Move over, Sara Lee

To get ready for our five day break, I spent a considerable amount of time in the kitchen today. I baked two dozen plain biscuits, two dozen cheese/garlic biscuits aka Red Lobster biscuits, three dozen gingersnaps and two loaves of banana bread. I also made two pans of puffed wheat squares and tonight made a huge pan of baked enchiladas for dorm treat. I quite enjoyed myself and the perk to the baking I did this morning was that our dorm amah cleaned up all my dishes!! She's a wonderful help :)

So when Brian and Val, our Resident Supervisors, come to our dorm tomorrow afternoon to take over for us, all is taken care of for them in terms of the menu. That way they don't have to worry about what to make for breakfast or snack and they can hopefully enjoy more time with our students. I probably haven't mentioned this before but Brian and Val were the dorm parents here in Chandler last semester for pretty much the same group of kids as we have now so they do know their way around our kitchen and our students really well.

Here's what our five day break looks like: We serve breakfast to the dorm tomorrow morning. Then we are officially off and will hang around tomorrow to pack while kids go to school. Tim goes with Kaleb on a field trip for World Religions class after lunch. Kaleb has drama practice after school and some homework to finish up. We'll head for supper to the stalls and then to the YWAM house to stay overnight 'free of charge' :) Early Friday morning, we take a taxi to the ferry and, after 2.5 hours, arrive at the island of Langkawi, north of Penang. We'll spend four days, three nights in an apartment owned by a pastor in Langkawi at an incredibly cheap rate. The two bedroom apartment is fully furnished, comes with a car we can use to tour the island and has an outdoor pool. Monday afternoon we take the ferry back to Penang and stay one night at the Crown Jewel hotel just down from the school so the kids can go to school on Tuesday. We haven't used the pool at this hotel before, although Dalat staff is welcome, so we thought we'd try it out.

The one night at the Crown Jewel will cost as much as the three nights at the apartment!! Here in Asia, its very hard to find a hotel with two double beds in one room. You have to rent a family suite,if the hotel has one, which costs a bundle and even then, it might not have enough bed space for four people. So at the Crown Jewel, we have to rent two rooms in order to accommodate our family. Its very strange to us but quite normal for this part of the world.

So that's the plan - we'll post lots of pictures when we get back as we are hoping to go feed the eagles, ride the cable car up the mountain, go-cart racing, swimming, shopping, to the aquarium and out on the ocean.