Penang part 2

 We ventured out to Little India with some friends. Here are some streets of Penang, driving is on the left side of the road. Malaysia is a Muslim country, but such a mixture of cultures, Penang happens to be over 50% (I think) Chinese, and has a large population of Indians (obviously because there is a 'little india'). Most Indians we met had been on the island for a number of years.

 The British influence.

 And then to Little India: The TriShaw, or what we called a 'Rickshaw'.

Yum food was waiting for us.

 Tobin loved it. (who doesn't love butter naan, or cheese naan?)

These two girls became good buds.

watermelon drinks. Mango Lassi  (Indian Yogurt drink), was delicious.

Look at all the curry and spice. SO good. 

A nearby Mosque. (near our guest house there was a Mosque as well, and the call to prayer woke me every morning before six usually).

Penang Part 1

 A friend did a magic show for the kiddos. He was really good. The kids were amazed. Here they are waiting for the show to begin.

 Sophia and Bella made some really good friends.

How did those coins come out of his ears?????? 

On our first weekend off we borrowed someone's membership cards to the Hard Rock Hotel and used the swimming pool and ate yummy yum poolside. Their pools are always incredible (who knew?). It was sand bottom (a special kind of sand), and had three slides with an amazing kids area. We all had a blast.

 Tobin braves the slide, head first, oops.

He really swims around on his own with floaties on.

 Sophia is quite the swimmer now...

 See what I mean, who would not have fun at this place?

Tobin just liked to stay and lay in this little shallow area.

 This was beach front. The beach was pretty nice, but everyone talked about jelly fish. And something did sting both David and a friend of ours, that seemed to really hurt, and they were only ankle deep...

 This part wasn't white sands or anything, but still beautiful. And no surf.

 Bella cutie can swim along too, but is way more timid, no worries this is a trait that will benefit her in many areas of life. I love the personality differences in our kids, it adds much spark to all our Coker journeys.

what's this mommy? this is his favorite question of late, or 'what are you doing?'

Then it was back to meetings for the week!

Back from Malaysia: It's a....

Well....we are not 100% sure because SHE was curled up and HER foot was covering the most important place (modesty in the womb), BUT the doc (and we as well) pretty much think it is a GIRL! We will have another Ultrasound in about 6 weeks when we travel out for a week to Thailand, hopefully things will be clearer. I did forget to drink caffeine to get the baby moving. We were so thankful to see that everything looked fine, healthy, and good to go!

The kids are excited. And poor Tobin doesn't know what to think, the drama you are in for buddy! That's okay He and daddy will be the men of the house and have to take care of all us ladies! I do love being a mother to girls, as silly and dramatic as we are, it is so much fun! Some of the names the girls have come up with: 'Daisy' (a friend we met recently), Genevieve (the name of Madeline's dog in the Madeline books), and Princess '....', you name it they come up with some pretty amazing princess names. We, on the other hand, haven't had any serious discussion on names yet, probably won't boil it down until September.

I will blog some Malaysia pics soon. We are running hard in Homeschool the next 6 weeks to finish up, then two weeks later I am starting Sophia's first grade year and Bella's K4! Things will definitely slow down in September/October, so trying to get things going for when it all slows. More on that later too.

From Malaysia

We have been in Penang, Malaysia for almost a week now, it is a beautiful island. We love going to new places and finding out more about SE Asia. Today the Malay people voted in an election that is the closest in their history. It i s a hot topic here. In the park today an Indian Muslim lady asked us to pray for her country and this election. So far we don't know the results, though we did just hear some fireworks.

The kids have been doing 'school' and fun from 8:15-5 p.m. while we are in our meetings. This time has been super helpful. We are learning a ton!!! We had today off and tomorrow, which is a great break to spend more time as a family.

We went to a park today that also had some small pools, as well as some not so nice monkeys and at least one huge monitor lizard. It was a beautiful park! Then when half of us returned to our guest house with the littlest kids we were locked out. While the guys were trying to get us in from around the back they saw a small cobra. Yes. A cobra. Needless to say we have had quite a National Geographic day.

Tomorrow we are going to a really nice pool and hope to gear up for one more week here before we return home!

