Noah & Anna

After school Noah hangs out with a few other kids from his class (whose parents also work at school) and they are watched by other kids (whose parents work at the school too).  Noah plays with Karis and Daniel and Anna and sometimes Isaiah.  They had their play time and the sitter brought them down to us.  I asked Noah to wait just a minute while I finish up and we can go home.  Anna was following Noah and she decided to show off her strength and pick Noah up.  She did this a few times and Noah just went along with it.  While my back was turned I hear a smack sound.  Not the sound of a hand hitting a cheek, but more like the sound lips would make.  I turn around quickly and see Anna wiping her cheek and saying he slobbered on me.  I try not to show a reaction and I tell Noah that if Anna’s daddy was here he may beat you up.  You might not want to do that again.  Anna interjects in, “My daddy’s out of town.  He’s in India.”  Now if she was 15 that would have a whole new meaning, but thank God she is only 5 and she was just stating a fact.  Trying not to laugh I turn back to finish up so we can leave and again I hear a smack!  I quickly turn around to find Anna and Noah grinning and Noah says “I’m not gonna wipe it off!”  Oh dear!  It’s time to go home!  We try to talk to Noah about kissing without making it a big deal so he doesn’t do it again just to get a reaction.  The next day after soaking in our conversation he tells me that he has decided to kiss Katelyn next!  Ok baby I think you miss understood!  How about I word it like this, no kissing!

Another Unwritten Rule

This year I am teaching and working in the office. My office work mostly includes helping in the accounting office. Elena our accountant went on a vacation to visit family so I was left to man the ship. No sweet! I realize I need to make a deposit which included lots of change from the bake sale the PTF had just put on. So I head to the bank with all the coins. I ask the teller if I need to roll the coins or if she has a machine that can count them. She looks at me puzzled and I realize that “rolling coins” probably is confusing. I give her the check deposits and decide to finish with the cash. She counts the bills and then is puzzled why the deposit ticket does not add her count. “It’s because of the coins. You have got to add the coins to the deposit.” She whispers to her neighbor. “No coins today. Only Tuesday Thursday” she says. Really! I can only deposit coins on Tuesday s and Thursdays? Come to find out they also charge you for depositing coins. There’s a fee to process them. Why bother?! Get rid of the coins if the money is no good.


So take note. Don’t try to deposit coins in Singapore! Who knew?

Welcome Home

It seems Noah has got more of his dad’s genes than appear on the surface. Noah took two nights to get over jet lag. He is up and doing fine. Of course he’s still complaining about whatever is going on; wouldn’t be Noah if he wasn’t gripping about something. I (Holly) on the other hand would really like to sleep when it’s dark and be awake when it’s light out! Maybe one day...


We are back in Singapore and had a small welcoming party. Actually only one was alive to run away the rest of the “party” was belly up in my cupboards. Thank you Jesus for the roach motel!! We were met with our power out and the fridge has a hard time keeping food cold if it has no power. So I threw away a lot of food, well really condiments. And surprisingly that was the only odor waiting for us.

Our time in the states was very nice. We were very glad to see many of you. If we were not able to get together I am sorry and hopefully we can catch up next year! I do have one sort of disappointment/ surprise to our journey. As I looked forward to our trip to the states I wanted to hear the immigration agent when entering the US say “Welcome Home”. Maybe I have watched too many movies, but I pictured hearing those words and feeling relief or a peace as I entered “home”. However all the US agent had to say was “Did you bring any fruits back?” So I didn’t get my Hollywood entrance. I’ll survive. Then we are coming back to Singapore and the last time Steve came back into the country (after his Indo trip) the agent told him he could go through the short Singaporean line. So that’s what we did. No line. Right up to the agent. And as we approach I see the signs for “All Passports” and the ones for “Singapore Passports”. I’m feeling uneasy as I approach knowing my passport is not Singapore issued but we do have a “green” card. Then I notice the sign change and it now reads “Welcome Home”. We go through with swiftness and ease and I laughed at (or maybe with) God. Ok Lord, I hear ya!

Noah in Singapore

Thought we'd showcase Noah.  Noah has adjusted well to Singapore.  Of course there was jet lag and then when school started it took him about 6 weeks to be ok leaving Holly to go to class.  And if she ran into him walking the halls at school it spelled trouble.  But now he is a bit of a celebrity on campus.  Holly's middle school girls think he is just the cutest thing; so if Noah actually speaks, touches them or hugs them it's a big deal!!  Though that doesn't happen often usually he looks at the girls strangely with a look that says who are you?

Noah has visited the zoo and a local water park when his cousins came to visit in October.  The zoo was fun.  Noah and Karis even got to feed the manatees.  Noah was not as excited as the rest of us about this!

Later we visited the bird park. This was Noah's favorite place so far, asking us mulitiple times if we can go back. Noah wanted birds to land on him so bad he pretended to be a tree! It was quite hilarious!! He did get an opportunity to feed the birds, which he loved and then was jealous cause the birds were landing on dad and not him.  In an attempt to help encourage the birds to land on Noah I held his hand right at the feet of a bird hoping it would climb on.  Instead his little fingers must have looked like tasty worms so the bird took a bite!  It was painful for everyone, but Noah did recover and went on to feed more birds.

While at the bird park Noah got to play scientist.  This is his new gig.  He says he's going to be a scientist one day and he loves to ask questions about other scientist he sees (usually in movies).  His favorite movie is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (very scientist friendly!)  So anything labeled as science he is on it!

