Sing It With Me!

Yes, it's official...we'll be "coming to America" in a few weeks! I know, I know in the song, they yell "today!" But, apparently Neil didn't think the song had quite the same punch when he sang "they're coming to America...in a few weeks!" And admittedly, he probably wasn't talking about the Martins, but hey, it's our current theme song, so I'm going with it.

Actually, we didn't plan on coming back to the US until the summer of '09, but once we got here, we realized that that's a REALLY LONG TIME. Singapore really is a nice, relatively easy place to live and adjust to, but I was missing home quite a bit. So I talked to Colin and after lots of begging, pleading and crying (Colin did the crying), he agreed that it'd be a good idea for me and the kids to go back home for a visit. We're all SO excited. (Well, all of us except for Colin who will have to stay behind and work. Hey, someone's gotta earn the money! This trip ain't cheap, ya know!) Anyway, we'll be back June 13-July 27. We'll spend about a month with mom and dad in Illinois and then drive down to Nashville for a couple of weeks and stay with my friend Jeni. Can. Not. Wait.

Not only am I looking forward to seeing everyone, I'm a little giddy at the thought of shopping at Target. And Kohl's! Oh I've missed them! Here in Singapore, they don't have stores like that. Don't get me wrong, they have hundreds of malls and clothing stores, but the clothes over here are primarily for Asian women who all happen to be just a tad more petite than me (blasted Anglo genes!). And even though I've come to terms with the fact that I can't fit into their diabolically small clothes, I can't even make myself feel better by buying a pair of shoes because I can't squeeze my gigantic size 9s into the size 7s which are at the top of the Singapore size chart. So I'm really looking forward to going into a clothing store, grabbing my size and seeing that it fits. That and not having to hear the Chinese owner say, "Oh, you too big! You need extra large!"

Another thing...communication is a problem here. Though English is a main language, most of the time we have absolutely no idea what the locals are saying, and even when we understand the words, we still have no idea what they mean. More on this in another post, but as an example...we went to a restaurant and ordered water to drink.

"Orange?" asks the waiter.
"No, water."
"Orange?" he asks again.
"No, water."
"Orange," he says.
"No. Just waaaa-terrrr." We practically sign it.

It was exhausting, but we did eventually get water. I mean, how difficult is that?? To this day, I still don't know what the confusion was about, but after being here awhile and seeing how they confuse the language, I think that what he meant was "lemon" and what he meant to say was, "Would you like a lemon in your water?" But who knows? Maybe he really did want to bring an orange to our table. Believe me, that's a possibility, too. Anyway, we're really looking forward to talking and being understood.

Hey, it's the little things.

And now I think I'll put on my Gloria Vanderbilt jeans...or maybe Jordache, crank up my Walkman and listen to Neil sing about us coming to America...in a few weeks!

More later!