My in-laws give us the strangest, most random things.... 1. a key chain of a pig and when you squeeze it, fake poop comes out its rear end 2. a t-shirt that said "Eat Sh*t" in spanish...my FIL thought it was clever since I speak spanish. 3. battery-powered wool socks 4. an assortment of nail clippers 5. a sock monkey 6. and last year they gave my ds one of those fire-safe boxes you put your important documents in. He was 11yo. :tongue_smilie: I could go one but I'll spare you. :D One more great thing about moving to Malaysia....no more WEIRD gifts from the in-laws. We told them customs would confiscate them. :lol::lol::lol:

Well golly...I need to have a talk with my boss...as a school principal I make the equivalent of $30,000 USD a year and that INCLUDES my housing allowance. :D

This is absolutely true. She is not "just" a maid/nanny to us...she is practically family. She worries about the baby, she buys her gifts (even on her very limited income), etc. And we bring her to family events and we are spending Christmas Eve with her family at her house. This is why "not offending her" is more than an employer/employee relationship issue. Sure, I could hire someone else. But would that person LOVE my daughter? Or just take minimal care of her? I have had bad nannies in the past so I definitely appreciate a good one when I find one. Part of me thinks after 3 months, it's probably no big deal. If the baby was allergic to eggs or if the eggs we buy were contaminated, something would have happened by now. I think I may ask her to cook them at least a little more...maybe I can blame it on the doctor?:D Thanks for the advice!!! oh and "ahma" is the term used for "mom" and "nanny" and even "maid" here. Go figure. :tongue_smilie:

My daughter is Indian. Her ahma (nanny) is Indian also. We love it because she speaks to the baby in Tamil all day and Natalie is already picking it up along with english. Our ahma loves Natalie like her own daughter and we feel blessed to have such a woman caring for our daughter. She even calls on the weekends to see how the baby is doing, buys her gifts, etc. I say all that so you know how much we love this woman and how much she loves Natalie. BUT The Indian culture as well as the ahma herself does things differently than we do. Most of it is little stuff... old wives tales, etc., no big deal. The ahma started giving Natalie eggs at about 9 months which is ok at least according to what I have read. And we have had no problems so it appears that she is not allergic to eggs. But today I was home from work when the ahma gave Natalie her egg and what I did NOT know was that she gives them to her nearly raw. It is more raw than sunny-side-up...like just barely seared... My instinct was to tell her not to feed the baby raw eggs but I am trying to be careful because I do not want to offend her...and yet I obviously want what is best for the baby. The ahma swears that all the Indian mothers do this to keep the baby healthy. So all day I have been waffling...is it a big deal or not a big deal? She has obviously being doing this for 3 months now and there have been no adverse effects. Am I being paranoid? Is there anything wrong with giving a 1 year old raw eggs? What should I do?

Oh my word. This makes me ill. I am so sorry. :grouphug:

OK I need to know which circles to avoid because if someone said this to me my head would explode. This must be the same group that says a person is not healed because they didn't have enough "faith"? :glare:

Wolf Hall. UGH....it is the first book I ever read that I never actually finished...although I read half of it and at that size I think it should count as a whole book! Just awful.

We can and do order christian books, bibles, etc all the time. These aren't explicitly christian movies...they are christmas movies...like Miracle on 34th street and A Christmas Story and Elf and The Christmas Shoes, etc. But because it is about christmas I guess they thought there might be something subversive going on? My dh's theory is that they wanted to "scan" them so they could pirate them and sell them. :D Movie piracy is huge business here. They even have stores at the big malls that sell pirated DVDs. What's funnier is that the pirated DVD businesses now advertise why their pirated DVDs are better than the other guy's pirated DVDs. Honor among thieves? I have to say that I feel like I am becoming desensitized in some ways to government corruption here since it is so pervasive. If you get pulled over for any reason the cop will automatically ask for a bribe. And we know a local here who's son was arrested for murder (yes he is guilty). They paid the cops RM10,000 (which is about $3300 USD) and the cops covered it up. seriously. When we first moved here my kindle broke so I shipped it to the US to be fixed and they shipped it back. The guy at the post office told me I had to pay $300 USD in custom fees even though on the actual fee slip it was only about $50. He was just trying to line his own pockets. So the idea that they would hold our package for trumped up reasons planning to charge us extra "fees" is not far-fetched. at. all. In fact, a local told us we should offer the government officials a bribe to get Natalie's immigration paperwork through. I am sorry but I refuse to pay a bribe for any reason. So I guess we will just have to wait it out. But my mom took care of things so this time we win. Chalk one up for the good guys. :D

No that is not correct. Nothing in my box is ILLEGAL in this country. I just had to buy the DVDs from amazon because they do not sell them here. I have to pay customs/duty fees but there is nothing illegal. That is why I was upset...

