hello dear readers! selamat pagi! after a total of 41 hours travel time, i am finally in Malaysia!

We have been in Kota Kinabalu for a week now, finishing up our orientation yesterday. I’m not sure how to even begin to summarize what we have been up to, or what we have learned so far, but it has been a busy past few days as we are learning the city, the language, and the ways.

Laura, our country coordinator (she is the wife of the bishop of the BCCM- Basel Christian Church of Malaysia, and the dean of students at the seminary), greeted us with open arms at the airport. She has been very busy preparing everything for us—she hasn’t missed a beat on things we may need. Out of our volunteers, three girls will live at an apartment nearby, and Jacob will move to a nearby town. My roommate and I share a spacious apartment on the fifth floor within the seminary student housing. We have a living/dining room, two bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and laundry patio, as well as a great view of the mountains! The student housing is maybe a five minute walk from the seminary, and on the first floor there is a cafeteria of sorts where we eat.

The seminary has a main building with classrooms, offices, and a library, as well as a chapel, and teacher housing. Every blank space in the city is filled with thick, tropical vegetation. It is humid, and rains often. We have to close our windows every time we leave the apartment, just in case!
We have definitely already met so many people; everyone is eager for us to be here. Some have been praying for years that we would come. This is the first year of the program in Malaysia, so everything is new. They love to invite us to events and share with us the best local tea, fruit, markets…. and so on.

A few observations about KK so far…
- The food! We eat often and in large amounts. Meals are usually rice or noodles with either beef or fish balls/patties (though fish is preferred by the locals). And yes, this is even for breakfast. My roommate summed this up best by saying “I’ve eaten a million things in the past two days that I never thought I would eat!” Also, we have lots of different kinds of tea. My favorite already is called the tarik- it reminds me of Tanzanian chai.
- The language! Everyone can speak everything! Laura would like for me to learn both Malay and Mandarin, though I’m not sure how far I’ll get without any formal instruction. We are slowly working on our Malay, but it is difficult. The locals use many languages interchangeably. Right now I’m just trying to differentiate when someone is speaking Chinese or Malay, haha.
- The diversity! There are so many languages, cultures, and peoples here. Though it is not a melting pot, like the US. Each culture keeps to itself.

I’d better be somewhat brief, so I’ll save all the little details for another time. I'm off to begin preparing for my class, since I start teaching Monday! Prayers for that are definitely welcome :)

More to come, Ellen