Final Thoughts

The South Lllano River flows throught the TTU Field Station in Junction, Texas.


I started writing my first post for this blog while I was proctoring the Final Exam for the Field Ecology class that I was teaching at our field station in Junction, TX last year. It seems only fitting and symmetric for me to write my final post while this year's students are taking their exam. (Still love the nervous sweat!)

For those of you used to tropical rainforests, this is what it looks like during one of the most severe droughts in Texas in recorded history.



I have never attempted to write a blog before and I had no idea it would become such a major part of my time in Malaysia. I was surprised to learn that people were actually looking at it and were eagerly awaiting the next post (OK, "eagerly awaiting" is probably a bit strong). Once people started looking at the blog, I realized that I had to continue to post regularly and ocassionally, I had to have something interesting to tell you. Luckily, there were lots of things happening to me that I thought would be good to share with the folks back home. After a while, people from Malaysia started reading the blog as well so they could see an American's perspective of things going on in Malaysia. I am surprised to see that I have made almost 300 blog posts in the last year and that the blog received over 19,000 hits.

I was hoping that I would have lots of words of wisdom for my final post, but I think that I will leave that for another time. I know that I still need to process a lot of the information. I look forward to writing and talking about my experiences in the future. If anyone has any questions then please let me know. I am sure that I will be ready to hit the lecture circuit soon.

Thanks

There are so many people that I want to thank for making this whole thing possible. First, of all I would like to thank the Fulbright Commission for supporting me during my time in Malaysia and Texas Tech University for allowing me a Devlopmental Leave (it appears that Tech was able to muddle through in my absence).

In Malaysia I would like to thank the faculty, staff and students at University of Malaya for being such wonderful hosts. I just read that UM has moved up three spots to #39 in the Asian University rankings during the past year (there is no need to thank me- I was happy to help out).

I also want to thank everyone at MACEE and the US Embassy for all of the help and support that they provided throughout my stay. I also enjoyed meeting all of the Malaysians who were alumni of exchange programs in the US and I thank them for sharing their experiences with me and trying to make my transition to Malaysia as simple as possible. I also want to thank all of the people who helped me to live, eat, shop, move around, and generally survive in a foreign land; I appreciate how generous everyone was with their efforts to make me feel at home. Thanks, and good bye, to all of the great people I met during my travels around Malaysia. Hopefully, our paths will cross again sometime in the future.

Thanks to my fellow Fulbrighters. It was great to have others around who were sharing this experience. We never had enough time together, but the times we had were memorable. Who is in charge of planning the reunion party? I could host it in Lubbock, but somehow I doubt if anyone would show up.

All of the Malaysian Fulbrighters except for Veer and Meg.


Special thanks to the student Fulbrighters who were stationed in the Penisula (Michael, Jaki, and Meg). I appreciate it that you made me an honorary member of Team Fulbright!

I love this photo of Michael and Jaki in their "Malaysian Gothic" pose. 1Malaysia


I would also like to send my appreciation out to all of you that have ever checked out the blog. It was fun sharing my adventures with you. I hope that you gained some appreciation of what a wonderful country Malaysia is and maybe even learned a thing or two.

If anyone has any questions or comments please don't hesitate to contact me.

Signing off,

Mark

mark.mcginley@ttu.edu

:) LSF