February 2008

Hello all! We're back with some more commentary and pictures recapping our lives here. We hope everyone is doing well and those of you who have suffered through snow recently, that your temperatures are rising.

First, an update as to what we're up to this first week of April. Andy's birthday was the 2nd and he's currently on an Indonesian island across from Singapore with a bunch of guys playing golf for the weekend. I just spoke to him before starting this blog and I think his body will start convulsing after this trip given all the golf the guys have squeezed in in such a short amount of time. He said the golf course has ocean views, water is crystal clear, sand like powder. Yes, he's a bastard. So I guess just permission to go was a bit of a birthday gift but we're planning to celebrate his birthday later this month with an evening at a nice hotel in town, without the kids, with the added ability to sleep in. Anyone else with small children knows this is a huge luxury.

Speaking of kiddos, here they are. Harrison is doing great. He loves all his friends at school, has a little gang of them he calls "the boyz". I've been writing down the hilarious things he says so that I won't forget them and I'll throw some in here and there. He's pretty well potty trained (except at nighttime). You'll notice a few butt pictures to follow which I attribute to the diaper freedom. He also loves all his little activities. His drama teacher told me she thinks he'll be an actor one day because he's the most animated in the class. What kid wouldn't want to pretend they're the "big, bad wolf" for an hour. In the following pictures, he's channeling his inner T-rex.


Although he loves his little school, I'm hoping he can go to a preschool program at the international school in our area. The problem with his preschool is that kids just go there as they wait to get accepted into various international schools. So he'll befriend kids that will keep moving on. Many of his friends will move on for sure come August, some to this school, his best friend to the Japanese school. But if I have him in the international school, most likely his environment and the kids would remain the same, except for expat kids that move out of KL. Just trying to add as much consistency to his little life as possible.


Even in a Chef outfit, still channeling the inner T-rex. As for Syd, she's flying by the milestones. Just started crawling, or scooting more accurately, this past week. I'm totally unprepared. No true babyproofing yet or anything. But she's getting across the room in seconds so gonna have to get on that. She's imitating alot like waving or clapping and is busting out some ma-ma's and da-da's that appear to be to the appropriate people. No teeth yet though. As Harrison so eloquently put it, "Sydney can't talk, Mommy, she doesnt' have any teeth yet".

I continue to do my thing. I haven't attended the Buddhist Center for awhile because I was having trouble with the Geshe's English. I do meditation training one night a week and figured that and my Saturday tap class are all I want to commit at the moment that eats into "family time". I have a retreat through this class I'm doing in a few weekends which should be interesting. It's at some resort in a forest outside of KL. I'm the only expat so it's me and a bunch of Chinese Malaysians. So on Andy's weekend away he plays golf and on mine I get to not talk for 48 hours. Actually sounds kind of nice. I could stand to shut up for awhile. I'm also getting some yoga in once a week at a class taught by a friend.

Now to recap our February. Where I left off on the last post, we were about to have a holiday for Chinese New Year. Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday celebrated by the Chinese and is celebrated wherever there is a sizable Chinese population. Since 30% of the population here are Chinese, it's huge. All the malls are decorated in red and gold. Chinese lanterns are hanging everywhere (actually Harrison insists that these lanterns are jellyfish due to the resemblance). It's celebrated on the first day of the lunar month on the Chinese calendar and ends on the 15th although employers typically give just a few days off. Unfortunately we didn't get invited to any Chinese Malaysians house but we did get to see a lion dance outside the house of a Chinese family who lives a few houses down.



This ceremony is performed in front of people's homes or places of business to bless it. The mythology behind it is a beast would attack villagers and the villagers summoned a lion spirit to defend them and wound the beast. The following year, the lion spirit was guarding the Emperor's palace so the villagers had to create a lion statue which was enough to keep the beast away. So this Lion Dance is a traditional Chinese ritual to evict any bad spirits and protect the home from any future visits. This dance is accompanied with music that can only be described as loud "pot and pan" banging. The music has this annoyingly loud quality to also scare away the bad spirits.

In the above picture, you might notice the orange scraps on the ground. They are peels off mandarin oranges that are arranged in a Chinese character symbolizing good luck and happiness for the New Year. Mandarin oranges are everywhere during this time and I ate more fresh mandarin oranges in that week than I'll ever eat. And I discovered they're really good. They sell them by the crate and everyone gives them out. Andy got some at work. Harrison got some at school at his Chinese New Year party.

Speaking of which, I think he looks pretty handsome in his outfit. Every year is assigned a different animal, an animal that you "are" based on the year you were born, much like our horoscope by month. 2008 is the year of The Rat which is actually a good year to be born because it's the first animal of the 12 animal cycle. People actually plan pregnancies based on the baby being born in a "rat" year so this Chinese New Year was a bigger deal than others. Chinese are extremely superstitous so they take their zodiac signs very seriously as well.

