Getting Settled

It's hard to believe that we've been in our apartment a little over a week.  Sometimes it feels much longer, and other times it feels much shorter.  We're still figuring things out, but one thing we mastered pretty quickly is the funky power situation.  Of course, I managed to discover it in the worst way possible.  

Sometimes I wake up at night and just walk around and check on things, especially in a new place, so it was about 1:30 in the morning when I realized that one of the kitchen lights was still on.  I responsibly turned it off, and then the whole apartment went dark and silent, no air conditioners, nothing electric.  I have never in my life tripped the power by turning something OFF before.  I knew where the circuit breaker box was, so I opened it up, assuming I just needed to switch the kitchen back on, but all the circuits were on.  I checked them all twice.  All on, all fine, but there was no electricity in the apartment.  I tried picking up the phone that calls the guards to ask for help, but it was dead, so I put on some more outdoor friendly clothes and walked to the nearest gate.  I'm sure the guards thought I was completely nuts, but they said their boss would come help me.  A few minutes later, a very nice man showed up.  I showed him the power box, and he reached for an unlabeled switch at the top right hand corner and flipped it up.  Everything came back on.  What I wanted to do was ask why on earth that one wasn't labeled, but what I did do was thank him profusely.

In discussing this with my embassy neighbors, this seems to be a regular occurrence, and it has to do with the fact that the embassy has put GFCI outlets in the kitchen to be up to code for the U.S..  While that's all very nice, however they did it completely messed up the wiring, and so now, when we turn anything off in the kitchen, there's a 50/50 chance that the power will go out.  It's an easy fix, but it's super annoying

A lot of the past week has been about shopping, both for things that we need and for things that just make us happy.  One of my favorite purchases is new mugs to add to our collection.

The wiggle car I ordered from Lazada arrived.  The scooter still has not, but the girls are having a lot of fun with the wiggle car.

Jeff gets a parenting gold star, because it came without any directions, so he figured out how to put it together.

He gave the girls fair warning that it was a piece of junk that could come apart at any time, but so far they just wheel around on it, often giggling hysterically, so I feel it's $10 well spent.

Elena also achieved a reading milestone.  She finished reading Matilda all by herself.

I really want our sea freight to show up, because we have so many more good books in there for her, but for now, she's enjoying sharing her Mo Willems collection with one of her new friends.

That same friend invited her to her first KL birthday party.  It was an outdoor scavenger hunt, but at the last minute they let us know that it would be a costume party.  Ahhh! Luckily, our social sponsor has a daughter about the same age, so Elena borrowed some accessories, put on her sparkly dress, and felt party ready.

Vivian has also been spending a lot of time with her new friends.  A lot of it has been indoors, but she generally gets outside to run around at least once every day, so that's good.  We also bought a new fan for out on the balcony, so evening balcony time is especially nice now.

Noby has been such a help with the shopping.  Most of the stores at our local mall are closed, but more are open near where she lives, so she bought the fan and several other things we needed, and then brought them all to us.

My shopping adventures have been grocery store ones.  The closest grocery store to us is Cold Storage, and I learned that you can load all your groceries into the shopping cart, and then just roll the cart home to Seri Hening.  You don't even have to bring the cart back! You just leave it out in the hall, and the man who collects the trash picks it up and takes it back for you.  Craziness!

While Cold Storage is definitely convenient, they don't have a lot of the more western things that we like.  About halfway between our place and the embassy is another store called Hock Choon.  The aisles are super narrow, and the whole store is a bit claustrophobic, but they have lots of western brands, so it was good to check it out.  

I hit the biggest jackpot though at Ampang Grocer which is a few minutes drive past the school.  They had Sunchips and Pepperidge Farm frozen garlic bread.  There were four of them, and I bought all four.  Vivian was over the moon when I brought them home.  She and Jeff immediately enjoyed some of the Sunchips.

Noby and I have also been working together on cooking dinners.  We have set the goal of me eventually being able to just tell her a meal and she can buy the ingredients and make it, but for right now, we're still in a learning phase for both of us.  I'm finding some new recipes that will work well with what's available here, and she has been a great cooking partner.  I feel bad that I haven't taken pictures of any of the food we made, because as soon as things were done, everyone ate the food up.  Elena used some of the rice in her bowl though to show what the family thought of dinner.

