Selamat Pagi

Selamt Pagi Houston (and other places)...means Good Morning Houston! I have begun my Bahasa Malay classes., woohoo! I've had 2 lessons, it's once a week for 2 hours. Going well so far, learning a little bit. It's mostly about conversational Bahasa, so it's nice.  Although, problem is that I don't use it much as English is widely spoken, but it gives me something to do with some friends I have made :)

Eric and I got to see a couple Lion Dances that were put on, one in our building and one on the street.  They are really interesting and done for Chinese New Year.  Chinese New Year lasts like 2 weeks and these were marking the end on Chinese New Year.  Some kids get a little scared of the massive Lion or Dragon coming after them...shooooot, I'd be scared too if I was a kid and saw this coming for me...

I have made a couple friends out here which has helped me out a lot.  I have had a few rough days where I break down and I'm sure there will be more, but it's better now.  Meeting people makes all the difference in the world, especially since I'm not working.  Someone I really like and happens to live in the building next to us is Chantal and she is from Canada, ay. hehe.  But seriously, we have done quite a few things together, shopping, Bahasa class, dinners, etc.  Eric likes her husband too, so it's worked out nicely and she has a great 9 year old daughter. We went together into to the city one day to buy a Valentines present for the hubby's, we each bought a bottle of Moet Rose Champagne that came in a pink bottle you could write on...SO CUTE!  And they let us sample the Champagne since we bought a bottle. DELISH! 

Valentines Day arrived and so did our sea freight, YAY!!!  Eric went to work as normal, but left at lunch to help me with the arrival our precious things.  He had a little surprise for me when he got home, beautiful flowers and yummy chocolates! mmmmm. The movers did a fantastic job and unpacked all of our stuff and set up our bedroom and everything by 4:00 so we still were able to enjoy a nice Valentines Day together.  The big items we brought over were our couch and bedroom suite.  OMG our couch and bed are wonderful!! It was like Christmas and we got all new things, very exciting :)  The couch we were using left here by the landlord quite frankly sucked. It was rough and scratchy and just not comfortable.  Eric was in heaven when he sat on our couch.  He almost didn't want to bring it because he was starting to not like it anymore, but he thanked God when he laid on it here, lol.  He has promised to never say another bad word about our couch.  And it's so nice having our bedroom set here, it actually fills our room very nicely and it's indescribable how wonderful it is to sleep on our comfortable bed. Eric also made me an awesome dinner for V-Day. Stuffed Chicken Parmesean! So good, he is quite a man.  Here's a few pics from the move and Valentines.

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(the kitchen looks a lot better now) :)

my beautiful flowers!

<3



I went to a grocery store last week that had a lot of expat items and you won't believe what I found! Cool Ranch Doritos!! I was so excited, I had only seen flavors we don't have in the states like Chili (the pepper not the dish) and other weird ones. Couldn't believe I found my favs, I bought two bags and then when I got home I proceeded to eat almost the entire bag (I think I left some crumbs)...whoops! Oh well, totally worth it, I have been portioning out the second bag I got :)

One of the big malls here had a huge bear statue display for a few months, it was bears painted for countries from around the world, US had a pretty nice looking bear, if I may say so.

We also went to a rug auction this weekend. That was very interesting and a lot of fun. It was a silent auction/rug auction fundraiser benefiting a village in the Philippines that was destroyed by a typhoon.  Eric had way too much fun with his little number card for bidding, I was worried about him. Luckily I was there to keep him in check a little and let him lose some of the items we were bidding on. We ended up with a runner rug, the small rug shown in the picture of our bedroom (it's a Persian), a small one for framing, a hookah, and two Balinese figurines he won in the silent auction. All in all, a lot of fun and we got nice things for relatively cheap! SUCCESS!

This is just a pic of the auction, not a rug we got.

This is our score, minus the Balinese figurines.

Just so you can get an idea of how cheap the food can be out here, listen to this.  We went to dinner Saturday night with two other couples and one of their children and a guy and his 16 yr old son, so 9 altogether.  2 bottles of wine, plenty of beer, 4 crabs, and other meats and veggies at a Chinese restaurant. Everything was awesome and we all got our fill, we were there about 3 hours...the grand total for our bill...RM 1000. That's it, a little over $300 USD for 9 people to eat and drink good Chinese food. Ridiculous!!

That's about it for now, have a wonderful day! :)

p.s. A special congrats to a dear friend of mine Nicki and her new fiance Tommy!! So happy for you guys!!

haha...little Lucy!

 Sunrise over the towers from our living room...pretty nice



The Girls are Here, The Girls and Here!!!

A couple of metionables that should have been mentioned in the last blog, but I forgot...

