Singapore in Two Days

 Singapore in Two Days

Three buildings with a boat on top

This past weekend was the Labour day long weekend in Malaysia.  Combined with this event is the fact that my visa is close to expiring so a few friends and myself decided to take a trip to Singapore, which is only about an hour away from my place.  One of the reasons I chose to live in this area is the close proximity of Singapore.  I know a few people who have gone there and one who was born there.  Everyone seems to have only good things to say about it, so I figured I would take a trip there when a good opportunity presented itself.

Margie and Linda from South Africa

We all gathered at Margie's place and took a taxi to our hotel in Singapore.  I was a little surprised at how cheap it was to do this.  The only thing was I really wanted to ride the ferry which is an alternate route. I really like ferries.  Oh well, next time.

We arrived in Singapore around 10:30am which gave us an entire day to explore the city/country.  After checking into our hotel we started out to see what we could find.  

 We found a hop-on hop-off bus tour of the city.  You could get off and on all you wanted in a 24hr time period.

Also, you get a beautiful view with the open top concept of these busses.  As you can see, Singapore is a very green city.  One of the greenest I have ever seen.  It is also a very clean city, so I believe the stories I've heard about happens to people littering there.

A very beautiful city

 There is also some nice architecture 

and plenty of skyscrapers around too.

We found the Botanical Gardens and they were a nice relaxing place to visit.  Lots of greenery as you would expect and it was very quiet.  Many people come here to have picnics and walk their dogs.  Entry is free so its also a cheap afternoon out for the family.

                          Look, there is something up there!

Here are a few pretty flowers.

After a nice long day of walking/riding the bus I really wanted to get some shots of this building

so we found a place close to them and took some pictures.

 Next time I am in Singapore I will be going up there to see the high view.

The next day we all split up to do our own thing, so I went to the Singapore Zoo

It's hot in Singapore and the previous day was no exception, so when I got here in the morning of the second day I was already tired but I really like zoo's so I was gung-ho to go.  Something sort of exceptional happened when I was there.  This has never happened before.

One of the Tigers were active.  I think this is the first time I've seen a big cat moving around.

Beautiful animal!

There were a lot of things to see here and I managed to get some pictures but my nice camera's battery died shortly after this point.  I still had my phone so I was OK, but at this point I decided to just enjoy the sites instead of taking pictures of everything and not really seeing it.  All in all I would say the zoo is worth going to see.  

The final part of the day was a river cruise that came with a 2 day Hop-on Hop-off bus pass.

Here's our boat

  We were advised that the night cruise was the best time to go.  I would have done that anyway but it was nice that the sales guy told us that.  I got a new battery for my camera and got some nice pictures here too.

It was going home day and while we were waiting for the taxi to come and pick us up we decided to go for a walk to Arab st.  There are lots of little shops with some nice things to buy.  I got a hat finally, only two days to late!

I thoroughly enjoyed my two and a half days in Singapore and I am sure I will be going back again.  Next time I will make sure that I have a hat on day one and drink lots of water to deal with the heat.

Until next time enjoy your life and let people know about it!

What I Do at my New Job

 Entrance to the English Room at one of my Schools

I've been working at my new job for around two months now.  Being a teacher mentor is an awesome job to do.  I get to talk with English teachers every day and try to help them have more fun with their jobs so the kids will enjoy learning English more and hopefully improve the learning curve.

In this lesson the teacher is introducing some new vocabulary and having the students spell the new words.  We made a game of this by having the students match the words to the pictures.  The kids are very good at doing this.

The kids at these schools are so excited to see a new person at the school it sometimes gets difficult to cross the yard without being mauled by a bunch of kids who want to say hi.

Some girls doing an English project in the room that I work in

All the teachers that I work with are great.  They are all full of good ideas and willing to try my ideas, so my job is very easy.  The worst part of this job is getting up at 6am so I can get to the schools by 7.  First class starts at 7:30 and they are done lessons by 1:30pm.  Some schools have an afternoon session that starts at 1:30 and finishes at 6:30.  I have two schools like that.  

Teaching in Malaysia is a lot of fun because the students are so eager to experience your lesson.  They bond very quickly to their teachers and have a very difficult time when they leave.

Every child in this class was crying because the previous lesson was the final lesson for the practicum teacher.  It took almost 20mins to calm the kids down so we could teach the lesson we had planned.  Must have made the practicum teacher feel good about how much the kids liked him.

Here I am having a spelling contest.  As you can see everyone gets a point when you play in my games.

And finally the verb tree.  Made by the teachers at one of my schools.  Very nicely done.