Not your average trip to the post office.

Our doorbell is broken so we missed a package yesterday and the postal service left a note saying we would need to come pick it up at the office the next day.  This wasn’t in my plans for today but I needed to mail something to the US anyway so I drummed up the courage and went for it.

There’s an incredible website here, www.gothere.sg, which tells you how to get somewhere either by bus, MRT, taxi or car and how much and how long each will cost. I chose the bus. The gothere direction took me a way I didn’t recognize but I headed out anyway. I decided to ask the gate guard at our complex if he had a better idea. He did and that was better!

I got to the post office and the line (queue) was really long. It felt like home only I was the only American in the place. All were Asian or Indian. That didn’t bother me at all.

A lady walked in behind me, cut and smiled on her way out after taking care of her business and and the lady next in line was furious! She got the rest of the crowd to back her up and she was going a little postal. I really wanted to laugh out loud and felt sorry for the post office employee. She let her have it in her Senglish accent.

If that wasn’t enough, there happened to be a guy in front of me in the queue who left without me noticing cause I was paying attention the fit lady. An obviously drunk guy tapped on my backpack and told me to move up. All 6 inches… It made a huge difference.

THEN! He cut in line to that same employee and slapped his $10 bill on the counter and started demanding service. She said he would have to queue up and stood her ground. He began to beat on the counter and loudly state that he was going to fall and she would be responsible for his injuries. All of this was in his drunken drawl. I really was so amused I had a hard time holding it in. No one else seemed impressed. My sick sense of humor I guess. I couldn’t believe I was standing in a Singapore post office getting such a show. It was well worth the effort in getting there.

He did “fall”, which consisted more of a sitting down slowly, and began beating on the floor. Mothers covered their children’s eyes and a few people walked out. Works for me, the line was shorter.  The employee finally said “I surrender.” and began helping him. She was kind of laughing too. He was obviously harmless, skinny as a tooth pick, wearing shorts and a t shirt so he couldn’t have had a weapon or anything. I was not scared at all. I totally could have taken him!

He got his $10 whatever and drunk talked his way out the door. I picked up our package and mailed a package (Happy Birthday, Mom!) and got quite a show. Not a bad way to spend a couple of hours in Singapore, I’d say.

I did get on the wrong bus coming back, 92 is apparently different than 92B just in case you ever need that info, and took a little detour but managed to get home fine.

I’ve always dreaded going to the post office in the US. So inconvenient and an all-around necessary evil. But I think I’m going to try to mail something to someone else every week just for fun. Anyone want anything from Singapore???

Livin’ life…

Nothing very interesting is going on around here these days. Unpacking boxes, way too much laundry with a way too small washing machine and cooking and cleaning. We’re in the real world now where we have to do that for ourselves again and there’s no housekeeper coming in to make our beds, mop our floors and wash our towels. Man, I miss that!

But that’s really all I miss from living in the serviced apartment. We are really enjoying having our home and having our familiar things around us. We feel very blessed to have the home God has provided for us. It’s a great place in a perfect location for us.

We went to the zoo on Saturday and I’ll post some of those pictures soon but I took 240 so I’ll seriously have to weed those down before posting. We had  a great time and it was a really good zoo. Open concept so many of the animals were right in front of you and touchable if you are brave enough. We’re wanting to go on the Night Safari soon. We’ve heard it’s great too.

We’re leaving for an island getaway on Sunday for a couple of days. Very excited about that! We rented two small chalet’s right on a beautiful Indonesian beach. We’ll take a 40 minute ferry ride to the island and then live on the beach or in a hammock on the porch for 3 days. I’ll definitely be posting pictures of this trip.

We are really missing our family and friends now. I’ve had a couple of rough days so far but this is the sacrifice of getting to live this adventure. I am probably going to join up with an American womens group and will get involved in our church at some point and that will help. I could easily be a home body and that would be bad for me right now. Anna and I pray for our family and friends every night that He would keep them healthy and safe and that they would know we love them and miss them.