I also made banana bread as my first real oven experiment, and it came out well.

Our biggest achievement for the past week though is that we bought a car!

The picture makes it look longer than it is, but it's a Toyota Avanza, which is an Asian specific model.  It's basically like a cross between a hatchback and a minivan.  We bought it from one of our neighbors, so it just migrated a few parking spots over.  We have two spots next to each other, so I parked it smack in the middle of our area.  It'll be great once we can finally do some road trips, but for now it's perfect for getting back and forth to the embassy when we need to, and maybe even venturing out to the grocery stores that are a bit farther away.  We had a family conversation about naming our new car.  Jeff said we should just call it car, but that wasn't creative enough for me, so I suggested Carla.  We decided it was a perfect fit, because here in Malaysia people often end their sentences with lah, so we bought a car, lah!

We have a couple more weeks until school starts, so hopefully we can get some good routines established, and feel even more settled in before all the adventures of a new school kick in, but I feel like we're off to a good start so far.

Happy Birthday Jeff and Welcome to Your New Home!

We have had a really busy past few days.  After being told to be prepared to stay in the apartment hotel "indefinitely", we got word on Wednesday that our apartment would be ready to move into on Friday, and Jeff could come pick up the keys Thursday at the end of the day.  Since Thursday was his birthday, it made for a perfect birthday present!  

Vivian helped me hang the birthday banner after he went to bed Wednesday night, so it was up and ready to welcome him when he came into the kitchen the next morning.

Since KL is still under a movement control order, we can't really go out and do things, so his birthday became a celebration through food.  His main birthday present was a new Nespresso machine that works on Malaysian power, so he could start using it right away.

The hotel also left him donuts, just like they did for Vivi.

For dinner, I found a Syrian place that had shawarma.  It was delicious, and Jeff loved it.

For the finishing touch, I got him a peach strudel from the fancy bakery down the road.  

I asked if he wanted a fork and knife, but he said there was only one way to eat it.

Yum!

He declared it a great birthday.  Hopefully next year we can do some traveling, but the most important thing is that we were all together to celebrate.

The next day was a whirlwind.  We got all of our suitcases and all of our food and other paraphernalia packed up. One of the hotel staff helped us bring it all down.

Thank goodness the embassy provided a van to get us and all our stuff to our new home.  It took a couple trips to get everything upstairs, but it was so wonderful to know that we were done being nomads for a while.

We immediately set out to explore.  The entrance leads directly into the living room.

Which shares a big space with the dining room.

This provides plenty of running around space and lots of natural light.

Across from those rooms are a kitchen and a family room with sliding glass doors.

There's a laundry and "maid's" area through the kitchen, and the family room has a Jack and Jill bathroom that leads into Elena's bedroom.

On Saturday our air freight was delivered.  So Friday was all about getting the suitcases emptied, and then Saturday was all about washing and putting away our air freight.  

We are incredibly lucky to have already hired a helper named Noby who is from the Philippines.  She came on Friday and Saturday and was a HUGE help with getting everything organized.  A top priority was getting the bedrooms as comfy as possible. The bedrooms are all along the hallway past the dining room.

We are looking forward to getting our pictures and rugs in order to add some color, but the girls have already started decorating.  This was the original bedroom set up in Elena's room.

Then we moved around some furniture, and the girls added Disney flair.

We have our comforter, but are waiting on our king size bed.  The embassy provided queen is quite comfortable though, and we're happy to be back to double sinks, while also being resigned to having the only bathtub in the house, meaning Elena hangs out in there too.

Vivian has her own full bathroom connected to her room, which is perfect for a teenage girl.  We're a bit sad not to have a half bath for guests like we usually do, but it's a small price to pay for such a large, lovely, rent free apartment.

Our favorite part of the whole place though is the outdoors.  We have a small balcony that is surrounded by palm trees and overlooks the pool, which is sadly closed for now.

