Missin' My Peeps

As you saw in my post yesterday (on the off-chance that you read it!), there are certain things about America that I'm definitely missing. I know that I will find substitutes for some and others I will just have to miss/build my anticipation for until I can have it again in December! Obviously one of the things I miss most is my friends and family. And unfortunately, that's one of the things that is irreplaceable! Haha. I've met some great people here, but nothing compares to the people I 'left behind'. While it's been a little lonely occasionally, I've been trying to stay positive and just remember how much those people mean to me. Lately, it seems everywhere I look, I see things that remind me of one person or another. I've taken some pictures to let you know what I mean.... Enjoy!

**Please note: It is not always convenient or social acceptable to take pictures, so don't be offended if you don't see something on here that represents you! I have been thinking about you, I promise!!**

Things that remind me of Peter:

There are cats EVERYWHERE! Some are sophisticated like this one in front of the Petronas towers, others are less classy and hang out in the sewers. Your dream come true?

They have Starbucks Malaysia mugs! The only way you're getting one is by coming to visit me (or on the black market, I guess...)

Things that remind me of Kalia & Alison:

I got Fro-Yo the other day! The toppings were awful! Haha. But, lots of fruit for you, Alison  and lots of weird toppings for Kalia!

Things that remind me of my family/sisters. (This list could go ON and ON, but here are 2 in particular that made me smile!):

These are everywhere! Dad, guess what you're getting for Christmas?

I wonder if they have any 'h's and zeds in there? Would you like to buy a new pair of pant?

Things that remind me of Danielle:

There's no alcohol in this one, but since we're forever looking for pretty drinks, I thought this one met the mark! It's a Mango/Dragonfruit smoothie! So yummy! (And who says we couldn't add our own alcohol to it?)

Hopefully you can read the name of this little shop.... :) Missin' my Pandas!!

Things that remind me of Phil:

You've snuck a knife into Canada, think you could sneak one of these onto the plane? Haha. They also have machine-gun shaped wine bottles and all sorts of framed guns for decorations. Come visit?

Things that remind me of all my faithful blog readers:

Bottom Left.... Roti I Love You. "Roti" means "Bread." I have no idea what I Love You Bread is, but come visit me and we'll figure it out together!

 Thank you all for being part of my life!

Transition Stages

At my PFO training, they spent awhile talking to us about 4 stages of transition.

Stage 1: Honeymoon. Everything is wonderful. You love all the new adventures and seeing everything through new (tourist) eyes. All of the new foods are yummy, you see all the major sites, and life is good.

Stage 2: Flight. Once the honeymoon is over, you decide you've had enough of this foreign place and are ready to go home. Things aren't the same and you miss your old life and want to go back to it.

Stage 3: Fight. Somewhere in the midst of the flight stage, you realize this IS your new home. You're stuck here long-term. But it's soooo different and you're going to fight all of these cultural discrepancies. Why do they do things in such a weird/bad/dumb/different way? I like my way better.

Stage 4: Acceptance/Acclimation. Eventually, you start to overlook the differences as just a part of life. You may adapt to them or you may adopt them. You're living here long-term and making the most of the experience.

I got to Malaysia on Tuesday, July 31 (a week ago yesterday!!). My family came in on Wednesday and we went straight to the beach for an incredibly relaxing (yet short!) vacation. On Friday afternoon my parents left, on Friday night one of my sisters left, and then on Saturday night my other sister left. Then it was just me.

I didn't expect it to happen so soon, but Sunday was definitely a "flight" kind of day. Nothing seemed to go right and all I wanted to do was climb into MY bed in Virginia and sleep it off. It was nothing major even, just all the little differences that crept up on me.

I woke up on a futon with no sheets, because those aren't common in Malaysia. I took a shower with water-heater-heated water and a shower head that was "Asian-sized" tall. I had to rifle through 5 suitcases to finally find an outfit I could wear. I went to church with wet hair because my hair dryer isn't the right voltage. I spent 30 minutes of my afternoon at the phone store because the first SIM card they gave me was already broken. I had to walk to the mall to connect to the Internet. 3 coffee shops later, I still hadn't managed to get a connection good enough to check my email. Everyone on the sidewalks and the subway were staring at me because I'm the tall, crazy white girl. They were playing Celine Dion's Titanic theme song for half of the subway ride. I'm pretty sure that was the breaking point where I almost bought a plane ticket....

