Miscellaneous

Our daughter Jessica turned 14 at the end of October.  She and her friends like to bake cakes for each other's birthdays and try to surprise each other, and four of her friends showed up at our house on her birthday with a cake for her.

Our kids with Given, Zi Hui, Nichelle, and Tze Yan

Our family

Jessica and her good friends Zi Hui and Nichelle

We have had a couple more homeschool outings recently.  At one of them, we saw some strange goings-on with groups of people in the park.  We weren't sure at first if they were doing some form of exercise or some form of Buddhist ritual, but it turned out that some of it at least was Buddhist ritual. 

 The November homeschool outing was at West Coast Park.

One or two young men from church are doing their National Service right now.  This is a time when all Singaporean males are required by the government to spend almost two years doing army training, usually beginning at age 18.  One of our young men, Yang Zhi, just spent three weeks training in Brunei, including ten days living in the jungle.  Our daughter Emily got to go to the airport to see him off.  You will see by her dress that it was a Sunday. The National Service training week often seems to begin on Sunday nights, but we are thankful that most of the time during their two years of training, the young men can still go to church activities on Saturdays and church services on Sundays.

Yang Zhi on the right, with his girlfriend Nicole and our Emily

Yang Zhi with Nicole, his mom and sister, and Emily

Emily, Tze Yan, and Marcus

Our three oldest kids take an art class with Nichelle Wong from church.  For the past couple of months Megan has joined them, and Nichelle's older sister Noelene has taught them. They did a few projects together, and one day some extra kids from church joined them.

A big batik project (fabric dyeing technique)

Johann, Given, and Eric with chalk pastel drawings

Jochebed, Megan, Emily, and Jotham

Nichelle and Jessica

The youth recently went to a trampoline park for an outing, and my daughter forwarded me a picture of the girls.

Orchard Street is a very busy road in Singapore.  We are always amazed at how many people can fill the sidewalks there, so that when you stop for a traffic light, probably a couple hundred people cross the street in front of you!

And finally, one group photo that I missed on my last blog about the Bruinsmas and Singhs: