I got dressed this morning putting on my oversized red preschool t-shirt along with my skinny jeans. I call it a compromise. Next was bleary eyed Addison's turn, who suddenly became quite alert in order to protest wearing a RED! shirt. Not a color in her pallet.
By 8am we'd already joined the sea of red at her preschool for some nasi lemak, which is the traditional breakfast food around these parts: coconut rice with egg, cucumber and sambal a fishy kind of chili sauce. The bus wouldn't arrive until 8:30am. [Calling people to be somewhere an hour before things are expected to happen is pretty typical here. My first workplace operated the same way... But it took me a few years to figure out my cultural ignorance and thus accept that it's totally expected to eat breakfast at work for an hour before you start any kind if work.] we've adapted, and so I rolled in without a care 30 minutes "late" with plenty of time to spare to down a nasi lemak.
We loaded up in a tour bus heading north an hour to (da-da-daaaah) THE LOST WORLD OF TAMBUN!!
Addison was chomping at the bit to jump into this world she'd yet only previewed via YouTube. Now, what's that sound of something exciting coming to a screeching halt? Yeah, well, you can enter that sound here.
Malaysian formalities. Ohhh Malaysian formalities. Kill me now. Once in the park, we sat under a gazebo for several hours listening to speeches, waiting a lot, recieving absurd obligatory "prizes"... This is too big a topic to explain today. Meanwhile, an exciting swimming area was lively and 20 feet to our right. Every five minutes I got asked when we were going swimming. Finally by noon we got to do SOME-thing. The "petting" zoo.
By 1:45, our suits were finally on. It was free time.
Since I was responsible for Addison all by myself for this trip, I read many reviews for the place so I could anticipate obstacles and areas of the park that'd be of interest to Addison. Usually I go along for the adventure and Matt, our planner, has everything under control. When hubby isn't there, you realize just how much you depend on him (Thank you, Matt, for being such a rock for our family!)! But it all went well. The younger kids play area was pirate and fortress themed including around 15 slides and just as many perches for shooting stationary water guns. It was huge!
Addison loved playing on the pirate ship. That girl is fearless in the water. Watch out! The hardest part of the day was just getting her out of the water so we could get to our bus on time... But none of my other anxieties like having trouble walking from painful feet (from arthritis and pregnancy) or it being too hot and making me feel nauseas and this difficult to care for Addison actually happened.
A friend from my hometown always says to have a high sense of adventure and low expectations. I'd say I went with dreadfully low expectations for the day and, well, we really did have a super time once the formalities were over! It was a good chance to get to know some of the other parents better and to get to see how Addison interacts with her classmates.
I think we will need to go again another time. There's still tons of areas of the park we didn't have time to play at.
