June was filled with kids events - birthday parties, soccer practice, playgroups, etc.. we've been keeping busy. I started volunteering at this orphanage called Home of Peace a few months ago, so in June I invited Madison's soccer coach to go with me. She's from Brazil, an amazing coach and so patient... and donated two hours of her time at Home of Peace to teach the girls soccer. It was a really fun afternoon. The girls are so precious - have have absolutely nothing, but they are always SO happy and full of life. I love spending time with them and teaching them simple things - good hygiene, how to defend themselves against bullies at school (w/o getting in fights!), leading Bible studies with them, and encouraging them to dream BIG... because no one else is telling them they will amount to much.
I have to admit, some days it's hard to go... for selfish reasons. I'd rather spend time with my own family - especially since Ryan is only home on weekends so it's not like we have a lot of family time together as it is. But the fuel that keeps me going is the feeling I have every time I leave, and the excitement on their faces when I arrive. It's worth every minute of my time.
Ryan's mom visited in July. She stayed with us most of the month and it was wonderful! Somehow it went by too fast.. I think it's just because we tried to pack so much into 3 weeks, coupled with not wanting it to go by fast because we miss her so much.
We spent the first week here in KL - exploring the city, culture, food, etc.. The next week we flew to Vietnam (Ho Chi Minh) to spend the week with Ryan while he was working there. It was quite the experience! I actually really enjoyed it - the city was pretty organized and clean (given it's history and economic state), the people were so nice and friendly, and it was small enough to see most of the major sites in a few days. We visited a beautiful Chinese pagoda, the botanical gardens & Saigon zoo, a few local markets, a lacquer gallery where you can watch the people making the lacquer screens & bowls (such an amazing skill! so beautiful). After a week in the city we drove to Mui Ne beach. The resort was beautiful - we had this amazing villa right next to the pool / beach, with it's own pool and bbq pavilion. Madison had a blast at the main pool every day too, which was various levels and had a swim up bar... although when she swam up to it they gave her cookies, haha. Ryan attempted to kite surf (that's a story in & of itself!).. as Mui Ne beach is known for being the best location for kite surfing in Asia. Every afternoon the sea was filled with kite surfers, skirting around beautifully colored fishing boats. It made for gorgeous pictures.
We were going to finish our trip out in Singapore, but we were all a bit worn out from the beach so decided to keep that adventure for her next visit. So we spent the extra time doing a few tours of the international schools here in KL. Since Cherry has been a teacher for 20+ years (& my mother-in-law whom I love and trust of course) I really wanted her input and advice. We had Mads in a school in the same building as our condo - I know, convenient right?! However, they really misrepresented themselves as a 'montessori' school and every time I would "pop" in to see how Madison's day was going she wasn't doing anything that followed the montessori system.. and even worse is she hated it. She would cry every morning and beg me not to take her. Madison never did this in Dallas - she LOVED school and never hesitated to walk into the classroom and wave me away! So when Cherry was here I asked her to observe Mads at school and let me know what she thought.. and as I suspected she said it wasn't the right place for her. So we toured a few other schools and finally found one (on the last day of her trip actually - talk about God timing!), and Mads has been very happy there so far. It's such a relief to know your child is in good hands and that they are happy at school. Plus they have a true gymnastics gym as part of the school, so her "recess" each day is a gymnastics class with a great gymnastics teacher, and I think that's her favorite part! : )
We also visited the Elephant Sanctuary, which is located about 1.5 hours away but an easy and beautiful drive up through the smoky mountains of north KL. I packed us a picnic lunch and off we went! The sanctuary is a non-profit park, and I had heard mixed reviews, so we didn't anticipate much.. but it was really nicely done. The park was clean, nice pretty buildings and facilities, and you could walk right up to the elephant enclosures and feed them. The handlers brought them out for a while and showed us what they could do as far as tricks - stand on hind legs, bow, pick up logs with their trunks, and talked about how they use the veteran elephants to help wrangle the new "wild" ones they capture and bring in. It's really an interesting process, and the elephants are so lovely and majestic. I brought a huge bag of peanuts, but they wanted nothing to do with them. It turns out, elephants have a sweet tooth! Some other guests there knew this so they came prepared with sugar cookies, and the elephants just shoved those in! A couple near us gave Madison some so she could feed some of the baby elephants. It was really cute. Then Madison and Ryan rode a huge balding elephant, and Madison kept yelling to me that he was "hairy!!" the entire time she was on it. Hilarious. They also let you bathe in the river with the elephants and a lot of people did it, but the river is pretty brown, and I just kept thinking about what else was in the water.. so we did not do that, and unfortunately Madison left in tears and yelling "I want to take a bath with the elephants!!!" We amended the problem with some ice cream : )
I took Cherry & Mads to the KL Bird Park on Cherry's last day here. It's a nice park, very near our house, and you can have lunch in the cafe there that kind of feels like a treehouse. If you sit outside the hornbills fly free around you, and it can be quite frightening at times b/c they are SO big. But I've been there enough times now to know it's safe - they never hit anyone (or drop anything, ha), they're just looking for food. It was too hot the day we went so we opted for the nice A/C inside. Most of the birds can fly around freely inside the park b/c there's a huge overhead net covering the entire park, so it's cool to get up so close to them. Some are in cages, such as some of the owls - they are so beautiful and so many different kids. They're my favorite. The peacocks are Madison's favorite - see pics below:)
It was the perfect way to finish up a great trip with Cherry. Sad to see her go but so glad she came to visit!
No comments:
Post a Comment