December

Here we are at the end of the month and not one blog posted!  I am fixing that.  This month has been so busy that we haven't had much time to post!  Here is a quick run-down of what has been going on... 

1. Trip went camping with the Young Men for three days.
2. Two days after Trip got back I went camping with the Young Women for another three days.
3. While Trip was at camp my sister, Angie had her baby!  To see their blog and pictures of little Brayden Weston Brown (who is adorable, by the way!) click on the link.
4. Two days after I got back from camp we hosted a pool party for the youth in our Branch.  It was a lot of fun and we had a good turn out. (more details to follow)
5. The week after the pool party was the week of Christmas!  This time was spent in a frenzy of buying presents, getting internet, decorating our tree, and arranging for our pets to come out here.
6. Christmas parties and Skyping with family ensued!


Some other unfortunate news is that my camera broke shortly after Thanksgiving, so I haven't been able to document any of this!  Luckily, Trip can take pictures with his iPhone so it isn't too bad.  Anyway, we should be posting more now that we have the internet in our apartment.  We will fill you in on all our recent adventures soon!  Merry Christmas to all of you and Happy New Year!!  Thank you to our families and friends for all the love and support you have given to us.  You are the best!

Thanksgiving Pictures

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun this year.  We got together with a bunch of Americans in the ward and had a massive pot luck.  There was so much food that everyone also got to take some home too, and that was after about 30 people went for several rounds!  We played games, visited, and just enjoyed each others' company.  Here are some pictures of the event.

Me and Trip with Elder Wall, one of the missionaries.  They both look pretty good, I on the other hand look awkward.

We played Werewolves with about 20 people...it was so fun!

Trip and I showing off our white elephant gifts.


It was fun to have mom in town too!  Thanks for coming out to visit us Mumsie!!

Cockroaches...Ew

We had our first cockroach visit our apartment last week.  It had been raining a ton and the roach decided to look for shelter in our living room.  Unfortunately for it, we were also seeking shelter in the living room.  Unfortunately for us, the cockroach was huge!  We got it and I made Trip pose for a picture to show how big it was.

Happy Thanksgiving & A Newish Post

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I think this is a day late, depending on how you look at the timezones and all that (my family is just finishing up Turkey day back in the States... so it's a toss up.) Kimberlee and I are going to be celebrating today with her parents and some of the members of our ward, as we have the day off for a Muslim holiday, which is a nice coincidence.

By the way, I have a few posts that never made it out of draft form back in September and October. One of the challenges for me and posting on this blog is that I have been extremely busy at work and we don't yet have internet at our apartment. Hopefully this will be rectified soon and when it does I will be resurrecting those "director's cut" posts. They will appear in their rightful time line so I will just let you know when they are up and give you a link. I have just unearthed the first of about 5, entitled Sprinkles The Cobra. I started writing it on October 4th. Go check it out.

New Pictures and More on the Way!

I just wanted to let you all know that I have started adding pictures to some of the old posts (Halloween Party and Missionaries and Mishaps).  Since the internet here is soooo slow, it is going to take more than one day for me to get all the pictures uploaded.  So...keep your eyes out for new pictures in the posts about Langkawi, our Anniversary Dinner, and Deepavali as well as some new stuff!  I will be working on this all week  :)

Raindrops Are Fallin' on My Head...

Today is a momentous occasion...for the first time since rainy season 'officially' started it has rained non-stop, all day.  Up until today it has rained everyday but usually just for a few hours and then it dries up nice and fast, since we are still experiencing 80 degree weather.  But not today.  Today, it was raining when we were driving to work, it was raining when we were going to lunch, and it is still raining as I write this at the end of the work day.  I don't really mind the rain because it cools down the air so that it is like a nice spring day instead of a hot, muggy summer day.  Rain also means some horrible traffic (because everyone feels the need to drive like a moron when it rains) and some sweet flashbacks to being a missionary and riding a bicycle during rainy season in Japan.  Good times!

Langkawi

What a beautiful weekend we just had!  We took work off on Friday and spent a three day weekend in Langkawi, which can best be described as the Malaysian version of Hawaii.  

If we look a little tired, it's because we caught a 7:30am flight that morning!

