Wow, since my last blog post I flew home for 10 days, came
back, taught for two weeks, flew to Malaysia for four days, and came home barely
missing a record setting typhoon.
Minnesota was great as always, although I somehow managed to book my
return flight for the wrong day and missed a day and a half of work. I got some really dirty looks and a deeper
understanding of the meaning of “nonrefundable ticket” (turns out you can’t even
change the little bastards). So then I
worked 10 out of 11 days and got up at the ass crack of dawn to fly to Kuala
Lumpur on day 12.
My friends Emily and Sam found $300 tickets and an air
B&B on the 22nd floor of a high-rise for like $40 a night. Our place had a pool and restaurant on the 37th
floor roof top. The place had four
towers and so many people we had to wait 5 minutes for the elevator to
come. We had a studio with a mattress on
the floor for me and a semi-broken AC unit.
It worked out though.
I was a bit nervous going with friends that I hadn’t
traveled with before, but we got along well and didn’t have any emergencies
except when a monkey stole a bag of souvenirs from us. We did a bunch of touristy stuff like going
to temples, mosques and shrines and going to the top of an 88 story tower. We did a food tour one night with a random
local guy we found on the internet. He
fed us Chinese street food and we got caught in the middle of a huge Chinese
ghost festival parade. (I didn’t know
before going that the gates to the spirit world were open in early
September). Other highlights included
feeding parrots an aviary and visiting an enormous cave guarded by a 100 foot
golden statue of a Hindu war god.
Overall the city was super huge and built up but it was easy
to get around with uber and nearly every one spoke English. The
people are super diverse and there are very active Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and
Taoist communities. The city was also
super developed and we didn’t have any problems with scammers, feral dogs or
human refuse being thrown out of 2nd story windows.
Now I’ve been back taking it easy and gearing up for another
work week. We have a meeting tomorrow
before work for the full staff 200+ Shimon staff, then on Wednesday I teach at
my new branch for the first time. I’ll
be in touch. Tootles.
