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.