The National Mosque and KL Train Station (CNY Adventures Part 2)

The inside of the mosque. The guys on the right are performing their prayers (solat).

KTM HQ from Masjid Negara

Interior of the mosque

They made me wear a gown thingee as I was in shorts. The hood is for women but when you are having a day out and you have just bought novelty green frame glasses you gotta get your Yoda on.

KTM HQ

KL Train Station

Yup, still having fun with the glasses

Interior of the train station. Just uploaded then realized its not centered :(

By the end of the day I had scored some sweet new glasses and a new T-shirt (2.50 USD).

Then you gotta have some fun with the silly pics setting on the Macamera. Kinda froggish.

Petronas Twin Towers and Some Joss Sticks (CNY Adventures Part 1)

The fountain in Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square)

Petronas Twin Towers

The Towers reflected in the fountain.

I'm a little yellow from the streetlights.

Sometimes you get tired of seeing the Towers in virtually every ad, commercial, movie, etc and then you see them again and realize just how spectacular they are.

Lots of Chinese families visit the temple at midnight on Chinese New Year. They light incense sticks...in this case giant one.

Giant Joss Sticks.

The Night Market

Kuala Gandah Elephant Santuary (Deerland too!)

Don't forget to wash behind your ears!

Fun for some, pain for others.

Bottle feeding a 6 month old elephant.

A few students get to ride on an elephant.

Mommy, I'm dunking the elephant underwater!

The teachers pose the the Malaysian Sun Bear and Encik Abdullah.

Should we let the bear lick sweetened condensed milk off the face of a student? Sure, why not. What could possibly go wrong there?

Monkey butt!

As the conga line wound its merry way into the jungle, the evil monkey planned its attack on the noble American teacher.

Deer me!

Korea in Pictures

This is Hey Jang Guk or Hang Over Soup. That big dark red thing is congealed blood. It was probably my favourite new dish.

Sometimes self-photos don't turn out very well.

Snow in downtown Seoul.

Unfortunately they didn't let me ring the bell. It would have been fun.

Me atop the Seorak Mountains. We cheated and took the cable car to the top.

Min Ji's grandparents, Min Ji, her stepdad and me.

Sunrise at this very popular place for watching the sun uhhh rise.

At the cultural village...old style building.

Also outside the cultural center complex.

Very wise advice for us all.

Camp outs and Childhoods Lost

This last Friday we had a 'camp' at school. I would call it a lock-in or sleep over. The students came at 4 p.m. in the afternoon and left the next morning by 11 a.m. Now this is a common thing to do. In the churches I have attended over the last 10 years I have probably organized 8 such lock-ins. What amazed me was the 'hoo ha' made about it. There was a parents committee, hats were made with a camp logo and lots of flashlights were purchased and given. Every student who attended got a certificate. I kind of chuckled and then it hit me, oh, yeah, these are ASIAN kids.

Now I don't intend to be racist but these are observations that I have garnered over the years. Of course there will be families that are total opposites of this but here are some broad sweeping generalizations.

Asian kids live very sheltered lives. Most of them really got into the camp out when most American kids would have been bored to death. Some families in the US camp out the entire summer at the lake while Asian kids have probably never even spent the night in a tent in the backyard (Malaysia child, "Mommy, what is a backyard? I saw a picture of one once"). Several years ago, the Korean church I was attending asked me to help with a camp out. I organized the camp out, which was held on the church property in Bellingham. Every afternoon we would go to a place to swim or hike or climb around on rocks. I remember vividly the first day when we went to Larrabbee State Park, one of my favorite places in the Ham. I thought I would have trouble entertaining them but they were fascinated with the tide pools and we started trying to climb up some of the rock faces there. 4 hours flew by and as we left I realized none of the kids had ever been there despite the fact it is only 15 min from B'ham. I have biked and run there from the Ham. This trend has continued as I have known more and more Asians. Most of the kids I have known have rarely been afforded the opportunity to camp and to be outdoors for long periods of time. As I was teaching one of the kids how to roast a marshmallow on Friday night I felt a deep pang of sadness. I consider it essential to childhood to know how to make smores, to camp out and swim in the lake. Malaysians do like to go swimming in waterfalls as a family activity but most Asian children are very overprotected.

