John and CB's Most Excellent Adventure

Greetings, friends!!  This is the last post of the day–finally!  We have been so horrible about keeping up the blog–we really want to do better.  We’ll see how that goes!!!:)  In this entry, I will tell about my last trip to Batam, Indonesia, give a general life update, and a schedule of our upcoming trip to the US!!!

I went to Batam, Indonesia two weeks ago with church to volunteer at an orphanage/children’s home there.  The children at the home range from ages 5-17 and have either been abandoned by their parents or have no parents.  I went with about twelve other women and children from our church in Singapore.  We did a handicraft with them, ate lunch, did sudoku, and then had to leave far too soon.

Sweet kids...

These children really stole my heart.  Until our church became involved, they were on carbohydrate rations–only certain children got carbohydrates on certain days.  This was happening in the land of rice–I was shocked.  The children were also keeping their tooth brushes in the same bucket with the brush to clean the toilet–which is an eastern toilet (hole in the ground).  They need lessons in hygiene.  They had no idea that this is harmful.   Their home has enough electricity to power four light bulbs and has poor drainage–so poor that if it rains too much, their sewers can back up.  This is an area that was rainforest until it was developed, so you can imagine how frequently that happens.

So cute!!

When we arrived (Batam is only a 45 minutes ferry ride from Singapore), we went through customs, then got on a bus and headed straight to the home.  The children do everything in just a few rooms.  There are thirty children and one large room that serves as a church room, classroom, dining room, playroom, etc.  I don’t know where they sleep.  A minister and his wife have taken in the children in hopes of giving them a better future, but the minister himself is poor.  Once we got there, we did a sewing project with them (they made drawstring bags), then we had lunch, then we did sudoku.  We spent only about 4 hours there and it went by so so quickly.  The children were so eager to learn and to have someone teach them.  I can’t wait to go back this fall–hopefully we’ll be doing some ESL lessons there.  It was a very sad sad thing to see, but the children were so hopeful, it was also encouraging.

Now, on that somber note, it’s on to life updates!  I have been on summer vacation from my graduate program since we went to India.  I’m currently starting to do some research for my dissertation.  That will start full swing in the fall.  My topic is energy poverty and energy efficient ways to address it.  Of course, as the term goes on, it will tweak a bit–but that’s the general idea.  John has been working on a project lately that has been taking up a lot of his time.  He’s working late and going in early–but his last day is next Friday–the day before he leaves for the US!  He’s going back for training and is very excited about potential projects when he gets back!

We have some more big news……we’re moving!!!!!  We’ll still be in Singapore, but we’re moving across the country!  Our move is a grand total of 20.3 kilometers!!!  We’re moving to a bigger place, closer to the MRT.  We can’t wait!!!  We’re moving the day after we get back from the US and the day before I start the fall semester and John starts a new project.  Can you say jet lag???  Yes, we’re still insane!

As most of you probably know, we’re coming back to the US for a visit!!!  Here are our schedules–if you’ll be in any of these cities at any of these times, let us know and we’ll see if we can work something out!!!  We would love to see you!!!!

John:

18 July-25 July:  Chicago (Job Training)

25 July-26 July:  Louisville/Shelbyville (Whitney’s Wedding/Tory’s Wedding)

26 July-31 July:  Chicago (Job Training)

31 July-1 August:  Orlando (Stephanie’s Wedding)

1 August-2ish August:  Charleston, SC (Tyner’s Wedding)

2ish August-8 August:  Orlando (Family Visit)

CB:

14 July-16 July:  Orlando (Family Visit/Jetlag Recovery)

16 July-17 July:  Greenville (Visit Patrick/Furman/Tyner’s Bachlorette)

17 July-19 July:  NYC (Tyner’s Bachlorette)

19 July-30 July:  Shelbyville/Louisville (Family Visit/Whitney’s Wedding/Tory’s Wedding)

31 July-2ish August:  Charleston, SC (Tyner’s Wedding)

2ish August-8 August:  Orlando (Family Visit)

Then….we come back and move and resume our lives in Singapore:).  Email us if you want to hang out–phone communication may be questionable!!!  Thanks for reading as always!!!!!!!  We’ll update soon (we hope;)!!!!!