I'm not trying to sound like I'm miserable, though at the time I may have been. Haha. I love Malaysia. It has been a wonderful experience moving here and I know the little challenges are not only making me stronger, but will soon become second nature and hardly noticed anymore. I know that Sunday's frustrations were more a result of me being completely exhausted after 3+ weeks of going non-stop to "leave well" and a jam-packed week with my family to "enter well"! I am confident that after I get a day or two to relax, get caught up on email, have some "me-time", screw my head back on straight, etc., I'll feel soooo much better! Once we get an apartment and I'm able to settle in, I'll be even better still! My goal is to make the "Flight" and "Fight" stages as minimal as possible so that I can live in the Honeymoon and Acclimated stages for the majority of my time and really get the most out of this experience!

Day 1

I promise I'm not going to do a post for each day. That's just way too much work for something that only like 5 people read... Just Skype me. Haha.
But, I figured my first day in the new homeland would be good to record.

I woke up around 6:30 (thanks, jetlag!) and got showered and ready. Around 8, my director, his wife and I went across the street to an Indian restaurant to get breakfast. Now, I'm not the hugest fan of Indian food, so really wasn't sure how I'd enjoy it for breakfast, but it turned out to be super yummy! I got a dish called Tosai Telur. "Telur" means "egg" in Indonesian/Malaysian, and I don't know what Tosai means. It was a huge crepe with some dipping sauces. Plus fresh squeezed orange juice, yum!

After breakfast, we headed over to the church where our school is going to meet. They gave me a grand tour (all 5 rooms!) and I was able to get online and let people know I'd made it... I know you were all so worried! Haha.

Then we walked over to the apartment of Jalah and Clay (a married couple who I'll be teaching with! I'm sure you'll be hearing more about them because they're awesome!). We hung out in their apartment for a few hours just catching up. They gave me a quick insiders view of KL according to what they'd experienced so far. By the time we got done talking, it was lunch time, so we walked back to the Indian restaurant where we'd had breakfast and got food (apparently, it's a crowd favorite, I have a feeling it'll be a frequented place!). From here we went to buy me a phone so I'd have a way to be in touch with (some of) the world. I went for the cheapest.... Super weird transition from a Blackberry to a super generic flip phone with T9 texting!! So far, it's a nice little downgrade!

Look at that fine piece of craftsmanship!

After we got me up and running, Jalah, Clay, and I boarded a train/subway to go to KL Sentral. It's the Malaysian version of Union Station. They showed me around a little bit and then we figured out how to get me on the right train to get to the airport to pick up my family! My director is a bit of a nervous traveler, so he made sure I allowed for PLENTY of extra time, meaning I got to the airport way early, arranged a taxi to the beach, surfed the net (free wi-fi in Malaysia is very prevalent!), and just kept watching the screen to find out when they would land. I thought it was a little weird that my mom had said they arrived at 6:30, but the only flight on the screen arrived at 6:45.. But, knowing that Asia isn't known for its punctuality, I shrugged it off and continued waiting.

Around 7:30 I got a call from an unknown number, answered it to hear my sister telling me they were at the OTHER airport (20 minutes away). The other airport is the Low Cost Carriers Terminal (LCCT). I thought it was for domestic flights only. Had I known it was for cheapo airlines in general, I obviously would have gone straight there. :) After a brief re-negotiation with the taxi driver, he took me over there, we got the family, and headed to the beach. It was a lot more stressful than it sounds here (they didn't have a phone, my Internet was spotty, the taxi driver worked for a middle man who was super sheisty, etc), but we got to Port Dickson in an hour or so. We quickly got settled into our villas, and I went almost straight to sleep, silly jet lag!

5 Interesting Facts/Observations

I've been in Malaysia less than a week, but have already discovered some interesting things about the culture/country. Here are 5.

1. There are quite a few white people here! I saw 3 within my first hour in the country! Even though I do see them so frequently, it's still shocking every time I do! It's even more shocking when they start speaking and I don't understand them. Apparently there are white people who aren't American in this world, who knew? :)

2. Malaysia has never won a gold medal in the Olympics! Tonight as I started writing this post at the mall, a Malaysian was competing in the men's badminton championship. It sounded like a Packers bar in Green Bay during the SuperBowl of 2011. Unfortunately, the Malaysian didn't fare as well as the cheeseheads, and the first gold remains to be claimed!

3. There are a lot of Indians (from India) in Malaysia! I guess now that I think about it, India is pretty close, but still... One of my taxi drivers said more than 20% of the population of Malaysia is Indian! A lot of them own yummy restaurants all over town. Roti Canai. Yummmmm.