Let me finish with this thought. Perhaps it is worth it to trade the outdoors experience for parents that care deeply about their children's well being. Many American parents allow their children to experience far too much at a young age. Parental neglect, to my knowledge, is rare amongst Asians. The opposite is true. The care fiercely for their children. Grandparents raising children is now common in the USA but I don't know of a single case of this in Malaysia. The grandparents may live with them but aren't their sole guardians.

In the end, as with many things I've seen and experienced, a middle road is best. Care fiercely for your kids but allow them to experience (and to fail sometimes) all that life has to offer, when they are ready. P.S. Stand back ready to catch them should it be too much :)

Korean Christmas

Well, I’m in the Beijing airport (not one of my faves) on my way back to Malaysia. What to tell you about Korea?

My first impressions of Korea were very good. Nice airport. Great highway system. Comfortable housing. Good public transport. I thought it would be more vertical, it seems most apartment buildings are not over 20 floors where KL seems to be populated with many that are 30 or even higher. Or maybe that is an wrong perception.

After a couple of days we went out to see Min Ji’s aunt, who bought us a 300 USD meal (for 4 people). We rode the bus one hour from her house to the center of Seoul and then another hour from the center of Seoul to Suji where Min Ji’s parents live. I started to dislike Korea a bit at that point. It was the same, endless apartment buildings and urbanization as far as the eye could see.

The next day we went across the peninsula to Sokcho, a beach resort town. We left very early, 3 a.m., in order to go watch the sunrise at a famous spot. The sunrise was very spectacular and I wish I had better pictures but, alas, my battery died just before the sun actually came up. We then spent the next two nights in Sokcho. The first day we spent celebrating her grandfather’s 82^nd birthday and the next we went sightseeing. The Seorak Mountains are nearby and we rode the cable car to the peak of on of the mountains. Then we went north to the area near the DMZ where the current dictator, Kim Jong Il (is he still alive?) of North Korea spent his summers. His parent's summer home is now a museum.

Christmas Day we were out in Seoul after going to church. We went to an exhibit called “From Monet to Picasso”. It was a traveling exhibit from the Philedelphia Art Museum. We also went to a huge clothing market that evening, one that is famous in Seoul. The next day we went to Sherlock Holmes with Min Ji’s step-brother and then to lunch.

He also reserved us a spot at a nice buffet at the Ramadan in Suwon. Now, there is a buffet experience in Asia that most Americans never have experienced. The buffet is all you can eat and open for two hours. This one was from 8-10 pm. So, you go at 7:45 and when they let you start filling your plate, you have to start slow. Eat the best. I had raw oysters and tuna and salmon sashimi for my first go. Basically, you keep eating till it closes at 10 p.m. They have several varieties of food, like lamb, beef and chicken in Western styles to Korean to Japanese. I tried to eat my weight in steak tartar, tuna and oysters because they were so fabulous. There was also a chocolate fountain to dip fruit in. All this cost 40USD per person.

The last day we went out to church and then off to the Korean National Palace. After the long train ride, we came out of the station to find it snowing. It turned out to be one of the best experiences that I have had in ages. The snow muffled the city sounds and the palace complex was sprawling so it felt like you were back in the ages it was used. That and it was gorgeous in the snow. It was a fitting end to the trip, in fact, a fairytale moment that will always rank near the top of my travel experiences.

Korean parents

Min Ji’s parents were amazing in that they paid for everything. Add to that the fact that we went to the best places to eat and I would guess that just in food alone they spent 300 USD on me. Add into that her aunt’s meal and I was treated like a king. The hard part was that her parents treated me like a child. Min Ji was given a 15 minute lesson on how to ride the trains when all was needed was to tell us the stop to get off at. I was told to tuck in my shirt by her step-dad. It made me realize something. I have had several Korean friends and they lived with their parents but sequestered themselves in their rooms. They didn’t watch TV with them, didn’t talk to them much and seemed to do little more than share a house, not a bloodline. Now I realize that is how they kept their parents out of their lives. They kept the relationship active, still living with them, they just didn’t tell them any details or else they would have gotten an earful on how to handle their lives and then expected to act on that advice.

