It was a close battle this week, but the Barons ended on top. With focus and strategery, we were able to overcame our first food court experience with Avery (for newbies like us, sort of felt like soup nazi from Seinfeld), hailing a cab illegally from the street, scaling 30+ stairs carrying Avery in her stroller, IKEA, jogging in 85% humidity, Avery's 12-hour jet lag, a broken washer and dryer, getting locked out of our apartment in 90-degree heat with frozen groceries, and other things that I have since blocked from my memory.
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| Tough day |
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| Familiar friends |
With all that said, we still came out on top. It really was a great week. Between Tuesday and Thursday, we bought most of the furniture and appliances we'll need. We shopped at IKEA (it's exactly the same here as in the US - a stressful maze) and a furniture mall (they have malls for everything here). We got our appliances at a local place called Best Denki. It was a mediocre Denki, at best. I tried my hand at negotiating prices and I give myself a C+. We also bought a TV on craigslist, which seems to be used mostly by expats.
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| Dolphins! |
Carly went to work on Friday, so Avery and I went swimming. We actually did a good amount of swimming this week. Avery calls it "kicking" because that's what we tell her when we're trying to teach her to swim. She also calls it being a dolphin because Carly's dad had told her one time that there were dolphins in the pool - now she wants to be one. I think we were at the playground at 7 pm, 8 pm and as late as 1 am this week with Avery's jet lag. She didn't seem to mind. It seems like all apartments here have more than 1 pool on site. Our temporary place has a big pool and 2 small kiddy pools.
We've done a lot of grocery shopping this week. Carly mentioned that we go to Cold Storage. We actually found a much better location that has so much more variety of our favorite brands. We found lite Ranch!! Of course it's about double the cost as the US, but it's good to know we can find stuff we know we like.
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| Future gymnast |
We've done a lot of riding the MRT (train) system, too. It's really easy. It can be crowded, but it's manageable. It's weird that almost everybody has a smartphone or tablet and they watch tv for the entire ride. Maybe that's the norm for people who regularly use trains, but we're from the burbs. Avery loves the "choo choo" and we can see it from our temporary apartment. She waves to "the people" throughout the day. She also likes to warn people of the "gap" when exiting the train.
We learned this week that the respectful name to call people is "auntie" and "uncle". For instance, Avery will have a ton of aunties - her bus driver, her helper, etc. I would liken it to calling somebody sir or ma'am in the US, but even more frequently used here. I heard our consultant call the taxi driver "uncle". That's going to take some getting used to.
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| Chijmes Courtyard |
OK...to warn you, we haven't done a ton of experimenting with food. There's plenty of time for that. We're hoping our helper will gradually introduce the food to Avery so we're not stuck in a food court with Avery saying no to everything...which is what already happened once. This weekend, we went to Chijmes, which is an area in the city near the Raffles Hotel (famous hotel here) that has a bunch of restaurants. We ended up getting pizza at a nice outdoor italian restaurant called Pizza Giardino.
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| ICE CREAM!! :) |
On Saturday we went to Star Mall (we forgot to take pictures, but the building is amazing and it's brand new). We went to Senor Taco there...which is, of course, Mexican. Not the best service, but another good outdoor eating location. One thing we noticed is that napkins are difficult to find here. In the US, you can grab as many as you want. Here, some places don't give you any or they charge you for them. We've also had our share of ice cream and chocolate. I must say that I was concerned about it being difficult to find sweets here...for Avery, of course.
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| Carly and Avery sitting down for a picnic |
We went to the Botanic Gardens today. That place is amazingly beautiful. They have a kid's park that Avery loved...especially the water fountains she ran through. We saw lots of dogs in the park, so it was nice to know our little Scouty is not going to be alone in this city. It's a great place for a run, too.
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| Posing at the turtle pond (some on the rocks behind Carly). |
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| Giant lilly pads with a waterfall backdrop |
We're going to do our best taking pictures of "interesting" things we see that we're just not used to in the US. I've posted a couple of pictures below with some mixed messages. If I do something wrong, I really hope I only have to deal with the first guy...
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