Nature In The Ctiy

We live in definite city, this is the view from one of our balconies.

In fact there is "city" all around us all the time, but less than 5 miles away from our apartment is a nature center and today we went exploring.

The Mac Ritchie Reservoir is one of many reservoirs in Singapore.  Singapore gets a lot of its fresh water from Malaysia so in the endeavor to be independent as a nation Singapore has a very aggressive reservoir program.

The water is treated and then sent into your home for drinking etc.   the water in Singapore is safe unlike many of the surrounding countries but we as a family still filter our water before drinking it due to the amount of chlorine added to the water by the city.

There are monkeys running wild in the park but we did not see any today probably because it had just rained so we think they were bedded down, it is very clear that you are not to feed the monkeys and we have been warned to hold on tight to our water bottles as the monkeys are known to swoop down out of the trees, grab your bottle and take of running.

There is beautiful plant life all around in the park and it is very peaceful as well.

The park is a nice place to picnic, there are benches and little covered picnic tables throughout the park.

Singapore is big on its signs and they leave little doubt as to what the sign actually means, here are some signs we saw today in our park walk.

There are also many places to just sit and reflect.  We were only able to explore a fraction of the park today, we will for sure be back, oh and the parking was way cheap!  Thirty cents for a couple of hours.

We are thankful to be in a city that offers many areas for us to enjoy Gods creation.

School In Singapore

One of the benefits of home schooling is that it really allows for continuity in education no matter where you are located.

 We sent our books on ahead of us which meant that the boys had about two weeks off in WI before we moved.  This time off allowed for some visiting with family and friends before our departure and sending the books ahead of us allowed us to start school back up the second week we were here.

The first month has been a bit tricky with getting all of our schooling done as we are learning how to get our groceries and exploring the city around us.  We seem to be in a great mode at the moment with accomplishing a lot of school work in the day and the boys have settled into a routine with their books.

I have not been able to find any home school groups here yet, I am sure they are around so I am keeping an ear out for a connection.  We also are having difficulty finding violin lessons that we can possibly afford!  In the states we paid about $14.00 per lesson per child here in Singapore the going rate is $120.00 per lesson per child!!!  Um, NO.  So we are checking into a lead with a 22 year old boy who will come to our house but I still do not know what his rate will be.

We get Mandarin lessons while we are here so we have been doing Rosetta Stone Chinese until our lessons start in January.  The boys will both get high school foreign language credit for the Mandarin and there is a place in Milwaukee that we can continue what we start here when we get home. 

Both Scott and the boys would like to take up Martial Arts while we are here so this next week we will be exploring our options with the lessons.  In the mean time we are doing a lot of reading and enjoying every moment in our days as each day comes with a new lesson and each lesson betters us as a person.

Clark Quay

We took the boys down to Clark Quay today, it is a strip along the river in Singapore that really gets hopping at night but we went late afternoon so it was not too bad as far as crowds go.

 Of course we had to get some ice cream sandwiches while we were there.  They put the ice cream on a piece of bread, fold it in half and wallah, an ice cream sandwich.  We actually had "normal" flavors, chocolate, mint chip, raspberry swirl, and mango.

It was a nice day so we decided to walk along the river down to the Merlion, there is a series of statues along the way depicting Singapore's history one of which is these naked kids pushing each other into the river

And here is the Merlion the symbol of Singapore. Here is an excerpt from an article about the Merlion:

The Merlion (Malay: Singa-Laut) is an imaginary creature with the head of a lion and the body of a fish, used as a mascot of Singapore. Its name combines "mer" meaning the sea and "lion". The fish body comes from Singapore's ancient name back when it was a fishing village — Temasek — meaning "sea town" in Javanese. The lion head represents Singapore's original name — Singapura — meaning "lion city" or "kota singa".

This one is just a baby Merlion so you can take pictures next to it, below is the bigger Merlion.

This one is the small one, the really big Merlion is on Sentosa Island.

We have seen many street sweepers while we have been here and finally today I was able to capture one in a picture.

These brooms do not look like they would be effective but they do a pretty good job at cleaning the streets.  I think we need to find one to sweep our deck.

We walked for about 2 hours so afterwards we were pretty hot, it was fun to stop at a fountain and play for a bit.

Our plan was to eat dinner at Brewerkz but then we realized it would cost over S$100.00 for our family to eat burgers and fries if we drank water so we opted for Burger King and all ate with a drink for S$21.00, that is a much better deal for the budget!

Window Wahsers, Black Chickens, Quail and Duck Eggs

I was saying to my friend Tammy that I just simply do not want to leave our apartment these days.  She said "that is culture shock and you just have to make yourself get out there and do something"  then I remembered Sylvia sharing with me that when she was in Spain she did not want to go out of her apartment so she made herself walk around the city. 

