We have arrived

I have felt so naked the last 2 weeks without my blog.

We left our apartment in Kuala Lumpur to move to a small town about an hour south called Seremban. Our friend who lives out here found us an amazing house that was actually not for rent but was meant to be sold and the sale dragged along for months until finally falling through, so she convinced them to rent it out to us instead! It has been a dream come true and I can hardly believe our good fortune in securing this place. It feels positively palatial after our tiny apartment (although it was a great little place with perfect accessibility to the city center) and honestly my biggest problem so far is having TOO MUCH SPACE. Oh, no, what's a girl to do.

SO...we had to register for a phone line first, wherein our lovely Chinese friend again helped us by going into the shop and using her name, otherwise we would have paid the "skin tax" of a few extra hundred dollars. So once they set up the phone line we waited another week and the nice internet guys came today and hooked us up so now I am connected again! Phew, I feel like I can breathe again.

We'll take some good pics of the place and post them soon, but for now I thought I'd list a few things that differentiate our new house from our old apartment:

- we each have our own room...meaning i can actually shower in my own room while emily takes a nap and i don't wake her up!
- there's more storage than we know what to do with: whole walls filled with empty cupboards, a storage closet with nothing in it.
- a guest room, just waiting to be used.
- lots of gecko sightings, which is good because they eat little obnoxious bugs. although if anyone knows a medicinal use for gecko droppings let me know because i could sell it and retire next year with the proceeds. it's everywhere. ew.
- a yard outside for john to play in!
- a curry leaf tree in our yard.
- a covered car park right outside our door so i don't have to take 2 elevators, 2 long hallways and an underground ramp to get to and from my car!
- an island in my huge kitchen. again the problem with empty cupboards in there because it's so freaking big.
- a bigger, top-loading washing machine. (although there's sometimes brown water running through the pipes which leads to brown-water stains on my WHITE clothes...argh. anyone know how to get that out? i'd be much obliged if you'd leave a comment.)
- apparently frogs come up the drain pipes and push their way into houses...we've found three in our kitchen over the last week.
- we wake up to birds chirping happily in our garden (and all day as well, since there's a nest right outside the master bedroom window)

ok, that's probably enough of a list for now. we hope you are all doing well and i can't wait to check up on everyone now that we have internet again. i feel awful because i missed 2 of my best friends' birthdays (sorry, guys!! i love you!!!!!!) and couldn't even send them an email but i'm back on track now. happy november!