Kuala Lumpur: Local Friends

Our local friends, the Goh family, took us to Genting amusement park and casino up in the cool hills

You take a tram up

Aletheia, the 9 year old daughter, and Alice are friends

Atticus, the 1 year old son -- Boom and Atticus are very affectionate with each other

Holding hands. A true cross-cultural reaching out and taking each others' hands

The hotel with the most rooms in the world, as of a few years ago. 13,000 rooms the size of jail cells. Sometimes they offer a nightly special of only 33cents per night.

Abraham just barely made it onto some of the rides, size-wise.

Boom's first bumper car

See that? Black sesame gelato.

That's dark chocolate, for Grif

Pei Shee, Chee Leong, and us at their house a couple months ago. We first met because Chee Leong is the dean of the psychology department and via his wife Pei Shee, she introduced me to World Vision heads in Malaysia, where she works. The World Vision leaders introduced me to the NGO I work with now, a refugee training center and school.




They have a little pool/fountain inside their house! It's so hot out, no one would use it much outside, probably. And, they have an lcd projector showing thousands of movies in their database.




Chee Leong's parents who live a walk away and take care of Atticus while Pei Shee works part-time during the week. Mr. Goh was head of World Vision Malaysia and is now a consultant to the opposition party in Malaysia, representing Chinese and Indian-Malaysians, mostly, in their attempt to stop discrimination and have a more fair system for all racial groups in Malaysia. He discussed US real estate, not politics, with Ken.
Ken, enjoying having people talk to him about his area of expertise - no adults ask him about real estate here! The grandmother told me she'd heard about me -- I'm the wife who was lucky enough to have a husband willing to leave his job for a year to come here. I always wonder, would they say that to a husband whose wife was willing to move here for a year?

They had a piano, great drum set, guitar, and limitless choice in kids movies.

Atticus love -- Abraham is very protective and loving of Atticus too.

April, 2011

Kuala Lumpur: Easter with Indian, Vietnamese, and Muslim Neighbors

Freeze! Dance Party

Frozen

Vietnamese and Indian moms organizing the party at our condo -- Mimi and Tina
Ironic that Tina is Hindu, not Christian, organizing an Easter event
Mimi is the enforcer, always forced to collect money from the parents to pay for the event

Our babysitters Rhianna and Cassie - doing the freeze dance with the kids

Minh, a Vietnamese mom who also sells her spring rolls to us and other families. Yum!

Varsha, the grand organizer, from India

Ken and Varsha have become good friends, both stay-at-home parents of ISKL kids

April, 2011

Alice's Blog -- 1st Grade "Save the Ocean" ISKL Performance

Ms. Thompson, Alice's teacher, biting her nails

Ms. Grace, Alice's assistant teacher

April 28, 2011

Alice's blog:

When I stood up on stage, there was a great hush over the audience. First, Sammy said "Coral Necklaces for sale! Beautiful earrings made out of coral straight from the reef!" I said my line which was "That coral necklace is gorgeous. I want to buy some for my sister and grandma." Then Jeffrey said to the audience "Do you think that was a good choice or a bad choice?" And the audience said "BAD CHOICE!!!!!!!!!!!!!" And, I said "You're right, coral is a living thing and even dead coral is important to the reef. We shouldn't be using it for jewelery."

Click HERE to see me speaking in the show.

Then we sang songs about the ocean. The first one we sang was "Zipidy Doo Da" The second one we sang was "Under the sea." The last one we sang was "If you L-O-V-E the O-C-E-A-N" And, they were about trying to save the earth. Click HERE to see me singing.