pembantu

It is customary in Asia Pacific that Westerners employ someone to help with cooking, cleaning and watching the kids as that gives the wife a lot more time to concentrate on language and culture study. Those helper ladies are called pembantus here.
We have two lovely ladies (two, because of accountability as they will probably sometimes watch Alia without us there) helping us and we are praying that we can be a testimony to them and have really good relationships with them.

 Alia loves them both already. Here you can see Ibu Asih carrying Alia in a baby sling, she even got her to sleep that way. 

Notice how the baby is on the left side, so that the right hand is free to give and receive things.

Doing that with your left hand is considered extremely rude, as the left hand is used for cleaning oneself after going to the loo.

I tried using it too when we went for a walk but I have to practice a lot before it is comfortable for Alia and for me. While practicing with the sling, we enjoy taking baby-carrier that we have gotten from Erlend's parents, when we go out for longer at a time

this and that

There would be so much to tell about all the new things we are experiencing here, but I am afraid that once I start I will babble and not stop, so for now I will just post pictures and let them speak.

The last few days have been filled with meeting lots of new people, doing loads of things for the first time and...

 ... decorating the house a wee bit, 

 lots of shopping, for example helmets (we are not allowed to buy a bike yet, they want us to get used to our surroundings first, which makes total sense - traffic here is not the same as in our home countries, but we are using these already when riding with our co-workers here)

 We are officially unpacked since Sunday night...

... and are trying to make this house more and more our home with putting some decorations up like these awesome vimpler (what are these called in English?) that Alia got custom made from her very gifted auntie Marte (Tusen takk, tante Marte!)

life is hard :-)

I wanted to post a few pictures from around the house today, but somehow my computer is totally against that and won't let me do it... so I thought I would just post a picture of what we did on our first day here, to get over jet-lag and the stress of the journey (why was it stressful? well, who would have known that Kuala Lumpur has two airports and that we had 10 kg less luggage allowance on our third flight - all details that made some things very difficult and that would have been great to know upfront).

But for all you who are worried that we are suffering a lot here in Asia and that life is really hard here, maybe this picture will calm you down.

Our friend who has been living here for a few months took us to a pool at a hotel (it costs about 2 dollars to be picked up from your house, driven to the hotel, use the pool and get free soda plus a ride back home) and we had a great time chilling.

Our new home

Of course I will post more picture later, once we have settled in more, but here a sneek peek of the house we live in now.

Kuala Lumpur

In case anybody is wondering... We made it to our new home! More about that tomorrow, for today i am too tired to write my own blog so I will just copy paste Kristine's blog post with picutres from our layover in Kuala Lumpur.

http://sunteleiaaion.blogspot.com/2013/07/kuala-lumpur_3585.html

Enjoy!

so far so good

The day is finally here - we have officially left Europe and are in the process of moving to Asia.

After two flights yesterday, we are enjoying a day-long layover in Kuala Lumpur. It is good to have a good meal, a bed to stretch out in, to catch up on sleep and trying to get over that jet-lag.

We are so thankful that we get to travel with our friend Kristine and that all our luggage has made it so far.
Tomorrow morning we have one more flight and then we will move into our new home.

not all our luggage, but it is still a lot

as promised

Here come the pictures of our remodeling projects at the house.

working hard, trying to get three layers of wallpaper of the wall

Alia was right there the whole time "helping"

 now my mom's new office looks like this - love the wall color

only curtains missing 

the living room got new sofas, a bit of new wallpaper and all of downstairs has new doors now

sending service Germany

Today we had our second sending service from our home church here in Germany.
Markus, Erlend's brother preached and Erlend shared about our plans.
We are so thankful that this church stands behind us and we could not feel more blessed, loved and supported!

the sermon preached by one brother and translated by the other

 enjoying to sing in German for probably a long time

 being prayed for by the elders

we are very thankful that these guys stand behind us

the kids sunday school class sang two songs for us

Erlend shared about our plan in GERMAN!!! 

I am so proud of him! Unfortunately I don't have a picture of that, but you just have to take my word for it :-).

lots of stuff

Lots of stuff has happened during the last few days, which is the reason for my long absence.

Our visa came!!! so awesome! Praise God!

As excited (or in Alia's case, hungry) as we look, we are also very aware (and in denial about) of the fact that we are leaving in just a few days!

Another big thing happening right now: Our brother and sister plus one nephew and niece are here to visit us and we are having such a good time, so basically this is just gonna be a picture dump to show you what we have been up to :-).

cousin time!

oh how she loves her auntie Sarah

one day we went to a swimming place and I did not take any pictures inside, but these are the slides we went down - awesome!

 afterwards we went to a restaurant in Nürnberg and had amazing food 

 of course all our visitors have to go to the sign park, the only tourist attraction we have in Hof :-)

 spent some time chilling at the lake

 wee trip over to the Czech Republic

 all doing their favorite things, snuggling babies, jumping on the trampoline and bbq-ing

 and today it was Zoo-time in Leipzig, this is the indoor tropical part, such a good zoo

better late than never

Here come a few pictures from my brothers wedding.

 and then there were 18 (one little niece is missing because she was sleeping... 

...and one does not mess with a sleeping baby :-))

 the traditional crazy picture

 so cute those two

 how cool are they!?!

a new sister

Danke, Tschu und Steff für eine tolle Hochzeit und ein super schönes Wochenende!

Munich

As we will be leaving soon there are lots of "last"s happening. 

Right now we are enjoying a few days with my brother and his wife in Munich and when we leave here tomorrow it will probably be a few years until we see them again.

This afternoon we went to the Isar (river that flows through Munich) and chilled there

little feet in the sunshine

 Alia chilling with her Tante Steff

 we did a tiny bit of sightseeing, here the pretty city hall

 which Alia found extremely boring :-)

 she thinks it is a lot more fun when she can wear a chandelier as a hat

 and right at this moment we are all "recovering" from a delicious meal

cookies, cool people and cricket

Did lots of stuff today, here a selection:
printed out pictures (one of the most important things for me to take to Asia are pictures)
folded some laundry
baked some cookies
visited my brother's in laws
enjoyed fellowship, an amazing dinner with them (Danke, Mannchens!)
learned playing cricket (yet another sport I suck at)

 look who is a big girl already

 my sister in law's sister in law Liz and Alia had a lot of fun playing the air drums

and flying a fake plane

Papa's birthday

Today it is my Papa's birthday and we had a really nice family day, going to church together, lunch, chilling outside, playing games and now for a round of poker with pizza - life is good :-) or as my dad would say, "Kinder, geht's uns gut!"

 playing badminton with lots of people

the birthday boy with Alia and his awesome new t-shirt 

(if you can't read it, it says, Great dads get promoted to grandpas)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PAPA!

baby wellness

Today Alia and I went to a swimming place for some baby relaxing time. When Alia was born we got a voucher for it and it sounded like lots of fun so we went with two other mommies and their babies.

even though they don't look like it in the picture our girls enjoyed playing in the water and even getting a massage from their mommies afterwards

education starts early

As long as we are in Germany (which, we found out today, will be longer than we thought initially) my mom makes sure Alia is taking in as much German vocabulary as possible. Only important words like rubber duck and such, of course :-).