Hello everyone,
As many of you know, Ben and I embarked on a new adventure and on our 24th Anniversary we left the Pacific Northwest of the United States to live in Malaysia, where I will be teaching English at an International School.
To get things started we stayed at a very nice hotel provided by the school until our townhouse is ready for us. We were very fortunate that one of the teachers who is leaving to teach at a different country sent me a video of her house and we were able to secure it for ourselves. We had to jump on the opportunity because we brought Lulu and Pepper with us and not every place accepts dogs here. One interesting fact is that most people in Malaysia will not even touch dogs for religious reasons.
Bringing Lulu and Pepper with us was not an easy task. We started working on their paperwork about 3 months before our move. Lots of back and forth between two different companies, one in the US and one in Malaysia. Finally, we got it all figured out and we were able to get approval from Turkish Airlines to take them as service dogs in the cabin with us. The poor things were real troopers and did well the whole trip. They had paparazzi at both airports Seattle and Istanbul. Lots of people took pictures of them because they were wearing pajamas and each had their own backpack.
However, when we arrived in Kuala Lumpur we were presented with a challenge. Dogs are not allowed anywhere in the airport outside of a cage or crate. Because of this, we had to wait a couple extra hours until our agent brought the crates and I had to put them in even though they wanted nothing to do with it.
They are currently in their 7-day quarantine and we receive updates daily of how they are doing. I miss them so much and cannot wait to get them back and snuggle with them again.
We are still recovering from all the traveling. I spent 10 days in Greece and Turkey with my last group of students from Seton Catholic and arrived home the day before we left for Malaysia. Therefore, I have been recovering slowly from all the change in time zones and all the traveling. After all, I did 7 airports in a span of 3 days.
Well, stay tuned to see how our adventure unfolds. I start working this coming week and we move this week too. Once we are settled we will start exploring the country. We cannot leave Malaysia for at least 6 months for tax purposes, so we will be exploring more locally for the time being.
Love to all,
Juliana