4. Language is kind of a complicated thing here. While my family was here, we had a veryyyy difficult time communicating with the Malaysians. We used Indonesian (which is supposedly 80% the same) and got stared at blankly. So, we'd switch to English and get stared at blankly. It was the weirdest thing trying to figure out what language to use! I talked to a native Malaysian who's fluent in both Malay and English about it. She said that if that happens again I should just keep talking in Bahasa because they'll understand eventually. Apparently it takes some adjusting to figure out why a white giant woman in Malaysia is speaking to a short Indian man in Indonesian. I don't get it. Thankfully, I took her advice and actually met four very friendly, female, Malaysian college students on the train and we had a good long conversation using 90% Indonesian and 10% English! Success! Our conversation ended with them asking me to follow them to their house and trying to marry me off to one of their brothers! Maybe too much success??

5. Malaysia just updated their money. As if learning a new set of bills and coins wasn't enough, try learning 2 new sets of bills and coins being used simultaneously! Haha. The differences are small, but still enough to make me have to examine my money for an excessive amount of time before handing it to the cashier!! Haha.

Many more observations have been made... Stay tuned!

Facelift!

Since I no longer teach 4th grade and have recently taken over my blog with updates about my big move, I figured it was time to make the blog reflect that! Once I get back into a classroom, I'll still be posting about that (and I'm moving to first grade, so there's BOUND to be some funny stories!!), but wanted the title and layout to be a little more generic and relevant for now.

Hope you enjoy the changes!

Flying Light

I was going to originally name this post “Answered Prayers”, but I feel like there have been/are going to be MANY more posts that could have that same title, so I decided to go more specific. I’m writing this during my 14.5 hour flight from Atlanta to Seoul, South Korea (but will obviously post it once I land since I'm not rich enough to pay for internet on the flight!).

The Lord has MAJORLY been looking out for me today! It started in Baltimore. Tim and Katie took me to the airport and helped me check-in. The self-check-in machine was messing up, so we went to the lady for assistance. She looked at me, looked up my ticket, looked at my two HUGE pieces of luggage and said, “Usually you’re only supposed to be allowed one 50 pound bag, but on here there’s a note that says you get two for free.” Then she weighed them each and one was at 52 pounds (she accepted it!) and the other was at 55, so we pulled some stuff out real quick and got it down to 50. Considering that’s my life’s possessions (minus a few totes in storage), I’d say I did pretty well! But, things just kept getting better. I then went to my gate and while I was waiting heard them make an announcement about gate-checking to your final destination. I’ve gate-checked bags plenty of times, but had only ever done it domestically and thought an employee somewhere had once told me that was all we could do. I decided to pull the naïve card and give it a try. What was the worst that could happen? I’d have to carry my 30 pound backpack and roll my 40 pound suitcase around the Seoul Airport during my 12 hour layover? Well, that’s what the plan was anyway! Haha. The man at the desk very excitedly agreed to gate check it to Kuala Lumpur and just like that I was down to only a backpack! Hallelujah! (Hence the title, “flying light”. Although my backpack does still weigh an insane amount!) 

My flight to Atlanta was short and sweet. I slept about the first hour and then watched a GORGEOUS sunset while we landed. I love flying. I love sunsets. I love sunsets while flying SO much! :) During my 3-hour layover in ATL, I was charging up my electronics when I got called to the desk at my gate. I quickly packed everything up and went over to see what this was all about. The lady pulled up my information and said, “I see you signed up for a window seat?”

I said, “I did, but just in the car on the way over here, I was talking to my brother and sister-in-law about how I think I’d actually prefer an aisle because I like to get up and move around and don’t want to be a hassle to people.”

She breathed a huge sigh of relief and said, “You just made my day! Are you sure you don’t mind? I just accidentally switched you to an aisle seat, and it’s a full flight and before I could move you back to the old seat, someone got online and swooped it up!”

It was pretty ridiculous. I really had JUST been talking to Tim and Katie about it! So, here I sit, in my aisle seat, with 4 hours left to go. I’ve slept, ate 2 meals, slept, watched The Hunger Games, and edited some maternity pictures of Tim and Katie (coming soon!)! 

Thanks for all of your prayers and support! I know this trip wouldn’t be going NEARLY as smoothly without them!! 

Hit the Ground Running!

I arrive in Malaysia on July 30th around 9:30 pm. I'll stay at my new director's house that night. Then, the very next day, I'll be bombarded with my first visitors! My two sisters, two friends, and my parents are all coming over from Indonesia to explore Malaysia with me and help me celebrate my birthday at the beach! As if my last few weeks in the states haven't been busy enough, the partying is just going to continue until the first weekend in August! If you know anything about me you know that some of my favorite things in life are family time, beaches, my birthday, and new adventures. All of those things together makes me think my first week in my new home is going to be pretty spectacular!

The hotel/resort we're staying at looks AMAZING (see for yourself here... hopefully pictures don't lie too badly!) and was ridiculously cheap. I have a feeling I'm really going to like these Malaysian prices and beaches!

The countdown is on! So much to do! So many memories to make!