Blessings from Florida

Actually, the blessing was straight from heaven, sent via Florida. So the other day Sharon and I were in Carrefour (like Walmart with less mullets and way more Asians). We only had a couple things to grab and little time to do it in, so we split up and planned to meet at the registers. Five minutes later Sharon comes around the corner with a huge grin on her face. In her hands was pure liquid gold straight from Polk County, FL- Florida's Natural Orange Juice. No lie. Even though it cost 5 times more than all the other brands, we had to buy it. Actually, it's the only "real" orange juice we've found. "Oren jus" here is basically watered-down Tang with fake pulp. Bobby, please hug the man who thought it'd be a good idea to export to Southeast Asia.

A Sod, Lizards, and Sparklers kind of Weekend

What was your weekend like? Here's the rundown on ours...

Friday afternoon we 'landscaped' our front yard ...for all you before-and-after photo lovers these are for you...

Nice huh? And we're hoping our little Plumeria tree will survive...and produce wonderful smelling pink flowers like the nursery manager said it would...

Saturday we went to the mountains again with Abang, Kakak, and their 4 kids. Here's us doing what we usually end up doing with them...eating...

A few minutes into eating, a jungle lizard of some sort threw caution to the wind and jumped from a nearby tree, landing on Anthony. After consulting a highly reliable and reputable source (*cough* Iguanas for Dummies *cough*) we decided that the lizard was most likely a young iguana. We were all laughing too hard to get a picture of it on his head...but the little guy hung around for a couple hours after and posed for this picture later...

...maybe he sat still for Anthony as sort of an apology for the whole kamakazi attack earlier. Probably.

Going to the mountains also includes playing in the freezing cold river...this time little Adik had a boat...

Anthony took this one while I was catching some Z's on top of the car...what can I say, it's hard to sleep on the ground when tree-cutter ants are crawling everywhere along with the ever-present danger of leaping lizards...

Sunday we ate dinner with Abang's family at their home. Sunday was the first day of Ramadhan. It took a lot of motivation to get them to stop for this picture...they were pretty hungry after fasting all day...

Afterwards we all played with sparklers...

For more pictures of our life and times overseas...go to our shutterfly page (if you like any of the pictures you can even order prints for yourself)

Modern Convienence Week...

So this week was a fairly uneventful week as we again learned more words in our new language and fought the struggle between the ease of eating Western food (KFC just around the corner!) and the necessity of becoming acclimated to our new culture by eating at a local food stall. But that's just a normal week here in tropical paradise.
What did happen this week was getting a refrigerator for the kitchen and an air-con (as they say here) installed in our bedroom. These two modern conviences have revolutionized our home.
It's amazing how much better one feels - after the culture shock of eating at the local food stall- to drink an ice-cold coke and sit in an ice-cold room.
Here's a picture of the guys installing it...bless-ed, bless-ed men- they deserved the RM130.00 they got for their work (about $40).

Sorry no more pictures, but here's a story to give you guys a taste of what its like to go shopping here...with a dramatic twist at the end.
This week we had the opportunity to go with a curtain-maker to a fabric store to pick out fabric for the curtains she is sewing me. The curtain part isn't interesting, you guys have them in the US, although I do feel a bit spoiled hiring someone to make curtains for me...she says "I make you very exclusive design." Hmm...
Lemme tell ya ladies, if you have a low self-esteem, this is the place to come. The stares are never-ending...and even after speaking perfect English to them they still usually ask me "Are you Arab?" Then when I've sufficiently set in my mind to ignore the stares, an older teenage boy that works there sets out to follow me around the store. I glare at him, ask Anthony to stand close to me or to block him from getting near me, but his ninja-like moves between the bolts of fabric prevail and before I can start looking again, he's there.
Once I had endured the questions of "why you like the plain ones?" and "why you not get this one? This one nice color!" I had chosen my fabrics (one was too expensive so I decided to go with my first choice at IKEA) when we realized Kakak's 2 year old son was gone and we couldn't find him. This is the kid who each morning during our language lessons gives up "Sponge Bob Square Pants" to sit on top of the table just to be next to his mother. The store was 3 stories and Kakak, Anthony, and I were scouring the bolts of fabric beginning to get desperate after about 15 minutes of looking with no success. Oh, and instead of helping, the people in the store just decided its more fun to stare at the whities than to help look for the kid.
Then Anthony comes to the rescue. He decides to look outside the store...it is pouring down rain and the child is a block away standing in the middle of a street corner. Anthony triumphantly carried the child back to his mother and hopefully all the onlookers saw that the whities really are here to help.
I'll take pictures of my "exclusive design" curtains when they're done.

Monkeys, Sunsets, and Dwarves

So no one will be held in suspense any longer as to what I said in the video 2 posts ago...here we go...
"Sorry. What time is it?" Then I just named some dolls, not sure what order now but, "Woman, Man, Old people, girl, boy, and baby." Ya'll are all now unimpressed...I can feel the disappointment as you all sit at your computers and go "That was it?"
Although Joanna was incorrect, we applaud her efforts to guess (as she knows at least 2 languages fluently and speaks them with no accent)...so MamaKoo...anytime you're in our corner of the world, you're welcome to stay the night...no charge.

On to the pictures. Since nothing significant enough to warrant more than one picture happened this week, here is yet another hodge-podge of pictures. Enjoy.
The first is for all the kiddies out there. (and those like our friend Corey Z. who loves monkeys)
The next is a sunset picture in the city. This picture isn't an old Christmas picture...the lights on the intersection are always there.
The next is a photo of all the objects we can name (in theory at least).
This last picture is for Paul and Julia Roberts who are (Jules please don't kill me!) expecting their first baby next year! Congratulations guys. No this isn't a prayer for you guys to have septuplets...we were just wondering if Paul could help us find Dumpy.
(As one that loathes inside jokes proclaimed in public places... The joke came about something like this as we were concluding our day at Disney World. "So where did you guys park?" Rivers:"Oh we got here early, so we're in Pluto 19. Where are you guys?" Paul: "Um...I think we're in Dumpy." )

4 Week-aversary

We've been here 4 weeks Today! (Wednesday)
Last Thursday we celebrated Independence Day here. We went to a local jungle with Abang and his family and had a great time. We swam, ate, swam, played in waterfalls, and ate a little more. Nothing like celebrating independence from the British twice in one year. These folks are great at relaxing.
We didn't take any pictures of the big waterfalls we played in because they were too far away...and like Johnny May-May says "Hopin' I would see the world with both my eyes....so no more 3x5's" If you come see us, we'll take you there:)

Also this week...we moved into our house! It is still being cleaned, having furniture delivered and what not, but here it is...This is the outside...this was taken before our bars were put on the windows and doors and before the overgrowth was cleared out of the yard. We feel like we live in a castle compared to our two-ROOM apartment we had for the first 2 years of our marriage.

This is the view from the living room looking out. We love the potential in the front yard. More to come when paint goes on the walls, furniture is delivered, and flowers get planted.