April Already?!

It's already April and so much has been going on here. I'm sure that's pretty obvious since my last post was in January! I have some serious catch up to do. My Mom was really tired of seeing the Christmas page and asked, "Now...when are you going to do a new blog post??" It's much more relaxing for Mom to read everything that is going on in our lives than listening to my speed talking. I've been known to wear people out when I get excited talking about something, and go on and on without breathing. So, sit down, relax with a cup of coffee or tea, and enjoy the relaxing written word.

Kevin has been extremely busy with project planning at his work. He's gone out to lunch and dinner a few times with his managers and team to unload some of the stress. He's been asked to face new eating adventures head on, like fish head soup. He hasn't tried it yet, but was told that he needs to eat the eyeballs. Nothing goes to waste. That's disgusting!!! But people seem to like it. One company lunch outing celebrated the Chinese New Year salad toss. There were many large round tables with about 12 people each. Ten courses were served, and the first course was a large salad which everyone tossed together. They all reached into the bowl using over sized chopsticks tossing all the ingredients into the air, over and over again. The salad tossing ritual is only done during Chinese New Year to "gather prosperity" for the upcoming year.

Salad bowl before the tossing action

Some salad tossing action                                                                           

I've been going to Pilates reformer classes twice a week since December and I really enjoy it. I would love to train at a Pilates school somewhere and become a certified instructor when I return home someday. My Mom loves that idea. Private lessons! The Pilates studio is located in the central business district close to Kevin's office. I walk by some interesting buildings near the studio. There is a Chinese temple that people place burning incense sticks by the entrance. The incense has a really strong smell that's a little too much for me. I have discovered that you miss a lot if you don't look up. I was waiting for my bus one day to go home, and looked up across the street and noticed an unusual, massive apartment building that looked like a Borg space ship. (OK...so I'm a Star Trek fan)

Inside the studio

Seng Wong Beo Temple
 

 Massive apartment building (center platforms are walkways with gardens)

I was recently invited to join someone for an hour long aerobics outdoor class. I thought no problem. I've done aerobic exercise before. (oh boy) There were about 100 people in an outdoor pavilion overlooking the Singapore River. I thought this looked like fun. I knew I was in trouble when I was already feeling the heat and humidity before we started. The workout was intense choreographed aerobics and kickboxing to loud, upbeat music. Tourists were walking by taking our pictures and watching. I never sweated so much in my life! I should have been given a T shirt saying, "I survived the aerobics/kickboxing insane boot camp!" It was a great heart pounding workout, but I think I'll stick with Pilates for now.

I have also been busy with weekly Bible study and ESL (English as a Second Language) ministry for women at our church. I have been helping with interviewing new students by testing their English comprehension and placing them in the appropriate English level. Over 200 women are taught English and Bible stories each week. There is no cost for the English classes and childcare, and no advertising is done. They seem to hear about it by word of mouth, and new ladies join every week. There are long waiting lists for almost all the levels. I just started to teach my own class of 19 ladies who are mostly from Japan, Malaysia, China, and Korea. It's a new and exciting challenge for me, since I've never been an ESL teacher before.

Adorable pictures of our pampered pooch

Christmas in Singapore

Happy New Year!! We hope everyone had a wonderful and blessed Christmas. We were unable to fly home to spend Christmas with family, and it was a little sad being away from our loved ones. We missed everyone, but Kevin and I created new memories spending our first Christmas in our shorts and flip flops in and around Singapore. Kevin had two weeks off for Christmas and New Year. Four of those days were spent in Bali, Indonesia. Details and lots of pictures will follow in a later post.

We were here in Singapore for Christmas day and had a wonderful buffet dinner at Melt the World restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. There was a turkey, ham and roast beef carving station, Indian and Chinese specialties, barbeque, sushi, fresh crab, shrimp, lobster, oysters, a decadent dessert station, and much more. We were sitting next to a large group of people and the men were dressed in their formal Scottish kilts and Sporrans (leather or fur waist pouches). They were having such a good time with their loud merry making, that we expected them to break into song with a folk ballad. No such luck.

Not only was the warm and tropical weather in December kind of fun and different, but so was watching children playing barefoot in the "snow" generated by a soap making machine. This stuff was sprayed all over the ground and on a huge Christmas tree in front of a shopping mall. This happy scene was complete with snowmen, reindeer and the all too familiar sound of Elvis singing "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" over loud speakers.



