Hello from Singapore! We have been here for almost a week, and we have seen a lot of Singapore! The weather in Singapore is cloudy, but hot. To deal with the heat, we walk through the malls whenever possible (Malls are usually the first floor in most buildings.), take handkerchiefs to dab our sweat, and drink a lot of water. 

We have walked a ton, because we don't have our own car (way, way too expensive-- in the six digits). We take the MRT (subway), that is usually pretty busy and very, very clean. The girls noted that there are no durian fruits allowed on the MRT- signs are posted- because they are a stinky, spiky fruit (and also the national fruit of Singapore).

Kiera: We went to Sentosa, an entertainment island. My favorite shops are Candylicious and Hershey's Chocolate World. The thing I most want to do there is go to Universal Studios. They have rides and my dad says they have a Transformers ride. There is a globe next to the Hershey's World that is huge. It spins and there is mist and we got to play in it. My dad said we will go there some time soon. We had to get 100 sister points in order to go and we earned them all so we get to go soon!

We looked at a lot of the things to do and there is climbing up the Merlion, going to the beach, going to see motion movies, bug and butterfly world, ziplines, and a lot of restaurants. We went down to the beach first. Chloe, McKenna, and I (Kiera) kicked the big waves and splashed ourselves. The water tastes horrible. While we were waiting for the first trolley, we saw a beautiful peacock. It was a male and it was plucking its feathers. We got off the bus at Underwater World and got shaved ice with flavoring on it. It doesn't taste the same, but it was good. We noticed when we got to the bottom of the bowl that it had tadpole eggs, worms, and other gooey things at the bottom. They were made out of gross gummy stuff. We said we saved the bottom for our dad.

After that, we saw a female peacock. It followed me. We were about to get on another trolley when we saw a sign that said Please Don't Feed Us. We Like to Hunt Ourselves. We looked up and on top of the sign there was a monkey!! We saw the trees shaking and there were two more monkeys. Chloe tried to get close to one and my mom said they are not meant to be nice. So Chloe backed away.

Sentosa was really fun. I wanted to buy candy, but my dad said maybe later. That was my favorite part about that day. I got to spend time with my family while seeing a new part of SIngapore.

Chloe: We got to the apartment really late on Thursday night. Everyone was tired but excited. We were about to start our new journey and we explored the apartment. We learned right away that the light switches are outside the doors and so are the water heaters. My parent's bedroom is huge and the kitchen is small. My room is pretty small too. McKenna, Kiera, and I all share a room. There are two closets in both rooms. We have a washer, but not a dryer so we have to hang up our clothes to dry. My suitcase is really messed up. We have a balcony in every room, but we can't go out because it is locked. The view is beautiful. I can see lots of buildings right across the street. At night it is very light out because of all the buildings. If I look down they are building a new train station and it is really noisy at night and early in the morning. My dad wants them to stop or at least not work early or late hours. We are now use to the time difference.

Sorry for the expressions girls...this photo was too fun not

 to post!

There is a pool right on the eighth floor! The view is great. We also eat breakfast on the eighth floor. At breakfast they serve watermelon sometimes, but my favorite is the toast- buttered toast. They serve eggs every day. They are scrambled and too creamy. They also have apple juice that is to die for. Some people eat cream of mushroom soup, watery oatmeal, brown beans, and different kinds of dumplings. My family likes to eat the toast, cereal, and fruit. Sometimes we like the tomato noodles and pizza bites. McKenna has hot chocolate every day. As you can see everything is different.


I hope you are doing well. I hope to see you when I get back. I miss all of you a lot. I will talk to you again in the next blog.

Traci: As you can see, the girls are acclimating themselves to the new and different life. It was fun to discuss what they would write about. They had so many things to choose from! McKenna will be writing her own posts, while I will supervise the other two girls' writings. They are both very excited to write again.

I know this is a very long first post, but we purposefully went almost completely offline and focused on becoming a family again for the time that Ryan was off. It was very nice to spend time together again. In five days, Ryan showed us everything he had scoped out. Basically, everything is different! Since Ryan has lived in Chicago, it wasn't as big of a change for him. But, the girls and I have never lived in a big city, so it is all new.

I had read in expat blogs that the people of Singapore are rude. We have had the opposite experience. Men are giving the girls and I seats on the MRT, and we even had an old Singaporean man stop us on the sidewalk, ask us where we were from and gave us advice on sights to see.

It's very nice to have someone come in and clean for us every day. We just do our laundry  and straighten up. I will certainly be spoiled once we move into our apartment.  We are going to look at apartments on Monday and Tuesday next week. That will be interesting! We start at 10AM (The time for everything here. Nothing opens or gets going before that. Ryan doesn't go to work until 9AM.), and go all day. They are "sending a car for us."



I will be posting an album of more photos on Facebook with many more interesting sights!


We are so happy to be a family again!!

Traci