A Day At the Mall

Meet Nicole! She is the very non-dogmatic, non-opinionated, never complaining, 20 year old Canadian that keeps life fun around a Malaysian flat. She comes from Lebanese/Egyptian parents; her mother grew up with Dr. Biles in Lebanon and they are close friends. She is the type of person that helps add a little spark to the most mundane of activities.

Today we went to the Utama Malls. There are actually two parts, the old section and the new one. It is BIG. Too big to see all of it in a day; too big to not get lost over and over again; just TOO big! At one point I counted eight stories. Oh, did I mention, that mall queen Nicole came with us?

We stopped and had Sushi for lunch. It was one of those sushi bars that had both the colored plate line or you could order of the at the table computer screen. It was all good and pretty cheap compared to the US. Needless to say we were able to finish it all.

Even though English is a main language here, you can not always account for the confusion of accent and dialect. The flat/apartment where we are staying is on a small side street that is not well know to everyone, including taxi drivers as I have discovered. Trying to explain to a taxi driver, where I want to go, then having a gaggle of of additional cabbies join the group and try to figure out where these crazy tourist types want to go. Well it's part of the adventure.

I know I'm making it sounds like all we do is goof off and play tourist. That's only partially true. The mornings and early afternoon we do have pretty free this first week while we are only teaching Counseling Skills I. In the afternoon we meet to have a devotion and prep time for the evenings classes and break out groups. Dr. Biles does most of the main lecturing and then Robyn, Nicole, and myself take smaller groups of students to practice and video tape the counseling skills they have just learned. Here are some of the students both in class and during one of our break times. Pray for both the training team and the students that neither language, ethnicity nor culture will get in the way of our accomplishment of the mission.

Talk to you tomorrow. - Jeff