Welcome to our Blog!

We haven’t had regular internet service since we got here so that’s why it’s been delayed. For now, we aren’t going to make it private but we may in the future so if you can’t get on in the future just shoot us an email and we’ll send you an invite.

Be sure to go back and start at the beginning of the blog—we’ve attempted to post it in chronological order. The first few posts about Singapore have a lot of detail so feel free to skim over it. We started writing and it sort of turned into our record/journal of the first little while here. I guess we’re not really good bloggers. I am more of a blog-stalker than a blogger and Ben is a boy so it’s not exactly acceptable for him to do it. We’ll add more pictures in the future. Our camera has been having issues for months and won’t focus properly so the foreground is often blurred and we haven’t taken too many.

Also, since we are just posting these to get them up and sitting on a very uncomfortable bench, the blog is a little rough so bear with us until we learn the ins and outs of the blogger. I already have a few questions for you experienced bloggers. Can you add more than five pictures to a post? Can you rearrange the order of posts after you’ve posted them?

Happy Valentines Day!

We hope you all had a wonderful day. This past week Samara and I watched the Charlie Brown Valentines’ DVD and it has the “It’s Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown” episode on it. In it, everybody blames Charlie Brown for losing the homecoming football game because he missed a kick. Of course, no one seems to be aware of the fact that Lucy, the scuz, moves the ball away from Charlie Brown at the last minute—he didn’t even get to kick the ball. I really can’t stand Lucy! It drives me crazy that no one notices that it’s her fault. However, he does get to kiss the little red-haired girl in the end (and anyone who’s lucky enough to kiss a redhead knows what a privilege that is!). Anyway, I hope you had a Lucy-less Valentine’s Day (and got to kiss a redhead!).

Chinese & Japanese Gardens

This is one of many beautiful and manicured nature areas on the island. Ben commented on several occasions how it felt like sacred grounds—it’s very quiet and there is indeed a reverence about the place. They had statues of prominent figures in Chinese history. Mulan was our favorite. Ben is standing by Confucius. At the gardens is the have a museum with the world's largest turtle & tortoise collection, which we didn't go to yet.

Downtown

These were supposed to go with Chinatown post, except this first one, which was taken at a park system near our house. There is a really cool sky bridge and tree-top walk too that we'll post pictures of later.

Sentosa Island

Just off the Southern tip of Singapore is a resort island called “Sentosa”. In fact, it’s apparently the southern-most tip of Asia (another feather in the cap). It’s a great place that has been designed for easy access and easy fun. It’s a cheap S$3.00 monorail ride over the strait and you’re there. Once there, you have several beaches to choose from and a host of neat fountains and lazy walks. They aren’t the most spectacular beaches in the world but are still quite pretty. We are only a 45-minute ferry ride away from poster-card perfect tropical beaches and resorts in Indonesia and Malaysia. Come check them out for yourselves...

Chinatown and Chinese New Year

Christmas is celebrated here, but seeing as how the majority of people aren’t Christians (they’re Buddhist), Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year. This is the year of the Ox. It’s a pretty big deal here. Church was shortened on the eve of the holiday. Wards were combined so everyone could be done by noon. Ben got two days off. Most stores are closed for a couple days and some are closed for a week or more. One of the days, we went and visited Chinatown and had a great time. The other day we make our first trip into the downtown core—it really is a beautiful city.

Adjustments

All in all the culture shock has not been that bad and I think Singapore has to be one of the easier foreign countries to live in unless you count that great northern “providence”, or did that place Ben’s always referring to already get ratified as another state? (I don’t think there is a new star on the flag.) With the exception of her sleep being really off, Samara’s adjusted really well. She hadn’t been getting cheese like she normally does when we first got here and one day she announced to us, “I need cheese!” She is obsessed with Thomas, so riding the metro trains is a dream come true for her. I’m sure she hopes we never have a car or car seat again. She’s convinced we live on the island of Sodor (“Sodor”, “Singapore”…close enough). She loves swimming and is thrilled we get to go so often. The biggest challenges so far are how expensive it is (who knew you could have less disposable income than as a student?) and getting around. The hardest thing is not having a car and trying to grocery shop. They want to limit the number of cars on the road so it costs about $1,200/month to have a car. You have to get a 10-year permit and it’s a lot more if you renew it with the same car so there are hardly any cars older than 10 years old here. It's so weird having cars drive be on the other side of the road. We now understand why they say, "look both ways before crossing the street". We've both gone the wrong direction on a bus and it feels so odd sitting in the driver's seat when your not driving and have no steering wheel. A couple times I've seen a child sitting there and thought, 'oh dear that kid stole his parent's car. '
Grocery shopping is particularly bad where we are now because it’s a ten-minute hike to get out of the complex, usually involving stairs, which are no fun with a stroller and a weeks-worth of groceries. It’s a catch 22, the more groceries I buy the hungrier I am because it takes so much effort to get them home so I have to turn around and buy more. It’s usually after this that I have a meltdown and announce to Ben that I’ve had enough of this little adventure and that I am going home to live in my mom’s basement.

However, the condo we’re moving into is right across from the MRT & Bus depot, a mall with a grocery store, and library so it’s in a fantastic location for everyday stuff. The facilities are unbeatable and we have a beautiful view of the mountains in Malaysia (which celebrates a national “Derek Zoolander Day” to acknowledge the day the Prime Minister of Malaysia was saved from an assassination attempt). It will be about a 45-minute commute for Ben and about the same for us to get to church. Church would only be like 15 minutes on a taxi. The transportation is great—it just takes so much longer than a car/taxi. You have to leave an hour early to get somewhere that would take 10 minutes in the car.

We were quite surprised at the open discrimination here. When we were calling around looking for apartments they’d say things like, “You’re not Indian are you? We don’t rent to Indians” or the listing would advertise no “Chinese Agents”. It was very surprising. Some things may get carried too far in the states, but my goodness, we sure would have felt bad if someone would have told us they wouldn’t rent to Canadians or Americans.