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.