Catch-up

I had lofty goals of keeping a daily blog for all my friends and family in the states to read and view. Well, daily blog is now a weekly blog since I left a week ago and am just now writing my first entry. I hope to be better in the future.

My first weekend was mostly spent taking it easy and trying to adjust to the time difference. Malaysia is 12 hours ahead of Maryland. I arrived at Kuala Lumpur airport around Midnight last Thursday. Customs was amazingly a breeze. I was unsure of what to expect with my first trip through customs. I took my bags over to get checked, and they told me I didn't need to have them checked and showed me to the exit where Brooksie (Jeff) was waiting. Very easy.

Brooksie's aparment is very nice. The building is very secure. It has a guard station. Residents have a key card to permit them entry to the building. They have to use the key card in the elevator, and it will only allow you to go to your floor, the 3rd floor where the beautiful pool is, and the 1st floor. If you don't have a key card, the elevator will not take you anywhere. The complex has an absolutely beautiful pool which is seldom used. I have used it almost everyd day. Amazingly, the water does not get too hot because they have the pool itself shaded most of the day. It's just awesome.

Brooksie lives in a town called Shah Alam. Kuala Lumpur is the nation's capital of Malaysia. Like DC, it is an entity of itself, not part of any state. It is surrounded by the state of Selangor. Shah Alam is the capital of Selangor. So it is like Annapolis and KL(Kuala Lumpur) is like DC. They are about the same distance apart.

My first two days were filled with amazing cultural experiences (that's sarcasm). My first day Brooksie took me to a mall called Subang Parade for lunch at TGI Firday's and shopping at Cold Storage which is a western market that is a grocery store meets Macy's meets Costco. My second day Brooksie took me to a mall called Lilitama for lunch at Chili's. The mall was ridiculously huge! Malls and American restaurants. I was totally feeling like I was in Southeast Asia! Seriously though, the malls really are part of the culture here. They love their malls, and they are completely enormous with all kinds of activities for kids and adults both. I'm not a huge fan of malls to begin with though so Brooksie agreed no more malls for a while. He said he was trying to ease me into the culture. What he didn't realize is that I like to completely dive head first into these kinds of things and then come up sputtering for air and thrashing around. Easing in is for wusses. I wanted to be submerged.

On Sunday, I took off on my own to a place about three blocks from Brooksie's complex called Giant Plaza. Again it is like a mall, but a very small one with a local food court, some outdoor kiosks, and the Giant which is like a grocery store and Target rolled into one. The Giant has a lot of western products but also local products and cuisine. It was a lot of fun. I had my first Malay food which was delicious. I have fallen in love with mango juice which is available everywhere. And of course, everything is very cheap. Everything local that is. The western items are just slightly cheaper than in the US.

On Monday, I did a little exploring of Shah Alam. I met Brooksie for lunch at Giant Plaza. The teksi(taxi) took him back to work and then took me to the Blue Mosque. It was beautiful. It is the largest Mosque in Southeast Asia. It is huge and amazing. I was there during afternoon prayer, and the prayers are said over loudspeakers and can be heard several blocks around the mosque. The grounds are also beautiful. Very tranquil. I could have kicked myself for not taking my camcorder. Fortunately, I had my camera so I was able to get some pictures. The best part of the grounds was the turtles. There were so many turtles sunning themselves on the rocks. For those of you who don't know, I love turtles. It was so neat to see them swimming around everywhere.

I explored a little bit more of the area around. Went to Tourism Malaysia where they were very excited to speak with me about the states. When I said I had just come from the Blue Mosque, one man just kind of looked at me and said "Not many American girls there". It was kind of funny. I didn't go into the mosque, but nobody gave me weird looks while I was walking the grounds. Everyone was friendly. Then I decided to tackle the local public transportation system even though I had absolutely no idea what to do. After a while, I finally figured out the correct bus to take me near the apartment. The bus was very nice and air conditioned. It's funny. It is hot and humid here with temperatures every day around 90 degrees which is nothing to what Maryland has been the last few days. Anyway, it is hot and humid but there is always a refreshing breeze. I don't mind walking outside, but Malaysians hate it. Nobody walks anywhere. They all take air conditioned buses or taxis, and then go into air conditioned malls.
Well, that's a brief, although probably not brief enough for you all, synopsis of my first four days in Malaysia.

On Tuesday(yesterday), I had my first adventure into KL. I'll write the post a bit later about that excursion. Hope everyone is doing well.