Love,

John and CB

Whew–what a busy time it’s been since our return from India!  We are terrible bloggers–sorry for the delay.  And thanks for checking back:).  Now, on with the update!  Happy Meal visited us, the Candeto family came, we’ve been to Thailand, celebrated two birthdays, been to Indonesia and are generally trying to keep up with the busy day to day lifestyle in Singapore since you have last hear from us.  Instead of boring you with an incredibly LONG blog entry on all of these things, I’m going to spilt them up over several entries.  This entry:  Happy Meal aka Mizzle aka Flid aka John McDaniel’s trip to Singapore!

Flid arrived around midnight one evening after John and I had gone to see Shakespeare in the Park–a delightful rendition of “Much Ado About Nothing” with local soap opera stars.  It was a wonderful show and we had wonderful weather.  After the show, I was off to the airport to pick up Flid (John was not feeling well and ended up heading home).  Rev and I met at the airport only to realize that neither of us had Flid’s flight number and there were two flights originating in Tokyo at the same time on the same airline.  However, these two flights were arriving at different terminals in the Singapore airport!  So, Rev went to one terminal and I went to the other to see who could have the first “Flid sighting.”  Rev won and I was off to greet Flid via sky train.  It had been almost a year since we had last seen Flid, so this was a joyous reunion!  The first thing he said to me after his 30 plus hours of traveling was “my butt feels like a flotation device.”  Some things never change:).

Flid stayed with us in our 250 square foot one room apartment!  Fitting three people into that small space proved to be quite interesting, but we’re all such great friends it worked out fine!  Flid slept on our pull-out couch and we were hopping all around each other when we were all in the apartment!!!  He was such a good sport.  Hopefully, we’ll have a larger place the next time he comes to visit and more optimal visiting conditions!

Turtle Face looking at the turtle

The next morning, well afternoon–Flid slept until about 12 or 1pm every single day–we went off on an adventure to the Turtle Museum!  For those of you who don’t know, Singapore hosts the world’s largest collection of turtles, both living and in statue form.  Before we could do this I took Flid to a Singapore “coffee shop” which is a type of hawker centre where there is very little coffee actually served.  There we got some chicken rice and Flid got a taste for what most menus around here have to offer with items such as pigs organ soup, chicken foot soup, and other wonderful parts of animals that can be consumed.  After Flid’s first meal here (I must admit, I’m not sure if taking him to such a local place so early was such a good idea:), we were off to the Turtle Museum!!!  The museum is literally a tiny building with lots and lots of aquariums with turtles floating around in them.

Flid the Turtle God

We saw creepy snake turtles, turtles with pig snouts, and turtles that will worship you if you give them food.  After viewing a turtle who was supposedly over 100 years old, we left the museum and headed to Holland Village (an expat hangout) for a sushi dinner and some Ice Kachang.  Ice Kachang, or as we lovingly call it “blended clown,” is a dessert that is a snow cone on top of black beans, grass jelly, and jelly beans, then topped with cream corn.  It’s as delicious as it sounds!

Flid nervously eyeing his spoonful of Ice Kachang (that's melted a bit)

The next afternoon–mind you, Happy Meal was sleeping until then–we set off to explore the city and two of the main cultural quarters of the town.  Our first stop was the Arab Quarter where we looked at the mosque, did a bit of souvenir shopping and met John for lunch at a delicous Middle Eastern restaurant.  Next, we headed to Chinatown where Flid spent most of his money (there are so many beautiful presents to buy!) and we explored the Buddhist Temple and went in the Buddhist museum.  I must say, images of Religion 12 all came flooding back while we explored the exhibits!  In fact, we had done a project together on Buddhism for that class–we found out that we were exceedingly accurate with our presentation…haha:).  For the rest of the afternoon, we wandered around the city until we met Rev and John for dinner at a hawker centre near the Singapore River where we introduced Flid to delicious Sting Ray and Flid and John ordered cockles in honor of Molly Malone.

Cockles in honor of Molly Malone

The rest of the week seemed to go by in a blur.  One day, Flid and I did the zoo AND the night safari (I think Flid slept until almost 2pm the next day) and another day we intended to go to Little India, but I went the wrong way when we got off of the MRT and we ended up back in the Central Business District.  That day, we did a lot of walking. One of the best part of Flid’s visit was the chance to catch up with him–I feel like we’ve missed so much since we’ve been over here!!!!