The other side of this was a realization for me as to one reason that Asia crushes creativity. I didn’t bring a plug adapter because I thought they would be easy to find when I got there. Min Ji’s step-father swore you couldn’t buy one in Korea. I stopped two whites in the street and asked them where to get one. They told us a store called ‘Home Plus’. We went there and found the adapter. Min Ji’s step-dad didn’t think it would work and was didn’t conceal the fact that he hoped it wouldn’t work. When I got it home, of course it worked. In this situation I realized that many good ideas, such as Google, Facebook, etc have come from younger people. However, in Asia, the hierarchy is set up so that you have to wait to get to the top. Therefore, when you get to the top, you feel it is your turn to spew idiotic ideas (not always, of course) and that others should blindly follow you, just as you did when you were in their shoes. Hence creativity is crushed. I have seen this some in Malaysia. I call it pak cik syndrome and I have spent many a night over a cup of teh tarik listening to how to cure diabetes by eating chicken livers and other mad tales. Min Ji’s step dad told me I could get to the airport at 9 am for my 9:30 flight. It was kind of shocking how openly (nonverbally) and badly he wanted the plug adapter to not function.

Korea dreaming

Before the trip I had secret fantasies that I would love Korea and move there next year. I can say I don’t really feel that way anymore. You can make good money as an English teacher in Korea but the country is so populated you should be ready to never be alone. We watched the sunrise with maybe 300 other people doing the exact same thing. We went to the top of the Seorak Mountains with tons of other people. I did some figuring and the peninsula of South Korea is roughly the same size as the state of Oklahoma. 50 million people are crammed into Korea whereas Oklahoma has 3.6 million. That means Korea is 14 times more populated, which means the density of the population is intense. KL is a city of roughly three million and it is too big for me sometimes. The Seoul/Incheon urban area ranks in the top three largest cities by population on some lists.

Secondly, I found the level of English low. Maybe I should say confidence level because I think Koreans can speak English but they just don’t think they can speak it so they are shy to talk to you. One major place I found this evident was at church.

My church in KL has a fellowship time after the service and usually I find myself chatting for 20 or so minutes with someone just about every Sunday. We went to church three times during the stay and I only met one Korean besides the pastor. I did meet several English teachers. That was the very good thing about the church. In KL, you either get the hedonistic foreigner or the Christian ‘worker’. Seems that an average, Christian person steers clear of KL. It was good to be reminded that lots of Christians work in other countries and still live out their faith.

Malaysia's National Past time

Ask anyone what America's national past time is and you will get one quick answer from 99% of people: baseball. If you were to survey other countries my guess is that sports would enter into most of the national past time arguments. In Malaysia there are no sports. No Little League baseball, no Saturday morning soccer leagues, no professional sports, no high school athletics, no university sports teams. Nothing. In fairness, I will say a handful of people play futsal (indoor soccer) and there are a handful of pickup soccer or basketball games. If you were to compare Kuala Lumpur to Denver, Colorado it would look like this: Denver-hockey (Avalanche), basketball (Nuggets), American Football (Broncos), baseball (Rockies) and soccer (Rapids), probably 40 or more high school teams, probably 6 universities with teams. Kuala Lumpur: a few soccer teams in the Malaysian Super League or whatever it is called. Now, I could launch into America's unhealthy obsession with sports but but I'm not, this blog is about Malaysia's national past time.

So, what do Malaysians do during the weekend? What would be their national past time? Simple: the mall. When foreigners arrive in Malaysia and are taken to their first mall, they usually have to pick their jaws up off the ground. I have never been to a mall in the US that would be considered equal to the top dozen here in KL. On any weekend, the mall is packed with a crowd greater than the Christmas crowds in the USA. Two facts I can't back up but believe to be true are these. 1) Malaysia has more shopping malls per capita than any other city on earth. 2) The parking areas are roughly double the size of a US mall because of the massive number of visitors. One of the largest malls in the world is in KL, Berjaya Times Square. It supposedly has 7.5 million square feet of shopping. I have been there once and was completely unimpressed. (Wikipedia is confusing, saying on one page that Times Square it the 13th largest mall in the world and on another page that it is the largest. Let's split the difference and say it is 7th largest in the world. And my students wonder why I won't let them cite Wikipedia!)

I created the national past time comparison because last night as I left the Curve (FYI, 1 km from the Curve is 1Utama, another huge mall) the scene reminded me of the one you see in the US after a sporting event finishes. Stop and go traffic inching out of the parking areas, long lines of red tail lights trying to enter onto freeways, 20 minutes waits to get from the parking spot to traffic that is flowing near a normal pace.

