Mom wanted to see @'s schoold and I was moer than happy to take her around because I was hoping to sneak into his school building and get the name of his teacher. I've wanted to start talking about her some at home and was acctually hoping to meet her also. That didn't happen. The principal wasn't around at the moment so it'll have to wait. But we did get to see his new school building which is a huge improvement over ths old one. The old building is really dreadful and I hadn't realized how bad until they took out the furniture.


Above are some of his old teachers working in their new classrooms. They were happy to see @ and after getting over the shock of the thing he was pretty happy too.

Below is a picture of the old school's sink and bathroom area for the kids. Its just dirty and moldy.



And this is the waterline in his old school. The reason they aren't using it this year is that the building floods during high tide/ rainy season. So there's a water line. Its the dry season now so it doesn't look so desperate. The new building is supposed to be finished this week for the high school kids so all of the grade levels will be moving. Fortunately the Kindergarten preschool acted fast and nabbed their building straight away. The teachers are already ready.

These are some of the images from our garden. Its such a wonderful place. We spend a little time out there everyday in spite of the heat. the days lately have been really breezy and nice. This morning I was out hanging laundry which is so pleasant to do in this beautiful environment. Our bushes along the car port, the right side of the picture, are just starting to flower. My mom arrives tomorrow and I thought it was rather friendly of them to start flowering just for her arrival.



I just flipped by this photo of the climbing wall at Jon's university. Its back behind the main building and its the thing that the climbing wall walls off that is a real stitch. The climbing wall is the wall to the school Musholla, Muslim prayer room. So people can be performing their religious duty and after they can climb.

@ finished school this last week for the summer, actually for a month. The last week I think is really spent teaching the kids the dance steps for the closing prgram but such is the nature of school. The practice was on Wednesday and I got some pictures from it. its impossible to get pics at the closing program because of the crush of parents trying to get pics in any ruthless fashion possible. I thought these were cuter and I could see @. The boys were all put in the back row at the actual performace so they wouldn't have been very nice anyway.


I got the TV room painted last weekend and yesterday we started working on painting our bedroom. Rain started so it'll be a couple of days before we can start again and finish it off. I'm loving the progress on the painting home improvements.

these are a few pictures of @ in the last few weeks He's really gotten into the hang of school. Now he's comfortable going into the classs everyday and he talks about his teacher at home. Just now he was playing teacher on our upstairs wipe board. His school does a sunday school activity once ona month on friday afternoon. some of these pictures are from that.




This is one of Jon in one of his classrooms at the univ. No students so I just made him stand there and pretend.

This last weekend we went up to SL3, our former town, to see the international school's performance of "Hamlet". And before you sneer and say "High School kids don't do Hamlet, they do musicals." this one did Hamlet and they did it justice. They really were wonderful and you could tell by the characterizations that the kids understood their characters. It really was great.

But we also stayed in a hotel and relaxed and visited while we were there too. After a late Saturday night, we woke up on Sunday and there was a parade coming up the main street of town. Jonathan and @ rushed down with the new Canon Powershot in tow and Jonathan got some really gorgeous pictures. They said it was the city health walk, which I believe, but I'm guessing it was also politically motivated because we're getting ready to have regional elections in the next month. I'll see how many I can get up before the internet connection says its had enough.

Its wierd that we put @ into school the first of May, I know that. But truly we wanted him to get some exposure to school and what its going to be like before we put him in for real in July. The school year here is a little wierd, July 15 until about June 15 , the kids get a month break between school years. They also have a break in October for 2 weeks and then another 2 week break at Chrstmas. There is a spring break of sorts but I'm not sure when that is. Anyway the motivation was to get @ exposure and to get the other kids in his class exposure to him, most of them will not have really meant non-locals before and certainly not any with blond hair and blue eyes. I know that shouldn't be distracting but it is. They all want to touch him, kind of want to talk to him but they are pretty scared too. So if we can ride out this month and break everybody in, the kids, the teachers, the principal, the parents and ourselves, he'll be better off when he starts for real in July. At least that has been my ongoing prayer. For many of the teachers this is their first contact with non-locals too, at least in any type of professional capacity.
Anyway first day pics with the uniform and the meeting classmates and the obsessive scared mom.

I had some trouble last time i went to upload and could only get one picture before the internet had had enough. So these are a few more. They were cleaning the aquarium while we were there and it was so much fun to watch. There is a people mover that goes under the aquarium so you get a full few of the tanks because to some extent you are in them, or at least surrounded. Jonathan and I couldn't get enough of it. I rode through it 3 times, it helps to get your money's worth out of the entrance fee.



This is the belly of a shark. It was so cool to see them glide by.


This is the coral reef tank that goes up through the entrance. So beautiful.

These are a few aquarium shots from the olympus and actually they are post dropping so it still takes an ok photo.

Ironically this is from Singapore and its one of the funnier adverts I have seen on a billboard. Its all good english its just the understanding of the thing that is funny.


We did have a good time in Singapore, including the aquarium where I broke my camera. These are some from the new one that we bought, which I am now in love with. This is a picture from the store (my favorite store, Mustafa's), the guy wanted to show us it worked. He set everything so that we were ready to walk out with a working camera. I read some of the book but the problem was that I forgot my glasses and couldn't find a store that sold ready-made. So I read a little of the book.

My nose was so sweaty the other day my glasses fell off my face and into the fish bowl. It startled the fish for sure but it was rather an interesting picture I thought.



Our easter baskets/ pots. Everyone got a little something for the garden.