Travels with Kids

Wednesday, 27 January 2016 Rebecca Michelle 2 Comments

The dedicated Harry Potter fans out there might remember the bemusing Gilderoy Lockart, author of a series of books about the exploits unsuspecting adventurers that he attributed to his own prowess. One of these books was titled Travels with Trolls and that’s the inspiration for the title of today’s post.

No, I am not traveling with trolls. No, I have not had children since my last post. No, I am not offering advice on how to travel with children because I have no experience in such things.

I am, however, getting ready for a week-long trip to Cambodia with the grade ten class at my school. There are about 90 of us on this trip, and 12 of them are exclusively my responsibility. I have to admit, that’s rather terrifying.

In addition to regular teaching, the grade 10 advisory team has spent the last three weeks collecting medical forms, health insurance forms, trip waiver forms, passport copies, and passport photos. We’ve spent hours sorting out who will be in which room at the hotels and on which flights. Just when we thought we had it all figured out, about 15 new kids joined the school and about half of those want to go on the trip. And the process repeats.

The past two days after school I have gone to the money changer to change literally more money than I have ever held into small US bills so we can pay the $35 per person visa fees at the airport in Cambodia. Note to people who are unfamiliar with visas-on-arrival: Airports require USD in exact change or in very close to exact change. They will happily take your $50 and send you on your way if that’s all you’ve brought with you (and if the airport isn’t busy enough for you to hope for change).

All that aside, I’m really looking forward to the trip. Once we land in Cambodia, a very cool educational tour group is partnering with us and they are responsible for everything related to the itinerary, programming, and experience that the kids will have. Awesome job, right? We’ll be working with social enterprises and NGOs, participating in circus school, taking a cooking class, biking through town to visit local businesses, hiking to a temple, and learning what social activism means. Had I known one could have a job facilitating such experiences, I might have rethought my career!

Dealing with discipline and disruption in the middle of the night, on the other hand? Less fun. Equally necessary. Unsurprisingly, that’s on us teachers. As I’ve told my advisory kids, who have never seen me angry, I am neither happy nor patient in the middle of the night and they’re better off not testing me on that.

Fortunately, after being with kids and on call 24 hours a day for a week, we have two days off for Chinese New Year. I’m spending two nights at home to recuperate and then flying to Bali for two more nights to relax in some peace and quiet. I am also looking forward to that! There are going to be some changes to my career and living situation in 2016 and I’m trying to do as much as I can before that happens.

If you happen to be at the airport here in Singapore on Saturday and you see 90 people in red shirts . . . congratulations, you’ve found us.

Look out for travel photos coming mid-February!

Singapore

To the treetops!

Sunday, 17 January 2016 Rebecca Michelle 2 Comments

There’s a lot of green Singapore, the self-styled City in a Garden, but it’s a city all the same. After three weeks in wintery upstate New York and one week sweating in the city, a group of us decided to go for a hike to actually forget that we were in a city (and to reacclimatize to tropical heat).

We chose the Treetop Walk at MacRitchie Reservoir for this morning’s hike, which was swelteringly hot and really beautiful.

No city here, right?!

We exchanged road overpasses for a suspension bridge over a rainforest.

View from the bridge, with the reservoir and Singapore Island Country Club’s golf course in the distance:

City? What city?

A couple cool shots looking down off the bridge:

In addition to flora, we also saw quite a bit of fauna! Most of the monkeys scampered off through the trees as soon as they saw cameras, and one bounded straight towards my friend as she tried to get a picture with it. Another headed for a fellow hiker’s bag until other hikers’ yelling warned it off. This one, however, remained still enough and close enough for a quick photo:

We also met a lizard, a much easier photo subject:

All in all, it was a very serene way to spend a morning, and we even managed to beat the tropical downpour by about 20 minutes. I was also pleased to see the trails populated with families. In a city that is so connected to technology, so much so that it’s rare to see someone walking down a street without his or her face in a phone, it’s really important to get outside and spend a little time in the real world.

Happy trails!

Singapore

Arab Street

Saturday, 16 January 2016 Rebecca Michelle 1 Comment

I am ashamed to admit that it took me until Thursday to make it to Arab Street. Mitch says we talked about going a few times, but never got around to it. The one excuse I can think of is that it used to be a pain to get there, but now that the Downtown line runs through Little India, almost everything is easier and definitely faster! Singapore is building more lines, too, which is very exciting even though I won’t be here to see it.

This isn’t the greatest picture, but I like the street sign in the corner. I was (clearly) focusing on the mosque but I’d reframe the picture in the future to place the street sign more prominently. I didn’t even notice it until I was editing!

Anyway, this was our first week back at school and it went really well. I did better than I expected with regards to jet lag, and the kids were great. They were mentally checked out at the beginning of the week but have come around a lot. I was really glad to reunite with my friends, too. There’s a lot to talk about after 3 weeks away!

Jamie, Lindsey, and I headed to Arab Street for dinner Thursday night and it was just wonderful. The Lebanese restaurant that Jamie chose was excellent and we went to a popping Mexican place for margaritas afterwards. I will be definitely be back to Arab Street because there are loads of adorable little cafes pretty much everywhere. There were a couple cool boutiques, too, that I will have to check out. Trying to reinvent my wardrobe.

The alley-facing wall of the Mexican place was covered in amazing murals. A lot of the alley walls were, actually, but it was dark so this was the only one that came out even a little bit.

I hadn’t planned on being so fascinated, so I only had my phone with me but the pictures are okay. It was a lot like Chinatown, but with shops selling Turkish lanterns and hookah instead of chopsticks and chicken rice.