The Saturday of Flid’s visit was Revant’s birthday!  So, after Flid got up, we went to the Asian Civilizations Museum (a really cool museum that takes Asia country by country and displays artifacts of historical significance) and walked around until John could manage to get off of work (he had to work that Saturday…).  Once John was able to meet us, we visited an Ice Cream Uncle just ouside the museum.  Typically, ice cream is quite expensive in Singapore, but not if you can find an Ice Cream Uncle!  They charge only one dollar and cut off a small block of ice cream for you then put it between two wafers.  John got mango ice cream.  I got chocolate chip.  Flid got red bean.:)  He was so adventurous with his ice cream decision!  He said it tasted like strawberry…it certainly looked like it!

This picture pretty much sums up the evening...

After this we headed over to Clarke Quay to Rev’s birthday dinner!  Rev had chosen a Mexican restaurant (Singapore only has Mexican “fine dining”–none of the cheap Mexican that we all know is far superior to all other Mexican food) over looking the Singapore river.  Even though it wasn’t cheap Mexican, it was good:).  We hadn’t had Mexican food in about six months.  It was a wonderful evening with lots of fabulous pictures including a photoshoot on the bridge over the river!!!!:)  Just a note of how awesome Rev is:  the morning after his birthday he biked something like 60km at 5:45 am.  We were all extremely impressed.

Happy Birthday, Revie!!!!!

The next day, sadly, was Flid’s last day in the ‘pore.  His visit flew by as quickly as this entry makes it seem.  We went to church, had a nice lunch, then went swimming in the pool at our condo before seeing Flid off at the airport.  We are so thankful that he was able to come over here and really appreciate him taking all of time and making all of the effort to make the trip happen!!!!!  Flid–come back soon–or go to wherever we end up next!!!!

Three days after Flid left, Steve, John’s little brother came over for a visit.  John’s family followed shortly thereafter.  Check out the next entry to hear all about our adventures in Singapore and in Thailand!

Dear all,

Happy Summer!  I’m officially half-way finished with my Masters Degree (I took my last final exam yesterday) and am ringing in the first day of summer with a blog entry:).  Summer has become a relative term.  Today, it’s about 80 degrees outside and it feels cold.  Perhaps this is because of the 100 plus degree week we had last week.  Despite my complaining, though, I am starting to get used to the heat.  When I walked out today and realized the actual temperature and how cold I felt, it was a bit disconcerting–80 degrees should never feel cold.  Wait til we get to India…

The past week has been a typical, good week.  Our English class potluck went wonderfully!  I was extremely nervous that no one was going to bring any dishes besides Yoshie and me, but as it turns out the concept of “potluck” bridges cultural gaps!  Everyone made a dish specific to their home country (I brought cupcakes that “tasted like America,” says Yoshie, to represent the good ole US of A) and the food was delicious!  Yoshie made a SPAM sushi that is very popular in San Francisco.  It’s the only SPAM I’ve ever tasted that I liked!  We had dishes from Mongolia, Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Indonesia.  And, the best part, every lady was able to tell us how they made it–in ENGLISH!  I think they surprised themselves with how much English they knew.  What a wonderful class day!

The Western Niceties Seminar was a good time!  It was actually a Japanese Bible Study Coffee House that I went to with Yoshie and Hozumi where I also learned Western Niceties.  Despite being Western, I actually learned quite a bit because we discussed European customs.  After the presentation, I went to the presenter and told her how much I had learned.  She looked at me and denied it and said I should have known everything she said.  I then informed her that I am, indeed, an American and we don’t have the same customs.  “Well, that explains it.”  She said.  “You Americans and your air kisses.  It’s a whole different level.”  Whether that level is up or down, I’m not sure.  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say that it is up!  After years of Cotillion, I should think that!

On Friday, I volunteered at the nursing home with church.  This particular facility is home to 13 ladies as old as 91 years of age!  The only problem was, none of them spoke English.  And, I don’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin.  After singing some church songs in Mandarin (I did my best to hum the tune) and listening to a testimony in Chinese (the staff was kind enough to translate for me), we had lunch with them.  The food was incredible–all traditional Chinese food including vinegar pork and eggs that are traditionally eaten by a mother after a child is born.  There are lots of links between food and health benefits here–more so than the calories consumed!  As I was leaving and shaking hands with each of the old ladies, they each tried to speak some English to me, as I used what broken Chinese I know to try to communicate with them.  One lady grabbed my hand with both of hers and kept repeating “happy happy happy.”  It was the sweetest thing.  Another of the ladies wished me a Happy Birthday (it wasn’t my birthday;).  Many of them said thank you and smiled at me.  It was yet another lesson that language doesn’t have to be a barrier.  I had a wonderful morning with those ladies even though we only exchanged ten mutually understood words.