A few final thoughts about sports in Malaysia. Malaysians love soccer but they love the English Premier League. The time difference means that many games come on late at night, after midnight. Guys will get up and watch the game in one of two ways (that I know of). One is to watch it at home. The second is to go to a local restaurant (mamak stall) that is open 24 hours and meet up with friends. I really miss the community aspect of watching sports, like a good Super Bowl party (at a decent hour). Lastly, Malaysians will like one of four teams in the English Premier League: Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea. If they like a different team, check their passport because they may be imposters!

Error of attribution to culture

Once you have lived overseas for a while, you start to realize that many of your assumptions about culture are not true. Most of this realization comes via comments others make about your home culture, as they assume that you represent the norm for what every country you hail from, in my case America. I have created a term for this called error of attribution to culture. By this I mean that someone observes a behavior in a person from another culture. We then conclude that all members of that culture must act exactly the same. We attribute their behavior to an entire population. Saying it another way, we take the actions of one individual and stereotype the entire culture as being exactly the same.

The offending wallet.

An example of this that I have seen recently is my wallet. For years I carried a wallet in my back pocket. The wallet would become a thick monstrosity as I accumulated receipts and business cards. Eventually it was like sitting on a phone book. I took quite a bit of good-natured ribbing about this. So, last year when I thought it was time to get a new wallet, I bought a front pocket wallet. This is basically a couple of leather pockets and then a money clip for your cash. I love it. It worked better in the US because you can pay everywhere with your credit or debit card and just keep a bit of money on you. Here in Malaysia it doesn’t work as well because I carry more cash due to a high rate of credit card theft. You give you card to someone, it comes back but they swiped it in a machine and then make a second card and charge things on your account. Malaysian money is also poorly designed for this. Denominations are 1, 2, 5, 10, 50 and 100 so if you break a 50 to pay for a 7 ringgit item, then you get 4 ten ringgit notes and 3 one ringgit notes. Therefore, my money clip often looks untidy. I pull it out and people notice it. They then say, “So this is the kind of wallet Americans use.” I laugh and try to set them straight. “No,” I say, “I’m the only person I know with a front carry wallet.” But I know the damage is done. They will forever think that Americans use the kind of wallet I do.

Of course this is a two way street. We have all met people of different cultures and labeled an entire culture bases on our interactions with .00001% of the population. What I’ve tried to do is show how this is different than stereotyping. Stereotypes are the nerdy Asian kid, the AK-47 wielding Arab, the loud and boorish American. Those are based on a larger sample of the population. This is how we personally stereotype a culture based on our own experiences. Perhaps the safest thing to do is see each person as unique and try to shed our own or societies stereotypes. It is only then that we can really get to know the true heart of another person.

Economies of scale

This blog will deal with the idea of economies of scale so let’s make sure the definition of that is clear. Economies of scale are when it costs an enormous amount of capital to build something but then as that item operates it becomes cheaper and cheaper. A classic example is a power plant. Let’s say that it costs 1.2 billion to build a power plant. The first kilowatt generated cost 1.2 billion dollars to make. However, as the years pass it becomes cheaper and cheaper with each unit produced. Usually with items such as power there is little marketplace competition because of the massive amounts of capital needed to get the first unit produced.

Economies of scale impact us everyday and not just when we flick on the light switch every morning. Some economists may disagree with me but most of our lives are made easier by this idea. Walmart sells millions of items each year at lower prices than their competitors because they allow the factory producing it to work on the economies of scale principle. The factory that supplies Walmart’s hair ties for them can actually lose money on the first million if they can make money on the second million and the third million and so on.

This impact has given us better lives. We have more income to spend on other things because we can get cheap items at the local Walmart. Even the smart rich people shop there for their daily necessities.

What is the unmeasurable cost of all of this? I believe it is the standardization of our lives. As economies of scale caught on they swept across America. You can see the proof of this in franshises. I’m sure McDonald’s did something right back in the day, maybe even made edible burgers. Today they are just cheap, quick and for children.

Americans, well, everyone in general, love this standardization. We love the fact we can drive 500 miles and stop at our favorite restaurant and order our favorite item and it will taste just like it did in our hometown. I see it all the time in Malaysia as Americans like to hit TGI Fridays and Chili’s. We know what we are getting. Gone is all the guesswork.

