Stepmomming It

We met M's daughter in LA, and she flew back with us to KL for a couple of weeks. Last time, she and her brother came to KL, it was over the Christmas holidays, and M and I had time off from work. This time, we aren't able to take off the whole time she's here, so of course I'm concerned that she is bored. We looked into several options for her to do volunteer work while she's here, and we came up with some volunteer work at the SPCA for her during some of her afternoons.

She went yesterday, and part of her job was to pull chicken meat off of cooked chicken necks to feed the dogs. I know that volunteer work isn't glamorous or anything, but she's sixteen, and we envisioned her being able to play with puppies and kitties all day, maybe scoop the occasional poop and what not. But I don't think chicken necks were part of C's plan, so she wasn't too keen on going back today. Oh well, we tried.

Since I work from home, I've felt pretty torn this week. I mean, I need to be working while I'm at home, but it's tough because I don't want her to be bored. But we are taking her to do some fun things in the evenings, and we are going to Redang this weekend, so hopefully we've struck some sort of balance between our work obligations and making sure she has a good time.

I'm also kind of worried because we would love for her to come and live here, so we are trying to expose her to all the fun and interesting things to do here. But she's experiencing some of the same frustrations that we did when we first got here. They are really not frustrations, simply differences that she encounters, but to a sixteen year old, every difference IS a frustration. Small things like the milk tastes different here, or salespeople follow her around the stores in the mall, or it takes longer than normal to get our restaurant bill. We try to explain that things are simply different here, but I'm not sure she's having a good time. And I'm feeling some major stepmom guilt about that.

What really sucked though is that on Tuesday, she went to the mall by herself. When she was walking home from the mall, she passed by a street where a lot of delivery trucks were parked. A couple of the drivers got out of the trucks and made kissy noises at her and asked her to marry them. That kind of freaked her out. So I got pissed because, they can do that to me if they want, whatever, but leave my stepkid alone. Ah, the protective parenting thing is in full gear. I'm sure The Triad is teary eyed and proud.

Once she got home, she went downstairs to swim. Of course, since we have lots of construction around us, that means that there are a lot of construction workers around. There's one building in particular, where M and I have watched them stop working and leer down to the pool and stare at whichever women are using the pool at that time. Well, that happened to her as well, which made her uncomfortable. I really can't blame her; it makes me uncomfortable too, which is why I don't use the pool very often. I don't need an audience, and she doesn't either.

So hopefully, this weekend will be really nice. Then, next week, we are planning to take her to Eye on Malaysia and some other cool stuff, then she and M will spend a day in Singapore before she flies home.

So, between the chicken necks, the leering men and the strange food, she doesn't seem to be enjoying herself as much as she did last time. I feel GUILTGUILTGUILTGUILT. Any ideas on some fun stuff for her to do during the day in KL?