Well, today is our last day of work and I will now, finally, describe to you what our work this month has been!
We are living with another team, Lilli’s. We live in our own flat, in Georgetown, and have a microwave, hot showers, western toilets, stove top, dining room table, air conditioning for night time, basically we live in a castle.
Lilli’s team is working at Advent Hospital and helping raise funds for patients with critical needs that can’t pay their bills. Our team is working at a home for blind and re-organizing a braille library. It is somewhat like factory work and, I must admit, I pretend the blind people are zombies when the time needs to fly by quicker, but all in all it is a great job (also, these zombies are much more polite when they bump into you). We work from 9am to 4pm, basically a regular job, with an hour lunch break in between. We take that opportunity to walk to a nearby cafe and read or just to walk around.
We are working with an organization here that has people from around the world working with them. We have done prayer meetings, worships, homeless outreaches and more with them and that has been fantastic.
We had been eating mostly street food, besides the lunch that is provided at the home, but Malaysia is a bit expensive for our budget, so we started cooking meals at home. Last night we had a SALAD! We’ve also made pasta, breakfast for dinner, rice dishes and the normal cheap dinner foods.
We had two Saturdays here, so two off days and we were able to site see on both of those days which have been fantastic.
The first Saturday we went to Penang National Park and hiked through the jungle to a white sand beach, pretty much secluded from society, then took a boat back around the island. We hung out in Batu Ferringhi, got a fish pedicure (you basically stick your feet into a fish tank and let the fish eat the dead skin off of your feet. Ticklish and weird and first, but you get used to it) and had some amazing street ice cream before heading home.
The second Saturday we hiked up Penang Hill. We hiked through the jungle on our way up and happened upon some random gym equipment, so we made a gym promo video, which you will have to see when we load it. The view from the top was gorgeous, but also hilarious. We weren’t expecting there to be free WIFI, a beautiful restaurant with a deck we could rest on, a somewhat animal show, tons of people and a train that took people form the bottom to the top in 20 minutes, but we took it all in anyways. On the way down I was charged by a rabid monkey, scared to death and met some Hash House Harriers. For those of you that don’t know, Hash House Harriers is a “drinking group with a running problem”, or so says their tag line. It is a social running group that started in Malaysia and is now in every big city around the world, if you look it up, there probably is one in your area. They have a “hare” or someone mark out a trail (sometimes through cities, jungles, what have you), then the “hounds” follow the marks. It was created by Australian air forcers in Malaysia that wanted to keep the boys fit, stay social and to even out the old men’s running skills with the new recruits. So the trail usually will have check points where you have to look for the trail and somewhat stall so the slow-pokes can keep up. Then it ends with a big party with food and usually beer. There are also tons of fun rules, nicknames and songs that go along with the group.
Anyways, they invited us to run with the on Thursday, tomorrow, and I am excited to do so!
We leave Friday morning for Kuala Lumpur and then off to China. We will be working in Harbin, China, in between Russia and North Korea, so VERY cold. I’m trying to figure out boots for up there, since Asians have way smaller feet than Americans, and gloves, had, coat, etc. Although I did find a few nice sweaters here.
We will have our 8 month debrief in Beijing after next month, then off to Ukraine, our “ATL – Ask The Lord” month and then Romania, then DONE! Can you believe it?!
NOTICE: Due to security reasons, we will not be able to use the internet AT ALL while we are in China. If you have things to tell me, you can leave comments or email me and I will get them in a month.
Thank you all and keep us in your prayers as we venture into China, a country that doesn’t tolerate foreign religions very well, and as we venture form 90+ humidity to -17 and dry!
