Year One in Numbers

We've just past the one year mark for our life in Penang this time around. Composing the list below helped us realize just how much happened and how fantastically good God has been to us!

12 Types of transportation used 

          plane, city bus, intercity bus, taxi, ride-share car, feet, bike, ferry, train, sky-train, motorbike, van... and with biking we've had to be somewhat creative in getting things home at times: Grace biking Jasmin on Aiden's seat at the back, a flat of eggs strapped on the bag carrier, Aiden sitting inside the big container we needed to get home... Most of the time we use the buggy/trailer we've borrowed from a friend though.

12 flat tires, 10 replacement tires - not just the inner tubes! -  and  5 other replacement parts on our bikes, such are the hazards of constant biking.

25 Birds identified

 Sunbirds, woodpeckers, kingfishers, myna, sea eagles, plovers, blackbirds, storks, songbirds, etc....

12 the rough number of liters of water consumed daily by the 5 of us

7 Skills learned

Aiden to swim, bike, and play chess
Jasmin to bake great cakes in the rice cooker, and now cake and cookies in the toaster oven recently given to us
Grace to play the guitar, hand sew clothing
Jasmin to animate well, paper quilling, calligraphy

10 Pets and plants acquired

Sugar glider, dwarf and Syrian hamsters, turtles
Orchid, Aloe vera, Jack fruit seedling, Oregano (a previously unknown variant), Succulents, Unknown one gifted to us

Kilometres biked

A rough estimate:
Mom: 2,600 km
Dad: 1,400 km
Grace: 1,600 km
Jasmin: 1,000 km
Aiden: 200 km

12 Classes taken:

About 100 hours of Chinese instruction (Grace, Aiden, Mom)

About 40 hours of Malay (for Grace)

About 60 hours online Spanish (Jasmin)

About 50 hours of voice and violin instruction (Grace and Jasmin)
4 month-long courses (for Dad)

Batik painting (Grace, Jasmin, Aiden)

SOZO training (Dad)
Spice Garden tour class (Grace, Jasmin, Aiden, Mom)

3 Beaches explored

Barnacled and oystered rock beach (ouch on the bare feet!)
"Infinity" beach where we usually go to cook a beach supper
Miami Bay beach where we can meet our friends and find lots of small square tiles

2 trips to the hospital (and lots of dr trips)
          Jasmin sliced open her finger, got cellulitis in her knee, had an allergic reaction to an ant bite
          Dad with ear infections
          Aiden with an eye infection
          Mom with knee bursitis
          Grace for a months-long explosive cough

9 Trips taken:
          Bangkok (x2)
          Sibu, Sarawak
          Kuala Lumpur (x6)
          

20+ New friends made

17+ New Experiences

Mom made red bean paste and other new-to-us Asian foods
STS group - Bible study group where everyone tells/recites the passage of the week in whatever language you want. So we hear the story in Malay, Hokkien, Mandarin, English
Grace took a music theory exam
Mahjong game
Cook fish on a stick on a beach fire
Rice cooker cakes
All day praise and prayer services (Grace and Mom stayed for 5 hours at one, and 12 hours for another)
lots of new foods
growing lots of house plants
making batik
hand sewing a pair of shorts
Jasmin teaching herself to play the flute
The girls babysitting Aiden while Mom and Dad go out
Fixing mom's computer with duct tape - oh, so Canadian?
Tropical weather patterns: rain so thick it looks white; regular, very close thunderstorms; haze; and even a local waterspout!
Tropical wildlife: monkeys more common than squirrels; birds smaller than a butterfly; bees as big as your thumb
Bugs getting into our washing machine and shorting out something so it doesn't work. We sucked out the bugs with a vacuum.

Random Facts from the Spice Gardens

We went with a bunch of homeschool families on a school tour of the Tropical Spice Garedens this morning. Here are some random facts we gathered up from the 3 separate tours (young kids, older kids, and leftover adults :)

*Pineapples were originally tiny and sour! They don't need soil to grow.

*Common cinnamon is actually a poison that can lead to organ failure!  True cinnamon is much rarer and super good for you.

*We saw a bird smaller than a huge butterfly (which was about as big as an adult stretched out hand)

*Bananas are in the ginger family

*There is a tree in Malaysia that you can be killed by sitting under it or walking by! It is closely related to the mango tree. There have been only two documented deaths in Malaysia. Sceintists don't understand the chemical reactions that make it so deadly to humans.

*Lemon grass helps with flatulence :)

*Nutmeg is a potent hallucinogen

 *some palms only flower once in 10 years. And only Flower once then die. So they are considered annuals.

*the flower Cat Whiskers make really good tea and helps with small kidney stones.

*pandan is a leaf and makes a green colour

*there are over 1,000 kinds of ginger! We were shown a few and told their specific uses. For example, one kind should be eaten with seafood to counteract any gastric problems from the sea, and another kind for eating with red meat, etc.

*black Lilly has three different kinds of leaves on the same plant; one for photosynthesis, one to attract night pollenators, and one to stabalize the plant when bugs, and animals come for pollen.

*Herb painting is not easy (the kids' tour group experiemnted with natural dyes from tumeric, pandan, butterfly pea)

*Citronella is a kind of lemon grass

*Cinnamon and cloves use used to be only of the leaves, not the bark or flower stems as is now. 

*Bamboo grows as fast as 75 cm in 24 hours!