Langkawi is a little island that is located a short, one hour flight away from Kuala Lumpur.  The hotel we stayed at was absolutely beautiful and set on it's own private beach with nothing and no one there to disturb the feeling of seclusion.
  

This is a path from our room to one of the pools.  The set up was so beautiful!


The hotel was a gift from friends in the ward because they were not able to use the room they had and we owe them big time!  We got there early Friday morning and after getting checked in and settling into our room, we went to the breakfast buffet and indulged in fresh fruit, croissants and pastries with homemade jam, and french toast.  We also went to one of the three pools, which was in the midst of trees and was set up like the beach with sand and everything.  

It was so beautiful!  Dinner was in a fancy restaurant and we just enjoyed our evening off together.

Sorbet was served in a bowl made out of ice.

On Saturday we went mountain biking to a waterfall.  

This is the island as seen on bikes!
 
The bike ride took us through a little village where we saw some cute kids, lots of cows and chickens, rice paddies, and rubber trees!  

You can actually see the glue like sap that they harvest to send to rubber factories.  It was pretty cool.  

Trip took this picture while the cow was moving and while he was on a bicycle.  Impressed?  I am!


After biking for about an hour, we got to the waterfall and walked up to the pool where we swam and cooled off.  It felt like a scene right out of a movie!  

It was just me, Trip, and a cute native family swimming under a waterfall in the middle of a rain forest in the mountains.  So cool.  When we got back from our biking adventure, we had just enough time to shower and eat lunch before our second adventure or boating through the Mangrove trees.  It was not as physically taxing as riding bikes, but just as exciting.  We were the only two people on the boat, so it was like a private tour.  

Look at those sweet orange life jackets.


The tour took us down these rivers to see the different types of mangrove trees, we saw some caves, and a ton of wildlife.  Some of the creatures we saw include eagles diving to pluck food out of the river right next to our boat...

more bats up close than I have ever seen.  Ever.  And we saw monkeys like you see squirrels in the States (the guide couldn't understand why we were so excited by all the monkeys).  

There was also a monitor lizard and a viper sleeping in a tree.  It's so amazing to think that these things are normal to these people when they are so exotic to us.

After such a busy day, we took it easy that evening by taking a nice hot bath and watching a movie.   I should also mention the beach.  We spent some time on the beach and it was gorgeous!  

There were no waves on the beach, it was more like a really large, salty pond.  The water was warm and the shore was almost empty.  Needless to say, it was hard to come back to work.  We would recommend this place to anyone who needs to relax and escape the world.  I will post pictures in the next couple of days so you can all see the beauty that I can't describe.

Singapore

We drove to Singapore a couple of weekends ago to ‘reset’ our visitor’s pass in Malaysia since we haven’t gotten our visas yet.  It was a fun little road trip that only took us about 3 and a half hours to complete.  We crossed the border with no difficulty and then we were in what seemed like a completely different country.  Even though Malaysia and Singapore had the same history until 50 years ago, Singapore is totally different.  The most noticeable difference was the road systems.  It didn’t take us very long at all to figure out the roadways (unlike in Malaysia where we still haven't figured it out), and people drove in a normal, sane manner (meaning they actually obeyed common driving rules).  It was rather reminiscent of the US.  We only got to spend one night there before coming back and since we didn’t get to the hotel until late, we didn’t really do much besides eat dinner and sleep.  We are definitely going to go back so that we can experience Singapore properly.

Anyway, we were laughing about how spoiled we got in the less than 24 hours that we spent there.  When we left Malaysia we were told we had to purchase a Touch & Go card (kind of like the Easy Pass on the east coast) where you put money on it and then tap it against a pad to pay tolls instead of using cash.  They told us it was 20 ringgit for the card, but they didn’t tell us that paying 20 ringgit only left us with 9.20 for the next toll and we didn’t find out until re-entering Malaysia because there were no toll booths after that.  So, we came up to the first toll booth back in Malaysia and we tap our card and find out we need 10.80, but we didn’t have enough.  We had to back up and go to a different lane (there wasn’t anyone at the booth we were at) so we could pay cash and move on.  Well, shortly after this we decided we wanted to put more money on the card and at the next toll we pulled up and asked the person if we could top up.  They told us to go to booth one, so we said we would do it at the next toll.  The next toll comes and we pull into booth one and say we want to top up and the person tells us we have to go to booth three…oh brother.  We just said never mind, we’ll pay cash ‘cause it’s easier.  So long uniform and easy to understand Singapore…hello random Malaysian ways!

