So, needless to say, there is nothing to report for really cool weekend excursions.
Luckily for me the week started off differently. I was fortunate enough to spend the first Monday of the month hanging out with my friends. Our first task of the day was to go to the AAM villa and help decorate for the Christmas party. It was a lot of laughs and we actually did some decorating, too! We left there and went to a mall called Berjaya Times Square. The entire top floor of this mall is a theme park and includes a roller coaster. We didn't go to it but I will venture back that way. I've been told that the roller coasters that are found in this country (and there aren't many) are nothing like the ones we have at home. At this point I'm ok with that! I was having roller coaster withdrawals before I left there so they are so much worse now.
The cool thing about going to Times Square on this day was that I had my first Papa John's pizza since I have been here. I've had Domino's but that was the only pizza chain pizza I had before this. It was pretty good but nothing like home! There are no pork products so I couldn't have my favorite - ham, beef and mushroom. I had to settle for two out of three. Now I only have Pizza Hut to try. And before it is said...I know these are not exotic, local foods! (You know who you are...)
After lunch we walked around the mall for a bit. I'm not much of a shopper but one of the ladies I was with is so we walked...and looked. The funny thing about the malls here is that there are so many of them but most of them have the same stores. No matter where you live here you won't have to drive far to get to a mall...crazy!!! We finally left and headed back to KLCC where I caught the LRT home.
When I got home I found myself in the decorating mood so I pulled out my Christmas decorations. As I started looking around for places to put them my mood sunk. I have a great house with an awesome open floor plan and amazing windows. What don't I have? Places to put things out. I have no bookcases which is ok since I don't have much wall space. There are no built in shelves and since the walls are made of concrete it is difficult to install any. If you have ever seen the inside of my house at Christmas you know that I have a ton of decorations - most of them Santa. Sadly, I was only able to put out a small fraction of what I normally do. And to make matters worse, I still didn't have a Christmas tree to decorate. Man, this was turning into a bust! That's ok because I had Tuesday to look forward to.
Christmas at the Villa - this is what the AAM Christmas party was dubbed. It promised to be a good time and I woke up ready for it. I headed into KLCC to ride with my friends. I even had my really cool Santa hat to wear. Lunch was catered and everyone that came was asked to bring a dozen cookies. Pauline, Sharon and I kind of cheated and bought Famous Amos cookies on our outing the day before. Before we had lunch we engaged in a very competitive game of Dirty Santa (known by many other names). Here is the gift I ended up with...
Since I am in the middle of reading a series of books on my Kindle, I loaned this to a friend that seemed interested.
The day was a lot of fun but like all good things it had to come to an end. The sad thing about this was that my running buddies were all leaving in the next day or two for different locations and different amounts of time. The rest of the week I would be left to my own devices.
I took advantage of the time by hanging out with some other friends on Thursday, one of which I met at the First Friday lunch I went to right after arriving here. I met her and one of her friends at a place called Jim's house. It is an actual house that is full of really cool home decorations...most of them antiques. Since I figured out just how empty of knick-knack space my house was, I put myself on a mission to find a solution. I fell in love with this at Jim's...
It's a 200 year old bench made of elm. It is only RM 2600 (a mere 870 USD). Maybe Santa will bring it to me for Christmas. And I even have the perfect place for it!
We left Jim's and went to another gift shop type store called Allison's Place. It is very similar to Peter Hoe's - it is an expat favorite and they serve lunch. The items they sell are not quite the same as at Peter's shop. These were more craftsy and I was told that most of what is sold there is made in Malaysia. We had lunch there and it was pretty decent. I figured out that it would be best to go earlier though...I had a hard time ordering because the first choices I made were sold out...bummer!
My friends drove me home which was really nice! I didn't stay home long because I wanted to go to 1 Utama to try to do some shopping. Anyone in a relationship knows that it is just better to go shopping alone sometimes rather than bring the other half (hubby, boyfriend, etc). Now I love Patric dearly but I'm not a fan of shopping and when I have him with me it is just that much worse. I've been having trouble finding clothes in my size here and it's not that I'm big - by American standards. By Asian standards I'm humongous! So I ask every American expat that I meet if they have found stores here that carry their size. I had been given the names of a few that were in 1 Utama and wanted to see if I could find any shorts in my size. Plus the bonus of going to 1 Utama was that I could catch a ride home with Patric instead of taking a taxi.
When I got to the mall Patric was about to leave for a late lunch so I met him and had dessert since I had really just eaten. It was mid-afternoon and there was a lot that he had to do back at work so we didn't sit long. From there I started my navigation efforts to find a store, any store, that I had been told about. 1 Utama is one of the biggest malls in KL and it has two distinctive wings. I'm starting to get my bearings in this mall but since I was looking for stores I didn't know I had to rely on the directories that were sparsely placed. I finally found Dorothy Perkins (quite by accident while looking for another store). This is apparently a UK based store because the clothes had the UK sizes listed first, then the European sizes and last the Australian sizes. I already knew from past experience that the UK size is two sizes larger than the American size. I lucked out and found some shorts in my size!!! They were the largest size in the store but I found them! I bought two pairs of shorts and two shirts...success!
As I was finishing there Patric let me know that he was close to wrapping up at work so I headed to a new little restaurant that served Satay. I had only had it once before and really liked it. This was not as good as the first time but I could see myself going back to it.
The rest of the week was spent catching up on laundry and just lounging at home. I view this as a pretty decent week...
See you next post!!
I'll take that piece of furniture off yor hands when you return to the States. Beautiful!!
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