Settling In

We got our internet connection last Thursday. Getting it hooked was typical of how things tend to work here. The internet service providers mainly use telephone to provide the service. So we had the phone hooked up on Tuesday night. The fellow came over about 8:00 in the evening and basically plugged in the phone. I had to pay a deposit (around CAD$300). I guess they want to make sure I don't skip the country with an outstanding bill. I also had to provide a copy of my passport. The internet guy then came on Thursday. He called after I got home from "Back to School Night" around 9:00 and asked if he could come over then to hook it up. He left about 11:00, after clearing up some glitches, along with another hefty deposit and copy of my passport. There are so many copies of my passport out there I'm not sure how many people will be travelling around with my ID.
We got our car on Friday night. It is a little 2 door 1998 Satria. It is a locally made car. I filled it up today for RM100 or a bit less than CAD$30. It is nice to get wheels but the roads and driving around here really are unbelievable. Someone described the road system as being like someone dropping a bunch of spaghetti on the floor. There are as many overpasses as people in the city. Today we went to get some plants for the condo. The place really wasn't too far away and I did manage to get there no problem. Coming back was a different story. In most cases there are not intersections to cross to the other side of the road. One has to turn into the flow of traffic and eventually you find a place to U-turn around the divider and go the other way. I knew we had to do this to get back to our place the only thing was I had no idea which way to take when I got on to the highway and there were 10 different choices for roads off the freeway. We ended up way to heck gone in the opposite direction with no opportunity to turn around and when we did eventually turn then road back was filled with many different options. It doesn't help of course when one is driving on the opposite side of the road and everything in the car was opposite. I kept turning on the window wiper when trying to signal a turn. Most couples have resorted to buying a GPS to save their marriage.
I went for a bike ride today with a group of locals. We pedalled through a rubber plantation. The picture shows how they collect rubber. Looks a lot like gathering maple syrup.Yesterday we took part in a dodgeball tournament at school. We were part of Team Canada and of course we brought home the gold. It was fun. There were a lot of teacher teams representing a few different nationalities and then parents also took part so there were Swedish teams etc. We played in the high school division. Boy those kids can throw the ball hard. Maureen was to be our coach only because of her knee but, of course, couldn't hold back and was in there diving away from balls like the rest of us.
I've added a photo of one of her grade 1 classes. She has been having a mini Olympics with her classes. The kids are having lots of fun with this. All the Korean girls came dressed in their country costume.