Halloween Party

I know this is kind of late, but I haven't been able to upload pictures lately and I really wanted to post this with pictures...oh well, I will be adding pictures to this post later this week.  We spent Halloween throwing a party for the Young Men and Young Women.  It was pretty fun and by the sounds of it, rather successful.  We had a donut eating contest where we had to eat donuts off of a string without using hands.

It was pretty funny!  Especially because one of the boys totally beat both Trip and me!

We also bobbed for apples, did a cake walk, and played the always popular and successful Werewolves.  I had to create my own Werewolves cards since we don't actually have the game.  It was especially helpful to have some parents involved when we played that game...the more the merrier!  Since they don't really celebrate Halloween here, nobody dressed up and there was only one trick-or-treater who came by.  Kind of funny since that is the same number of people that stopped at our place when we were in Utah last year...


Anyway, we put up some decorations for fun and also had a BBQ, although it started raining on us just in time for the grilling.

Missionaries and Mishaps

These last two weeks have been so busy and full of stuff to blog about that it will take more than one blog post to catch up.  A couple of weeks ago we had the chance to talk to Mike and Annie at their wedding in Jersey, which was pretty cool.  It sounds like the wedding was really nice and everyone seemed to have a good time.  We wished we could be there, but we are just too far away to be able to visit very often.  Congratulations again, Mike and Annie!


That weekend we also had our first formal MBT (Master's in Business Information Technology) preview.  For those who are unaware, the MBT is the new Master's program that Trip and I are working to help launch and that is the degree that Trip will be getting. 

Anyway, we held it in a conference room at a nice hotel and there was food and some of the MBT team did presentations and then we broke up and spoke to potential students personally.  It was on a Saturday, which was lame but it was good to start getting the word out and get some students recruited.

We also had the missionaries over for dinner that week.  We had the Elders over on Sunday and they were regaled with stories about the army by Trip.  It was a good time.  On the drive back to their apartment, we saw a cow crossing the road (which has never happened before or since, and we are on that road daily!).  It was funny because the cow was just lazily walking across the street and the cars were all completely stopped but somehow the cow walked into a car!  It bumped the headlight of a car and jumped and ran off...haha...silly cow.  On Tuesday, we had the Sister missionaries over for dinner.  That night was interesting because first we accidentally lit a pot on fire while making curry (and everyone knows that those things don't normally happen in Trip's kitchen 'cause he is pretty careful) which filled the house with smoke.  Once we got that cleared out everything was fine and we made it through dinner and dessert before a light exploded in the hallway which tripped the breaker and plunged us into darkness all at the same time.  It was pretty crazy!  We figured at that point that we better take the Sisters home before anything else went wrong.  I am happy to report that despite the mishaps, they had a good time and are willing to come back.


While I am on the topic of missionaries I should mention that Dan also left the MTC for the New York, New York South mission that week.  Unfortunately, we were not expecting his call and we missed him.  He tried leaving us a message but we couldn't understand much of it.  That bummed me out but we will be able to talk to him for Christmas which is approaching fast, so I can look forward to that.

It's A Small World After All

Today was a relaxing Malaysian day. I know, it's Thursday, but that is Malaysia for you. Kim and I went to work. Nothing was due today and all of my major projects are in between milestones. So, we got some things done, but overall it was pretty relaxed.


After work, we drove the 26 kilometers home in a downpour, which was exciting. Once we got back to our little apartment, we opened up the front door, the back door, turned the fan on and enjoyed watching the rain pour down. Living here is kind of like being in a ride at Disney World all of the time with the fantastic plant life, the dramatic storms and the sounds of the rain forest.

Deepavali

This last week was full of blog worthy experiences!  First of all, our anniversary was very relaxing and thank you to everyone who wished us well.  Trip wrote such a nice blog post and he really went out of his way to make sure it was a good day for me.  I am so lucky to be married to such a sweet man.


