Well Hey There!

Do you come here often?

Sorry for the long absence, hopefully your hearts all grew fonder.

As it turns out, having a newborn and doing literally anything else is impossible.  Much less a side project you're doing as a hobby.  But here I am again to chronicle the amazing life I lead.

But as it turns out I do get bomb ass cupcakes now.

While I am still an American in Malaysia, I'm about to become an American in Germany.  It's going to be a short, nine month visit.  My husband is going for a training program and his company has graciously allowed the family to come along.  As our son is still young and we don't have to worry about school, we decided to try it out.  If it agrees with us we may try for more expat positions in the future.

As it turns out, shockingly enough, there is quite a bit of paperwork involved.  Actually to be completely honest, it was less than we had initially anticipated but to make up for that we ended up in a holding pattern for about five months and now we are having to make a mad dash to get all the paperwork approved before my DH's report date of June 1. We finally made head way and received the paperwork from Germany last Saturday, the day before we were supposed to leave for our scheduled interviews.  My poor husband was about to cancel our hotel reservations and reschedule our embassy appointments.  Thank goodness I told him to wait.

On-The-Road Selfies

I don't know why, but for some reason I have been pretty chill about this whole process.  I guess because it's more my husbands responsibility and he's been doing a good job of trying to keep it on track and this is a company move so we can leave most of the details up to them.  However, I hadn't realized how nervous my husband was until the week before we were supposed to leave.  He was a superhero getting all the documents in order and finding a translator, and keeping everything organized.  By the time we showed up at the German embassy (two hours before they even opened for the day) DH was totalled frazzled and I was nice and relaxed from a full night's sleep (Baby I had spent the last evening in the pool and subsequently knocked off from 8 pm until we woke him up at 6 am!)

Our appointments went smoothly, but took a very long time to get everything sorted out.  It was mostly frustrating because your interview happens IN the waiting room with everyone else.  And while everyone else was sitting quietly waiting for their turn, Baby I choose that time to want, nay NEED, to crawl around and talk to everyone.  He fussed the entire time and made it miserable to have to listen to the embassy workers as they walked us through the process.  I have to say I'm very thankful to everyone involved.  Most found the baby charming and for those who didn't, well they were polite about it at least.  No one complained or tried to make me feel bad, let's just say I made a big withdrawal from the Karma Bank that day.

The little Embassy Terrorizer on break

Now between you, me, and the rest of the internet, I knew this was a "business trip" but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't psyched to go.  I LOVE Kuala Lumpur, it was everything I dreamt of when I thought about moving to SE Asia, tall buildings, crowds everywhere, food and shopping galore.  The last time we had a proper outing to KL was back in July to pick up my sister from the airport, the baby was only two weeks old so I was still healing and exhausted.  I needed another trip before leaving for Germany.

Literal drive-by of KLCC

We didn't get a chance to go to any of our "regular" joints and instead without any intention tried only new places.  Not a single disappointment was had.  We dined at a hot dog stall in KLCC, ate at Piccadilly's, had pizza at a bar in the shopping strip connected to our hotel, lunch at Fatburgers, dinner at Texas Chicken and tried Longhorns Steakhouse, a favorite back in the States we wanted to see how the Malaysian store stacked up.  Before anyone loses their heads, yes, we only ate Western food...well except for at Piccadilly's.  I'll be honest, we get better Chinese food in Alor Setar and Indian food in Sungai Petani, when I go to Penang and Kuala Lumpur we gorge ourselves on Western food, something we don't get a lot of up North.

Apparently the hot wings were hotter than initially anticipated

So after four days in Kuala Lumpur, early mornings for complicated meetings, copious amounts of fattening but delicious food, a nice swim, and bonding with family and friends, we packed up and headed home.  It's nice to be back home and sleeping in my own bed, enjoying the simple things before we pack up and move on again.  I loved my little vacation with my little family and I hope you enjoyed it too.  Thanks for reading.

