Malaysia

I've been here for a week already! It feels like it's been much longer than that because I've done so much and everything's still so overwhelmingly new!
When we last spoke I had just arrived and was jumping into my first weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I went to a bible study with my host mom on Saturday which fun because we joined a well-established group of funny older folks who clearly enjoy each other's company and they spent most of their time poking fun at each other.
On Sunday I went to church with my family. After the service they have breakfast and seated me at the special visitors table but I was the only visitor so I had the whole welcoming party trying to feed me and make me feel at home. They were all incredibly nice and probably a third of the congregation introduced themselves to me and welcomed me to Malaysia.
After church I met a friend that's doing the world race and was in KL for a few days before she caught her flight to the next country, so after getting lost with my host mom (she doesn't have a great sense of direction so we're all about that GPS) and ending up in the lake gardens I finally found her. That was my first trip into the city so she took me to Times Square Mall which is an unbelievably large shopping mall with a theme park on the 5th floor. It was my first introduction to the mall craze that has obviously swept Kuala Lumpur. There are HUGE malls everywhere. They are some of the biggest and most recognizable landmarks and I could probably name half a dozen off the top of my head. I've only been here for a week.
And each giant mall I go into is always crammed full of people. My host mom says that it's because everyone wants to shop in the air-conditioning but as far as I know, malls are the only places to get things. I'm sure there are smaller stores and there are street markets in Chow Kit, Chinatown, and other places downtown, but anytime I've gone to purchase anything with my host family we've gone to a mall.
Anyway, the mall was huge, and we rode the monorail through the middle of KL which was very interesting because it's about 5 stories above street level so you get an aerial view of the city, and because so many of the buildings are so tall in KL you miss a lot on ground level.
On Monday I started work! I was planning to begin working next week, but I'm glad to be in a routine and to be able to anticipate what the next few months are going to look like so I can begin planning trips! I am the advocacy intern for Women's Aid Organisation which means that I work in the main office and am helping with things like press releases, research, a little bit of organizing file cabinets, and going to meetings. Not all of those things sounded very interesting to me at first, but the past few days have been pretty exciting. My first day at work I went through orientation and visited the refuge (a women's shelter), and the child care center. There are other interns working at the refuge and the childcare center and Monday night we went out to dinner with our coordinator to meet each other. There is myself, a few Malaysian women working at the refuge, and a couple of German guys working at the childcare center. The dinner was a great introduction to the other interns and a fun way to start the job.
On Tuesday I did some research on some things that have been happening recently with a non-profit that we partner with and on Thursday I'd planned to work at the refuge but instead ended up having a crazy day. I started the day at a press conference at the Houses of Parliament. It was not our press conference, but it was being led by an organization we partner with so we went to show solidarity so by 11 am I'd already attended a press conference and met a couple of members of Parliament. Not bad for a Thursday. After the press conference we went back to the office and I drafted a letter to the UN to alert them of some recent developments in an ongoing discussion about the safety of the leader of a coalition we're a part of. After that we attended a meeting for that coalition and I got to meet the woman I'd been reading about in news articles and about whom I'd just written to the UN. So that was kind of a trip. A different day than I'd expected certainly, but going to the Houses of Parliament, writing the UN, and meeting a famous leader in the Malaysian NGO community is a pretty solid day.
It'll be interesting to see where I end up with this internship. Right now, it seems like it could be anywhere.

A picture from the press conference. I've just been taking quick pictures on my phone so far, but I'll get the big camera out soon and take some real ones!

Here are a few quick pictures of Kuala Lumpur City Center. My host mom needed to run an errand downtown this afternoon, so we went to the huge mall in the lower floors of the Petronas Towers in KLCC for dinner.



The fountains are right outside the mall and are synced up to music. They are beautiful, but the great skyline behind them is really what makes them so spectacular.



I'll be back soon with a post or two about my job (I started on Monday) and Malaysian food, because when I'm not at work or sleeping, I'm probably eating.

Hello from Petaling Jaya, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia!
I got here a few days ago and since then have been doing a lot of sleeping and getting unpacked. I arrived late Thursday night after 32 hours of traveling and met my lovely host family, the Leongs. Mr. Leong and my host brother, Joseph, both work during the day and my host mom is retired so she's either around the house or tutoring former students. They have a live-in maid, Dara, who cooks and cleans and looks after Ms. Leong's mother who also lives with us.
I have not seen the city of Kuala Lumpur yet, but the suburbs are busy, noisy, and congested. Businesses are right next to neighborhoods or apartment buildings and everything is next to a mosque. Cars and roads are nice but everyone driving seems to be committed to getting where they need to go at any cost and we saw people lining up in a popular turn lane 2 or 3 deep in a single lane. A lot of things remind me of South Africa because it is my only non-western frame of reference, but KL seems to have a push, a throb to it, that was absent in the slower movement of South African culture. It is impressively hot and Mr. Leong was telling me that the seasons in KL are hot and hotter, and right now we're in hottest which is approximately the same as our summer.
I went shopping and out to dinner with my host mom yesterday at a mall across the street from my office at WAO. We ate at a cafe that does Eastern and Western food and it was strange thinking of pork chops and steaks as belonging under the specialty "Western foods" menu heading but nice to know that I have options if I get tired of Malaysian food. I'm going shopping again today with my host mom and the students she tutors to buy them new uniforms and tomorrow is church and then I'm meeting up with a friend from camp in KL. She's in the middle of the World Race, and I'm really excited to see her and a little bit of KL!

Welcome to my GLT blog!

From mid June to early November I’ll be just outside of Kuala Lumpur studying and working at Women’s Aid Organisation so I’ll use this blog to keep everyone updated on my travels and experiences in Malaysia.

Looking forward to sharing the journey with you!