Since we live in a very small apartment, we did not have room for a Christmas tree. Plus, all our decorations and ornaments are back home buried deep in storage. But we had to do something festive in our little dwelling place. Our inspiration came from all the blue and silver decorations along Orchard Rd. (The well known elite road in Singapore with endless high-end shopping.) We did a simple garland with blue, silver and gold trimmings. The lights were fiber optic stars.






















There were so many different Christmas trees throughout the city with various themes, colors and sizes. We spotted traditional red and green trees, turquoise trees, teddy bear trees, fairy trees, elephant forest trees....




















































Tangs is a department store comparable to Macy's or Nordstrom. They hosted a Christmas elephant exhibit which showcased large, hand painted elephants by different groups of people around the world. These elephants were all over the city, but most of them were on Orchard Rd. near Tangs.






















































We ended 2011 by watching the new Mission Impossible movie at the nearby Imax theater, and going to the Titanic Artifact Exhibition at Marina Bay Sands ArtScience Museum. Singapore is the first city in Southeast Asia to host this exhibit. There were real artifacts recovered from the ship's wreckage and intriguing stories of some of the passengers. They replicated the grand gold staircase and different areas of the ship with great similarity. We felt like Titanic passengers walking through hallways of first class, steerage and the boiler room. There was even a large chunk of ice on display to look like an iceberg for people to touch and feel how painfully cold it was for the doomed passengers fighting for their lives in the freezing ocean.




We had a wonderful time during Kevin's time off. He's back at work now working hard, and I am catching up on our blog. Time flies by quickly when your working and playing hard. I plan to upload some video of the "Christmas Around the World" musical presentation from our church in my next post. So stay tuned...

Singapore Walks - Clarke Quay

Welcome back to part two of The Original Singapore Walks. This time I will show you around the eccentric Clarke Quay Singapore River area. Kevin joined me on this walk which took place on a Saturday evening.

There were only about five people in this tour group, and Kevin was the only guy. One woman was from Chicago, one from Australia and another from Italy. There are many restaurants along both sides of the river, which is called the pedestrian mall. The tour guide said that some of the best chili crab can be found in one of the restaurants here. We took note of that for later. There are seafood restaurants, ethnic restaurants, brew pubs, and lots of night clubs.

The Singapore River used to be very polluted when it was used primarily as a trade route filled with boats transporting goods to warehouses. Some people used to live in tiny spaces under the bridges making their living fishing. One old man in particular was called the Guardian of the River, who lived under one of the bridges for many years. City planners had a vision to change the Clarke Quay river area for good. They cleaned up the river and relocated some tenants to a different area of the city. Historical buildings were restored and moored Chinese junks (tongkang boats) were refurbished into floating restaurants and nightclubs. Now, river taxis such as bumboats, float up and down the river providing relaxing and interesting tours of the Clarke Quay area. Kevin and I have not done this yet, and were told that the best time to ride one is at night.


The building in the background of the picture below is so unusual and unique to Singapore. This is the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. This building complex has a hotel, large shopping mall, skating rink, casino, art/science museum, convention center, grand theatre, and a skypark on the very top of the building which looks like a ship. When I first saw this building I thought it looked like there was a great flood in Singapore and a ship beached itself on the top of three buildings, and then the waters receded to expose the spectacle. That's definitely not the case. This building was designed by a great visionary.


We walked by some intriguing restaurants that Kevin and I will be returning for dinner sometime. Two restaurants in particular that caught our eyes was a Chinese restaurant called Indochine, and a Moroccan lounge called Marrakesh. As a group, we stopped in Marrakesh and had drinks while listening to our tour guide talk about the history and current happenings of the area. I had a Moroccan mint tea on ice that was so refreshing. They normally serve it hot, but I wanted it cold. It's not traditional ordering tea on ice, but I loved it. Kevin had a green drink that I don't remember the name of. It was sweet and very green!
































We stopped into a pewter museum and gallery called Royal Selangor that specializes in handcrafted pewter and tin. Pewter was originally used as currency. People would trade pewter figurines, such as animals in exchange for goods. Later, the figurines were replaced with pewter coins. Pewter was made into coin "trees", and someone would snap off a coin to be used as currency. When all the coins were used up and just the outline of the tree remained, it would be melted down to make more coins. We watched pewtersmithing demonstrations that showed pewter being poured into coin tree shaped molds, and cups being hammered into textured patterns.

At the conclusion of our tour, we took our little souvenir coins that were given to everyone in the group, and headed to one of the restaurants to sample some yummy food that enticed us earlier. I might head back to Royal Selangor sometime soon to try my hand in making my own pewter bowl at the School of Hard Knocks. I can take home a hand made piece of history, plus it would be fun to make a little noise. :-)