So I ordered some items for christmas presents for my kids that I cannot get here and I sent them to my mom in Michigan so she could then send them to me in Malaysia. In the box was two board games (Settlers of Catan being one of them and I am so excited but I digress), 2 ipods, 1 xbox game, and some christmas movies. Believe it or not you cannot buy a.)non-pirated movies anywhere on this island...pirated movies are of such good quality here and so cheap they literally have put legitimate DVD sellers out of business and you cannot get b.) christmas movies...which makes sense since this is a muslim country. So I was a little behind schedule in getting presents this year and had my mom fedex the package the fastest they could bring it and I paid an unspeakable amount in shipping to make sure the gifts made it before christmas. And then..... Nothing. I track the package and find out it has been sitting at the local post office for a week. I call them to find out why it has not been delivered and I am told they are holding it because they are scanning the DVDs for "christian" content. Seriously. They do not censor violence or foul language in movies but christian content is OUT. So I said fine, keep the movies, but I need the other gifts, they are for christmas!!! They said "No can la". So I complained to my mom about it. Guess what she did? She wrote a scathing email to the U.S. Embassy here about the post office holding my package indefinitely and..... Later that day the post office delivered my package to me without scanning anything. GO MOM!!!!! :D

Well, my own mom was the same. I think a day after we were married I started hearing "When are you going to give me some grandbabies?" from her. :D

The book by David Platt is SO GOOD because it is, IMHO, the perfect blend of sound doctrine and social gospel. I have read books about the social gospel that were a whole lotta social and not much gospel, ya know? Then, of course, there are plenty of books on sound doctrine. But this one combines the two in a way I have not seen before. He really gives a good doctrinal basis for being involved in social gospel projects but for gospel reasons. OK, I am rambling...just read it. :tongue_smilie:

Congratulations!!!!!!!!!

Gospel-Powered Parenting Shepherding a Child's Heart Bringing up Girls

I wish my brother would go to rehab. :glare: Praying your holidays go smoothly...

I believe so, yes. His book was excellent.

OK here are the rules for the game :D Name your favorite work of fiction that you read in 2010 (only ONE!) Name your favorite work of non-fiction that you read 2010 (only ONE!) When I force myself to pick JUST ONE then I actually reflect on why I really liked this book or that one more. Picking just one is tough. Can you do it? I read a lot of really great books this year but if I have to pick just one for each category I would pick... Fiction- Fall of Giants by Ken Follett Non-fiction: Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream by David Platt your turn!!!

Yep, the no eating with the left hand thing is big here too. But OTOH we use utensils when we eat and they don't. :D We have a term here we use called "Malaysian Rubber Time" which means that they show up whenever, businesses open at different times each day depending on when someone finally shows up to open it, etc. So don't get used to having coffee at Starbucks first thing in the morning because more often than not you will show up at the same time as yesterday but today "no can la". :tongue_smilie: If you get really worked up over promptness then do NOT move to SE Asia!!

:svengo: I would never make it. I have personal space issues and don't like people hugging me except my dh and my children! :tongue_smilie: This has been an interesting conversation for me. On Saturday we went to Chili's for lunch and the waiter who seemed perfectly nice looked at my caucasian birth child, my korean adopted child and my indian adopted child, pointed to my two adopted children and said "These two look different." For some reason the first thing that popped into my mind was that song from Sesame Street..."One of these things is not like the other..." :lol::lol::lol: I simply explained that they were adopted. Now I am sure he meant nothing rude by that BUT in the US his remark would be considered rude. And people here have ZERO problem asking you how much money you make, how much you paid for something, telling you that you have gained weight, and all sorts of other topics my mom always said was rude to talk about. ;) So now all day I have been wondering what we Americans do that the Malaysians probably think is really rude ?

