Wednesday, March 16, 2005

New School Building


Here are a couple of pictures of the property we are bidding on for our new campus.

Great Sports Field


One of the great features of this campus is this large field. This used to be a local school, but has been unused for the past year. There would be enough room for 2-3 times as many students as we can hold at the current time!

Monday, March 14, 2005

A week in Singapore

OK, well, Monday #2 in our new weekly update schedule.

This past week has been a busy one. Having Mom here makes for extra activities as we try to show her around. Really it is the weekend where the business really stands out. Saturday we had a carnival/book fair at the school and spent most of the afternoon and evening there. The event was to raise funds for the library, the senior class trip, and the Asia mission team. It was a fun time with carnival games and food and books, and a dunking booth! I even got a 20 minute session in the dunking booth. It was something I would never look to do, but it was fun, and I would do it again. Pictures will be included later.

Sunday was church and Sentosa for volleyball again. While on Sentosa we took Mom on the monorail around the island. The monorail closes its doors on Tuesday to make room for a new and improved train system which will be much more efficient, but not as scenic. I think it will be a good thing, but we were glad to have one last trip on the monorail! We also got to go to the island via the cable cars this week. The view from up there is just magnificent! And mom even made it up the 130+ stairs, and back down as well!

All in all a good week, but we are looking forward to Spring Break next week. I can't believe that the third quarter ends on Friday!

I, Betsy, have added Thursday afternoons to my RDA time. One of the instructors, Bee, asked me to assist her with some students that are much more capable riders in the afternoons. There are 3 riders. I'm in charge of teaching the two beginners. I forgot to put my name tag on this week. I only had one student because the other was sick. The student asked me to repeat my name because he couldn't remember it. I told him, "It's Betsy." He said, "I don't think I'll remember that name, so I'll just call you Mickey. You're Mickey okay?" I chucked inside and agreed that would be fine. During the entire ride he called me Mickey. I actually remembered to respond accordingly. Just wanted to include this humerous tale for you! As a prayer request, while I was teaching my student, Mom got to talk with his teacher. She is a Muslim and Mom had her undivided attention for the entire hour-long lesson. Please pray that God will open her eyes to His truth!

Harley


Mom got to come with me, Betsy, to the RDA on Thursday. She got a picture of me with one of my favorite horses, Harley. I get to lead him on Thursdays. He is a retired thoroughbred racehorse. That means that he reminds me a lot of the horse I used to own, Flight. He is a sweet horse with a willing spirit.

Assistant Instructor


I was asked by one of the instructors at RDA if I would be willing to be an Assistant Instructor (AI) for the month of March. I said I'd be willing to take on the extra responibility for them. This last Thursday I still lead Harley for one hour and assisted for the other hour. You can see me here helping one of the students go to his horse, Django. I helped each rider mount, helped teach the warm-up exercises, helped with crowd control in the arena, and got to help some of the students with their trotting. I enjoyed the morning very much!

The Pirate


The carnival had a piratey theme, so Mom and Betsy had fun dressing me up as a pirate. They wanted to put a tea bag over my eye for a patch, but I told them I wasn't going to have tea dripping down my face from the sweat!

The Dunking Booth


As you can see, I've been in once or twice already, here I await my next dunking!

Taking the Plunge


Water has never been my favorite thing, and the idea of being dunked wasn't exciting to me, but I've been working on it lately, and really had a lot of fun. I don't think I had quite as much fun as Mom did though! The water actually felt really nice after I got used to the process. And I did get used to the process, I had a lot of practice!

Monday, March 07, 2005

Mom's here!

New Eyes

It has been fun these past couple of days having Susie (Betsy's mom) here to visit. We are again seeing Singapore through the eyes of a newcomer! As such, we will probably have more things to share in the next month. Things that have become commonplace to us will be new to her and she will remind us to tell you about them!

Yesterday we took her for her first real adventure, trying to break her in quickly! We started with a 8 minute walk to the bus stop followed with a 45 minute bus ride to church. After church it was a 35 minute bus ride and a 20 minute walk to lunch with some friends from school (we had Mexican!). Then we walked 8 minutes to the MRT for a 15 minute subway ride. Another 5 minute walk brought us to Starbuck's. Then we shared a Taxi with Miriam which dropped us at the bottom of the stairs of death (75+ steps) to return home. Once we got home we changed and got ready to go to the beach. That was a 15 minute walk to the bus stop, a 3 minute bus ride to the island of Sentosa, a transfer to another bus for a 6 minute ride. Once at the beach we met a bunch more friends for volleyball. We were there for a few hours, then we took a 6 minute bus ride to watch the fountain/music and light show. That got over at about 8:10 and we walked a couple minutes to the next bus for a 5 minute ride (in a PACKED bus) to the transfer spot for leaving the island and returning home. Once we got to the departure bus stand we decided to sit and wait a while instead of standing in the huge line. After 6 full busloads of people left we decided to get in line for the 6 minute bus ride back to the mainland. Then a final 15 minute walk brought us home! Showers and bed!

Sentosa

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Baseball Season

Well, the long awaited time has returned. Baseball is back! In case you didn't know March 2nd holds the first spring training game of the season, and MLB.com is broadcasting it for free. I'm excited to be up waiting for it to come on. The Washington Nationals playing the New York Mets. Ah, what a wonderful pasttime.

Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, it is 2 in the morning here. I went to sleep at about 7:30 this evening so I could get up early to watch the game. I'm going to grade some papers during the game, then go to bed and sleep a couple more hours before getting up for school!

Love you all!