Actually, I was shocked by it last year when I moved back to Oklahoma. Ask any person in Oklahoma or Texas what their favorite restaurant is and they will tell you a chain restaurant. Olive Garden, Texas Roadhouse or On the Border. (Ok, may be not EVERYONE) In Bellingham there were many, many more local restaurants. Skylark’s Hidden Café, Grace Café, The Bagelry, La Fiamma, Bob’s Burgers and Brew (now a franchise) are all my favorites. New Orleans is much the same, with many restaurants being one of a kind. In fact, it may be a way to mark the quality of life in a city, by the uniqueness of the restaurants found there. This is a new thought as I write this blog. Oklahoma City definitely has seen the number of restaurants explode with the growth of Bricktown.

This whole idea came about because the other night I was sitting in a Malay food stall and I ordered roti canai. Roti is a staple here, a kind of tortilla that is fried on a griddle and served up with some sort of gravy. That night it was dhal, a lentil based curry that is flavorful but without spice. On the side was sambal, best described as Malaysian salsa without vegetables. I mixed the dhal and sambal and proceeded to devour the roti in a couple of minutes. I sat back and thought about how good it was. I wanted another. So I summoned the waitress and ordered up a second roti canai. Then I started thinking, “Why do I never order a second of anything in the USA?” Then I realized it is mostly due to the economies of scale. It tastes the same every time, everywhere. I have never eaten something and then said, “Wow, that was perfect, give me one more please!” Because everything is standardized, everything tastes more or less the same. Maybe you have been to a bake sale or food fair and had this experience but they are increasingly disappearing from the landscape of the American experience.

Roti canai with dhal and sambal. When done right it is the best thing in the world.

Malaysia still has this unstandardized life. The roti guy at the bottom of the hill makes wonderful roti, crisp the way I like it, and the dhal and sambal blend together into a delectable, savory slurry of perfection. The guy down the road a bit may be selling roti having the consistency of wet socks and gravy that is bland and dull. You never know. And when the cook gets it just right, well, order up another round.

Standardization means the loss of creativity and ingenuity. Take chocolate chip cookies. The recipe is everywhere, most notably on the back of every package of Toll House Morsels sold. So why is that some people can make amazing cookies and others can’t? Well, we decided to get rid of that and now you can buy cookie dough at our local grocery or with your pizza.

We need economies of scale to give us a higher quality of life. But we need to keep them in check so that the uniqueness is maintained and our lives are a bright tapestry rather than a dull, drab coat of gray. If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go see the roti guy. There was no teh tarik in the post but in real life there was. Nothing beats a good roti and teh tarik breakfast.

Changes

(Disclaimer: I'll change my mind about all this in a week.)
I have only lived one year of the last eleven in Oklahoma. That was last year when I lived with my parents and went to Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, Texas to get my teaching certificate. I then moved back to Malaysia about 4 months ago.

Over the last few years I've enjoyed going home to see my family and friends. But I never thought it was the place I should be until the last month. It's strange in someways. I have missed so many Thanksgivings but this one I really feel the desire to be home. I'm not homesick per se. I was homesick when I left Malaysia in 2007. It's more like a feeling that it is the right place for me to be. I have desperately missed my active lifestyle from the last year...the 1/2 marathon training, riding across Oklahoma on a bike and other possibilities.

Teaching here has given me more experiences that working in the States would have. In 14 weeks of teaching I have put on a school dance, had my club put on an awareness week which included selling ribbons and performing skits, been emcee for Sports Day and next weekend we will have 200 orphans at the school for Christmas Cheer. The next weekend we will be off for a leadership camp...oh, and I forgot the conference I went to in Thailand. Whew, no wonder I'm tired. I say living overseas crams several years into one and it is doing the same with teaching. Hopefully next term I'll be running a Model U.N. club to boot.

Therefore, I am surprised by these feelings that I should be home, that I want to be home. Lots of good things are here. I keep voicing the fact I want to buy a house here. But, somewhere I wonder if it isn't time to go home, be with my family and put down roots. I really want to spend more time with my family, especially my granny.

I want to do so many thing that I so often find that no matter what I do there is a draw in the opposite direction. I would love to settle down in Bellingham one day but I don't know when and how that will occur.

All this is to say I don't know what the future holds. I love being in Malaysia and will enjoy each moment here to the fullest. I am just musing over what choices I will have to make in July. Happy Thanksgiving.

Shotgun blogging

Well, I haven't blogged in a couple of months so I thought I would sit down and write a few thoughts.