There's also a kids pool, a playground, and a little store that we can see from our balcony in the other direction.

Vivian has already taken advantage of the store.

There is also a walking path around the property with exercise equipment,

and an extended water feature near the entrance with lots of fish in it.

We feel like we're living in a tropical resort, but the best part is that it is a family friendly place FULL of children.  After a year of online school and not being able to hang out with friends, the girls are in heaven. 

On our first day here, I sent a message to the community WhatsApp group saying I was looking for friends for my 13 year old (sniff!) daughter.  A mom almost immediately sent me a message, and it turns out she has a daughter right around Elena's age too.  Viv went off on her own with the big girl, and Noby took Elena downstairs to play with the younger kids while I continued to attack the suitcases.  Elena didn't last too long outside, but Viv made a bunch of new friends, including one who is from Colombia, but has spent most of her life in Asia.  Viv stayed at her new friend's house until the evening playing an intense game of Monopoly, which she eventually won.

Saturday was busy in the morning with air freight, but in the afternoon, Jeff took the girls outside to walk around.  The way the apartments are set up, you can see if your friends are outside, so Elena's new friend called down from her balcony to stay there, she was coming to play too! I got to meet the mom who got everything rolling the day before, and Vivian's gang of girls appeared after a bit too.  The only problem at this point is that everyone seems to have a scooter or some type of wheeled transport, and they roll around the place on the walking path.  The girls have said they need scooters NOW, which of course is difficult with most stores being closed.  There is a local delivery service called Lazada that I've tried ordering from. So far nothing has shown up, so we'll see.  For Vivian, we picked a scooter out on Amazon, which takes about two weeks to get here.  Hopefully, they can survive a couple weeks without wheels.

It's been an incredible first couple days in our new home.  We love our apartment, and the girls already have friends.  It's also been wonderful to start to wean them off of all the time they've been spending on screens.  Last night we celebrated with another round of Din Tai Fung and a leisurely evening on the balcony.  Elena and I toasted our baos, since we both love them so.

The girls played three chess games, and Elena won all three.  She really is becoming a little chess master, and to Viv's credit, she was mostly just incredibly proud of how well Elena is doing.

We are hopeful that more things will open up soon (the pool looks especially tempting), but for now it's actually kind of nice to have a slower, simpler pace as we get adjusted to our new home.

 

Food and Pool

Now that we're free from quarantine, our days are all about going to the pool and figuring out what we're going to eat.  Sometimes, we combine the two, like when the "squid" that we use for diving practice became calamari for Vivi and Elena's cooking show.  The water cannons contained "butter" and "seasonings" respectively.  Viv decided that the yellow one was butter, because "butter is yellow."

I also brought the water painting books to the pool for a slightly different outdoor, water themed activity.  I asked the girls to smile for a picture, and instead they gave each other the giggles.

While we are still loyal fans of Raft's apple juice, Elena decided to double check some of the other offerings. On Monday, she tried the watermelon juice, and she declared it delicious.

She made friends with the main server who suggested that she try the chocolate muffin warmed up, so of course, that was what she had for dessert.  She was also interested in the carrot juice, but he told her that wasn't fresh on Monday, so she should try it another day.  When we came back on Wednesday, she gave it a go.

She drank about half of it.  She said the apple is definitely the best.  She also discovered she likes xiao long bao from Din Tai Fung, which is not a huge surprise, because they're delicious.

The delivery ones are not quite as good as what you get in the actual restaurant, but the silver lining is that the broth doesn't burn your mouth, so they are completely the right temperature for Elena.  Unfortunately, Vivi's leaked, so she didn't get the full experience. I guess we'll just have to order them again soon.  It's a tough life.

We also got some other things to try.

The regular dumplings were just okay, and we probably won't get them again, but everything else was a hit.  The fried rice was delicious, and the breaded chicken had a hint of cinnamon in it which made it smell fantastic.  Jeff's favorite part was the greens.  We got green pea sprouts (on the left), and "spinach" (on the right) which is the closest thing we have found to morning glory.  They were crunchy and delicious.