Jakeb is taking a couple of summer school courses to prepare for the IB program. He’s enjoyed his school so far and made a couple of friends from other countries. Anna is not looking forward to school itself but she will be much better off once she finds some girlfriends here. They start school on Aug. 11th. This house is going to be so quiet.

So pretty much we’re living our life in Singapore now. Getting cable set up, setting up pest control and air con servicing, getting extra keys made, unpacking box after box and making an almost daily walking trip to the grocery store for this day’s meal. I can’t really plan ahead yet because I don’t know what is or isn’t available here. I have meat in my freezer and the meal starts there. Last night we had hamburgers with my US$7.60/lb burger meat, corn on the cob and ice cream for dessert. It was not a cheap meal but it was yummy!

Life is good here and we have everything we need except our extended family and friends. It’s not home quite yet but we’ll get there.

Singapore Photo Post 25 July

I’m having trouble posting photos like I have been (which is super frustrating since that’s why I changed over to WordPress to begin with) so I’ve resorted to using Smilebox again. I may end up liking it better but maybe not, but at least you can see some pics of what we’ve been doing lately.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Driving in Singapore

This was my first ride with Tommy driving in Singapore. The cars are backwards and we drive on the left side of the road. Actually, if I’m not mistaken, North American’s are the only ones who drive on the right side of the road so I wonder if that makes us wrong. Who knows…  

The traffic was  mild on this outing. I’ll have to post another video of how it “really” is to drive in Singapore. Everyone is very kind on the road but there is not much regard for personal space and staying in your own lane. Tommy does very well here.

This one didn’t blow up!

So, do you remember this Crockpot? You know, the one that magically showed up at my doorstep after I blogged about it and sang the Hallelujah Chorus and all? Yeah, this one…

The one that doesn’t leak when you travel cause it has a seal on it. I still get excited when I think about that!

Well, it traveled with us to Singapore and survived the many mile boat ride across the ocean.

I planned a crock pot meal for dinner tonight and with much fear and trepidation, with squinted eyes and on the ready, I plugged it in to our transformer, plugged the transformer into the wall (with a converter) and flipped the switch and….

It didn’t blow up! No smoke came from the back side and our dinner is cooking. YAY!!  Unlike a few other things we’ve blown up. Luckily, the Dell computer we bought just a couple of months before we left was only a $45 fix. :0) We’re wondering how many American appliances and electronics we’ll actually have left by the time we leave here.

I guess if I travel with this crock pot here in Singapore, though, the transformer will have to tag along.

It rains in my house!

I’m way behind on posting, sorry. We’ve been busy unpacking and there’s still more to do. It’s so great to be in our own place and have our own furniture and familiar things around us after about 2 months of feeling like gypsies.

So, here are some pictures I took this morning of our atrium. It runs smack in the middle of our house along side the stairs and is opened at the top. Kind of like a sunroof for your house. It rained this morning and was so peaceful to sit inside on my couch and feel like I was outside at the same time.

Plenty more pictures to come of the house but I want to get it in order first before I take any more.

Our atrium! Bringing the outside inside. :)

Ground floor. There’s a neat bubbling water fountain in that brown pot.

Looking up from the ground floor.

Looking down from the top floor window.

Anna in Singapore

So, I mentioned Anna being on a mission in a previous post. Here it is… These little kiddie rides are everywhere! And we didn’t even scratch the surface of finding them all. She sought them out and we took pictures. She’s a funny kid and these pics are yet another reminder of how grown up she’s getting. When did that happen??? 

So, anyway, this is what we did while Tori & Jakeb were in Kenya. Along with eating fun and weird stuff, exploring new malls and getting her a new Build A Bear, Candy. We had a really great time!

Photo Post

So, here are some photos of the Stunz Family Adventures over the last week or so. Enjoy!

Anna spends most of her time in the pool!

