Monday Just Isn't the Same without Little H

First - our big news: Success! Internet installed at our apartment. This is huge.

Now on to the real topic of the post: Monday night. For ~10 years, Brian and I have gone to Little Havana in Federal Hill (nearly) every Monday night for 1/2 priced sandwiches and 1/2 priced beer. Shout out to all our Little H friends over the years... we're thinking of you and missing you so much. So Brian and I want to establish a similar tradition here. Really, who wants to cook on a Monday? So we're looking for a bar walking distance from our apartment. Tonight we tried 'Backyard'. Verdict = No. The food was pretty good and okay priced. And the beer was also good (for Malaysia) and okay priced. However, the walk is just a bit too far. (Also for several long blocks the sidewalk is missing manhole covers over the storm drains. Yikes.) Check out the pic of Tyler enjoying the bar. (Jacob = note the Skylanders on the table.) However, the evening did have a very Little Havana-ish element: good friends. Nico and Isabel joined us out for great conversation and a lot of laughter. On our walk back to the apartment, Nico, Isabel, and I detoured to the hawker stands to pick up Isabel's lunch for tomorrow. (As it's Ramadan, in some areas of town, most of the shops are closed during fasting hours. It's best to pack lunch right now.) Of course, we also enjoyed a couple small Tigers while waiting for her food.


So something we haven't yet spent too much time writing about is KL's amazing food. Mayaugust commented about the chicken in the window. So I took a pic for you all. There is any kind of food here. Violet and Tyler wish to inform you that the self serve fro yo is excellent. We'll try to take some pictures of our food so you get an idea of what we are eating.

Speaking of eating, after Violet said 'Mom, remember in Baltimore when you'd open the cupboard and have food? Can we please have that here? Soon?', Brian and I decided a major grocery trip was in our near future. So yesterday afternoon we were off to Tesco (think Super Walmart). Good news. We found a true locals shop (even if it's a British chain). We were the only people in the store speaking English. We were also purchasing a Sam's club-sized cart of groceries while inline behind 12 people just buying eggs (and air fresheners as they were on the blue light special. We bought 3.). As it was Sunday afternoon, the place was packed. Shopping took soooo long as I had to spend time on each item identifying the correct product among 50 similar ones -- all with Asian writing. Tesco has an entire aisle of ramen noodle soup. What's a girl to do?

Today the kids and I visited Garden International School where both kids will attend in the fall. We walked down the hill to school from our apartment. It was only about a 15 minute walk. Very do-able. I'm going to enjoy our walks to school. It's hard to judge a school when school is out of session. There was a great deal of construction. It's also a very large school -- Tyler's grade has 7 classes! However, everyone we meet speaks very highly of Garden International School and they gave us a wonderful little book called 'Where We're From: A Celebration of Our Multi-cultural Community'. But I do miss Park right now.

Eating frozen yogurt after visiting GIS.