Over the weekend we had the opportunity to experience an Indian (Hindu) holiday that is similar to Christmas for Christians.  It is called Diwali in India, Deepavali in Malaysia, but it all means the same thing: The Festival of Lights.  They believe that Deepavali is a time of renewal, a time to let light in and push darkness out.  It is symbolic of how good triumphs over evil and it is a time to get together with family, eat food and enjoy each other's company.  We were lucky enough to get invited to join in celebrating with a coworker.  It was really fun to go to their house and learn about their traditions, and the food was excellent.  The people here are very social and they made sure that everybody had someone to talk to.  There was one couple sitting alone and Trip, Shanti (the woman we were talking to at the time) and I were asked by the hostess to please sit with them so they would be included.  I was so impressed by that!  If only we all thought that way a little bit more...just think how enriched our lives would be.

This is made out of colored sand and it is Buddhist Monk art...so pretty!

Trip helping the ladies in his office create their own 'Buddhist Monk art' for Deepavali.

Anyway, it was a great experience and I learned a lot.  The rest of the weekend was dedicated to cleaning the apartment, swimming in our awesome pool and catching up on some much needed R&R.  We are settling in and adjusting to our surroundings, and I must say that we are enjoying our simple little life out here.  It hasn't all been easy, but it has certainly been a good experience and we are looking forward to the rest of it.

Two Down, Infinity to Go

Today is our Two Year Anniversary! Yay us!

It is hard to believe that we have been married for only two years. I was telling Kimberlee that our time together has been paradoxical. On one hand it seems like such a long time ago that we weren't together, but on the other hand it seems like yesterday when we got married. Weird how that works.

Either way, I have really enjoyed the past two years of marriage and am looking forward to many, many more. As far as our plans for the day, it looks like we will be going out to dinner and enjoying a quiet evening at home after that. To me just being with Kim is the best gift possible.

I love you Kimberlee Baker!

Pictures from our fantastic anniversary dinner...

 

 

Our Move and Interesting Observations

Well, we are not doing very well at posting lately.  It seems like every week night it is hard to be motivated to blog (plus we don't have the internet at our new place), but blogging at work is nearly impossible, and the past couple of weekends have been so busy.  We spent one whole weekend moving into our new place and making necessary purchases and then this last weekend was General Conference for us.  The new place is only temporary and we will have to find somewhere new by January, but for now it is ours and we are loving the area.  I will post pictures as soon as I take some.


So, we are now living in a city called Seremban and it is a smaller city than Kuala Lumpur and the traffic is much better, which we appreciate!  It's also cool because our Branch President also lives in Seremban so we already have friends to get together with.  We have decided to do joint FHE and play games every Monday.  It has been fun so far.  The only downside is that we do not have the internet at our place yet.


Anyway, there are several things that stood out to me when we first got here and I decided I better post them before I forget or get used to them.

1. When eating, people don't use knives to cut their food.  Instead they use spoons.
2. Pedestrians have no right of way...at all.
3. Napkins are never provided, nor are hand towels in public bathrooms.
4. Sometimes toilet paper isn't provided either.  (Solution: always carry pocket tissues!)
5. Drivers are crazy and motorbikes are even crazier!  (Trip has a post about this insanity, so I won't elaborate)
6. There are holidays every month celebrating different religions.
7. Some things are ridiculously cheap in US dollars, and some things are twice as expensive...like electronics.
8. Every morning when we drive to work we pass cows, goats, and chickens that are loose on the street.  One cow actually moo'ed at us this morning!  There is also a random camel in a pen on the side of the road.

So there are some things that stood out to us when we first got here that is becoming more and more normal.  I will have to add to the list as I find more stuff.  I love the randomness here!

Please Keep Your Hands And Arms Inside The Ride And Hang On To Your Purse!

So, I was going to write a message and I noticed that we have about 5 unpublished posts!  These are stories/comments that we have started writing but have not had time to finish but they need to be shared.  So instead of writing something new right now, I am going to post something a little less new.  This happened a couple of weeks ago and I am happy to report that nothing else like this has occured since then. 


