The Holidays before Christmas
Halloween Singapore Style
As Halloween is primarily an American holiday now despite its Celtic roots, trick-or-treating in Singapore is essentially occurs in a neighborhood around the Singaproe American School, SAS. The event, as it truly is an event, has an organized planning committee from the American school. The streets are closed off to traffic with police patrolling the street entrances, a temporary taxi stand emerges outside the American school with long queues of kids and parents being dropped off and leaving. The streets are packed of Westerners and some locals as well. Official halloween banners span the street as well as corporate booths promoting their ex-pat related businesses. Disney set a booth there selling tickets to their latest Singapore show!
About half of our church group live nearby the school as its convenient for their school age kids. We were invited by one of these families to join them for our first Singaporean Halloween. We joined them with another family from Belgium and Holland. It was their first Halloween ever. There were kids everywhere and Verene, dressed as a ladybug, loved being around and "playing" with them. She's just starting to be aware of other kids now and learning how to interact with them.
First steps on Halloween ... scary
We were taking pictures of all the kiddies Verene being the smallest. After holding her hand and walking her in front of the other kids, she stood still enough for the pictures. Amazingly she walked herself back to us as the other kids wandered off! There must be synergy from being around other kids. The rest of the evening, she wandered around the living and dining area by herself practicing her new moves.
Verene has been doing well walking as long as one of us held her hand. It started with holding both her hands for her to balance well enough to walk straight. Whenever I'd hold just one hand, she would walk in circles. Eventually her balance came and she learned how to walk straight while holding only one of daddy's hands. A couple weeks prior she did walk a few steps by herself when we were at the zoo but that felt more like a fluke. Halloween felt more like her debut.
Video of Verene's first steps and more halloween pictures
Thanksgiving
Thanks to generous friends at church, we enjoyed two Thanksgivings this year! My prayers to enjoy turkey on turkey day were answered in full!
Our home teacher, Tim, from church extended our first invite and we graciously accepted. Having only met him and not his wife at that time, Janae was pleasantly surprised to see an email from a sister inviting us to Thanksgiving. She accepted assuming it was Tim's wife and mentioned to me in passing that they changed the time for the meal from 6pm to 3pm. Neither of us thought much of it until I caught a glimpse of her email and noticed the last name of the email invite came from a different family! After already accepted the second invite, we felt obligated to have honor both rsvp's!
Our first dinner was held at the Gordhamers with a few other families. Small world - turns out Joseph Gordhamer knows Rich Bangerter from Romania. We may just all need to get together when the Bangerters come visit Singapore!