9,426 miles away...

Sorry for the delay! Just our luck, the internet bill was left unpaid momentarily. But it's back up now -- and maybe next month we'll have to give a friendly reminder that it's bill time.

Flights were long, yes. But if you have ever flown Emirates Air, you know we weren't exactly suffering. Even all the way back in row 44, we were pretty comfortable in the lap of luxury. We flew through two sunrises and two sunsets, changed planes in Dubai and made it to Kuala Lumpur. In Dubai, all of the signage was in Arabic and we started to hear less and less English, but it still felt like we were inside a comfortable bubble. The second leg of our flight was much more crowded than the first - not to mention we were surrounded by 30 men from Pakistan who had been traveling for over two days... not showering or sleeping much -- a chatty bunch.

When arrived in Kuala Lumpur we followed the signs, now in Bahasa Malaysian (and luckily English) through a very long customs line and to the Star Shuttle 'bas' station. For $13 each we purchased our tickets to Ipoh. We slept for most of the three hour bus ride and eventually we were the only two people on the bus. We got off at the last stop, which was a tiny office in a very dark city at 3:30 a.m. local time. Don't worry mom(s), it was well lit and we tried to look alert. John and his wife Joyce picked us up there about 45 minutes later and drove us to Harvest Haven, our new digs. We weren't sure if we were tired or not... but they wanted to have tea, so we did. Brian and I each have a room in the guest house which has a bathroom and another woman, Raquel, lives. She is their housekeeper from the Philippines. Zacchaeus is a local man who also lives here and does all of the maintenance work. For those of you who have ever gone to Vacation Bible School... you may remember a song about Zacchaeus... "was a wee, little man..." That's a great way to describe him! Ilman is the new administrator -- and that's everyone. John and Joyce left the day after we arrived and won't be back until tomorrow - it's been just the four of us and our two dogs Happy and Honey.

In the last two days, we've mostly napped to get over our jet lag, and done small chores around the school. This time of year, they host a lot of church retreats and youth groups. We have been helping to get the center ready for a group of nine coming in tomorrow. There is a great garden behind the school -- papaya trees, pumpkins, chili peppers, sweet potatoes, onions, starfruit, mangoes and a lot of weird fruit that we've never heard of. We have been helping Raquel in the kitchen before meals and so far the food has been pretty familiar. Although, last night the two of us made spaghetti with meat sauce for the other staff and we got the impression they were expecting something a bit different. The use sweet chili sauce on everything, so that's a plus!


Tomorrow, we will be going to the market with Ilman to get some supplies for our new guests. When we come back to the center we'll likely try to get in some of the garden work before it gets too hot. And believe us, it gets really hot. Basically nothing outdoors can be done for the hours in the middle of the day... fine by us.

So here we are, in the middle of thousands of acres of oil palm trees, gardening and cooking spaghetti. We are anxious to see how our time here plays out... Stay tuned. Selamat malam -- goodnight!