This experience occurred when Trip and I went to dinner.  We went to this place that Dad had taken us to on our first day.  It is in a shopping mall that is massive, it has a theater and two food courts and is 5 to 6 levels high.  Like I said, massive.  So, we are sitting alone at a table eating our food and I had my purse with my camera sitting on the chair next to me between me and the wall, which seemed safe enough.  Well, we are just eating and talking when out of the corner of my eye I see my purse move, so I look over and I could have sworn I saw fingers pulling it.  So I cry out "Hey!" and turn around.  At the same time the hand releases my purse and returns to the table behind us where a man and woman are sitting.  Before Trip and I can fully register what just almost happened they get up and leave, looking very worried and I check my purse.  "Good", I think "nothing's missing".  About thirty seconds later it hits me, holy cow, I just almost got pick pocketed!  That guy is lucky it took me a minute to be sure I saw him grabbing my purse because when I confirmed this to Trip, he was mad!  So, we talked through the scam this couple is most likely pulling and have come to the conclusion that the purse must always be either on the table, in my lap, or left at home in the future.  I have to admit, I am super lucky I noticed him because he could have easily slid it off the chair, given it to the woman and left without either of us even noticing they were there.  Neither of us have lived in a country where you have to pay such close attention and we didn't really realize that was the way it would be here.  Luckily, we have learned that lesson the somewhat easy way and we haven't had any trouble since then.

Sprinkles The Cobra

"Do you want to watch me feed Sprinkles?"

"Heck yeah I do." I reply as I walk out my Branch President's front door to meet the baby King Cobra he caught in his front yard a few days ago. It's a cute little serpent of death, named Sprinkles. Sprinkles the Cobra. I'll pause to let that sink in.

We get out onto the front porch of his house, which apparently, is where you keep live baby cobras, and I am confronted with an old aqurium with a screen lid and a brick holding it in place. "This is going to be interesting," I think to myself.

"Ok. Now I'll grab the brick and the lid. You keep a flashlight on him as I toss in his dinner," which is a gecko that one of his boys just caught for him. Every Animal Planet snake show I have seen flicks across my consciousness. This is going to be awesome.

He tosses in the gecko and quickly replaces the lid and the brick. I have the flash light trained on Sprinkles like an FBI agent about to take down Hannibal Lecter. "So I just learned from my neighbor that apparently baby cobras are even more poisonous than a mature King Cobra," he pauses for a second as Sprinkles stirs. "Yeah, since they haven't learned to control the flow of their venom when they sink their tiny little fangs into their victim, they kind of over do it." Cute, right? Sprinkles slithers around a little bit, but shows no interest in his dinner. I track his movements with my flashlight with laser precision.

"We probably won't see him eat. I haven't yet." Pres. Renner says. "Let's see if we can't get his attention." He raps on the glass. Sprinkles does not like this. He smacks the aquarium again and out comes the hood. "Cool" I croon. I tap on the glass and Sprinkles is striking so fast that it is as if he knew that I was going to do it. In a flash I am jumping back, retracting my finger from the glass, and screaming like a girl "WHOA!" Even though there is a pane of glass between me and my poisonous little friend, it is funny how deep the instinct for self preservation is.

I want to clarify something real quick. President Renner is an awesome dude. He was SF in the Army and has done some work in private security so he has the kind of stories that you can write movies about. This is probably why he is so chillaxed about his new pet. I, on the other hand, have a huge phobia of snakes, especially the poisonous ones. That didn't stop me from asking Kim on the way home that night if I could have a pet cobra some day. The answer of course was, "not a chance."

I'm Ok, I'm Ok... I'm Ok, Right?

So as some of you may have heard in the news, there was an earthquake in our part of the world. Indonesia suffered some pretty bad damage and casualties. However, here in Malaysia, we only felt a few aftershocks. Kim and I didn't even realize that there had been an earthquake, because we were driving at the time the aftershocks occurred and even most people standing on firm ground didn't feel them.

Sorry that we didn't post about this sooner, but to us the event was about as big a deal as the California fires were while we were living in Utah. Tragic, but no effect on our daily lives.