The blue tear drop is part of Noah's favorite playground.  It is on the roof at a mall we frequent quite a bit cause it's the only place we can get a real american hamburger with pork bacon!  As soon as he is done eating (really it starts before he's done) he is asking if he can go play.  There are many other acpects to the playground, but he loves to be turned around in this crazy seat.

Coming home from the mall on the train, Noah starts practicing his Mandarin (Chinese).  This lady knows exactly what Noah is saying and doing and starts to help him count to ten.  She continued to teach him other words, mostly body parts.  The people are very friendly especially when it comes to children!!

And most recently we purchased Noah an authentic Indian outfit.  He liked it a lot more than we were expecting.  We hope we find him a chinese outfit too so when we visit the states he can dress up like the locals! 

So Noah for the most part is loving life.  Except when the 4 yo inside tries telling us that because "no" is in his name he does not have to listen to us telling him no.  It's never ending, but life would be so boring otherwise!!

Way overdue update

We made it through our first semester of teaching and are now coming to the end of a well deserved 2-week time of rest and relaxation in Thailand with family.  This 3 week teacher Christmas vacation is very nice.  Life has been extremely busy and there are many things that we should have blogged about, but between killing our computer, the busyness of the end of the semester and such we simply haven't had a chance.  But I am going to attempt to bring you up to speed with this post (might take 2 posts - we'll see)

First semester ended on Dec. 18th and we spent a couple of days finishing up our Christmas shopping and such in Singapore before heading to Thailand to spend some time with Holly's family.  One of the coolest things we had the opportunity to do was taking Noah to play in the Singapore snow (see pic).  It is still 90 degrees here which made it hard to convince my self that it was actually Christmas.  To make it feel more "Christmassy" one of the malls setup a Christmas village and every evening they made it "snow" using giant bubble machines.  Noah loved playing in the snow, especially since he could do it in his swim trunks and didn't have to worry about coming in to warm up.  While not the same as real snow, it was pretty cool.

Following our snowy outing and a couple last minute trips to Toys R Us, we boarded a plane to Thailand.  Holly and I were excited about seeing family, but Noah was ready to ride an elephant.  Back in October, we went to the Singapore zoo and he saw people riding elephants.  He wanted to do it, so we told him we would do it in Thailand over Christmas break.  As a result he has brought up riding one at least once a week.

During our two weeks in thailand we have experienced lots of new things (mostly good, some not so good).  We got to ride in tuk-tuks.  Singapore definitely needs to invest in some tuk-tuks around the MRT stations.  We have had some great Thai food from the local street venders and restaurants.  We went swimming on top of a mall.  Now that is a great concept - put a pool on top of shopping mall.  Mom can shop while dad hangs out with the kids at the pool.  Noah got to ride on water slides for the first time.  Don't know what was up with the water slides, but I (Steve) could not slide on them.  Everytime I went down I had to push myself the whole way.  Holly and I got pedicures, sad to say no polish for me (Steve). 

After a week in Bangkok we took a day trip to Ayutthaya to check out some of the ancient buddist temple ruins.  To get
there we rode
3rd class on a
train (Note: trains
in Thailand are very different from trains in Singapore).   We did not have seats, so Holly, Michelle and I had to stand.  But not Noah, he was basically adopted into a Thai family.  They squeezed him into their seats, feed him, gave him something to drink, etc... Once we got to Ayutthaya we went sight seeing.  At one of the stops Holly and Noah got to see the ruins from atop an elephant.  Afterwards we went to a Buddhist temple.  This was a great reminder to me of why we came to Southeast Asia to serve.

Holly and I also got to celebrate our 12th anniversary in Thailand as well.  We left Noah with family and headed off to Kanchanaburi for the weekend.  The biggest obstacle of the weekend was the fact that no one on the bus or taxi spoke english which made it tough to travel.  On several ocassions during our trek we had no idea if we were going to the right place, but praise
God we made it.  The lack of being able to communicate was by far the thing I missed the most about Singapore.  Once we made to to Kanchanaburi we had a great time - Thai foot massage, great Indian and Thai food, hung out at a water fall, took an elephant trek thru the forest, piloted a bamboo raft down a stream and took a tour of a WWII memorial called Hellfire Pass.

It was a great anniversary weekend, then we trekked back to Bangkok by bus with no translator.  We got on the right bus and after several instances of second guessing ourselves we arrived at the correct bus terminal where we got a cab and ended up close enough to family's house that we could walk home.

On our next to the last night in Thailand, we took a river taxi downtown to eat somee chicken tikka masala and nan (Indian food for my american friends).  The food was quality, not quite Al-Ameen in Singapore but very good.  Following dinner, we caught a cab and started making our way home.  Our cab driver was the first one of the trip that could speak a little english and he was excited to have someone to practice talking with.  Actually he was too excited about being able to use his english and we rear-ended another cab.  Thankfully no real injuries, just a little sore necks.  After the crash, he kicked us out of the cab and told us to catch another one and off we went.  This was Noah's first car wreck and our first in Asia.

Now we are getting ready to head back to Singapore for a couple of days before we head back to school.  It has been a great Christmas break, but I am ready to get back to our lives in Singapore.  This trip has shown me how much I take for granted in Singapore and how much like home it has become.  Thanks for keeping up with us and hope you had a Merry Christmas and your New Year will be awesome.  We hope to be more deligent about keeping this updated.