classy Singapore

The time has come again to travel to the great land known as Singapore. Talk about a metropolitan city. The contrast is so strong, I culture shocked after walking into the airport. Just the airport! It's clean, and there are signs that accurately point to where you need to go...

There are many things I love about Singapore, and others that I don't so much. I love that I can walk around without being stared at and at night without fear (Singapore has a super low crime rate. No worries, still being wise). I love that I can take the subway. I love that I can drink water from the tap. I love the different cultural pockets in the city - Chinatown, Little India, Arab Street. I don't love the prices. Or getting lost in a 10-story mall after going up the wrong subway exit (whoever came up with building malls on top of subway exits/entrances was both brilliant and horrible - great for advertising, awful for navigation).

Buuut the good news is I got my visa! PTL there were no problems or complications! The way the visa process works actually sounds a little... shady. I meet a guy (a visa specialist) outside a McDonalds in the morning; hand him my visa papers, passport, and some money; and return that evening to pick up my passport with a new visa inside. It's all totally legit, though, and gets the job done! It also means I have the whole day to explore. First stop: IKEA.

 

The first time I went to IKEA was during my last visa run. I was overjoyed and overwhelmed and almost hyperventilated. After 45 minutes of wandering and occasionally putting something in my shopping bag, the overwhelmed feeling won out, and I ended up leaving without buying a single thing. This time around, I prepped myself a little better and was able to actually purchase a couple of things for the house.

On my way to pick up my visa, I ran into some friends who were doing the same. Afterwards, they took me to this lovely tea place and treated me to my first macaroon. I then made my way down to Arab Street and had some incredible Moroccan food and tea.

 

And then a nice evening stroll through the city.

 

If there was life on another planet, this is how I would imagine their trees. In reality, this is part of the new Gardens by the Bay.

"The man who has G-d for his treasure has all things in one. Many ordinary treasures may be denied him, or if he is allowed to have them, the enjoyment of them will be so tempered that they will never be necessary to his happiness. Or if he must see them go, one after one, he will scarcely feel a sense of loss, for having the Source of all things he has in One all satisfaction, all pleasure, all delight." - A.W. Tozer

cooking lessons

A few days ago a friend and I made dinner for our national colleagues at the English center, and what I really mean by that is she cooked and I watched. And peeled potatoes. We made a sort of local chicken curry. It was quite an interesting process, actually, and all started with a trip to the market. I walked out of the house without my camera (of course I forget it when I go someplace interesting...) but it's so unique of an experience that I snapped some with my phone. Apologies for the poor quality.

 

 

 

This is where we bought the spices for the curry. Those bowls are full of different... pureed maybe? ingredients. For instance, one has onions, one garlic, another hot peppers... You walk up, tell them what you want to make and how much, and they scoop different amounts of the spices into a bag.

 

What ours looked like. 

 

Yummm.

 

See? My potatoes. :)

 

So then after sauteing the spices a little, we added the chicken. And later some water and the potatoes.

 

And lastly some coconut milk.

 

Viola! Chicken curry! Actually, it's called gulai ayam. Maybe not quite a curry, I don't know. 

 

To go with the chicken, we made a special snack called krupuk. These are little chips made from cassava (so I've heard anyways). They start off small, and then as you fry them, they expand.

 

The process was so fascinating, I recorded it, ha.

 

Yumm... The dinner was a hit. I'm super grateful for them and all that they do. They're incredible.

bike ride to the beach

Yesterday a friend and I decided to go bike riding down to the beach. While it is true that we live on the coast and a part of the city runs alongside of it, where I currently live is about a 10-15 minute motorcycle ride away. But we were determined!

We stopped along the way at various points to meet and chat with people. All in all, it took us three hours and we met three different groups of people.

At one point, a boy rode up on his bicycle carrying a bamboo fishing rod and started fishing in the little pond next to us. At first, I thought he was doing it all wrong (since I know everything about fishing, ha!) cause he would stick his line in, let it set for three seconds, then pull it out. This seemed fruitless, and I thought he was being a little bit impatient, when suddenly he got one! And then another one! And another! I think in the 15 minutes he was there, he got at least 8 little fish. All the while, an older, more-experienced fisherman was on the other side, having no luck at all. Sadly, I couldn't get a good photo of either one, so these will have to do:

 

Anyone need a sofa?

 

  

my saturday

I know, I know, I've been dropping the ball on the whole photo-a-day thing. I set too high of standards for the photos, so when I don't do anything extremely interesting, I don't feel like anything worth taking a photo of. I need fresh eyes. Here's a glimpse of a fairly normal Saturday afternoon.

On Saturdays we have our house group. During the past couple of months, it's changed quite a bit from what it used to be, but it's still a very refreshing and encouraging time to study the Word together and lift each other up. Today we looked at the 4th chapter of Acts. You should check it out; it's pretty awesome.

 

And then I was craving some cobbler, so one person went and picked up dinner while a friend and I made peach cobbler.

 

Delish.

Then the power went off as we were watching a movie. Of course. It's a full moon, though, and with the power off, you could see the stars really well, so we just went outside to admire the heavens. What a beautiful night.

 

"Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus."  - Acts 4:13