The End: Back home

Sorry for not getting this up sooner but life has been crazy.

The last half at school was kind of sad to watch as I fazed myself out of the classroom. I had a student give me a thank you card on the last day and I got quite emotional (at least as much as I get emotional...). I am so thankful for the experience that SAS, Ian and my host family provided for me and do not see how I could ever express my gratitude.

The driver picked me up at 4:30 and I was at the Airport at 5:00 for my 7:00 flight. The flight to Tokyo was pleasant. I watched some movies and ate some not terrible food. I got to spend some time in Tokyo. Then I got on my flight to Chicago...The entertainment system crashed before we even got off the ground so it was an 11 hour flight; entertanmentless. I finished my book shortly into the flight and so all there was to do was try to sleep and wait for the meals. I met up with my sis in Chicago.

Since getting back I have started my student teaching placement at North St. Paul and tried to get over jet-lag. It has been different and I am trying to get used to the new school but I just keep telling myself that there is only a few weeks left...but that is kind of a scary thought...

I got down to Decorah this weekend for my Grandparents 60th wedding anniversary and see people on campus. Seeing family made me so happy. My grandparents are so amazing and I aspire to be at least half the person on one of the. As for my Luther friends, I have missed you all so much and wish that I had gotten more time to spend with you. The concert was really fun (Ingrid Michaelson).

Well...I guess that is it. I have enjoyed writing this and thank you for taking the time to read it. I apologize for any rambling that bored you and any spelling or grammar errors.

'Til the future,
-Steve

Spring Break and Beyond

Hello all,
I have been super busy as of late and a little negligent in updating this. Lets start with spring break. My parents were here as well as my aunt and uncle. It was really great to have them here and show them around the places I been working and living. Some of the things we did:

Sunday-Bird Park-I put up the pictures from this earlier. It is the largest bird park in the world. It was really cool and you got to see some really unique bird up close.

Monday-National Museum of Singapore- This was a really intense museum that had a very complete history of the Island of Singapore and took us almost 5 hours to get though (that with me skipping some of the parts at the end because I was getting tired of reading so much). They also had some neat sections on food, photography, fashion and film in Singapore. Down in the basement was a traveling exhibit on Egypt.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/NationalMuseumOfSingapore

I know we did something on Tuesday but I am blanking on what it was...

Wednesday-Malacca-We went up to Malaysia on a bus tour. It was a really great trip. We picked up our guide in Johor Bahru (just inside Malaysia) and he began spouting great bits of information about the history of Malaysia, Singapore and Malacca. He was really knowledgeable and made the trip quite enjoyable. I have decided that if teaching falls though I want to be a tour guide because that looks like a fun life. Stopped at a pewter factory and watched as the people making cups and tea canisters by hand. It was real neat. Next we had lunch in a 5 star restuarnt (included in the trip) and then off to all the neat historic sites of Malacca. Overall I really great day.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/Malaka

Thursday (I think)-Botanical Garden/Little India/Arab Street-Cheryl wanted to look for fabric. It was a fun time wondering around.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/SingaporeBotanicGarden

Friday-Boat Tour of the Harbor-I stayed home in the morning to get some work down slash try to get over a cold then in the afternoon we went on a tour of the harbor by boat. It was supposed to have "High Tea" but that turned out to be a bit disappointing (bad lipton tea with dry date cake) but some of the views made it worth it (kind of). Stopped on a small island named Kusu which means Turtle Island named so because a giant sea turtle saved some sailors there or something.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/SingaporeHarborBoatTour

Saturday-Mount Fabier/Sentosa- Jeanette's guide book had a description of a great little 2 hour walk. Well it took us a little bit longer then that...When we finally got to the other side, well we were lost. We wondered around and finally stopped and dehydrated then asked for directions. Then we went over to the Island of Sentosa. They had just built a new Universal studios and the island is undergoing all sorts of development. We went to a museum that was called images of Singapore that had all sorts of wax figurines.
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/MountFabierAndOtherWalkingAroundHiking

I cannot remember much else but overall it was a really good spring break

Back to school I had my final observation on Wednesday and I have started fazing myself out of the classes so that it will not disrupt the flow of things when I leave this week (crazy how fast that went). Dad, Cheryl, Criag and Jeanette left on Wednesday and it was a short week because of Good Friday. Yesterday I went down to China Town again and today I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon" it was a really funny movie that took so me shots and Scandinavians and it was fun to see how movie theaters work differently here. Tomorrow is Easter and I am going to go to Mass with the family. I leave for home on Thursday and the School has arranged for a driver to pick me up and drive me there (that sound really cool to me...) Welp, that is it for now.