How is school?
School is good. I absolutely love my students. There are a mix of good and bad of course but I often find myself thinking what wonderful kids they are. We have been reading "Rules" in class on Fridays and have an aquarium with a few guppies. I was the organising teacher for our fall dance. I thought it went really well. One thing you have to get used to is the fact that people don't praise each other in Asia. Compliments are rare. A few other teachers thought it went well and I thought it did so I just have to be happy with that. The funny thing was that two weeks later I was emcee for the sports day and that was met with loads of compliments. I scratched my head a lot at that one. The dance was a much bigger affair than reading the placings of students in the 100m etc.

I struggle a lot with how the school is run. The last two years I worked at great schools in the states where they accepted all comers and were run efficiently. Here we have a two day admittance test and only take the best and brightest. The school is run in typical Malaysian style. That means someone comes running in with an 'important' task. You drop everything to do it only when you get it finished you find it wasn't that important. The real struggle is the amount of admin work teachers do. I have to update school folders for all my students, so the first week of school I spent 5 hours typing their biodata into a spread sheet. Now we are finishing our term and I had to write 187 1-2 sentence comments about each student I teach. I then had to write 19 more comments (one paragraph) for my homeroom students. I don't mind this but, for example, I listed an actual instance where a student gave up. The comment was edited to read 'gives up when the going gets tough'. I rarely get to focus on creating great lessons and really just try to tick off all the duties required of me in a week, doing none of them with excellence. Unfortunately I have a personal creed to do things with excellence. Dang those personal creeds!

I go back and forth almost daily on whether or not I'll teach here next year. I have always wanted to teach multiple years in a school but putting up with poor management makes me wonder if it is worth it.

Actually, I was offered a job in Texas in October. I say 'offered' but I was asked to apply which is about the same thing. I turned them down because I feel a duty to finish the year with my students here. However, last weekend I had a 'panic' attack. I was really missing my family and my former active life of running and bicycling etc. Here I work 11 hour days and don't have the support network (living with my parents) that allows me to be active. Again my sense of duty wouldn't allow me to email and see if the post was filled. But then a day will come and I will have some great interactions with students and I think "I'll never leave here." I suppose all teachers fight similar battles emotionally.

How is Malaysia?
I have always fought this problem that I have three distinct spheres: Oklahoma, Bellingham and Malaysia. I feel equally at home in all three. I love being back here. I am often taken aback when people ask me basic questions about Malaysia. I forget that I am very obviously NOT Malaysian. This time the weather has been wetter than any of the other years I have been here and it has been harder because I don't ride my motorbike in KL traffic in the rain, if possible.

Random Tidbits
I'm going to Korea over Christmas, something I've wanted to do for a long time. I'm very excited about it. I had planned on a trip to the Similan Islands in Thailand before that but I won't be making it because I have to take 5 students to a conference on leadership the weekend before I head to Korea. My school year will end on July 23 and I'm not sure what I'll do after that.

My computer hard drive crashed and I've been adding songs again. There are a few songs that I always get. I was thinking about that recently, how I always make sure they are a part of my music library. Some are (in no particular order):
Live--Lightning Crashes
Van Halen--Humans Being
Van Halen--Jump
Billy Joel--We didn't start the fire
Madonna--Vogue
Bruce Hornsby--Mandolin Rain
U2--With or Without You, Beautiful Day and Where the streets have no name
Smashing Pumpkins--Disarm, Tonight, Tonight, 1979 and Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Cranberries--Linger
Some newer ones that I just think of as entire albums
Coldplay--Viva la Vida
Parachute--Losing Sleep
Nickle Creek's first CD
Emmy Lou Harris Red Dirt Girl

Thoughts on a six year plan

Well, I’m back in Malaysia for my second stint here and thought I would write about things that are going through my head concerning the present and future.

Things I learned while in the USA for the last two years: I love my family, they are just amazing, love my friends, amazing as well and my love for Malaysia did not diminish either. I think sometimes when you live overseas you are acutely aware of all the faults of your home country but being back in the US for two years made me remember all the wonderful things about it. In all honest, it was a tough decision to leave. Lastly, I realized that the place in the world I want to end up is Bellingham, where the largest concentration of my friends are and my family can visit much easier than Malaysia.

Things to consider in the 6-year plan: The first thing is that I love my granny dearly and she is turning 82 in February. She is still in great health but no one lives forever and I want to spend time with her while she is still very active. I went to New Orleans three times with her over those two years and want to spend that kind of quality time with her. I’m also glad that I’m gone for a bit because I push my parents too much on what they are going to do after retirement. Being in Malaysia means I won’t be hounding them so much about things.

