Too many goodbyes

This week has been bittersweet. We had a wonderful time on Wednesday night at the official opening of Avondale's new campus and it was great to be a part of the celebration. The Australian High Commissioner was there to cut the ribbon and the children performed well-rehearsed songs, dances and plays. But as this is the last week of the school term we also had to say good-bye to three families who are moving back home or onto their next country. Earlier on it was easier to say goodbye to families moving on as we had known them only for a short time but these are people we have known quite well for a year. Alice was planning who she wanted at her party this year and I realised not one girl who went to her party last year would still be in Singapore. Since arriving only a year ago we have had to say good bye to:
Lily-rose
Josephine, Nic & Lulu
Rachel
The Primmer Family
The Wilson Family
The Lombard Family
The Milkeratis Family
The Wong Family
The Tait Family
The Harkin-Strain Family
And those are just the people leaving Singapore. It's all very transient here. People leave our Condo for another Condo or the school to go to a different school in Singapore. The movement is constant. Of course wonderful new people have arrived too. However if your life is like paper and every passerby leaves a mark I think my page has filled rather too quickly this past year.

Showtime

Last night I was at a party and people kept asking where Matt was. "He's at his tap rehearsal" was my reply -which I'm sure no one else had ever said about their husbands! This evening the girls and I finally got to see the results of all that toe-tapping hard work. We thought the show was fantastic and Matt's performance was great. He tells us he wasn't perfect but we suspect he's being humble because it looked faultless from where we were sitting. Of course the girls now want to take up tap dancing so in a few years there just may be a little Bertram trio. I'll happily sit in the audience and take the photos.

Running...sitting...and waiting...

Saturday morning was the inter-school athletics and Alice had made it into two events (100m and 800m).  We arrived on time at 8am and it was raining lightly.  In fact, it continued to rain all morning - not heavy rain but constant.  On the plus side it kept things quite cool for both the athletes and spectators.  On the down side there wasn't much more to do than sit in the stands.  By the time of Alice's first race, they were already 40 minutes behind schedule.  Alice ran well, coming in 6th in the 100m (9 year old age group, even though she is 8), 7th in the 800m and 6th in the 100m relay.  At 11:40 Felicity had well and truly had enough of sitting around so she and I left.  The events were now 70 minutes behind schedule.

After an hour or so at home, I headed off to my dress rehearsal for the Jitterbugs Swingapore dance recital (which is on this afternoon and evening).  The instructions were to be there at 2:30pm.  At 7:30pm our group of tired, hungry and somewhat disgruntled tap dancers finally got onto to the stage for our run-through! 

Geocaching - the next generation

Last week our most frequent visitor Funny Uncle Andrew dropped by again. We think he's visited us at least 6 times. Maybe 7. We have lost count. With Andrew always comes increased Geocaching activity. Over the few days he spent with us, we discovered quite a few new caches. We were inspired and finally on the weekend we planted our first cache in a treetops walk near Matt's work.

Alice had to write a factual report for school on a subject of her choice - these are her words.
Geocaching
"My family likes going Geocaching. It is a fun activity where you go and find little boxes with prizes. They are all over the world. You can find them easily if you have a GPS. Everyone can do it and there are muggles. They are people that do not know about geocaching and steal the prizes. That's what I like doing!"

On the weekend Matt also made use of the flight simulator voucher which I'd given him for our 14th Wedding Anniversary last month. He apparently flew to Hong Kong and back. The girls and I enjoyed another fish spa while Matt was on his flight experience. On Sunday Matt flew out of tropical Singapore to 0 degrees in Beijing. And who did he meet there? Andrew again. For some Geocaching in-between the work! Hope the work didn't interfere too much with the Geocaching.

Training heats up

Last week I began my Oxfam Trailwalker Training in earnest. (For those of you who don't know, I was asked to join my sister-in-law Kim's team late last year after a member of her team dropped out. On April 16-17th our team of four plan to walk 100km in about 25-30 hours.) The fact I'm here in Singapore means I don't get any training on the track or in the company of the other team members but I do get to see a lot of Singapore. I did a 25km walk by myself last Monday and a 20km with my friend Jackie on Friday. Unfortunately I missed out on the team 50km training walk through Olinda on Saturday although I was glad to have missed the golfball-sized hail stones that accompanied the walk. Apparently hiding under fern fronds doesn't offer a lot of protection.

Training in Melbourne vs Training in Singapore

In Melbourne you get wet. In Singapore you get wet with sweat and that's before you even start.

In Melbourne you may need to dodge massive hailstones. In Singapore you need to dodge traffic and construction workers.

In Melbourne there are a few mountains to tackle. In Singapore there is Mount Faber which I have since renamed Mound Faber.

In Melbourne you stop at cafes for coffee. In Singapore you stop at hawkers centres for coconut water.

In Melbourne if you walk too far you may end up bored. In Singapore if you walk too far you may end up, not only bored, but across the border.

In Melbourne you rely on friends to support you with childcare, donations and encouragement. Same goes for Singapore.

All donations of any size welcome! It's a great cause. Our team is the Wayward Wanderers. To donate click here