Sorry for the short entry, but other than economics and technology finals with a few highlights thrown in, I have relatively little to report.  John and I are leaving for Bangalore, India tomorrow night!  I’m sooooo excited!!!!!:)  We’ll be sure to have lots of adventures to report from our trip.  Check back soon!!!!!

Miss you all,

CB

Greetings, everyone!

Hello from the hottest place on Earth.  Literally.  At least, it feels like it anyway:).  We’re in the middle of what the locals are calling a “heat wave.”  If you live on the Equator and it’s called a heatwave, you know it’s hot!  The temperature has been about 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the past few days–let’s hope for some rain to cool things down:).  If not, it’s alright–we’re headed to India in a week anyway.  I’m sure it will be much cooler there–yeah right!!!!!!!

Things are going quite well here.  John is doing wonderfully at work and I am in full swing studying for finals (I have one on Saturday morning and another on Monday afternoon of next week.)  Once those are finished, I’ve finished half of my Master’s Degree!  Yay!!!!:)  Other than that, life is pretty normal here.  We’re trying new foods, new places, making new friends, etc.  Oh, I did cook tonight–we had breakfast for dinner.  You can imagine how hilarious it was when I pulled an egg out of the carton and it still had a chicken feather attached.  I know that these eggs came from chickens but I did not want to be reminded.  I promptly washed off the eggs of the carton before refrigerating them–which they don’t do in the grocery stores.  If you can call this chain of events normal, then it’s been a pretty normal life since you’ve heard from us last:)

Now, onto some funny stories from English class!  I’ve mentioned before that I’m teaching an English as a Second Language class at church with my friend Yoshie.  We went to lunch with another friend, Hozumi, last week and started reminiscing and told our favorite stories.  Here are a selected few!

Yoshie and I teach an Introduction to English class.  This class is below a Level 1 class, basically meaning our students have had extremely limited exposure to English.  By limited, I mean on the first day, the lesson was how to say, “Hello, my name is…”.  Yoshie and I took over in January, so that lesson has already been given.  We took over in time for colors, body parts, and classroom words.  When you’re teaching introductory English in English, one of the best ways to teach vocabulary is to hold up an object, say what it’s called and have the class repeat.  For example, I would hold up a pencil and say “pencil.”  The class would repeat “pencil.”  This exercise continues until I’m satisfied with the pronunciation–which usually takes about twice.  My students are very bright:)  So, one day, we were going over vocabulary, I think I was holding up a shirt.  I said listen and repeat:  “shirt.”  They said “shirt.”  “Shirt.”  “Shirt.”  “Very good”  Very good.”  They imitated my compliment!  The funniest part was they had no idea that “very good” was a compliment and not another name for a shirt.  I then tried to explain–in a culture where a thumbs up motion means nothing–what good means.  I think they got it.  The next time they repeated a compliment–they all giggled.

I have sweet ladies from all over Asia in my class.  They hail from China, Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Korea.  The only common language we have is English, which is lucky for me because it’s the only language I have.  So, like I mentioned earlier, I have to bring in items to demonstrate the vocabulary.  When it was clothing day, I wasn’t shy.  I brought in everything…including a bra, that happened to be hot pink.  When they finished laughing at how brightly colored the article of clothing was.  They learned how to say it.  “Bra.”  “Bra.”  “Bra.”  “Bra.”  The week before, we learned the words for family members:  husband, father, mother, brother, sister, wife, etc.  Trying to be a good teacher and connect the lessons I asked my class, “does my husband wear this?” and held up the bra.  The entire class nodded yes, very excitedly.  I then asked again–“does my husband wear this?” and waved the bright pink bra around?  When they realized what I asked they all doubled over laughing and said “No no teacher CB.”  haha….it’s easy for things to get lost in translation, but so so funny.  They were then amazed that I was so young and married.  We played the “guess CB’s age” game.  Most of the class guessed 17-20.  They were shocked when I told them I was 23.  They then wanted to know about babies.  Haha–no babies yet, not until thirty, I told them.  We then practiced our English numbers doing the math to see how many years that is:).  If there’s one thing I’ve learned as an English teacher–teach English when no one is looking!

