First Days in Singapore

Happy New Year from Singapore! It's been a busy couple days as we get acquainted with our new city. Singapore is more lush than I imagined and I really like the riverfront area where we are staying and will be living. Brian showed us around the hotel when we arrived Wed morning and once the girls saw the swimming pool, that's all they talked about so we were splashing in the pool by 9am. It took me a mere 3 hours in Singapore to find another family of US expats. They were at the hotel pool with their 3 kids, fresh off their flight from Boston. Turns out that their oldest daughter is 5 and will be starting Kindergarten at Megan's school on Jan. 12th. It's nice to know that Megan will see one familiar face at orientation!

We've spent a fair amount of time walking along the river and yesterday we were able to visit our new apartment. It is larger than I imagined and being on the 10-11th floor of the building, the girls will have beautiful views of the Singapore River from their bedroom windows. Megan will have the smallest room of the three, simply because she wanted to be able to see the pool from her room. Here's a picture of the pool and grounds of the complex. I have no problem imagining myself lounging out there with the girls many days during my residence there!

Elizabeth has had a difficult time understanding where we are living. At various times our first couple days she has asked things like, "Are we having lunch in Singapore?" as if she was still waiting to see this mysterious place we have talked about. I also have to report that the high humidity has actually had a positive effect on one person's hair in the family. Elizabeth suddenly has little locks of curls in her hair that I haven't seen since she was a baby. It looks much cuter that way so good for her!

Jet lag is quite interesting with young children. Our first morning, New Year's Day, the girls were all awake at 4am. Of course, they were cratering by lunchtime so then proceeded to sleep most of the afternoon. I had to fight to wake them up and even then, they fell asleep in the car while we were out last night. The result? Megan and Elizabeth woke up at 3am today. Not going in the right direction! And poor little Emily has fallen asleep more times in her stroller in the past few days than in the rest of her life. Today I will experiment with a different napping routine and see if we get better results tomorrow.

Yesterday we made our way over to Orchard Road - the big shopping district. One could easily spend 2-3 days making their way through the malls and lines of stores. I visited a Japanese bookstore that had a large selection of English books. There's also a Borders somewhere along the road where I'll likely spend plenty of money while I'm here.

I've been to two different grocery stores already and they were pretty much what I expected. There were more American products than I recall seeing in Europe but some of them were so expensive that they will be a "sometimes treat" for the girls. A box of Apple Jacks? About $9 US. I'm looking forward to exploring the food situation more in the coming days after we're in our apartment. I do know that they have refried beans, tortilla chips and cheddar cheese so as long as I can fix nachos every now and then, I think we'll be okay :) We did have some local food for lunch yesterday at a hawker center and we all survived will no ill effects (other than a couple Tums for me!) so that's a plus.

I suppose that's plenty for now...today is an exciting one for us as some of our furniture and our air shipment will be arriving this afternoon. I'm eager to start settling into our new place because I'm quickly tiring of looking through 14 bags to find everything! Hope 2009 is off to a great start for everyone!