Relaxing Weekend?

This weekend we had a few offers to explore other parts of Malaysia, but frankly we were just too tired to except them. So, we decided to just stay around INTI this weekend and get some sleep and studying done, or at least that was the original plan. On Friday night we decided to accept an offer to go dancing in KL with our friends Kafar and Casey. By the time we got everyone together, found a taxi, and made it through a couple traffic jams we got to the club at around 12:30. We met up with some of our Iranian friends at the club, and danced the night away until they closed at 3:30 in the morning. Dancing was extremely fun because they were playing techno music, but we were all dancing Iranian to it. Humm how to explain Iranian dancing in words… you move your arms, hands, and shoulders quite a bit but it is very fluid and graceful. Hopefully, by the time we leave we will be able to do it justice and show you in person. Anyways, so after the club closed we said good-bye to our friends and tried to look for a taxi. During this process we found a group of INTI students that Casey and Zafar knew, and they said they had room in the van they had taken and offered a ride. In the sheer excitement of saving $70 RM we accepted. Before we left KL we went out to eat a bistro, where Meghan had some delicious Chinese noodle dish and Shan had some banana roti. We finally left KL around 5am and headed back to INTI. Just as we were about to fall asleep in the van, we woke up and realized that there were flashing lights in front of us and that we were about to be pulled over by the “Malaysian Police” at a road block. We use this term loosely because Malaysian police are nothing like American police. The government is very corrupt here, and often times the police will set up road blocks and stop anyone who is not Malaysian and threaten them with tickets only to make them pay cash on the spot. The guy driving the van had a proper license and we didn’t exceed the capacity of the van, but there were several foreign students in the vehicle. The Malaysian government obviously had a problem with this. We aren’t exactly sure what all went on because there were three natives in the car who were speaking Malay with the police, others were discussing the situation in some middle eastern languages, and we were just sitting there shocked at how government officials could act this corruptly. After about 15 minutes I guess an agreement was made and we paid them $50 RM and were allowed to leave. We didn’t really feel threatened or scared in this situation, we were just confused and angry that the police are allowed to act this way not only because they demand cash, but because they get away with being discriminatory towards anyone who isn’t native Malay.
On Saturday we actually did get some sleep, and yes studying done. Then, on Saturday night we went over to one of our classmates apartments and hung out with him and a group of his friends from Kenya. We taught them a few American games, and we tried a rice dish they had made and made a sad attempt to learn some Kenyan dancing styles.
Today, we are going to try and prepare for our debate we have this week in our history class on civil disobedience, our history test, moral studies assignment, accounting test, our Malay project, and plan more of our 6 weeks 6 countries backpacking journey that we embark on in three weeks!