Down to the Business of Getting Established

Today we met our new amah, Daisy. The kids liked her right away and she is good with gentle but firm discipline. She will take great care of our family which gives me great relief. While Daisy cared for the kiddos, we were driven to Maybank which is the bank here to set up our accounts. There was another couple with us, and it took nearly 3 hours to set everything up. We even had an appointment, so I cannot imagine what it would be like to go to the bank without an appointment. I found it interesting that while we sitting at a desk being helped people were standing right behind us like within 6 inches or so waiting to conduct their business.

The next stop was ISKL to pick up our seed money from the school to help us get set up. We were told that it would be a check, but they handed us RM $9000 (about $3000 US) in an mafia style envelope and told us to be careful with that. Okay. I think that jet lag has set in now as everything was starting to feel surreal. Doug and Tracy Woodward, our new great friends, showed up with Reeve and Gabriella (two of their kids) to meet Rex. The kids played "hide from the parents" (Rex's idea) while we had a look around. There is a great turtle/koi/meditation pond that the kids had fun with.

From there we drove up to Bukit Anterra Bangsa (Bukit means "hill" in Malaysian), which is where the Woodward family lives. There is only one road in and it is backed up to the jungle. We would choose to live up here, but that would require us to have two cars and we have a goal of only purchasing one car. They have a beautiful home. Then we went over to another ISKL family home to celebrate Canadia Day with a BBQ. We met lots of people: Simmo and Margaret, Richard and Dante, and others. Did I say it was surreal and jet lag was setting in?