Penang -- Week 12 -- I love the nightlife.

WEEK 12
FRIDAY, May 30th
I've connected with a local salsa group that I found on Facebook. Gotta love Facebook. I'm better in touch with people now, thanks to Facebook, than I've been my whole life. Remember when we had to send letters to people? Now email is even becoming an outdated form of general communication. I'm also actually speaking with some of my extended family that I've never really communicated with before. And now I am using it to develop my network of friends here in Malaysia.

The group's leader is Yvonne. She contacted me several times after I joined the group. She's encouraging me to go to a certain club tonight. Apparently they go every Friday and Saturday, and it's all cuban style dancers. Shanti is set to babysit. Our first baby-free night out since getting here!

The club is a sweet little outdoor restaurant on the marina with a stylish bar and sofas for intimate seating. Across the way there is a long pier with a proper discotheque at the end, complete with thudding beats and flashing lights. Here, rope lights give the place a soft glow and someone's personal CDs are the music for the evening.

The dancing is done mostly on an open bit of deck that has seen some moisture over the years, so it's slightly warped planks catch my heels as I dance. Every time there is a hint of drops in the air, the couches get covered. And those poor workers are standing by, ready to uncover them again every time it stops. This can happen several times over the course of an evening. If the drops even remotely resemble rain, the dance floor is closed (wet wood is a highly dangerous dance surface). But the dancers are unfazed and simply move their body shakin to small squares of tile under the restaurant's covered patios.

The turn out at the club is very small. Maybe 10 or 15 people are there. To describe them as Cuban-style is stretching the definition of Cuban tad. They're all also beginners, but they're very nice and very enthusiastic about salsa; they've caught the salsa bug pretty bad as many of us do in the beginning. I'm asked how long I have been dancing. Do you know, as of next month, it's been a full ten years! Wow! And as of June-July-ish, it's been 10 years since I met George! What a long time!

I'm aching to teach again. Although a few people here have been introduced to rueda, none of them know very much, and I'm desperate for a few good circles. As it is, George and I dance together all evening, and though we're off and terribly out of practice, the level here isn't such that it's immediately apparent to those watching us.

We're on our way home when Shanti calls. Regin is awake and she can't get him back to sleep. I hear him crying in the background. "We're on our way," I tell her. Our short drive home takes us through George Town a little, and I can see that the city is teeming with life at night time. The food hawker markets are filled with people, there are trishaws criss-crossing the streets, and the local hipsters and club kids are looking for the next stop on their crawl.

But for us, it's the end of a good evening, and we're eager to get home to our boy. He's tired, and asking for me. I think a car ride will put him back to sleep, so we all pile in the car to drive Shanti home. It's about 1am and we're responsible for getting her home. She lives at the end of a long, winding road off of Tanjong Bungah. There are a lot of nicer homes and apartments in that area. That's where all the play group ladies live. But Shanti's road is a little less grand. We drop her off at an apartment block and consider watching her to make sure she makes it in all right. But, as she's walking away, with her work dress in her plastic bag, it feels like we're spying on her life, so I encourage George to leave.


SATURDAY
I kind of love Saturdays. It's our most normal day. I do laundry catch up and we play video games and waste time on our computers. This is exactly what we'd be doing in the States or anywhere else. Some days we also do some shopping, but mostly we relax while Regin wanders around the apartment babbling.