This is a sidebar but thought I'd mention some of these superstitions. They believe very strongly in ghosts. A man Andy knows told him he had to hire a special "exorcist" to bless his office when some collegues were convinced it was haunted, simply to get people to calm down. People discuss ghosts very seriously as if there's no doubt to their existence, which Andy and I think is kind of cool given my love of scary movies and his love of haunting shows. Also, you'll never see "4's" anywhere. Similiar to the bad luck feelings we have for the number 13. But the difference is that 13 is one number, whereas 4 is repeated constantly as you count. So for example, our address should be 64, but it's 62A to avoid any 4's. All the malls have various floors called lower ground, ground, upper ground, all these different ways to have the 1st floor be higher so that you never reach a 4th floor. Same with the building Harrison's school is in. His school is on the 3rd floor, next floor is 3A, next floor is 5, then 13, 13A, then 15.

Around Chinese New Year, Andy and I had a date day/night and I got to see one of my first sightseeing stops, The Batu Caves. I mentioned this place in a previous blog as the site of a Hindu festival called Thaipusam. It's basically the biggest Hindu shrine in the area, built into an old cave, about 20 minutes from our house. Here's little, tiny Andy in front of big, gold Lord Murugan, a Hindu deity that guards the cave. Behind him you can see the 250 steps to get up into the caves. And this is why I've never seen it. Can you imagine hoofing kids up 250 steps. Don't think so.

I'm not entirely sure what this guy is up to but I think the fire he has at the bottom step allows people to cleanse their feet before going up the stairs. You may notice that the women walking up on the left have removed their shoes. If memory serves, I think they prayed over the small fire and held their feet above the fire for a second or two. We later saw this guy performing a ceremony with other similarly dressed men within the cave but I couldn't get in close enough to get a picture. Since we went on our own, we didn't have a tour guide to tell us exactly what was going on, but it was cool to be able to go there by ourselves and hang out as long as we wanted. Since we were there a week or two after the festival, there was a lot of trash inside the cave, but this brought out the monkeys in full force. I think Andy literally got 10 solid monkey pictures but here's a small sample.

And this is me at one of the shrines within the cave. I believe after this stop, we got massages. Ya know, tired legs and all. ;) I haven't mentioned those yet but we get them all the time. They're not as dirt cheap as they are in Thailand, but still cheap enough to average a couple massages a month. So instead of dinner and a movie date nights, we do dinner and massages. Most of the U.S. movies in the theaters here kind of suck anyway.

Moving right along, midway through February we went on our first vacation outside of KL. We drove 3 hours to the eastern coast of Malaysia to stay at a Club Med with a couple other families for a long weekend. It was a nice break and rather low key. Here's a few pics from the trip:

This one I had to add. I'm sure taunting monkeys while naked is certainly frowned upon here.

Here is Harrison with buddies Easton and Emma.

These pics were in the hotel room but finally one with me and the kids. The one of Syd I had to add. She just looks like a little doll to me in the picture. Yes, I know I should have broken Harrison of his pacifier at bedtime addiction but I have yet to do it.

About a week after vacation, the American Association had their Annual Ball. I was actually jazzed to go because it's not often we women have an excuse to totally deck out. I busted my butt finding a dress, shoes and jewelry the week prior, then came down with a terrible cold that day. I took the approach of "drinking your cold into oblivion" which agreed with me that night, didn't agree with me the next day. Hopefully you think we clean up nice.

We also consider ourselves lucky to have made some great friends here who we're pictured with below, some of whom are currently on the golf trip with Andy.

We had a very fun night and were actually able to dance, one of my all-time favorite things to do. Therefore a blog would not be complete without the following addition of video. Although the video is pretty dark, you may recognize my husband as the man on the left. And for anyone familiar with The Rusie Shuffle, as it's affectionately referred to, please note the off-beat clapping. Harrison's sense of rhythm might come from my side, not sure.

I'm going to end this installment with a field trip we took with Harrison's preschool to a small air force museum. The kids got to sit on and in the planes, pretend to drive them, every boy in his class, including Harrison, was in heaven.

The boy on the right of Harrison is Kai, Harrison's current BFF, and official member of "the boyz". Not so sure if kid on his left is a member.

So we hope you're all enjoying your entrance into Spring. And although much of our life is fairly mundane and could be taking place in the middle of Kansas (no offense to those living in the middle of Kansas), hopefully you're enjoying the blog.

-Rusie Family 4