I LOVE teaching my sweet ladies in English class.  I’m sure I have several more cute stories, but these are the ones I can remember now.  We’re having a potluck on Wednesday.  Try explaining the concept of potluck to women who barely speak English–we’ll see how many dishes we have.  I will keep you updated.

For now, I am off to bed.  I’m going to a Japanese Bible Study/Seminar on Western Niceities in the morning with my sweet friends Yoshie and Hozumi.  Need my beauty sleep!  Have a wonderful day back home–we’ll talk to you soon!!!!

Hello all,

John here.  It has been quite a while since I’ve made an appearance on the blog, so I figured it was about time.  Last time I made a post, I was describing my adventures in hair cuts.  While I have not been disappointed with the variety of “hairy” options, I have also found a number of inexpensive, quick and quality manners in which to obtain a haircut.  My current and most-favored option is CB.  After forking over S$100 for a set of clippers, my hair cuts for the last three months have been free, and she does an excellent job.

In other news, several weeks ago a work colleague told me about an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant.  I should mention that it has become my custom at local hawker centers to order two of the same meal.  While some friends claim that I eat “a lot,” I simply eat until I am full.  This stated, depending on the quality of food I desire to eat it has become cheaper in some circumstances to go for the buffet options when available, so I jumped at the chance for all you can eat sushi.

The restaurant reminded me of one of those touristy US east coast seafood joints, which tries to have a coherent theme but falls slightly short of its mark.  Not long after arriving, a white-looking man and Asian-looking woman sat down to our left.  After ordering, the man turned to the woman and said, “So, you’re from China.”  Great line for a first date.  I wasn’t surprised when they started downing the wine.  He was going to need some help.

It was a good thing we weren’t there for the atmosphere.  However, the food more than made up for it.  We ordered expecting portions similar to the pay-by-the-piece restaurants we usually visit, but as it was a buffet we were rather generous with our order, much of which included “we’ve never had this before, let’s try it” dishes.  When the food arrived, it was at least 30% larger (per piece) than we had expected, and I didn’t realize we had ordered so much until the wait staff ran out of room for the plates.  Our work was cut out for us.

Two solid hours and approximately 75 generously-sized pieces of fish later, we rolled out the door.  I am nearly certain they didn’t make a dime on us, and for our part we were still full 24 hours later.  A great experience.

Several weekends later, another of CB’s friends from Shelbyville came to visit.  Brandon and his friend Robert are in the United States Navy and currently posted in Sol, South Korea.  They spent Easter weekend in Singapore, during which we hiked the “canopy tour,” which we learned was a 5 kilometer hike to a 250 meter bridge, followed by another 5 kilometer hike.  It was a great bridge.  As seems to be our custom, we were rained on in the rain forest, but made it out in good spirits and saw some beautiful portions of the Singapore Country Club’s golf course.  Later that evening the four of us along with two friends from church enjoyed a meal of Stingray, Roti Prata and Satay by Marina Bay.  Brandon and Robert returned to Sol the following evening after a meal of fish and chips where we learned, again, that one must order at least 10 servings of “tomato sauce” (ketchup) per-person if they desire an “adequate” amount to cover the chips.  Good chips, though.

Brandon and Robert taught us that it is possible to visit North Korea and return.  We are told that the conference room in which North and South Korea “negotiate” is literally on the North and South Korea border of the de-militarized zone, and it is open for tours.  We plan to visit soon.  Brandon also suggested a rather clever US maneuver to solve the US budget deficit.  I quote, “What has Guam done for us lately?”  At least we have options.

One last story.  CB seems to be developing the habit of lizard encounters, so it did not surprise me when I heard her yelp from the bathroom that I was needed to catch one.  Under normal circumstances this would be no great challenge, but I happened to be sleeping, an activity which I am rarely eager to end.  However, in an attempt to be supportive, I dragged myself out of bed and into the bathroom to perform the heroic deed.  “Where is it?” I asked.  She pointed out the window, and at this point you will probably recall that we live 14 floors up.  Un-amused (it was early) but still seeking to help, I asked, “What can I do about it?”  “It’s scary” she replied.  I do not foresee me understanding the fairer sex in the near future.