Palm Plantations on the way to Kuala Lumpur

Signing Off,
Sarah G. and The Boys

Blogging Abroad Challenge #1

Hello everyone, I’ve had issues keeping up with my blog.  My main roadblock is finding interesting things to talk about.  My sister who is in the Peace Corps joined this challenge (you should check her out here: thefreckledlife17.com , and the challenge site here: bloggingabroad.org ) and I thought I would follow along to get the hang of blogging.  I’m not trying to compete with anyone in the challenge and I may fall behind, having a kid makes even writing hard to keep up with, but I plan on doing each challenge as I can.  Since the first prompt is over Why? I figure it’s a great way to introduce myself and maybe go over anything that I may have missed in my initial introduction in my blog.  Anyways, here we go….

Malaysia, Home of the Green

How did you get to where you are?

As I said in my introduction post, I followed my (then) boyfriend after I graduated college.  He got a great job in a small city near his home town and that is where we now live with our six month old son.  If you want to know the whole dang thing, you can read this post.

What were your hopes when you first went abroad?

Well I was following a boy, so I didn’t exactly have a lot else structured around that.  In my head I saw us settling down in a large city, in a tall skyscraper somewhere making tons of international friends and ending up in a great career.  Definitely not what happened, haha, but I wouldn’t change what I got for the world.

Hey look! I'm holding up KLCC (and this is why I can't live in sophisticated places)

What personal values and priorities influenced your choice?

I suppose a romantic would say, I followed love and let the rest just fall into place.  That wouldn’t be entirely incorrect, but I was also seduced by the idea of a life different from what I had experienced thus far.  I wanted out of Kansas, a life more exotic and with a background in anthropology, I wanted a story more integrated than just an ethnography, I wanted to be a part of the culture. 

What challenges and sacrifices did you overcome to get here?

Giving up first world luxuries, even in a pretty developed country like Malaysia, is very hard.  Although Malaysia used to be an English territory and almost everyone, even in my small town, knows enough English that I can get by, it’s been very difficult to cultivate personal relationships outside my husbands family.  I’m also not very good at learning new languages, so when I’ve looked for classes in Malay in the past people have laughed at me and assured me I didn’t need classes, because Malay is such a simple language to learn.  It’s a bit disheartening to hear especially when a year and a half of living here and I barely know enough to order food and drinks, that and my ability to socialise has truly been affected by my isolation.  

Malaysian food, NOT a sacrifice and the only challenge is how much can you eat in one seating

Other sacrifices that I never considered when moving was starting a family.  I had no intention of having kids when I left and now there is a lot of guilt that my family doesn’t get to see my son and also knowing that if I did move back so that my son could grow up with my family would mean taking him away from my in-laws, there is no perfect solution to that issue and it’s definitely a sacrifice AND a challenge that is always there.

Have you achieved some of the goals you set for yourself through this experience?

Well, I haven’t packed bags and ran off for home yet!  To be honest, no I haven’t, I wanted to be better integrated into my city by now, have friends and a job.  Getting pregnant changed a lot of those goals and now raising a little one, we are all still figuring out what we are going to do.  As for becoming more integrated, I joined a gym this year and I’m taking yoga, Zumba and a POP pilates class, so hopefully 2016 will be the year that I finally break down those barriers.

Penang skyline on the ferry, no reason, just beautiful

So has it been worth it?  Of course it has, it’s been everything I wanted even if I had no idea what that was until I got it. It’s easy when you’ve lived in one place, or one country, your whole life to become convinced that that is all there is.  Being a part of something else, really breaking away not just vacationing, has a refreshing quality.  You are more appreciative for things you never thought twice about before and things that seem like a big deal back home (or even things that are a big deal where you are now living) get a big dose of perspective when you aren’t constantly bombarded by it.  

My family and I are still figuring out what we’re doing, where we’re going, and how we’re going to handle it all, but right now living day by day is the greatest pleasure.