Pictures

I am a little short on time as I am meeting my family to go to museums today but I wanted to post a link to pictures. This week there are going to be a lot so I am just putting them in public folders on Picasa.

http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/StPatrickSDayInSingapore
http://picasaweb.google.com/dignst01/BirdParkSingapore

Missed Sunday...

Well, it has been a busy week and a half. I have basically taken over all the classes now so I have lots of planning an grading to do. Last Friday I went out to a hawker stall with Ian, his wife and two of their friends. It was a lot of fun to interact with him outside of school and get to know his wife and friends. Their friends were vegan so we went to a place that has all sorts of Chinese food made out of imitation meat. It was really tasty and I think that it is because of this place that I have started to really like the hawker stalls.

Saturday, I talked with a bunch of y'all and that was good. Just going to throw out that I miss you all and it is good to get a chance to stay in touch (hint if I have not heard from you...) Then I decided to go out on the MRT again. I hopped on the train going the opposite direction from last time. Got off eventually in China town and explored there again. Next I went to Dhoby Ghaut which is the station nearest to where my parents will be staying when they get here (they leave the twin cities today) I did not know which hotel they were staying at when I went there so I just explored and got some late lunch.

Sunday ,I got to talk with my sister which made me happy and then I went to the St. Patrick's Day parade. It was really funny. Mostly Asians dressed in green. The best was the mostly Indian bagpipe band. I could not help but laugh when I saw it. After the Parade (which it rained for) we went over to a Irish Pub where they had set up a stage and Rebbecca (daughter in my host family) participated in the Irish dancing. They were quite good. I have not had time to get pictures off my camera but I will post them when I do.

Back to teaching Monday and I have been very busy with that since. The end of the quarter is Thursday so I have to get all the grades in (making me wish I did not assigned so much...). I was observed again yesterday. I thought it went fairly well. I was reviewing the test I am giving tomorrow and so I gave out a packet of review note I had typed up, asked for questions, using the CPS and doing a short activity to find the speed of sound. The CPS software is really cool. I can put in a bunch of questions and then the kids all have remotes that they can submit answers to and then later I can look and see how they are doing and talk with them about the topics they are not getting.

Today I was mostly giving test, making sure the test for the conceptual kids is good for tomorrow and grading. When I was grading I came across some iterated answers and that lead to some interesting events but...

I am looking forward to spring break coming up and spending time doing the tourist attractions with my parents and aunt and uncle.

Chill week plus exploring

Well, I did not have a very exciting week. At school I continued teaching the Conceptual Physics Students and have taken over the AP Physics students but for AP I am working off of Ian's Lesson Plans until after break when I will be teaching and planning for all the classes.

Thursday was a little exciting in that I had my first observation. Rhonda (the Assistant Superintendent of human resources) came in to evaluate my performance. Initially, I was really nervous but once I got into the lesson I mostly just forgot that she was there. In the end she ended up leaving the class slightly early because the superintendent was not there and there was an earthquake in Taipei. A group of students are in Taipei for a international school cultural convention (art, speech, debate, drama...contest) so she had to make sure they were all okay (they were).

Her feed back was mostly positive; she did say that there were some students that were not listening to me but when talking with Ian, he made the point that even he had trouble with those students.

Saturday, I decided I had not used the mass transit enough so I went out exploring. First I went out walking. Instead of going straight to the MRT Station I went wondering back among the subsidized housing.They are all over the place. I cannot remember the guy's name but the story I was told was that they were all built with the restiction that they were sold not rented to the occupents because they would treat them better in they own them. As a result Singapore has the highest percentage of residence ownership in the world. You might be able to see that out of the windows (even the high ones) people are drying there their cloths. I was told that if you want to get a housekeeper in Singapore you need to pass an exam and the majority of the questions are on how to teach your housekeeper not to fall out the window when they are hanging the wash up.

So after wandering around I got the the MRT Station. The trains are the nicest I think I have ever been on. Next time I ride one I will have to talk a picture because it is just so unbievable how clean they are. Part of that may be that it is illegal to eat or drink (even water) on the trains or in the station or you must pay a $500-$1000 fine. I rode the train for a long time, just looking at the different things of the window. I saw a group of kids playing Ultimate Frisbee and then there was a bunch of kids standing outside of the Presbyterian high school in very straight lines (it is a boarding school) Finally, when the train switched to being underground, I started thinking about getting off. Looking at the list of stations I decided to get off that the city hall stop. From there I started wondering around. There was a large completely underground mall that I looked around in and got some lunch. Then I ended up outside near boat quay so I walked around by the river before working my way back to the station. On the way back I stopped off at the Woodlands Civic center and then caught a bus from there back up by the school and walking back from there. It was a lot of fun to look around and though I felt lost at times I was able to find my way around.