Possible scenarios: My first thought was to live in Malaysia for 6 years and then return to the USA. I would return with a lump sum payment of about $40,000 USD, which would make a nice little down payment on a house. My instinct right now is to teach only 4 years in Malaysia, which would give me roughly $25,000 when I leave. So here is what I am thinking. I will save for two years and then purchase a house in Malaysia. I will continue renting myself and rent the house out, making double payments on it for two more years. After four years I will return to the USA and get a job close to my parents and my granny (they will be together), hopefully living with them. In the meantime, I will use the 25k from Malaysia with some savings to put a down payment on a house in the Sunnyland neighborhood of Bellingham, a house I will then rent out.

This scenario sets me up for later in life, Lord-willing, to one day move back to Bellingham but to also have a retirement home in Malaysia where I can either spend my summer school holidays or 4-6 month chunks after I retire.

Disclaimer: I am always thinking and scheming. Some come to fruition, such as moving to Malaysia. Some don’t, such as my dog poop scooping business. Please take all I have said with a grain of salt.

Goodbyes

Well, I have taken a job teaching geography in an international school in Kuala Lumpur, so I am headed back to Malaysia, arriving on July 29. I will then sleep 22 hours and be ready for action. That sounds like a solid plan for beating jet lag. I'm very excited about moving back but of course will be sad to leave. I loved, more than I can describe, teaching history to 8th graders this year. I liked the 6th graders but I think I hit my stride in that final 6 weeks when I was substitute teaching. Of course, I am my own worst enemy on classroom management when I suddenly break off course from a lecture on the Dust Bowl to wondering if all that grit made for whiter teeth when they brushed and if that was where the idea for pumice might have come from. 3 minutes later I'm trying to get the conversation back on the Dust Bowl and kicking myself for my vagrant conversation.


Anyway, all of this to say I will miss the people I have met here. Another group of people who are very special to me are those at my church. Not being able to do normal things, I have been attending a Korean church in Wichita Falls and I have been doing the children's sermons on Sunday mornings for the last few months. I will miss the kids, who are extremely cute. I don't think I was ever that cute as a kid.

Mom, tell the scary man to let me go!

The pastor and his wife couldn't escape my reach either.

Notice how far they sit away from me. Hmmm, I'm rethinking that pledge to go organic and stop using deodorant.

Most of the kids have to be held in place by their moms or they run screaming in terror.

Freewheel Oklahoma 2009

Last week I was off on my bicycling adventure, otherwise called Freewheel Oklahoma, an annual ride that usually starts near the southern border and finishes up in Kansas. This year we covered 415 miles according to the official certificate I was given at the end. Basically, you ride several hours each day, covering between 50-70 miles a day. We left on a Sunday and arrived the following Saturday in Kiowa, Kansas. You could do it much more quickly but we rode way to the west and then went back to the east. I'm guessing that riding hard you could go from Texas to Kansas in about four day.

What surprised me was how early people got up and started out. Some people were on the road by 4 a.m. Do you know how loud a tent being rolled up is that hour? Oh, we camped along the way and put our luggage in a trailer that was then moved to the next town where we would be spending the night. Indoor camping was available as well. I usually left out around 6:30 a.m. and arrived about 11 a.m. Then I would shower and find something to eat. The hard part of the whole trip was the afternoons, which would have been fine if I had been traveling with friends but mainly I just spent the afternoons reading. I did meet quite a few people but not really anyone that wanted to hang out with me the whole day.

It was definitely a good time and I would do it again next year if I weren't moving to Malaysia. Maybe I'll have to start Freewheel Malaysia.

Posing in my spandex just before leaving Duncan.

Not sure what dad is doing here. My butt has spent many hours in that location.

On the road to Apache.

The campsite in Apache. Mine is the little yellow tent in the lower left hand corner. About 1,000 people either ride or follow Freewheel. A ten year old girl rode every mile and one guy turned 70 during the week. Also, a guy who was a leg amputee did it as well.

Cheyenne in the pre-dawn light. Makes for a great morning ride, watching the sun rise.

This is Thomas in the mist. By the way, there is nothing in Thomas. They don't even have a restaurant, just a little place called the Big T that makes take-away food.