I would have been MORTIFIED if anyone had made a big deal out of it. I am way too modest for that. My mom had already given me the talk so when it happened I knew what it was and I knew were the girly supplies were in the bathroom. I told my mom quietly, she asked if I needed any help, I said no, end of story. My little girl has a long way to go before then but I doubt I will make a big deal about it either.

Well, here you line up but you stand so closely to the person in front of you that you are almost touching them. If there is more than 2 inches between you and the person in front of you, someone will step into that spot and I am not talking just the person behind you...I am talking someone not even in line yet will walk into, say, McDonald's and find an "opening" in the line and step into it and NO ONE SEEMS TO CARE. This has happened to me so many times at a variety of places and several times I have said "excuse me, but this is MY spot. You will have to go to the end of the line." But the best part is that person thinks I am the one who is being rude. :lol::lol::lol:

I am a RUTHLESS declutter-er. I cannot handle clutter at all. And since we have moved several times I get lots of chances to declutter. I have the same rule for everything in our house...if it has not been used in the last year, it goes. PERIOD. With the exception of a few precious mementos of course, like my son's baby blanket... I do not get emotionally attached to stuff. In fact we moved back to Michigan from NC a few years ago and there were several boxes in our garage that, for whatever reason, never got unpacked. When it was time to leave Michigan to move to Malaysia I found these boxes in the garage, still unpacked. Guess what I did? I gave them to charity without even opening them. :D My mom (who is a clutterbug) thought I was nuts. But my theory was, I have lived without whatever is in those boxes for the last year or so...I obviously don't need it. So my question is....is there anything I could get from this book besides don't have too much stuff? Even thought I declutter, I still feel like "life" is cluttered, ya know?

So then are we just using an improper definition when we ask whether or not something is rude? is it even possible to define it if it is relative and no one can agree on it? And if we all know this (at least on some level) then why do we get mad when somone does something "rude"? For instance, say you are walking through a crowded mall and someone walks by and you bump shoulders...in the U.S. (at least where I am from) you would say "excuse me" or "I'm sorry" or something like that. Not here. They just keep walking. And it is not considered rude. Now when the man bumped into me at the mall this weekend and just kept walking I was instantly agitated and thought how RUDE he was. But according to his culture, he wasn't being rude at all. So why do we even have words like "rude" or "polite" when trying to define them is like trying to nail jello to a wall?

This is a very interesting theory and probably not far off. I tend to be a lot more logical left-brained and it was the "oprah-esque" feel that bugged me as well. I can live with the allegory and the weird theology but like others, I read it as fiction. I am just not that touchy-feely of a person (like it bugs me when people call God "Papa"...I am not saying there is anything wrong with it...it just makes my skin crawl :D). So even as fiction it was kinda yucky.:tongue_smilie:

So we all have things we think are "rude"... whether it's people who refuse to take their shoes off in someone else's home or those who insist you do, those who refuse to take carts back and those who think it is rude to require it, those who think you should say excuse me when passing and those who think it is rude to bring snacks into a theater, etc etc (:D). We seem to have a hard time agreeing on what is "rude" and what isn't. Living in a foreign country gives me lots of opportunities to reflect on my perceived "rudeness" of others. For instance, here in Malaysia it is considered perfectly acceptable to: -tailgate in traffic -cut people off (and NEVER make use of the turn signal) -cut in front of someone in line whenever you feel like it -stand RIGHT behind someone at the ATM machine (I literally can feel them breathing on my neck) -rush onto an elevator as soon as the doors open without bothering to wait for people to get off -never hold doors open for others -slurp your soup -chew with your mouth open -belch at the table (at home and in public) etc etc etc Now when I say these are "perfectly acceptable" I am not kidding. If you were to call someone out on one of these things (and I have for a few of them) they just look at you puzzled....like they have NO IDEA why you are upset. And they really don't because to them these behaviors are not "rude". So that got me thinking... how do you define "rude"...and can anyone really? I am not talking about things that are MORALLY reprehensible just things that are ya know...rude. :tongue_smilie: So we hive ladies can't agree on what is and isn't rude a lot of the time and many of the things that I have thought were rude my whole life are considered not rude at all here and I am sure there are things that we Americans do that the Malaysians consider rude and I don't even know what that is. So what do you think? Are some things just RUDE and others are not? Or is RUDE relative?