Where in the World Are We?

The place we now call home is Singapore, a small island in southeast Asia. If you want to come for a visit we live immediately north of the Equator, and are located off the southern edge of the Malay Peninsula between Malaysia and Indonesia. Moving from a small town in central Illinois, we are now learning how to live in a city with approximately 4.99 million other people, which include Chinese, Malays, Indians, Eurasians, Caucasians, and Asians of different origins.

Within Singapore, we moved from the Great World Serviced Apartment in downtown Singapore to a home near the city. We live in a home called a semi-D, so our house shares a wall with another house. Thankfully, our home is located in a convenient part of Singapore, close to the city, shopping, markets, parks, and the highways. In a city with 4 million + people I still manage to get most places in 15 minutes. It’s a good thing, because if you know me well, you know I am always running LATE!

For the first month of life in Singapore our home was furnished with the bare essentials of rental furniture and what we could pack in a small air shipment or carry in our 18, 50-pound suitcases. Please come and visit, but you might want to wait until our home "essentials" arrive. Our sea container filled with everything we call home will arrive in March. Until then we are learning how to live and get along in a new country-city-state where some customs and ways of life are similar and others are very different.

Life is similar in many ways to the US and of course there are differences, many we are still discovering. We have the basics like indoor plumbing, electricity and air conditioning (thank goodness)! Most people speak a form of English. We have a small yard and an area for the family to play basketball. We live on a quiet street so the children still enjoy riding their bikes and scooters. Some of the differences we have encountered at our house are, our trash is picked up everyday. Most cooking is done in an outdoor kitchen. We have an American sized dishwasher and washer and dryer, but they are all located outside of the house. When I say I am doing my laundry outside, I am really not “roughing it” but I am doing it outside. Because of the extreme hot weather most floors are marble or wood, rarely do you see wall-to-wall carpet. Our garage is a car port with a gate. The differences both at our house and in the culture are a learning experience for us. The good part is we are making these new discoveries and braving this adventure as a family. I still have to readjust my thinking when I hear the radio announcer say, "It’s another beautiful 32 degree day in Singapore."