The Routines of Life

Another day has come to an end in Singapore.  I can see the neighbor in the flat across the courtyard from us standing in his living room, but I'm hoping the noise is finished for the night.  He often stands in his living room and screams a bunch of indiscernible words really, really fast.  I don't know for sure, but I have a feeling it is some religious ritual.  He does have a big golden idol standing in the corner of the room.  It's also that time of the night when I start going cautiously into my kitchen, wondering where our resident gecko might be at the moment and hoping it's not about to scurry past my feet!

Our days begin with homeschooling.  I've already written a blog about that, and not much has changed there from day to day, so I'll just post one picture and then move on.

After school there is a variety of activities.  Some days are just "stay at home" days.  Every one of those days, and most others, include at least one game of Ticket to Ride.  Jessica, Eric, and I play once or twice a day.  I can't believe I'm not sick of it yet, but it's a fun game! :-)

Some days we take a "trip" to the grocery store or library.  We go to the library quite often, because they don't allow you to get very many books at once here.  Usually a trip to the library also involves a trip to the grocery store, since they are located right by each other. I have just started driving here, only to our mall, which includes the library and grocery store.  It was too hard getting all the groceries home on the bus all the time.  Tonight we had to go out, but being a Friday night, I knew driving and parking around the mall would be very difficult--so getting groceries became a family outing.  And if I ever need to go to a store farther away, that can become a family outing also--we need my husband to drive if we are getting more than just a few bags of groceries!

The kids at the library

If you see Flat Stanley leaning against Jessica's leg, that's because we helped 

with a couple of Flat Stanley projects for Protestant Reformed schools in the U.S.!

On Tuesdays Eric has badminton lessons.  Marcus Wee, a young man from church, offered to teach Eric.  Baseball was always Eric's sport before, but there is no baseball in Singapore (or at least very little--I haven't heard of it).  However, badminton is very popular.  So Eric is learning a new sport and really enjoying it--although he did get Marcus and another young person to throw a baseball around with him today!

On Thursdays a woman from church named Jean comes to our house to teach us Chinese. We only started this two weeks ago, so it is still new and a bit overwhelming!  We are beginning with "hanyu pinyin," which is when the Chinese characters are written into letters.  This helps what would otherwise be completely indecipherable to us become something we can recognize.  For example, a couple of Chinese characters are written as "ba ba" so that we can pronounce it--although of course we still have to learn the meanings! :-)  "Ba ba" is "father."  But there's one more tricky thing:  each syllable can be pronounced four different ways--and if you say it wrong, you are saying a completely different, unrelated word!  So whether your voice goes up, goes down, goes down and then up, or stays the same, makes a big difference on what word you are saying.

Practicing the sounds before our lesson

Jean helping us read a book in Chinese

On Friday afternoon Jessica and Eric have piano lessons.  Two young people from church, Jean's son Yang Zhi and a girl named Joanna, come to our house to teach the kids.  As you can tell, the people from church really go out of their way to help our family here, and we appreciate it so much!

Saturdays are often busy days for my husband.  During the first and third quarter of the year he has two catechism classes, then a couple hours off, then a pre-confession class--and sometimes a speech for the young people during those couple hours off.  Sometimes when he is gone for most of the day, the kids and I will take public transportation and go do something--usually a mall, as there are many, many malls in Singapore, and the MRT stations are often in the basements of malls.  We check out a few of the shops and get Burger King for supper.  We have just entered the second quarter, so my husband shouldn't normally be gone as much on Saturdays, but I'm getting to know the city a bit better and am thinking of places to go with the kids besides malls! :-)

When the day starts to wind down, it's time for me to vacuum and mop the house.  (I still always say "house"--I guess I should say "flat"!)  I had heard before we moved here that people here mop at least once a day, and I couldn't imagine.  But yes, we need to! Someone told me it's a combination of the dust and humidity here.  Although I mop every night, by the next morning our feet are already getting dirty when we walk around in here.  It's just another part of life here!

So, five months into our stay here, we have settled into a routine.  We are thankful to God for His care and provision every step of the way.