Ready, Set, Teach...

Well, it has been another crazy week. As of Monday afternoon, I officially completely took over the conceptual physics class. I am completely in charge of lessons. grading, etc. Ian (my cooperating teacher) has been really supportive and I feel that I was really luck to be paired with him. Random coincidence: Ian lived next to Ryan Walker, my former piano teacher's son, when he worked as a elementary music teacher at SAS. They used to hang out all the time and play video games with each other. I feel like most of my "it feels like a small world" moment have something to do with the Walkers.

Tuesday was my host sister's birthday so we had a special dinner and dirt cake (you know the kind of cake with pudding, crushed, Oreos and gummy worms) for desert. Not too much exciting on Wednesday except that I got a letter from Kristopher (I sent out a bunch of letters and postcards on Monday but have not gotten to everyone yet so if you don't get one, hopefully I will get to some more soon).

Ian had to go to India for a Tech conference on Thursday and Friday. The School is starting a program called 1 to 1, meaning that they are requiring all students to have laptops as of next year. Ian was going to a school that had a similar program to get an idea of how best to utilize the laptops. This meant that, though there was a sub in the room for legal reasons, I taught all the classes. It was a little stressful but overall I think it went really well. I did notice that having been around Ian most of the day for the last week and a half I have started to pick up his Canadian accent.

Friday night there was a little excitement her. Around midnight, the Air cons all went out and it started getting hot fast. To try and fix that, they tried resetting the circuit breaker. That got the air con back but then most of the house lost power (though it parts it would go in and out) and in the morning there was not any water pressure. I was looking forward to some good sleep as I had not slept well the night before but the heat in the room kept me up.

Yesterday then, feeling very sleepy from the poor sleeping conditions, I went over to county fair. Just to be clear, Singapore does not have counties. It only has one city. County Fair is just the name of a fundraiser put on by the school where they do county fair type things; fry foods, carnival games, bake offs, etc. It was a lot of fun. I ran into a lot of the students I have in class working at the various stands and they tried to get me to do the activities at their booths. I did some but some, like the nail painting stand, I had to pass up. Rebecca, the middle child in my host family, performed in the talent show thing with the Irish Dance group and they did a really great job.

Last night I walked over to the hawkers stand and got some bubble tea, played around of authors (fun game like go fish except with books) and went to bed early in the nice newly fix AC. This morning, we went out to eat at chili's for Kat's birthday and wandered around the mall a little. I have some work to get done before tomorrow otherwise I plan to just have a chill day.

Pictures of the school

I took some pictures of the classroom and courtyard outside the classroom (eco-garden) today and thought I would post them:

It has been quite a busy Week. On Wednesday I started my work at the Singapore American School. This week I have been mostly just observing and getting a feel for the students and the style that the teacher I am working with uses. Slowly I started helping out in the classroom and now I will be completely taking over one of his 5 classes. I will be working with the conceptual physics classes, starting a unit on waves. I will also be helping out in his other 4 sections (AP physics B), and will teach one unit for those classes (on electromagnetism).

The school is great. The classroom I work in is off of the courtyard that hold the eco-garden and the facilities at the school are amazing (especially the lunch, yumm). I will bring my camera in sometime this week and get some pictures so everyone can get an idea of where I am working. Friday the High School had a breakfast for the staff so I got a really wonderful free meal. Then after School there was a happy hour put on by the school for teachers to get together and talk about the interim trips they all just got back from but I did not go. I just found it fascinating that the school had a happy hour.

Instead of happy hour, I went with when my host sister had to go to the dentist and explored the Ion mall (near the dentist). The place was amazing. The mall had 8 stories above ground but the top 4 were parking. In addition to the 8 floors above ground there were 4 basement floors all packed with people and stores. I wandered around mostly just people watching. I one point I noticed that I kept seeing this same guy and was worried he thought I was following him so I went across the street (underground) to another mall and wandered around Borders Books. Went out to eat after they got done with the dentist.

Yesterday I got up and watched some Olympics (I finally found some coverage that was not the same 4 highlights playing over and over again.) and then I went to my host brother's basketball game. They had a fairly tough season and made it to the finals game for the consolation bracket. They got beat but it was a close game. After the game I went over to the civic center to try and mail somethings but the post office was closed. I got a bus card so I can more easily explore the city and plan to get over to china town sometime in the next week (to see some more Chinese New Year celebrations).

Today I have just been doing some house keeping (clearing out my emails, going over lesson plans...) but hopefully I will get some fun stuff done soon. Next time I will have some pictures and maybe some actually interesting stories.

Lunar New Year

Well, it has been a busy few days. I have been forcing myself to stay up until 10:00PM in order to get adjusted to the time change and I think that it is working.