We just wanted to put all of our friends and family at ease that the Adventures of Trip and Kim will continue, unabated. Thanks for everyone's concern.

A Double Jointed Acrobatic Ninja Kind of Day

So today was a pretty busy and fulfilling day. I briefed the Inti marketing staff about the new MBT program and why it is going to be awesome. We ran through a bunch of information regarding how the program is different from MIS or MBIT programs. We talked about the power of modeling and why non-techies love it. And, I got to quote G.I. Joe and reference ninjas and monkeys, all while wearing a tie. All in all, it was amazing.

What was even cooler was having Kim in the audience. So, for those who are new to the show, Kim is Oma's assistant. Oma is the VP who is sponsoring the MBT program's creation. That makes Kim kinda like the Pepper Potts of Inti, at least I think so. Anyways, Kim was there to take minutes and report back any discussion or questions which Oma would need to be aware of.

This wasn't the first time that Kim has gotten to see me in action. I have taught a bunch of Sunday school classes and have spoken in Church on multiple occasions with her. However, I have to admit, having Kim in the room while I was tearing through a bunch of Power Point slides talking about Business Modeling was pretty freakin' sweet. Don't ask me why, but it was.

I have heard of people working with their spouses and having horror stories to tell, but I don't see that in the cards with Kim and me. She is doing a great job and I am loving having her around. What's more is that is that I am really enjoying this possibly once in a lifetime chance to share some of my working life with her. Time-wise, work is such a big part of my life, and in most cases she normally gets a glimpse of it through my boring, contextually lacking stories of co-workers and the day's events.

What's even more awesome is that we are making a great team, which is not surprising, to me at least. Kim and I don't have a perfect marriage, but it's pretty darn close. Two things that we are really good at is communicating and watching out for each other; or as I like to call it, "covering each others six." In business, just as in marriage, the ability to communicate effectively and cover each others blind spots is so critical. I think that is why we have been so effective these past few weeks.

Either way, this is an experience that may, unfortunately, be a one time thing. And, I plan on enjoying every minute of it.

Monkeys!

Wow, it has been awhile since we last wrote and there is so much to catch up on!  First of all, I started work on Tuesday, Sept. 15.  I am working as an assistant to Oma, the Senior Vice President of Employer Relations at INTI (the school Trip is working at).  It has been pretty fun so far, mostly because I get to work with Trip.  It definitely is keeping me busy too.  I am helping Oma get the new Master's program up and running as well as helping him with some other projects.  So far, I spend my time keeping Oma organized and making sure his secretary schedules meetings, etc. Trip says I'm like Pepper Potts in Iron Man.  (Haha, it's kind of true!)  I spend three days of the week at the campus Trip works at and two days of the week in the Corporate Offices, which is where Dad works.  Even though we are in different offices I still see Trip more now than before I started working and now I have a better idea of what the program is when he talks about it.


So, that is the reason it has taken me a bit to write this.  This last week was nice because we had Monday and Tuesday off for Hari Raya, which is the Muslim celebration of the end of Ramadan (the fasting period).  We didn't really find out about the four day weekend very far in advance so we didn't leave Kuala Lumpur to travel like most people did.  However, we did go up to Batu Caves, which is a short drive from where we are.  Batu Caves is actually a temple (Hindu, I think) that is built in some caves in the middle of a mountain.  You have to climb up 273 stairs, which wasn't as bad as I thought it might be, though I did feel it later.  I thought it was funny that they painted the numbers on the stairs so you can see just how far you still have to go.  I tried to take some pictures, but the lighting was a little tricky for my point and shoot camera.  I really need to get a better camera.  Anyway, here are some pictures of the caves... 

This is the statue at the bottom of the stairs.

 The 273 stairs we were about to climb.

 Here Trip is halfway up the stairs.

This is the actual cave at the top.

Here is one of the temples.  They are so ornate.

Of course the fact that there were a zillion monkeys at the top was totally worth it, especially for Trip!

 So, those are just some of the pictures from Batu Caves.  We have some videos of the monkeys too, but they were taking too long to upload.  I think the best part of the whole trip was when one monkey totally charged a kid and grabbed a sandwich straight out of his hands!  It was so funny.