1. Eric already got pulled over by the police. For what you ask, if you know Eric you can probably make a decent educated guess. Survey says...talking on his phone.  Yep, he was pulled over for talking on his cell phone.  Apparently, it's ok to drive like a nut but not talk on your cell while driving.  Things are done a little differntly here though, Eric asked the officer if he could 'pay his fine' directly to the officer. Eric paid RM100 which is a little of $30 to get out of his ticket.  Normally it only takes RM 50, but he didn't have a RM 50 on him, oh well.

2.  Eric and I found an Outback Steakhouse and had lunch there.  We took it back to where it all began, as Eric and I met at an Outback in Houston. Awww, the memories :)  We had a Typhoon Bloom instead of a Bloomin' Onion...YUMMO

We went on our first vacation over here.  We went to Pangkor Island, left super early Saturday morning and spent 5 hours in the car getting there and it should have only taken 2-1/2 hrs.

(Side note to send a shout out to Eric who as I type is messing with his ipad and playing our wedding song <3)

So, 5 hours later and lots of Chinese New Year traffic and we made it to the port where we pick up the ferry to the island.  I had been told not to expect too much, so we lowered our standards a little and were pleasantly surprised when we arrived.  The beach was nice, the water was good, the swim up bar and bartenders were DEF GOOD, the room was ok.  We had a great time, met some nice people, actually met a couple on the ferry that were from Houston, go figure.  We chatted with them over the weekend and some other people and just had a great time.  We rented a little 100cc motorbike for 2 of the days and cruised around the island and saw some sights and had some good food and felt the wind in our hair (a little scary for me riding with Eric, but we survived) He really enjoyed as it's been a few years since he's been on a bike.  We went to a Chinese Temple on the island as it was during Chinese New Year, it was really cool.  They had a mini great wall surrounding the entire grounds, dragons everywhere. Just really cool to see. Pics are attached in the link listed below.  We also saw some Sacred Rock, which is just as it sounds, it's a rock. Not sure why it's sacred, and we saw a Dutch Fort that's been left on the island, it's really small and not much to it.  They had birds and wildlife everywhere.  They had hornbills which were pretty neat looking birds.  I had gotten up from my beach chair to check out the birds next in the tree next to me to turn around and find 3 of the hornbills on my chair eating my fries, ha!  I fed some peacocks too :)  We saw some monkeys sneak into someones room that left their door open and they kept coming out onto the balcony with the food and go back into the room when they ate it, just back and forth, it was HI-LAR-IOUS! (pics in the link below)  Watch out for those mokeys, lock your doors!!! Monday night they had fireworks and they released 4 huge lanterns into the air from off the beach, it was really neat to see.  I thoroughly enjoyed our first Chinese New Year experience in Malaysia! But, it can't last, Tuesday came too soon and we headed back to KL, vacay over, boo :(



More pictures in this link if you are bored or interested...there's like 250 pics : /

http://photo1.walgreens.com/walgreens/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=8971931001/a=4748092_4748092/otsc=SHR/otsi=SALBlink/COBRAND_NAME=walgreens/

On our way back home we stopped by the airport (after getting a little lost) and saw the girls who arrived in KL that weekend.  Man were they happy to see us and I was so happy to see them too!  They were delivered to us on Saturday Jan 28th. So happy to have them home now.  They were a little upset at us though. After Lucy calmed down, it only took about 3 hours for her to start breathing normal, I gave them baths and once done they both preceeded to pee on the floor, awesome...Ava also pooped on the floor like a minute after that, awesome again.  They have since calmed down and seem to have adjusted well.  They actually like their stroller that I have to put them in to take them down the elevator and off property to go to the bathroom.  It's pretty funny to see them in there, they just sit back and enjoy the ride.

Eric's birthday was good. We went to the KL Tower, they have a revolving restaurant like Spindletop, only a little higher.  Enjoyed the buffet dinner and a couple drinks then headed to Changkat Street (a smaller scale 6th St) to a Whiskey Bar where Eric got a nice glass of scotch and a cigar.  Good Times!

We bought our first piece of art over here. I am very excited about it. It's a Batik painting, it's done on a cloth and outlined, waxed, painted, waxed, painted, waxed, etc etc....all in all it's really cool and I LOVE our piece. It's called The Goddess.

We now have cable and internet...WOOHOO! I can't believe we finally got interent, about freakin' time Malaysia, about time! Everything runs a little slow here (and that's being nice).

Hope all is well with everyone, we miss you guys terribly and I miss Bed, Bath, and Beyond! I took it for granted before. Cherish it my friends, cherish it. That and Target! I am starting to get a little homesick, but I'm doing good.  I've met a few people and started to make a few friends. 

Eric had Wednesday off this week and he gets Monday and Tuesday off next week, so we have another 4 day weekend ahead of us to enjoy and make our way around the city figuring it out a little better.

Stay Classy :)

one last fun one...this is my impression of godzilla  ;)