Since my last post in July, there have been a lot of happenings
on the Singapore front this fall and winter.
To make-up for my lack of blogs during this time I’ll detail an exciting
outing or two for each month :)
August
In August a couple girlfriends and I went on day-trip to
Pulau Ubin, a place you may remember from a blog last July. If not, the short on it is that Pulau Ubin is
located in the north east part of the island and is one of the few rural areas
left in Singapore. It involves taking a
quick ferry ride from the Singapore Changi terminal and once there you can
kayak, fish, camp, ride bikes, etc.
This day we kept to riding bikes…and being chased by
monkeys! I was left to lead the way
having been the only one to have been there before so I pretty well stuck with
the same route we had rode with Mark’s co-workers, knowing my own navigational
limits and all. It was a great day – we did
lots of riding, spotted some wild boars, walked to mangrove boardwalk, and even
made it back just before the rain started! The epic fail of the day was pulling
out a banana flavored Power Bar while viewing the rock quarries. At the time, there wasn’t a monkey in sight
but as soon as they heard the paper rustle, I swear they started dropping from
trees and swarming! I quickly threw the
bar away from myself and tried to high-tail it out of there on my bike! Except,
when the kickstand wouldn’t immediately come up I just picked up the bike and
ran (See picture. Yes, I was busy nearly getting eaten alive by monkeys and my “friends”
were laughing and taking pictures ;) Have I mentioned that I’m a bit dramatic?)!
On a high note, I didn’t realize my own strength and I haven’t ran so fast in
years!!
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| Running from the evil monkeys - that is pure fear on my face! |
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| The Quarry |
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| Bike Taxis (Photos compliments of Sarah) |
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| Wild Boar |
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| Sarah, Niki, and Grace on the Mangrove boardwalk |
September
We hosted Mark’s parents for their visit to Singapore! Meeting people who haven’t had any visitors while
overseas always makes me realize how lucky we are to have had Mark’s parents
come not once, but twice. As well as visits
from a few friends and Mark’s brother and plans for my family to come visit in
2013. Having support and visits from
family and friends makes our time in Singapore more memorable and more manageable
during those times when you get a little homesick.
My big worry for their visit wasn’t fitting 4 adults and a
giant dog into a small 2-bedroom condo as I already knew we would be fine in
that department. But, it was the worry
of running out of stuff to do because I felt like we had covered so much with
their last visit! In hindsight, I see
this worry was completely unnecessary. While we did repeat a few things such as
restaurants and stores they wanted to try again, we found fun new stuff
too! The first of which was taking them
to one of Mark’s hockey games which I think they really enjoyed! Other highlights from their trip included
dinner atop the boat at Marina Bay Sands, the Singapore Night Safari which has
an excellent fire show, a visit to the new Gardens by the Bay (just days before
the Duchess of Cambridge, I might add), and taking their granddog to play at
the beach!
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| Fire show at the Night Safari |
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| More fire show, very neat! |
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| Singapore Slings with my Mother-in-law |
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| Colt at the beach playing with one of his girlfriends, Buddy |
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| Yep, he's a crazy beast! |
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| A little sand roll |
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| Sandy face! |
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| My boys <3 |
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| The Vogels |
October
We were already excited to have found out we weren’t the
only ones of our Singapore friends that like watching UFC fights and had even hosted
friends on Sunday mornings to watch the fights in the past. So you can imagine
our excitement when one of our friends arranged a group outing to go and see a
UFC fight in Singapore! It was a really
fun night. The one low point was seeing
the USA fighter take such a hard kick to the “nether region” that he had to be
wheeled out on a stretcher! On the
bright-side (if there is one), it’s considered a victory!
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| UFC! |
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| The Boys: Christian, Nick, Mark, and Brad |
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| The Girls: Grace, Miranda, Niki, and Sarah |
November
The first full week of November we did an early celebration
of Colt’s 3rd birthday which is actually November 15th
but we had plans to be out-of-town. The
early celebration consisted of a new large bone and new treats but he also got
some new toys from our trip to South Africa to make up for us missing it. He
sure is spoiled!
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| Colt and his birthday bone! |
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| Colt and his doggy beer toy, I like how it looks like he is holding it |
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| Someone hit the Dog beer a little too hard on their 21st (3rd) birthday :) |
The last Saturday in November was a busy one for us! First, we hosted Mark’s new team for a BBQ
(sorry no pictures, I think someone else took some so if they get passes along,
I will update). Mark manned the grill - cooking
burgers, brats, chicken breast, and shrimp skewers. I made the sides the night before – broccoli salad,
pasta salad, German potato salad, and brownies for desert. Thank goodness for that Vogel cookbook!
After clean-up was complete, we headed out to a farewell
party for a couple of our friends, Christian and Sarah, who would soon be
moving back home to San Francisco. You
know when you meet people here that everyone’s time in Singapore is limited but
it’s still hard to say goodbye, especially because we have made such a fun
group of friends – they will definitely be missed!
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| The Group for Sarah and Christians Farewell party |
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| Sarah, Niki, Miranda, and Grace - just missing Ashley! |
December
This month has been full of growing anticipation for our
trip home but we’ve managed to squeeze in a few other things too! Early in the month we went to our friends Ryan
and Ashley’s house for rooftop-movie-night.
Their condo has a rooftop pool and grill and also a blank white wall
which they use to project movies onto so it is a really nice set-up. And although the food and movie was great,
their baby daughter, Grace, stole the show – I trust you can see why!
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| Grace, Sarah, Ashley, Niki, and Baby Grace aka Little G |
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| Kind of a blurry picture but the clouds and skyline look cool |
After movie night I went on to wrap up my fall semester classes
and sign up for the spring semester.
Unfortunately, Mark went on to get the flu and pneumonia which not only
caused him to use his first sick days in Singapore but also made him miss our
friends birthday celebration :( You know Mark is really sick if he is missing a
party! I was able to go though and made
sure to have fun for the both of us – Happy birthday Brad and Grace!
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| At One Altitude for Grace and Brad's birthdays! |
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| Happy Birthday Brad and Grace! |
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