The boys and I had plans to go to Little India today to do some Christmas shopping and I was going to force myself to get out there and drive, something I am a bit timid about doing over here.  We were all set and the door bell rang, I forgot that it is window washing day today and tomorrow and they need to get to our balcony to attach themselves to the gondola.  So much for Little India.

At 4:00 pm or as they would say in Singapore 1600 hours we were informed that the window washers were done for the day and we could leave.  Perfect just in time for rush hour! No way I am driving in rush hour so we took a taxi. 

Most of this blog is going to be pictures of various things we face when we leave our apartment, of course this is just a small fraction of the things that come at us every time we walk out our door.  I find it interesting and hope you enjoy viewing some of our life.

The Salvation Army bell ringers are much more exciting in Singapore, how they can stand the heat in those black costumes I have no idea, but we enjoyed viewing them, and yes we put something in the bucket.

There are various religious sayings and signs through out the city, this one was on a building:

and these two were on the back of a truck:

when in Little India as we have said before there is nice refreshing coconut milk all natural and cheap

the streets are very narrow as are the parking spaces you have like literally 6 inches on both side of your car after backing into your spot and yes you have to back in.

Motor bikes are everywhere and they just zip along between the lanes and in and out of cars. We just heard on the news that there were 920 motor bike accidents last year in Singapore and 22 deaths related to the accidents, you really have to look out when you are changing lanes.

Temples, shrines and churches are everywhere with all major religious beliefs represented.

Chinese medicine is everywhere, I bought some herbs we will see if they work.

The stores are never disappointing in the entertainment value and we do find some great treasures also, look at the variety of eggs, you can get chicken eggs, duck eggs, quail eggs, or preserved duck eggs.  When I took these pictures there was a man who was bewildered as to why we would take pictures of eggs.

Chickens come in all shapes colors and sizes and of course you get the WHOLE chicken here is our find today

you notice the date, here they label the day then month then year, it makes sense but takes a bit of getting used to for example July 6 2007 would be 6/7/07 not 7/6/07 as we would say in the U.S. so the date on the chicken is December 8th not August 12th.  You see when we first moved here I did not understand the dating system so I thought everything was expired.

As I said above, Chinese medicine is everywhere, this is in just about every grocery store we have been in

If you are short of fish heads don't fret just head on down to the grocer and they will fix you up

Where the rest of the fish went, we don't know but you can buy the heads.

Little street restaurants and stores are everywhere

and you can find restaurants with "Western food" that is what they call our kind of food the boys love it when we eat in a "western food" place.

There are some really beautiful plants and flowers, we bought this one tonight for our kitchen it will remind us of God's beauty and grace all around us.

We are enjoying our time in Singapore we sure do miss home and family!  We are blessed to be in such a rich and vibrant culture and have much, much more to learn and discover. 

Thank you for all of your encouraging words and comments with our blog, we do read them and are blessed by them.

Wok Cookies

We love making Christmas cookies!  We try to make our cut out cookies every year with another family, it just simply adds to the fun, the Christmas music, the fellowship, the decorating it is just great.  This year we are very thankful to be able to have our new friends the Goetz family whom also live in Singapore join us for our cookie day. 

This morning Keegan and I set out to make the dough as it has to chill for a good hour before you can roll it out.  We brought a lot of things with us from the states but as we cook we realize more things that should have made it into our shipment, like a BIG mixing bowl for example. 

Our cookie recipe called for 7 cups of flour as we were making a double batch and I have no dish that will hold 7 cups of flour plus all of the other ingredients in the cookies.  A slight panic set in until we realized we can mix our dough in our wok, and that is exactly what we did.

Keegan got all the dough pre-flour into the wok.  We had to keep the wok on the stove because that is where the stabilizing ring is.  Then it was time to add the flour

In actuality it was kind of nice to mix the dough in the wok because of the shape of the wok it was easy to mix.

  And here is our dough:

We also did not bring our cookie cutters with us so we had to make some patterns for those of us like me who did not want to totally free cut the cookies.

Caleb found some basic shapes on the computer and we then cut them out of card stock to use as a cutting pattern.  We are now ready for the Goetz family to arrive.   The music is playing the dough, frosting and sprinkles are all set to go.

Even with the templates I must say there was much creativity in our cookie making I really enjoyed not having cookie cutters as it allowed for much more creativity in our cookie design.

If you notice some out of place flour in these next few pictures that is due to a slight flour fight that broke out in the kitchen :)

The kids did a great job with the decorating and Tammy and I enjoyed our creative outlet as well it was a nice and relaxing time together.

Our finished products are great, you would never guess they were made in a wok and hand cut and so much fun was had by all.

When we finished with the cookies we all headed down to the pool for a swim before the rain came.  Our day ended with a few rounds of "killer UNO" and "spoons" followed by breakfast for dinner hash browns, banana pancakes and scrambled eggs.  We welcome any visitors, we will be sure to offer you one of our "wok cookies".