On Tuesday we went to the Aquarium which was actually pretty cool.  They had a really good underwater tunnel with HUGE sharks, stingrays, eels, and turtles.  It was pretty active too so they were all swimming right next to you.  We tried to get some pictures, but the lighting wasn't very good and we weren't allowed to use a flash so they are all blurry since the fish were moving.  Here is a somewhat decent one of a shark that was right over our heads and was on the larger side.

This was a random photo op in the aquarium.

So, that was our long weekend.  It was pretty fun!  We will post again soon.

And The Fun Just Keeps On Going

Well, the last couple of days have been pretty exciting.  First of all, I finally took some pictures.  Yay!  Since so many people have asked when I would get some up here, I figure that is the first thing I will do.

This is the view of the famous Patronus Towers from Dad's apartment.  I didn't have to zoom or anything.  

This is the rest of our view of downtown Kuala Lumpur.  You can see the mosque at the bottom of the picture and all the trees are part of the public park right next to our apartment.

We went to dinner last night and decided to try coconut juice.  To our surprise they pulled out a coconut, lopped the top off, and handed us straws.  Wow!


Now that I have fulfilled that obligation, I can fill you in on everything else.  So our first adventure this week occurred because we decided to try renting a car this month to help with the commute, and on the first day of having it, we got lost.  I'm not talking just kinda lost either.  I mean we got REALLY lost.  We were supposed to be going somewhere close and it was supposed to be easy.  Well, in fact it was not easy...somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn and after ending up merging onto three different freeways, paying three tolls, and losing sight of downtown completely, we had no idea where we were.  It didn't help that our cell phone died so we couldn't call anyone.  I definitely had a stomach full of butterflies (which was not helped by the way people drive here either).  Well, we finally found an exit that actually let us off the freeway instead of connecting to another one, and we figured we could at least ask for directions back home, when all of a sudden the street we were looking for was right in front of us.  It was like a scene right out of a movie.  Our mouths dropped open, we kind of looked at each other, gave a nervous laugh and went on our way.  And the good news is, we were only 15-20 minutes late for meeting with our Branch President.  Haha.  Let's just say we see a lot of value in investing in a GPS.


Well, the excitement didn't end there.  While meeting with our Branch President, who is awesome by the way, we were extended callings.  I think that's the fastest I have ever gotten one.  Ever.  Anyway, I will be the new Young Women's President, and Trip will be the new Young Men's President.  Holy crap!!  I am still somewhat overwhelmed when I think about it.  Oh well, it's just another adventure, right?  Needless to say, Trip and I will have plenty of things to do in our 'spare time'.
Side note:  There is a thunder storm going on right now and I am home alone since the men are still at work.  It's kind of creepy.


So, something that has really stood out to me is how many stray cats there are here.  It seems like you can't go anywhere without seeing one.  The worst part about it is the kittens.  I feel so horrible when I see these poor little things running around the streets.  We had one follow us home the other night.  We were walking down the street and I saw something move in my shadow and there is this little black kitten running beside us and mewing.  It took all my will power not to scoop it up and take it home with me!  I really wish I had my camera so I could have taken it's picture.  It's funny because shortly after that I thought I saw another kitten and it turned out to be a rat!  I have never seen such big rats in such interesting places.  The cats ignore the rats though.  They are probably afraid of them; I know I would be!



Anyway, we still really like Malaysia and there is a lot that we can learn from this culture.  It is amazing to see what a developing country is like and it definitely reinforces our appreciation for what we have in the U.S.  Oh, and if you get the chance, ask Trip how his first day of teaching went and what he has learned about the school systems here.  It is pretty interesting and surprising!

Can You Tell I'm Hungry?

Can I just say that I LOVE food?!  I get really excited at the thought of making something yummy and I am always thinking of ways to use whatever is in the fridge.  My only problem is that my excitement is often out weighed by my laziness, so I don't actually cook everyday and I don't go all out for every meal.  But every now and then my enthusiasm for finding new recipes bubbles over and the hunt begins.  During these searches for some mouthwatering dishes I have discovered a couple of websites that have yet to fail me.  I have posted the links under Recipes and Food because they are too good not to share.  Simply Recipes has more recipes than I could possibly use, but they are all good ones.  Some of my faves are the carrot cake, the sausage and spinach stuffed shells, and the ham, potato and leek soup.  Mmmm.  Vanilla Garlic is mostly desserts but he always has some snarky remark and his posts are hilarious.  I read it even if I'm not looking for recipes.



Anyway, time to move on before I make myself hungry.  Trip already posted something today but I have two interesting facts I just can't resist sharing.  


Interesting fact #1:  In America we are always looking for ways to get tan.  We have sunless tanning lotion, tanning salons and all that jazz.  Well, here where people actually have some natural color instead of being pasty white (like me) they advertise skin whitening lotions.  Even whitening body wash.  Interesting how we all want what we don't have. 


Interesting fact #2:  I just had to teach my sweet husband how to change the font on the blog.  Apparently Computer Science degrees don't guarantee that you will remember to highlight the text before trying to change the font.  That makes me feel smart and it makes me smile.  Silly boys.

Oh The Freshness

First I want to thank Kim for getting this set-up. As she said this is something that has been on our minds for a while and she got it done without her geek husband. So much for my expensive Computer Science degree, right?

Today is my second day actually working (HR stuff was basically the entire last week) and I have been slowly grabbing hold of more and more responsibility. It is quite a difference from my past US based jobs, which seem to enjoy attempting to drown me in stuff to do before the ink on the HR paperwork has even dried. Thankfully, I have prior entrepreneurial experience and they started a new class on IT Entrepreneurship, the instructor for which is in uncharted waters. So, I get to help chart the waters. I actually just finished up crafting the term long group project. Exciting!

My coworkers have been really nice and I seem to go out to lunch with a new group everyday. I was talking about my academic experience today to a group of instructors and they about feinted when I told them how many hours a week I was in class at Neumont. From what the other instructors were telling me, the students here whine a lot if you give them too much homework, or if they feel it is too hard. I told them that if I get to be a full blown lecturer (not just an assistant) that my students are probably going to hate me, because I won't be as sympathetic. Thankfully for the Inti students, I am not sure that being a full fledged lecturer is in the cards for me any time soon. Oh well...

Brand Spanking New!

Well, there is a lot of newness going on in our lives right now.  We are in a new country, Trip is starting a new job and going to a new school, Kathy has a new puppy (he is sooo cute), and we have a new blog!  It's all so exciting.  So, we are now in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and it is so interesting!  When we were driving to the apartment from the airport I couldn't help but think that it feels like a combination of Japan and India.  There are buildings that are Asian looking with the tiled and ornate roofs that make you stop and think "I'm in Asia"; and then there are beautiful Mosques that catch your eye and you start to wonder if you ended up in the Middle East.  


The people here are very diverse.  There are Indian Malaysians, Chinese Malaysians, Pakistani Malaysians, Indonesian Malaysians, and native Malaysians.  This also means that there is such a variety of food.  We have already tried some local food which is delicious.  Malaysian food is spicy and they love to cook with coconut milk.  As you can imagine, we don't mind at all!  The only thing I was not a huge fan of was ABC ice (that is the short version of a name I can't pronounce let alone spell).  It was coconut flavored shaved ice (that part was good) topped with, creamed corn, red sweet beans, honey dew flavored jello balls, and some other jelly things that looked like seaweed to me, but I have no idea what they are called.  The jelly/jello stuff wasn't bad, but I'm not a huge fan of sweet beans to begin with and the corn was a little weird.


Everything here is green and beautiful and I have never seen so many palm trees in one place before.  Since Malaysia is made up of mostly rain forests it tends to rain quite a bit here.  It hasn't rained everyday, but in the last week it has rained at least four days.  It's not too bad though because the rain doesn't usually last all day.  Even though it is 50% humidity or higher the climate hasn't been too uncomfortable.  Of course, I think the luxury of air conditioning has helped with that.


So far our experience has been quite enjoyable and the people have been very friendly.  I think it will only get better as we start to figure things out and explore the area.  We haven't taken any pictures yet, but I will be changing that very soon!  Until next time.