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