On driving in this town

We love our car and we love what our car has allowed us to experience as a family much more easily than if we did not have one.

However, driving in this town has become way more of an adventure than I would like at times. 

I try to control what I say out loud when I drive, usually it is just shock and amazement not anger that is coming out (it used to be anger, but I have gotten used to it so that subsided). I say things like: 'oh my,' or 'what is he doing', or 'what in the world?'  I have now come to just state simple facts. As I told Sophia that driving in China is different from the U.S., she finished the sentence saying something she has obviously heard David or me say: "because they just started driving like ten years ago". And she is right for the most part. Here are some stats from our own surveys/observations/questions of the locals:

• 15 years ago a lot of these roads weren't paved, 
• 10 years ago there were hardly any red lights in our town and hardly anyone  had personal cars.
• 5 years ago people really just started learning how to drive cars, really.
• Most people these days just got their drivers' license and have been not driving long at all. 
• I have been driving for 20 years, most of the time in a country with nice roads and enforced laws.
• I think after driving here for a few years I really could become a stunt driver, not kidding.

 We, and other ex-pats we know living in Asia, tend to take our newly acquired driving skills back to the U.S. with us. David and I often recall to our ex-pat friends the text he received from a friend who was driving behind us back to his house (in the U.S.): "Chinese drivers=no survivors". 

I personally remember being scared to death in the U.S. when someone would FLY up to a stop sign as I was driving by, I cringed and winced waiting for impact many times. But they always came to a complete stop. Always.  I have never seen a stop sign in China. Not in our town, and even at red lights when turning right on red, no one ever comes to a complete stop. This would explain why a friend of ours that lives in Asia got pulled over in the U.S. (and issued a warning), for doing a 'rolling stop'.

They also recently started being much stricter with certain parts of the traffic laws, supposedly, seat belts, for instance. And they now do the points on license system too. David and I have our fair share of parking tickets (I even talked myself out of one with a local Police officer), but the parking fines were minimal.

There you have it folks a little documentary of the history of driving in our little town.. 

Other tidbits

• We had visitors for just over a week, and then my electric moto stopped working. At first we thought the battery had been stolen (not an uncommon occurrence around here), but we realized it was the ignition. The temporary fix had the moto being unable to 'turn-off', which is quite dangerous when kids are involved (or a pregnant lady with brain mush). I rode it that way one time and then took it the shop. 20 bucks later I had a new ignition.
• I received a huge shipment of Homeschool stuff, the box all taped up by the China Postal Service and 10 items missing (not the postal service's fault, but the sender's). The company immediately put all the missing stuff in another shipment and said they didn't know why it wasn't sent in two shipments, being so heavy. 
• I have yet to dig into the aforementioned HS stuff, though I am so excited about it, good changes I hope, for the new year, a whole other post
• We will go to Malaysia as a family for 2.5 weeks. All sleeping in one room, in a guest house with at least a total of 15 kids that I know of, but I think more like 18. Fun times. In Malaysia we will get a look at baby Coke 4 around 20 weeks! Yes we will try to find out the gender. We will also get a look at Subway, and Chili's restaurant. More cravings this pregnancy than any other, but I have been controlling myself, and some I have no control over since I can't get what I want anyway.
• Our helper looked at what we were having for dinner and asked if she could take some 'western' food to her friend who is always asking to try it. I said 'of course, but it is going to be so simple, not the best western meal I make'. (Chicken and cheese quesidillas with pico de gallo, I didn't have time to make my real salsa or mock jalapenos).

TidBits in pics

 The other day while the girls were at school, the house got really quiet and I went to go find Tobin. This is what he was doing, just like this. Priceless.

 At the last minute, I got a text from Sophia's teacher saying they needed to wear their uniforms the next day, so I put both girls in their uniforms, they look so cute!

 The school just got a whole new building and revamping, it is more like a little park now. 

Bella and I waited while half of Sophia's class came back from a little field trip up the street.

Here she is with one of the twins. 

On the weekends we eat out a little more and since our town is booming with so much new stuff we try new restaurants. This was a Taiwanese restaurant promising steaks. I did try one, it was decent. The pizza was more like a cheese danish. BUT it had a salad bar that was decent, considering this town has never seen a salad bar before. And the french fries were good too.