Gorgeous flower!

MEAT!!!! At Fiesta Brasilia in United Square

Guarana - Brasilian Soda

United Square Shopping Center

$2 Fun Mistake Dessert! It was gross!! Yes, those are beans on shaved ice.

and some creamed corn and black jelly stuff.

We did not eat here! But we'll take you if you want to go.

Pool at our temporary apartment. So beautiful and relaxing.

Anna has made friends from all over the world at the pool.

Sam, our new friend at Amber Restaurant. Best restaurant so far!

Random Update

So the kids are home from Kenya. They had an amazing trip! It’s harder this year, being away from all of you in Texas, for them to share their stories and pictures with you. They both grew up a little, ok, maybe a lot. They handled things on their own quite well. They had to pay an extra $250 US for extra baggage weight (ouch!) in Nairobi but Tori bargained them down from over double that. Way to go, Tori! But, then they got bumped up to Business Class on the last leg from Doha to Singapore so that paid for it and then some. Hopefully, we’ll figure out some way for them to share their journey with you all. Who knows, maybe they’ll post something on their own blog. Oh wait! Tori did post. Go here to read.

Anna and Tommy and I had a fun week while they were away! We ate good, played hard and shopped alot for house stuff mostly. We went on many an adventure and discovered some neat places and interesting things. Anna was on a particular mission all week and we took pictures of her on that mission. That will be another post soon.

Our shipment is supposedly here in Singapore. YAY!! We get our townhouse on Saturday and we thought we’d get our shipment on Saturday but the complex won’t let them deliver on weekends so we’ll wait until Monday. So for this weekend, we’ll have a 42″ tv, a washer and a dryer, our computer, a broom and some other odds and ends that came in our air shipment. The utilities will be on so thankfully, we’ll have air conditioning and water and we’re supposed to get cable and internet set up this weekend as well. “Flexible” is the key word. We never really know how things are going to go down around here. We say “hmm”, raise our eye brows and shrug our shoulders alot. :)

I’m anxious to see how our stuff faired being on the ocean and in the heat for a couple of months. I hope my Bath & Body stuff made it okay. We are all ready to be out of this serviced apartment (our neighbors are loud!) and in our own beds and with our own stuff that’s not in a suitcase!

Tommy is enjoying his job. He’s very busy but he likes it that way. He gets to eat lunch at the plant cafeteria for about S$1.80 which is cheap. He, of course, loves that! A bargain is always welcome around here. We get our car, well a loaner car, on Thursday so he’ll be able to drive himself and that will be nice. We’ll get our “real” car in a couple of weeks. It’s a Hyundai I30 with a sports package if you want to look it up. It’s brand new and since we’re leasing, all we have to do is drive it, wash it and put gas in it. The car company will handle all maintenance. Having a car will be VERY nice for us too! To be able to go somewhere in the evening and not walk to an MRT station or bus stop will be heaven! Of course, parking is not cheap  so we may still be catching busses and MRT’s alot.

Jakeb and Anna have school orientation on August 7th. Jakeb already has two books to read before school starts and he has two mini summer school sessions starting on July 23rd for new students entering the IB program. This will introduce and explain more about the program he will be going through over the next two years. They officially start school on August 11th. Tori and I will have a week to ourselves during the day and then she leaves to head back to Dallas on August 17th. That’s not going to be a good day. We’re not going to think about that now.

We’ve already planned our family getaway to Bintan Island for a couple days at the first of August. It’s supposedly a very nice place to stay and we got two beach front chalet’s for a very reasonable price. We’re told we’ll be able to walk out of our front door and onto the beautiful beach. The island is in Indonesia but it is owned by Singapore. We’ll drive to the east side of Singapore and catch a ferry over to the island which I think takes about 45 minutes. There’s plenty to do on this island but we may just not do anything! We’re excited about this trip!

I will put up a photo post soon. We have lots to show you.

They’re home and Kenya threw up in our apartment!