I have been doing some light cooking at our hotel apartment as well.  The main problem is that there aren't a lot of cooking dishes, so, for example, there are no frying pans.  Of course we realized this after I bought eggs for breakfast.  Jeff, ever resourceful, starting researching online and figured out a way to make scrambled eggs in the microwave.  We may not have a frying pan, but we do have a full tea set, so we repurposed the tea pot as our egg holder, microwaved for 30 seconds, stirred, and repeated until, voila, scrambled eggs!

I had also bought some cut up fresh fruit at the supermarket.

As a finishing touch, we warmed up some sliced ham that I had bought in the special pork section.  It made for a yummy Sunday breakfast.

We've had a combination of delivery leftovers and simple meals for dinner.  I couldn't find just frozen peas at the grocery store last time I went, but I found a pea and corn combo packet that the girls accepted both as a side dish with the fish nuggets and mixed in with their shells.  At first, Elena resisted, but after she tried it, she very solemnly said, "I regret saying it sounded awful."  She and Viv finished everything in their bowls.

Last night Jeff's boss and his family ordered a pizza dinner for everyone at the pool, and we had a lovely evening.  It's not too hot here once the sun sets, so it was actually pleasant to sit outside and chat while the kids splashed around in the pool.  Life in KL is shaping up to be really great so far.

13!

My firstborn, my baby, is now, officially a teenager. I am simultaneously happy and sad. It was really important to us though to make sure she had a special day, despite the slightly chaotic circumstances of our move.  Jeff had to go to work, but before he left, he helped me string up the happy birthday banner, so that it was the first thing that Vivi saw when she came out of her room in the morning.  I also presented her with the birthday crown.

Grandpa and Grandma Goerss had mailed her a birthday card well before we left Virginia, and I had carried it with us to Malaysia, so that she had something special to open on her birthday morning.

Of course the main birthday activity was going to the pool.

Her birthday was also the day that the entire family discovered that we LOVE the apple juice at Raft.

We had gotten one for Elena on the first day, but this is no ordinary apple juice.  They have a juicer machine, so the owner takes a green apple, cuts it into manageable pieces, and then just puts it through the juicer with a little water.  This is basically an apple with some water, and it is delicious!  They have other fruit juices too, so we may branch out at some point, but for now we're into the apple juice. I especially love the green color, but drink it fast or it will turn brown!

When we got back from our pool time, we discovered that the hotel had left a birthday gift for Vivian, a note and some donuts.

It was a really nice surprise.  There were two donuts, and, being the awesome sister she is, Viv shared with Elena.

We had some time to clean up and relax before Jeff came home, and then it was time for the main birthday event.  Marvel very thoughtfully scheduled the release of the Black Widow movie for Vivian's birthday, so it was the perfect birthday present for a lifelong Black Widow fan.

Since it was Vivi's day, our special movie time snacks were some of her favorites, prosciutto and melon.

For dinner, I made shells and peas from boxes I had carried with us from the States.

I don't have all the baking equipment for a full on cake or cupcakes, and it's just the four of us, so I got her a frozen apple crumble that could be warmed up in the oven.  It was a hit.

The birthday fun continued the next day, because our social sponsor really wanted to do something to help celebrate.  First we met her and her kids at the pool for some swimming fun, and then we went to their house, so that the kids could play more, and I could do laundry with machines that separated the washing and drying functions.  Because she is such an awesome social sponsor, she also took Vivian to a local bakery where they picked out a bunch of treats to share for dessert.  The finished platter was impressive.

Vivian's favorite was the nutella banana tart.  Elena liked the chocolate tart, and I loved the peach pastry creation.  The best part of the evening though was after dinner when the kids all hopped on scooters, a balance bike, and a wiggle car and were zooming back and forth the length of the apartment.  Vivian asked for a turn on the wiggle car, and proceeded to wiggle and giggle for at least half an hour with all the little kids.

At the end of the evening, she said she had been worried that she was going to be bored, because the other kids were younger than her, but that this was one of the best times she's had in the past two years.  I am so glad that she had a fun birthday, and I love so much that her happiness comes from the simple pleasures of zooming around with other kids.  She may officially be a teenager now, but she's still the little girl I love.