SAM

After breakfast this morning, we headed to the pool for a family swim which always includes time in the sauna and the playground. When Daddy finishes his weights, he looks for us. We are hiding in the slide, laughing. What's fun is sliding down really quickly with wet swim suits on!

At 11 am, we had our first Mandarin lesson with Shea from China. Our kids have already picked up some Mandarin so today was more of a review and an introduction to pinyin. (the Chinese sounds converted into our Roman sounds) The kids got the 4 (+1) tones right away while I struggled to get my voice to go up and down and crinkly, like Pit's eyebrows! It'll take me time but the kids will probably be conversing by next year! (aaargh!)

We took the kids to visit SAM today: Singapore Art Museum for an open house which we read about in the Straits Times newspaper. It was funny to run into Daddy's colleague and his family as we had just seen them on Friday night at the Lantern party. Plus, it is a big city and we are already running into people we know. We have only been here a few weeks!!

We enjoyed some free candy floss and balloon dogs and signed up for several activities including the Animal Trail and Safari (hunt around SAM for hidden animals and colour your own animal designs) and best of all, making a terrarium (fit an entire eco-system into a jam jar.) The jar was made in Italy, by the way! We took a long time creating a doll using recycled materials so brought it home to finish it here. There is so much to do in Singapore. I am looking forward to the night safari at the zoo which has a Halloween theme right now!

Frunty cheered because he has completed his first week of school and thought he wouldn't have to go back. Then I explained that very soon, he'll have a week's holiday followed by a bit of school and then two months off. It looks like he'll return happily to school tomorrow. I am happy he has this time before starting P2 in January.