When I lay down to sleep the eve of my birthday; the last thing I thought would happen on my birthday was getting proposed to by my team leader the next day. Fast-forward with me 10 hours earlier before the proposal. I woke up at the sight of a wrapping present, sweet notes around my sleeping pad and the room, also on the wall are letters spelling happy birthday to me. I was a loved, happy woman who had wonderful friends making me feel so special on my day. I quickly took a shower, at that time it was 11:30 am and I had a lunch date with my group of friends. We had this fabulous lunch at a Chinese restaurant family style, everything tasted delicious. After lunch we headed home, then something hilarious although not unusual happened that made my first birthday abroad one unforgettable day. Since we were leaving the city of Kuala Lipis the next day en route to Gua Musang to spend a couple days with the other team that traveled with us; we decided to do one last load of laundry. We all put our clothes together in the washing machine and went about our business. It was probably 20 minutes later when Jenifer decided to check on the clothes and found something that almost gave her an anxiety attack. When she came back to our room she had this frantic look on her face, I just knew something was wrong.
So, I hurriedly left together with her to come face to face with a river of water in not one but two rooms in the house. She quickly explained that she maybe should have put the tube on the floor outside so the water could have flown outside and not inside. Instead, we find ourselves in a mess and freaking out that any member of the Indian family that we live with might walk in any minute and get upset. So, as you can imagine we quickly went to work, sweeping and mopping trying to clear all the water off the floor. It was not easy but we got every single drop of water off that floor. We did have a witness to our little adventure, her name is Cassie. She was our encourager and keeps telling us words that strengthen us to keep going when the task seemed impossible. She also took many photos, so you can be part of that event also. Throughout the rest of the evening, I kept getting little gifts on the hour by my sneaky friends. Before we knew it, time flew and we were having our last supper with the family. They cooked a type of noodle that became one of my favorites in Malaysia for dinner, it’s called Mee hoon.After the meal it was time to cut the cake, the family blessed me by driving an hour away from where we live to get me this cake for my birthday.
When I opened the box my name was spelled wrong and my age was wrong on the cake, but it was funny to see and we all had a good laugh.
So, one custom the Malays have on birthdays is everyone celebrating with you gets to take a piece of cake and feed it to you. So, that’s exactly what took place in my case I got the entire family member and the racers feeding me cake.
After many laughs and photos we all sat down to eat our cake. While sitting munching on my cake and watching an Indian movie; Drew my team leader was about to leave the room, he picked up this baby powder spoon measurement necklace from the floor that belongs to a little girl in the house and put it on my neck. I didn’t even think much on what he did and kept watching the movie, until I noticed Cassie and Selvie smiling and looking at me. So, I asked what was funny and Selvie replied that I just got proposed to. It turned out that Malaysian men proposed to the spouse by putting a flower necklace on the neck of their future wife. And the spoon necklace is close enough to the real thing she said. It took everything in us to not roll on the floor with laughter, but Drew was a trooper. He let me take several pictures to remember this priceless moment.
Since our next country is Cambodia, she said that we should go there for our honeymoon and that he needs to buy me many sarees. Although, I didn’t really get proposed to, I hope it will happen soon enough; in God’s perfect timing.
We'll add more photos later, the internet is not working to well.