Generally speaking, things are well over here.  Work is slow but steady, and it has allowed for us to plan a great deal of travel throughout the summer and into the fall.  Just this past week we were able to purchase S$0.08 (yes, 8 cent) roundtrip tickets to Saigon.  Taxes were several hundred dollars per ticket, but it still ended up being a steal.  We look forward to visiting.  For those of you in the US, CB and / or John will be in Chicago, Louisville, Charleston and Orlando (and perhaps a few other cities) the last two weeks of this July and first week in August.  If you’re around, please let us know!

I will close with a smattering of our recent favorite commercials.  Boomdiada is from the Discovery Channel (we watch a good bit of it over here), we won’t claim to understand the SoyJoy commercials but nonetheless find them hilarious, and the Singapore Navy commercial is inspiration for those of you (myself included) who spend most of the beautiful daylight hours under fluorescent lights.

Boomdiada!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wOKQmO-ftk

SoyJoy office: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V-VDSyZCnc

SoyJoy tattoo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2X64F6IzQg&NR=1

Singapore Navy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD0cYeVpkgI

Cheers,

John

Dear all,

Despite any excitement the title of this entry may ensue, it’s been a pretty normal week:).  A few highlights though–

I was on my way to class on Monday night.  School has been crazy busy lately, not like the first two months when it was just general reading to keep up with.  We’ve had to deal with the three p’s:  projects, papers, and presentations.  We even had Saturday classes–ahhhh!!!!  This was my version of March Madness.  Now it’s April and I’m slightly more sane.  Well, until finals at the end of the month:)  

Anyway, I was on my way to class on Monday night.  NUS’s campus is nothing like Furman’s.  It has some pretty landscaped spots, but it’s mostly buildings with no huge lake in the middle.  You can see the sea and port if you’re standing on the right hill. Since the campus is mostly buildings you can imagine my surprise when a giant LIZARD (probably a little over a foot in length) crawled out in front of me while I was walking down the sidewalk.  If you’ve been following my blog, you have discovered that our trip to Kuala Lumpur provided me with ample reptile/amphibian handling skills but, alas, those skills failed me.  I was just walking along minding my own business probably listening to country music on my iPod (I dearly miss my country music–Steve, I know this appalls you:), and this lizard darts across my path.  I jumped and let out a little squeak, but trying not to be the weird white girl who was scared by a lizard, I tried to keep on moving.  I’m sure my Singaporean school mates found this hilarious.  I nearly kicked the thing because I didn’t see it in time.  When I went back for class later this week, I carefully scoured the landscape for large moving lizards–no worries.  He didn’t come back.  Tim McGraw must have scared him away:)

Later this week, once I was safe from lizards seeking higher education, John and I went to a little Chinese restaurant we like to frequent to order our usual “sweet and sour chicken rice.”  In fact, we frequent this place so much, that as we’re walking towards the place, all the sweet waitress has to do is hold up two fingers to confirm the number of orders we want to place.  Sometimes, we order three–people attribute this to the fact that we’re American.  I attribute this to the fact that John has a high metabolism.  As we approached the restaurant on this particular night, the woman looked at us with an apologetic face.  We started to confirm our order and she just shook her head as she said timidly, “no rice.”  “No rice!!!” I replied absolutely shocked that a Chinese restaurant–especially in Asia could EVER EVER run out of rice!!!  That’s like a Chinese restaurant running out of MSG!!!!  I didn’t understand, apparently, because I proceeded to try to order two other rice dishes and it just didn’t work. The rice was gone.  John was adventurous and tried something new (Hong Kong Noodles).  I had my sweet and sour chicken–without the rice.

It’s starting to seem like most of our interesting stories from the East involve food:)  Tonight, we were having dinner with our dear friend Rev at a food court in Vivo City–my favorite mall in Singapore (well, favorite western mall).  Dinner was delicious–I had Italian…yummy:).  When it came time to order dessert, John talked us into trying a “traditional Singaporean dessert” that his co-workers insisted he try one day.  Before I go any further, it’s important to understand that finding a food that is traditionally Singaporean is about as difficult as finding a food that is traditionally American.  It’s an immigrant nation and most foods can be traced back to immigrant countries.  But, his co-workers insisted that this dessert is distinctly Singaporean, so I guess we’ll call it the Apple Pie of Singapore:)  It’s called Iced Kachang.  For your viewing pleasure, I did a Google Image search on the dish.  Please view it below.

