Well, there is work for Karsten, school for the children and Katrin and sleeping, feeding, burping and nappy-filling for the youngest. All that mixed with fun ;-)
We are sad that Katie's time with us has come to an end and she flew back to Australia 10 days ago. We do miss her! Katie has been a fantastic help, she cooked, cleaned and looked after the children and therefore made our life much easier. Now you probably wonder what Katrin did at all ;-) What a blessing to have had such a godly woman in our midst! THANK YOU!
Jonas has a busy time in school, lots of tests are written, which is quite challenging since he missed the first half of the school year here and most of the test cover this time. An advanced lesson in resilience, endurance and learning to learn. He is walking every day to and from school, with a heavy backpack. We have brought his bike, but he has to cross heavy traffic in front of our condo: Bukit Timah Road is 4 lanes oneway from east to west, then there is a fenced flood water channel and then Dunearn Road (4 lanes oneway from west to east). To cross all those there is one of many overpasses close by with lots of steps, so it's easier to walk than haul the bike plus backpack up and down that overpass.Yesterday in Sports he jump over 5 m in long jump and ran 9.9 sec over 75 m, not bad for warm up, eh?!
Jonas has made friends here, but also keeps contact via Internet with his friends back home. Just recently he had a Skype session with his grandma in Spain, going over some Spanish questions he had in preparation for the Spanish test. That is multi-cultural globalisation in practice.
Michael has also found friends and goes to school happily. One of his friends, Mika comes also from a German background. For lunch he eats at the school canteen and tries out new tastes, which is brave since he doesn't like hot spicy food and that is one of the most common ingredients here. He loves the tropical fruit and encourages us to buy this or that to try it out. So Katrin googles a lot ;-)
We have discovered quite some tasty new fruit like rose apples (also called plum apple). This native fruit is pear shaped, rose-purple in colour (the darker the colour the sweeter the taste apparently, unripe fruit has bright green colour) and waxy. The core contains of inedible fluff and once we had an inedible seed the size of a cherry tomato, but the skin is edible. The flesh is crisp and watery (similar to a watermelon), so very refreshing and juicy. It tastes like a cross between nashi pear and capsicum, there is a hint of rose water. They are in season now till the June. Rose apples are rich in antioxidants, calcium, fiber, Vitamin A and C. It is regarded as tonic for brain and liver in India - so we bought a few! The fruit is eaten like an apple, but is also served in salads, pies or made into juice. The court we live in is called Chempaka, the rose apple is also called 'champakka'.
Michael also loves nashi pears, which are available now too. These fruit are shaped like an apple and have an apple like texture, but they are quite watery, which makes them less suitable for baking compared to European pears. They are best eaten raw and taste like a cross between pear and melon. The nashi pear is ripe even though it's firm, but should be handled with care. It can be stored for a while in a cool and dry place. This pear is a great source of fiber and Vitamin C. Nashi pears are the oldest known cultivated pear and a symbols of spring around here.
Esther is settling into school, the teacher said her reading and spelling level is top of class - she loves to read aloud at our nightly Bible reading time with a lot of emphasis on intonation. Last week she had a friend over, they played with Lego for a long time and then hopped into the pool. Next week another friend will come over, Katrin talked with her mum for a while on the phone and learnt that this mum talked to a friend of hers about Esther as in 'a new girl has come into my daughter's class, she has 6 siblings'. To this the friend replied: "I think, they live in our condo, there is a family with 7 children".... We are definitely being watched and it's great to know that God watches over us with love and joy ("The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing" or in another translation: "Your God is present among you, a strong Warrior there to save you. Happy to have you back, he'll calm you with his love and delight you with his songs. Your God is present among you, a strong Warrior there to save you. Happy to have you back, he'll calm you with his love and delight you with his songs." Zephaniah 3:17)
Esther loves Sophie and is very glad to have a little sister, she enjoys carrying her in the pouch (Baby Bjorn) or just to carry her like that.
