A Geography Lesson and an Update

Being so far away from everyone and trying to keep everyone updated on our goings-on so far has been kind of hard, so I thought I'd try my hand at starting a blog. I can't make any promises, but I'm hoping to post on a regular basis. I'll probably just ramble on about nothing in particular in most of my posts; so if you have nothing better to do (you've alphabetized your canned goods, scrubbed the grout in your bathroom with a toothbrush, and memorized A-M of the phone book) and you'd like see how things are going, you can just check it out. Obviously, I'd still love to get emails, but I think this might be an easier way for me to "communicate to the masses". So...

OK, so here we are in Singapore. For those of you who aren't quite sure where Singapore is, you're not alone. Cameron thought that we were moving to Mexico when he first heard of it. (Well done, IHS Geography 101!) Anyway, I've inserted this handy map. If you click on it, you can see that Singapore is that teeny, tiny dot in Southeast Asia, just below Malaysia. In fact, so tiny that the black dot is covering the whole island on this map! Anyway, it's about a 20+ hour flight from America; not exactly convenient for weekend trips to visit mom and dad! But on the plus side, a mere 1 1/2 hour flight to places like Bali, Phuket, Java, Bangkok; a 4 hour flight to Hong Kong, the Maldives...Places that we hope to check out while we're over on this side of the world.

I'll do a quick update in this post and then will post day to day-type things in my other posts...

Things so far are going good. We are settling in as best that we can without many of our household goods. We're waiting on our sea container to arrive and in the meantime have rental furniture. The house is pretty sparse right now, so I can't wait to fill it up with our stuff and make it feel more like home. When we arrived, we thought that our air shipment would be here waiting for us. We had packed towels, sheets, kitchen supplies, our computer, etc. Just a few things that we figured we'd need right off the bat. Well, (of course!) it wasn't here. It took three weeks before our air shipment arrived. So, in the meantime, we bought one towel and small blanket per person, we were eating off of paper plates, using plastic utensils and washing styrofoam cups. We were roughing it! Of course, it's hard to cook without kitchen supplies, so we ate out quite a bit. (Oh darn!!) My neighbor lent me a skillet, though, and I bought a giant pot that did double duty as a steamer and stock pot, so eventually I was forced to cook meals for my family. Our air shipment arrived safely a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I was ever so glad to see a can opener in my life. Pretty sad stuff, huh?

Cameron and Alex started school at the American School the week after we got here. They are settling in. I know it can't be easy starting a new school in the middle of the year, let alone moving to a new country to do it. They both seem to be adjusting, though, and are doing pretty good so far. The school itself is amazing. They have a great campus and awesome facilities for all of the kids. For example, Alex's PE class is doing a swimming segment this quarter!

Cameron just got back from his interim semester trip. He went to an island in Indonesia with about 20 kids from his school. (Interim semester is a type of "life enrichment" project that's a requirement for all high school students at the American School. The students have over 100 places all over the world to choose from to go to, with seniors getting first choice. Places like Australia, Nepal, Rome, Greece, Indonesia, New Zealand...I was jealous!) I had hoped that this would not only be a great experience for Cameron, but would also give him the chance to bond with some other kids from school, and it did. He made several new friends and had a great time. I'm so relieved! I'll have to write more about his trip in another post and maybe post some pictures that he took, too.

Alex is doing good in 1st grade. I met with his teacher last week and she said that he's fitting in well so far. She did say that when they need partners to do something in class, all of the girls want to know if Alex can be their partner. When I asked Alex about it, he just smiled and said, "I think they like my hair." Our own little Casanova!

Alison and I are together during the day while the boys are at school. She and I go on walks, go to the park, explore Singapore and spend alot of time at the American Club. They have tons of activities, classes, a pool, library, spa, gym, restaurants, game room, bowling alley...you name it. Alison has swimming lessons and ballet class every week there and she's loving it.

Eric is coming to visit us for spring break and we're really looking forward to him being here and all of us being together. Unfortunately, his break is the week before Cameron and Alex's break, so they'll still have to be at school, but I'm sure we'll find plenty to do during the day. He'll move over here in mid-July to do his sophomore year at the American School. I know that Cameron, especially, will be happy to have his brother and friend back!

Well, I think that covers the basics for now. Of course, there are a hundred things I could tell you about living in Singapore and adjusting to life over here, but I'll save that for another time.

More later!