Yummy!!! Corn and Beans and a Snow Cone?

Yes, that is creamed corn on the top. And underneath this mountain of icey goodness is more corn, jellybeans, red beans, and jello.  While I can’t say the ice on top is bad (it tastes like different flavors of snow cones), I can say the concoction at the bottom is definitely not my favorite.  When dessert time comes, pass me the chocolate cake:)  John does like this though (sans corn and beans, I think) and the ice is definitely refreshing on a typical hot Singapore day.  When the dessert is half-eaten, the ice is melting, and you can see the jello and corn in the bottom, it looks a bit like a circus clown that jumped into a blender.  We had a good laugh about that one at dinner tonight.  What do you think?  

Dear friends,

Wow–what a month it has been.  Obviously, I am terrible at keeping a journal.  If you check my bookshelf at home in Kentucky, I’m sure you can find a few diaries I tried to start when I was younger only to leave the vast majority of pages blank.  This blog is my sorry attempt to break that habit. 

So this entry won’t be a boring recap of the last month and a half, I’ll just list a few of the things that have happened.  If you would like for me to expand on any–let me know:)

Valentine’s Day date to cafes around Singapore ending at a bar on the top floor of the tallest hotel in Southeast Asia,  a two week bout with laryngitis, LPGA golf tournament, English classes, dinners with Rev, St. Patrick’s Day in Asia, etc.  Just business as usual.  John and I decided we need to have a crazy adventure soon (we’re starting to think we’re boring)–we’ll be sure to keep you posted.  In other news, we are going to India at the end of April.  I’m sure we’ll be doing crazy things then!

Until our next wild story, here is a list for your viewing pleasure.  I was thinking about how much day to day life has changed since coming here.  Everyday life here is definitely different.  Sometimes I forget that because it has become normal for me.  Here are 25 things about Singapore (and around) that have just become part of life for me/us.  Enjoy:)

1.  I haven’t driven a car since 2008.  It’s been about three months–which seems like forever.

2.  I buy my meat, fruits and veggies, and flowers from a “wet market.”  It’s called this because they hose off the floor with a big hose and it remains wet all day.  

3.  Most chicken you can buy at the store still has the head on.  And the eyeballs in. 

4.  I hear at least four different languages almost every time I leave my apartment.

5.  Most days, John’s American accent is the only American accent I hear in person.

6.  I found a hair bow store in Singapore.  It’s in the Arab Quarter:)

7.  American dollars look weird to me.  And not very colorful.

8.  John and I have lived abroad for 85% of our married life.  

9.  I now say “lift,” “car park,” and “pram” and spell favourite with a “u”.

10.  If I meet people from the US, suddenly, our home towns seem so close–even if they’re from Oregon.

11.  I have officially been soaked on the sidewalk by a bus driving through a puddle.

12.  The worst sunburn of my life is finally ending with peeling skin.  It’s been 15 days since I burned.

13.  I never leave the house without an umbrella–for sun (I’m pale and should have used it 15 days ago) or rain (I like to be dry).

14.  We have a Furman alumni club here consisting of four members:).  Three of them work for Accenture.

15.  Football is soccer.  American football is what I miss.

16.  Everyone here loves an English football team.  Never mind they’ve never been to England…

17.  Sometimes, I actually prefer to use chopsticks.  Especially when I eat rice.

18.  If I don’t have rice every couple of days, I really want some rice.  Who would have thought?

19.  The best Mexican food I’ve had since I’ve been here was in Thailand.  Oh yeah, the Thai food was pretty good too.

20.  Singapore averages 400 people/acre.  That means that on my family’s acre and a half yard in Kentucky, I could put 600 Singaporeans.  

21.  I’m finally starting to run into people I know around Singapore.  In a city of 4.5 million people, that’s awesome:)

22.  The equator is hot.

23.  I can hear monkeys when I walk around sometimes.  No, they’re not in my head.  They’re above it.

24.  Being a newlywed in a one room 300ish square foot apartment has actually worked out well.  We’re looking forward to one day having a bedroom separate from a living room and a kitchen sink.

25.  Singapore is the 10th most expensive city in the world.  Ahead of NYC.  Friends in NYC, we understand your pain:)  Read all about it:)

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/cna/20090310/tap-327-survey-shows-singapore-worlds-10-231650b.html

More to come later if I can get my act together.  As always, thanks for reading.  We miss you:)