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| Katie doing Maths with the boys (aka baking) |
Quite often they sit in their room and play with Lego. Noah is very creative when playing, he takes his Lego and uses highly coveted 'Blu tac' to tie the man up or help him to abseil...We have been to the Science Centre while Katie was still here, in three hours we covered only parts of the first floor and it has 4 floors or even 5 with 1000 interactive displays. They say in their flyer: "Even if you spend a mere 5 minutes on each exhibit, it will still take you at least seven days to see all we have to offer here!". It's fantastic that their family year pass only costs $50, Katrin bought one pass for herself and the 3 younger children and once we all go we could buy another pass for the rest of the family. The options for the pass included also a pass for 3 adults and 2 children, accommodating the domestic helper. Outside of the centre are some special gardens: Ecogarden, Kinetic Garden and Waterworks. In future we have to bring our togs regardless of where we go, the Jurong Bird Park had a water park included and now the Science Centre too. Both attractions are less than ten minutes apart (by bus). Another good thing is the direct bus connection between our condo and the science centre, it only takes 20 min and all the buses are air conditioned ;-) Outside the Centre is McDonald's, so guess where we had lunch!
The boys cope well without the school social network and take their turns at time alone. But we are all glad that we have a great garden back home and everybody misses their friends, which is good to realise. David and Yannic are asking a few times if they could send an email to their class or to Mrs. Spencer, but look a bit confused when Katrin tells them that Mrs. Spencer is no longer at their school and that their class has moved on to Year 2 and is been reshuffled... I guess it's their first year at school and maybe after Prep they didn't realise the changes over all the novelty of being a big school child in Year 1?
Sophie is doing well, she feeds nicely and sleeps well at night only waking once for a feed. She started to smile, which is greeted by a lot of excitement from the older children.
Sophie had her first bath, alone in the basin and then just to make sure also with her brothers:
This week we went for Sophie's 1month-check up, she has gained 1kg. Well, as I said she feeds well and still has cubby checks ;-) All is fine.
We also have obtained a certificate stating that Sophie is Australian by descent. Now we have to get an Australian passport, which needs to be stamped by Singaporean authorities (a sign for her entry into the country) and then we can apply for her dependent pass. As foreigners who aren't tourists we need this check card size pass as ID.
All the children love to cuddle her. Noah came a few times shouting "The baby is awake, she wants milk!" because Sophie dared to move or blink in her sleep... He doesn't mind holding her even when she is upset. Yannic also makes sure he get his share of holding and cuddling her, he especially likes to hold her hand. When Katrin feeds her or she is in the pouch Yannic comes and looks for Sophie's hand to hold it.
Chinese New Year lasts for two weeks. The management office of our condo organised a dragon dance group to come and perform. It was interesting to see it from close by. The band makes a lot of noise to scare the evil away. Then two person are under one dragon costume and it looks like hard work for the second person. There were two dragons, I guess it has to do with the balance of Yin and Yang, two is very important. Towards the end of the performance one of the dragons climbed up a pole. First he walked up to the pole then the frontman started to climb up while the second man elegantly slipped away. It was a very artistic climb and when he finally unrolled a scroll written in Chinese (probably: Gong Xi Fa Cai!) a small firework started at the bottom of the pole.
The dragon also gave mandarines to the spectators as well as chocolate coins.
The dragon also gave mandarines to the spectators as well as chocolate coins.
Last Saturday we were treated to a tour of Singapore through Karsten's work. We were driven all over the island and if we hadn't stopped the lady after a few hours we would probably be still driving! She gave us a lot of advice what to buy where or what to visit. Katrin tried to take notes and Karsten changed seats ;-)
In the East there is a huge park (East Coast Park) where you can hire bikes, nothing unusual here, and ride along the coast for miles. The beach is not the nicest, especially not when one is used to the Gold Coast, but another reason not to swim there is the long queue of ships. They line up from Changi in the East all the way to the harbour, tons of container ships. We were told that a ship at the end of the queue will be in and out of Singapore Harbour in 24 hours or less - wow!
We stopped at McDonald to give the children a break from sitting in the minibus. One exit led towards the beach and still inside Maccas we found this 'Feet-washing Point':
Last night, Thursday, we took the children to Marina Bay and watched "Wonder Full", a laser show over the bay. It "uses electric light and laser effects to tell the universal tale of the journey of life" (their website: http://www.marinabaysands.com/Singapore-Entertainment/WonderFull/) accompanied by an orchestral soundtrack. It was very entertaining. For 15 minutes the skyline was the backdrop to a colourful show, when the flame thrower came into action it got really warm, even though we were 30 m (?) away. Afterwards we went into the shopping centre and ate ice cream at Cold Rock, which is next door to an exquisite toy shop. They sell bamboo baby clothes, these are amazingly soft and light, very tempting! But at the moment Sophie has a lot of clothes (THANK YOU for the loving parcels!) and toys ;-)
