April..

April began with a visit to the hostel from my brother, Sam. It was great to be able to show him some of the things I do out here and more importantly introduce him to the boys that have made my time here so enjoyable. The boys loved seeing another ‘orang putih’ and even more so the fact that he managed to upstage me by scoring a hatrick in a football match. He was also able to bring out some of the posters I’d bought to decorate the classroom and I have to say it’s looking very decent!

classroom in all its glory

Sam's visit

rolling game

Not long after Sam’s visit, we welcomed our Desk Officer/boss Chris Hitch from the charity I work for, Project Trust. It was good to catch up with him and share some of the funny stories Rory and I have had over the year and even better to crack into the Haribos and mini eggs he’d kindly brought us out. I’d missed them so much! After a day at our place he set off to MYTC, where Max and Liam work, for meetings about the future volunteers. Thankfully, Chris was pleased to announce that San Damiano definitely want Project Trust volunteers to continue to teach here which means that Rory and I haven’t been too bad!

football at the field

Shortly after Chris’s visit we had another outdoor cooking activity, which is a monthly event where all the pupils go down to the river to camp out and prepare food on a wood fire. The boys love it and there is always a great atmosphere down by the water whenever the cooking commences. This was our second time in the year doing outdoor cooking, so it meant that this time we knew what was going on and therefore we could help out gathering materials to make shelters.  As expected the boys made some very impressive bamboo shelters and after the camp was set up, Rory and I were tasked with keeping the boys entertained for the morning. We got stuck into a number of games and introduced the boys to a game of ultimate Frisbee. The boy’s thoroughly enjoyed it and with Rory on one team and me on team it all rather got a bit competitive!

Rory and I throwing the boys

With Visas soon expiring, we set off the following weekend to go about getting our visas extended for another 3 months. We weren’t quite sure exactly how to go about it and with week remaining we all joked that the three of us could be home sooner then we’d first thought. It seemed fairly simple and the plan was as follows: get a ferry from KK to Labuan, followed by a boat to Brunei, spend the night with friends in Brunei and then return to Labuan the following day; at which point we’d hopefully have another 3 months on our visa.

This was 60 pence!!

As I mentioned we stayed the night in Brunei with family friends of mine, who are teachers out there. We spent the afternoon exploring the luxurious palace and polo fields of the Sultan and even though we only spent half a day here, it felt like we’d actually properly ticked off Brunei. If the day spent exploring Brunei wasn’t enough, we were beyond belief when an enormous roast chicken was produced in front of us, for dinner. It’d been 9 months since we’d all last set eyes on such fine food and It genuinely hurt to think it’d be another 3 months until I’d next have it!

We returned to Labuan in high spirits, with a new stamp in our passports and most importantly our visas successfully renewed. Next ensued the quest to find a hostel and hopes were not high considering it was Easter weekend. Annoyingly, our efforts were fruitless and after playing with the idea of doing an all nighter, we decided the best bet was to call a staff member from Montfort, who used to live there, to see if she could sort something out. Luckily she reported back to say she’d found us a place. We were of course very grateful for her helping us out but she’d missed out the point that our accommodation for the night would be the Labuan fire station!! So you can imagine our reaction as we pulled up in the taxi… This of course set us out in a top mood to go and enjoy the cheap tax free alcohol later and the novelty of being able to have legit dairy milk chocolate for the first time in a while confirmed that we’d soon be back!

cake for feast day

Freiyster - one of the boys we chose to speak in English..

Karaoke 

The final week in April was Montfort week! St Louis Marie de Montfort was the founder of the Brothers of St Gabriel, who run the hostel that I work for. Therefore it’s fair to say it’s a pretty big deal out here. For the two weeks leading up to the day, I’d been giving it a go to teach the boys about the story of Montfort in tuition. Whilst at the same time we had to prepare 3 students for a sharing exercise about their time at the hostel. The evening was a huge success and like most occasions here for reasons I can’t explain they always seem to sign off with some form of a karaok performance.