4 Thornes in Malaysia

While Chris and Sarah were with us we took a couple of trips together. The first one was a four hour drive down to Kuala Lumpur on December 31.....the goals being to visit Ikea (for me!) and to go see the Twin Towers (for everyone else). Unfortunately, KL is a nightmare city to drive in and we got hopelessly lost, ultimately hiring a Domino's Pizza delivery guy to lead us to Ikea. It turned out we were on the absolute other side of the city. The following picture is of the beginning of our trip....our faces weren't so happy later on in the day! Friends met up with us and led us back to their home for an overnight stay, and if they hadn't have met us I'm pretty sure we would have just turned around and come right back to Penang. All in all....not the best day ever for the Thornes. On the bright side, though, with that kind of start, it can only get better for the rest of 2010! We thought we were early enough to get tickets to go up the towers when we arrived an hour befo...

FINALLY!!! Chris and Sarah arrived on the night of December 27. We stood and waited for them while they waited..and waited...and waited for their luggage. Agony when you can SEE each other but the pesky security rules keep you apart!! You can imagine the joy - hugs - tears - when they finally made it through the gate!! We stayed up for a few hours together and they emptied out some of their suitcases with some of the things we'd asked them to bring. Then the exhaustion hit and they had to get some sleep. The coffee table filled to overflowing...chocolate chips, Epicure spices, Craisins, Grandpa's homemade jelly, medicines, International Coffee, Stampin' Up! supplies...and enough chocolate to supply a small country!! We opened our stockings and Christmas gifts in the morning - seeing as it was December 28, Josh should be commended for his patient waiting! New shirt from Rachel. Rachel reading letters from her friends from Calgary...Josh reading something! Josh loves his p...

Josh was on the Varsity Basketball Team for the fall term of school. In the fall tournament hosted at their school, they won first place! Lots of fun for all the boys - and the parents too! Rachel continues with her piano lessons focusing on learning improvisational piano skills right now. Her recital piece was "My Only Hope" and she was the piano player for the band. It sounded great! All dressed up and ready to go to the Christmas Banquet at the school. Pictures down by the pool before and during the community Christmas party. We were involved in putting together the party and one of the big hits was the gingerbread house session we led - none of the kids had ever made one before! As a family, we delayed our 'Christmas morning' celebrations until Chris and Sarah arrived on December 27. So on the 25th we ate breakfast together, played a new game we bought especially for the day (Perodua - the game of Liar's Dice - actually a pretty fun game!) and then headed t...

Back at the beginning of October, our community celebrated the Chinese Lantern Festival with a big party. Everyone was instructed to bring a lantern - but when Bob asked where we would find them we were assured that someone else would buy them for us. We have so far been the one Caucasian family to attend these neighborhood events and I think they are quite happy to have us, so they took care of the lanterns for us. Here you see Bob, with all of his innate craftiness, putting together our lanterns. He did quite a good job!! And here are the finished products... Ours were very simple and traditional, but some were quite elaborate. And some young children's lanterns came with annoying, tinny music...just like those annoying Christmas toys whose batteries can't die soon enough! We're in the middle - we're pretty conspicuous in the crowd! A few weeks later we blended in quite well into the crowd of Canadians who gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner. We all enjoyed delicious t...

(blog post from Rachel) A group called "Care and Share" at my school has been taking on a project, an apartment building called the Rifle Range in a poor part of the island. One day a group of my friends went to the apartment and brought bags of food, played with the kids and had a great time. Feeling compassion for these poor families one of my friends, Chan-Mi, planned a day for all of the kids from the rifle range to come to Dalat (our school). The day turned out amazing. We started out early this morning. I spent the night at my friend, Beth's dorm, and we were woken up and asked to drive to the rifle range and help get the kids. Arriving at the rifle range we met the kids who were so filled with excitement for what the day had in store for them. We drove back to the school and it was neat to see the joy on the kids faces as they saw and experienced things that I take for granted everyday. They live in the middle of the island and were amazed at the view of the ocean...