This was our first weekend in our new ‘home’. I’ve included a couple of photos of the place and our view. The sunrise was taken yesterday, if you look carefully you can see the Petronas twin towers in the background. The Indonesians are burning their rainforests to make way for palm plantation and the smoke drifts over Malaysia for a month or so for each year apparently. I think this accounts for the reddish glow.
Maureen got a bike this weekend and I had mine put together so we had a little more freedom of movement. Our internet is still not hooked up and so we rode down to Starbucks last night to use their wireless. We met some locals at the bike shop and they have been taking care of us. There are rides every Sunday morning we plan to take part in. They leave early so we slept in this week because we were beat. We did go for a ride after. We rode to the closest park and found a steep hill to ride much to Maureen’s chagrin. Lots of people were either hiking or riding. There were a number of trails to head off of but we stayed on the main one. We didn’t run into any cobras (my biggest fear) but there were some rather unfriendly monkeys blocking the trail at one point.
Speaking of monkeys I’ve included a photo of one hanging outside of my classroom window. There weren’t too many around before the kids came but the monkeys do know where to get a free lunch. The Grade 5 PE teacher had a zippered pouch where she carried her bug spray, sun screen, and also had glucose tablets for one of the students from my class. She put her pouch down on the bleachers outside and went to set up her area for students. One of the monkeys came and grabbed the pouch and hightailed it up a tree where he then carefully unzipped the pouch and began to explore the contents. He unscrewed the tops of the sunscreen and bug spray and realized rather quickly that these were not very tasty. He then squirted the contents of each all over and dumped the containers. The glucose tablets were another thing however. He ate all of these and then began to get super hyper and this got all the other monkeys excited and they had to come over and have a look.
Maureen went to the Wet market in the area early Sat. morning with the other Elem. PE teacher, who also lives in our condo complex. A wet market has fruits, veggies, and also fish and meat. I think that it is called “wet” because of the fish especially, since it is wet around the fish section. She got introduced around all the hawkers, and bought much the same as Melanie who has 3 teenage daughters. She came home with a ton of food!!!!!!! We did have a nice stir fry last night, which is our second home cooked meal.
We also had a power outage yesterday afternoon in our condo for about 40 minutes.. Maureen was not too happy as she was worried how to get down and out. There are stairs, but they are taped off, which we could get through. But you can only go down to the bottom floor. We used the cell phone to call others in the building and no one was worried, but she did get her ativan out.
There are many teachers living at our condo, so they now have a Friday social here, taking turns hosting. We ended up at the big mall down the road on Friday after school, and could not get a taxi home. It was too busy and a huge lineup for a taxi, so we walked about half way, and stopped at the bike shop as we were hot and sweaty. We chatted with them and waited for a taxi driver who was next door watching a Malaysian play badminton in the semi finals of the Olympics. There was a big roar as the Malaysian won and then he quickly gave us a lift. We almost missed the social, getting their last as you always need a shower after walking in the heat and humidity.
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