When I last wrote I was on my way out to see some more of the city. I will spare the complicated details but my host dad need to drop family member off all over then pick them up 4 hours later (they only have one car and so there was a lot of planning that went into it) so between the drop and pick up he showed me around the city. We went down Orchid road and stopped at Raffles Hotel (famous place from the colonial days named after the British explorer that first claimed Singapore for Britain). In the Raffles, we went to the Long Bar and had a Singapore Sling (as that is the location of its invention). After that we walked around and went to Little India and Arab Street.

After that it was a quite evening at the house (minus a small incident with an ant infestation of the shower) and watched Nancy Drew. That was a good movie...I never knew.

Yesterday, Valentines day, I slept in got organized and went down town to Boat Quay. It was really interesting. We went on a boat tour, walked around and ate at a restaurant named Dallas. The restaurants were the best part. They are all outdoor and as you walk down the narrow street the hostess tries to get you to pick theirs over the others. There was one point when two were fighting over us.





That was really fun. It is also Lunar New Year(Chinese New Year) and so there are decorations everywhere. The first day (yesterday) everyone goes to visit family so everything was basically shut down. Today was much more exciting though with a Lion dance right outside the house. Ok, I should publish this as it has taken me like 3 hours to get to this point and I am loosing concentration fast.

It is really hot here...

Well, I made it. The trip was long and had its bumps but in the end I got here. Wednesday night I went out to the show Young Frankenstein with dad and Cheryl which was quite fun but we did not get home until late. The result is that combine with some last minute double checking I did not get to sleep until after midnight. Up then at 4 AM I said good bye to Cheryl before dad and I took off for the airport. Quick little hop to Chicago and the journey was started.

In Chicago I met up with Mal for some tea and conversation. Mal mad me some cookies for the flight that came in mighty nice. Worried about getting back through security so I headed for my gate plenty early only to discover that the flight had been delayed 1.5 hours. That was all fine except that I needed to catch my connecting flight in Tokyo about 1.5 hours after we were supposed to land. I went to the counter at the gate and the attendant there booked me on the Singapore Air flight just in case I did not make it to Tokyo in time. I boarded the 747 and the next 13 hours are kind of a haze. Highlights:
-They had lost my request for vegetarian meals but the attendant in charge of the Gulley was so apologetic about it and kept bring me extra food and making me sandwiches that it was probably better then if they had not lost the request.
-Movies: At first they showed a bunch of news show off the BBC that was OK. One was about Singapore so I kind of enjoyed that. Then there was the strange movie with Drew Barrymore. I think it was called Whip it. It was about roller derbies in Texas. I kind of enjoyed it but it was while they were serving the first meal so I had trouble seeing some of it. Then some strange one I couldn’t really follow. First this woman was dieing then this father and son were not getting along then something with tennis and rugby. I stopped trying to follow it. The last two movies (though I slept through most of the second) were Love Happens with Jennifer Aniston and Sunny with a chance of Meatballs. I did not realize that Mr.T was in that.
-Food: salad roll, pretzel sandwiches, soup, pasta, cookies…
-Random: Between movies they showed this thing with a map and a plane and random facts about where we were time to arrival blah, blah, blah and at one point while over Alaska it said the temperature outside was -66 Degrees C

Getting into Tokyo, they guided me to my next flight (already at final call). I was stressing out a little. I had to go through security and they kept saying things to me in Japanese and I didn’t understand them and I just kept saying Singapore and then I was on the plane. I was there for maybe 10 minutes. That 7 hour flight was uneventful. They guy I sat next to was nice.

Got into Singapore (at landing it had been exactly 31 hours since I left for the airport in Minneapolis) and through customs (I had no trouble getting a 90 day visa) and met Debra. 20 minute ride to there house and a tour then I went to sleep. I slept really well and got up again at 7 AM local time (the most restful 5 hours of sleep I have ever had). The house is beautiful and I will try to get some pictures up soon.

Read some and then ate breakfast with my host family. They seem really nice though I have not met the middle child yet... Went out for a walk and saw the school and am leaving in a little while to see some more of the city.
Whelp, that is all for now.

T Minus 6580 Minutes to take off...

I cannot believe that soon I will be on a flight going to Chicago...and Tokyo...oh and then Singapore. Since J-term ended a week and a half ago, I have been home packing and repacking; trying to make sure that everything is in order. I am so worried that I will forget something or not notice that I needed to file some paperwork before leaving. As of this moment, I think I have gotten everything but I am sure that by this time tomorrow I will have thought of something else.

I was so surprised to see that people had actually subscribe to this already. It really puts the pressure on to make it worth looking at. I will make sure to take notes food quality for the flights and such. Until next week...