat and as there were so many people (95% of wholm were Chinese and were wearing life jackets as they were not so confident on their swimming) we headed away from the group and swam out to sea a little bit... the coral itself was fairly amazing and there were so many fish, far more exciting than any i've seen when I've been snorkelling or scuba diving anywhere else... but the first really exciting moment happened when a shark swam underneath us... not sure whether to feel excited or scared we both kind of shrieked and smiled at each other... it was about maybe 3 or 4 ft long and not very far away (we'd been told that the sharks there were relatively harmless so we followed it for a while before it got away from us)... we swam further out and saw loads of clown fish swimming in and out of the anenemies... some of them were frightened of us and some came out to meet us and even nipped out hands with their little mouths... JR and I somehow got separated on our way back to the boat and we each swam different things... he saw another shark, this time quite a bit bigger than the previous one... and I was swimming along and saw something and thought "wow, that's a big fish" I then realised it was a turtle so I swam quickly to catch up with it, swam along with it underneath me for a while and then realised i was heading out to sea, so i let it go and returned to the boat... I realised back at the boat that we'd both swum about a mile and a half... which was good as i've not had any excercise since they stopped letting us use the gym for badminton a few weeks ago...



When we got back I went for another swim around the "house reef" and saw plenty more sharks, these ones were a lots smaller though (about 2ft)... not surprisingly at the end of my swim i was pretty tired... in the evening we had a massage, which was actually pretty brutal, but afterwards i was so relaxed I went back to our room and fell straight to sleep (even though it was about 10) so it did its job.. I also slept through my alarm so I failed to get up to watch the sunrise at 6... I was up at 8 though and we went for some scuba diving... JR did a discovery course and because I'd done it before I did a refresher (effectively the same thing, except JR was looked after constantly by his "buddy" who controlled his boyancy etc. whereas I was free to swim alone and my buddy just swam about 3 metres behind me... it was really nice and relaxing and we saw more sharks and clown fish amongst other things... as soon as we finished we had to get our kit off (scuba kit that is...) and join the second snorkelling trip to the marine park... where we were each given a loaf of bread to feed the fish with... it was amazing as they were not shy at all, and we swam about constantly with hundreds of fish accompanying us waiting for some food... they ate from our hands allowing us to stroke their sides as they ate... which was pretty cool... there was also a missive eel about 8ft long which came up to see us... was a little scary but i gave it a stroke as well... when we got back we checked out and I walked around the beach taking some photos... then fell asleep in a hammock for an hour or so and then it was time to leave...