malaysia, week one.

so. i will finally bend to everyone's demands that to accompany my three years living abroad in malaysia, i must document everything in a blog. i think it's actually simpler this way, because with the time difference i can't always tell everyone everything that's happening here. this way the whole world can see! i have a real challenge with doing this and posting pictures to facebook, because i feel like why do it in one place versus the other, but i finally reasoned with myself that facebook isn't necessarily a chronological order of things (to include the messy "timeline" layout), whereas this will always be here in order. it may have taken me an entire week to decide on a name for it, but obviously i finally settled for stealing lyrics from taylor swift.

they say it takes one day for each time zone that you travel across to adjust to the time difference. this is probably very true, but i realized the other day when i was about to eat my hand at 12:30 that at least my brain's "this is feeding time"-function has adjusted. getting settled and adjusted and into a routine is definitely one of the biggest challenges to moving anywhere, let alone to the other side of the world (side note: how do i know it's the other side of the world? you can go east or west out of DC and it's still the same amount of travel time. un.for.tun.ate.) in DC i had a fairly simple schedule: work, work-out, sleep, repeat. i need to fix that here.

so. what have i done this week? i have eaten many items that many people will be astonished by (considering that it's me). i have gone grocery shopping twice. i have gone shopping (in my first twelve hours in-country, even!). i have set up my "nail polish bathroom." here are photos to prove it all:

this is actually from my hotel in LA, where i was stuck during my layover. classy.

my ever-faithful moose, so tired of traveling already.

interesting tv options.

this felt like forever.

this was the food on my flight from tokyo - kl. i suppose i have to get used to the food on asian flights. i pretty much ate the noodles and that was it :(

my first malaysian meal! i forget what this place was called, but their lunch special comes with an entree, the soup of the day, a drink, and then ice cream for dessert. this is my green tea and my soup. i didn't realize i got soup with the meal, and so we asked the waiter what kind of soup it was. the conversation went as so: "normal soup." "what's normal soup?" "it's normal."

it was actually a normal kind of soup - chicken broth with some ginger root in it. i liked it.

this. i. did. not. like. ok. that's a lie. it was pumpkin curried chicken and rice. malaysians put fried eggs on everything, i have learned this in just my week here. as a non-egg-lover, this is a difficulty for me. luckily eggs are easy enough to pull off, and i was with someone who was happy to take the extra protein. the curry was tasty, but the chicken. the. chicken.

let's just make something clear, the thing i have to tell everyone and they just. have. to. understand. i don't like chicken with bones. i don't like chicken if i've seen it raw. i don't like chicken if it's even slightly pink (reason why i didn't eat my chicken on the flight down). i don't like chicken with skin. i don't like chicken if i bite into it and see those little purple-red things. so you can see why i had difficulty, and will have difficulty for the next three years. they don't use chicken breast like we do, so it's difficult. difficult difficult difficult. i managed to pull off a few pieces of meat that i could eat, but the rest went, again, to the delightful person with whom i was eating. this is a learning process for me.

fortunately, then came the absolutely wonderful scoop of ice cream. i had chocolate, and it had mini-chips inside! very tasty.

the rest of the work-week, i didn't take pictures of my food. but i ate a lot. a lot more than most people would give me credit. i finally found an indian stall with tasty eggplant and potatoes in a brown sauce, and that i could eat every day. i also found a frozen yogurt bar! two blocks from my apartment. i've decided to limit myself to fro-yo once a week.

today, we went here to celebrate the wonderfully nice person i am replacing. it was a bit out of town, but so delicious. 

this is tofu. yes, i ate tofu.

i very obviously did not touch this, as i don't eat things from the sea.

or this, as it was more things from the sea.

i did have the fried chicken (totally boneless), and fried pumpkin! the fried pumpkin (on the left) was probably my favorite. 

this was almost the whole spread.

annnd my plate.

we cleaned it up quite nicely.

dessert was a sweetened corn soup-thing. i actually really liked it. i like anything sweet, so that's no surprise.

on our way back, we saw this construction. it looks like it's been there for a while, but it's a little funny to drive by and just see a road hanging out like that. cover up, silly road.

TODAY i found the best treat ever: my rainbow chip frosting!!! everyone has told me that each of the grocery stores has a different selection, when it comes to looking for things from america. i cannot believe i was so lucky to find this so soon. it's becoming more and more difficult to find in america, so i was shocked. i bought two cans to start up my stock. a lot of people buy the pillsbury funfetti icing and think it's the same thing: it's not. BC's rainbow chip has actual little white-chocolate chips in it, which make it so tasty and wonderful.

so that was my week, sort of. it hasn't really even hit me that i'm totally on the other side of the world from everyone i love and care about. i feel like i'm just down the street. i also haven't yet experienced the "omg what am i doing with my life" shock that everyone has told me about. i guess this is just the way i am. i don't like to think about the negatives in any situation, because i know looking at the negatives just once gives you the ability to hone in and focus on it, and i don't want to do that. this is such a wonderful opportunity, and i want to make the very best out of it. we shall see. this is only week one!

Categories: food, kuala lumpur, malaysia