Friday, September 30, 2011

Cool Kids Blog in the Library

Hello,

Just a quick post today when I have time to write during my day, which is in the morning, at lunch, and my free period. I love that I have a free period every other day! It's so nice to get work done in school. Anyways, I'm officially friends with Susan and Hilary and am getting to know them better. Through dance I'm meeting a lot of really interesting people and some excellent dancers. The big try out here is for ISAS dance, which is International South Asian Schools (I think) dance exchanges and performances. I can't decided if it's worth dancing every day and going home at 6 every night, but there's a shot I'd at least make alternates.

I wrote the first part of this blog entry in the morning, and it's really weird to see what I wrote earlier! I had Subway for lunch today which was super good. I realised that I can have a good lunch (hot food, which takes longer) 2-3 times a week during my free periods. I'm so lucky to have my free always be by lunchtime :)

My friend Appu is sleeping over tonight! I can't wait. We're probably going to be stupid all night and watch a terrible movie, but that's a girl's night in on Friday I guess!

Will blog about the chaos tomorrow :D

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Egg Tarts Make Me Smile

Hello everyone,

Sorry I'm not posting as regularly as I'd like to, partially it's out of sheer laziness and partially because I get home so late there's no time to do anything but eat, work, work, work, and sleep. But today I've sort of been having a rubbish day that started out with me thinking I was sick, then having a boat load of school and home-work. I also am really starting to miss my friend back in the USA. There's a girl here that really reminds me of my friend Jackie in the States and two girls that remind me of a ridiculous pair back home. So if you are reading this blog, I miss you like crazy. Lots of love from Singapore <3

On a less depressing note, I have to blog about Egg Tarts. You can find them in the States and all, but right now I'm eating one from a bakery near my house and it is just blowing me away! It's just so yummy.
It doesn't even taste overly horribly eggy! Yippee!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

My Dad's Little Friend

Hey There,

So today was a pretty good day. I woke up at noon because I had such a gosh darn exhausting week (surprise, surprise) and didn't really do anything this morning. However, my parents went to an Expat furniture. All I know is that they ate hotdogs there. And didn't buy anything. My dad came home after that but my mom stayed out and went shopping. Eventually she came home and we went for Din Tai Fung pick up. Seriously, that place has really good dumplings.

So, who is my father's friend?

It's actually a little gecko that was apparently in our kitchen this morning! None of us really thought that lizards or snakes or whatever could actually get up into the high rises IN THE CITY, but we were wrong because there was one in our apartment! I wish I had seen him but I was dead to the world in bed :(

I babysat tonight for a family that lives in our apartment building which was pretty fun, there were three girls and it was uneventful except for a stomach ache that sent me into a panic while the other girls watched me with amused looks on their faces.

Since it's nearly 1 am, I'm going to go now. I'll try to post more often, so sorry about that!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Photos of My Dad's Birthday!

I don't have a lot of time tonight because I have to study for a quiz tomorrow, but as promised here are the photos of my dad's birthday dinner!

First Dish: Yam-wrapped scallops. Delicious

 Second dish: BBQ'd prawns. Smoky and wonderful!

3rd Dish: Really odd clam, I think it's called a razor clam? Not a huge fan.

 The star of the night... Chili Crab! AMAZING!


 The birthday guy is very happy that he got a huge claw. My mother is focusing eating her clam with chopsticks.



 The super-fashionable crab bibs.
 It's the latest trend!

My dad's place setting after he was done with the chili crab (granted, he did most of the hard work getting the meat out of the shell). He also accidentally sent food flying at my mom, but we forgave him because it was his birthday. Haha

 Ice lemon jelly desert (mine). Very cool and refreshing. 
Mango stuff. My parent's desert. Not entirely certain what it was, but it was really good. 


Jumbo sign all lit up!

 The lights are the barges and ships on the ocean. It looks like a big city, doesn't it?
The No-Name Signboard or something like that had a cool neon crab for a mascot. I liked it.

So overall, I really had a good time and I know he did too. Happy Birthday again, Dad!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

My Father's Birthday and Don Quixote

This has been a crazy weekend!

Yesterday was my dad's birthday. I was going to post yesterday but it ended up such an adventure that I just couldn't quite get myself to do it. Tomorrow I'm going to get out my camera and make a whole post about his birthday dinner because it was really something. To sum it up in 5 words: Ocean, Chili-Crab, Birthday, Weird-Clam, Avatar.

So that's tomorrow's post.

But today, I think the more interesting event was Don Quixote, performed by the world-famous MariinskyBallet. Yes. I saw the Mariinsky Ballet!! In Singapore! I didn't think they toured very often anyways. I have to say, it was literally life changing. Most ballet students have been lucky enough to see their local companies perform and all, but I mean the Mariinsky Ballet was simply stunning. It was pretty much a whole new level of ballet for me, I had never seen anything so incredible (sorry Boston). We had box seats that were right by the stage (in a good way, not too close) so we could actually see the Mariinsky Orchestra as well. 

Alina Somova was Kitri! I admire her so much and it was amazing to see her dance. In Dance Magazine once she was featured and I read her article like 700 times, she's my favourite ballet dancer ever. Her lines, technique, attitude.... So perfect! I really can't say enough about how freaking awesome she is.

Overall the show was really spectacular, the set, costumes, music, and dancers of course were all really... well... AMAZING. So now I feel a crazy need to work on my pointe work and ballet in general even though I know I'll never be as good as any of those dancers, inspiration can't hurt.

To make the day even better, we bought tickets for the Paris Opera Ballet's Giselle right after Don Quixote was over. And seriously, when does the Paris Opera Ballet tour? I'm pretty surprised their coming to Singapore but I'm totally delighted.

Dinner was really good afterwards as well, but now it's really time for me to study. I'll tell everyone about my dad's birthday tomorrow (or the day after...) depending.

Good night!

Friday, September 16, 2011

Quick Update

你好!

Hello! I learned how to type Chinese characters into the computer today so I figured I'd try it out on my blog. Don't deny it- you think it's pretty neat. It's been another long week, though it actually was an "easy week" with 3 days that only had Chinese for a major class, which isn't so bad. The rough part is dancing every single day this week (as opposed to doubling up on Tuesday and Thursday next week). Since we're doing ballet in dance class now I'm not really complaining though.

So I was taking random pictures of myself recently and figured I should post them here. The first is my hair that I wore to school on Thursday. It was for History of China-we all dressed up all Chinese-ish for a seminar. Then I walked around like this for the rest of the day. Whatever.

Yes, it's Panda hair! I think everyone in the whole school thought I was mental or a Freshman. I don't know which, but I think I prefer mental.

Here's me being happy Mom bought more Nutella. (no I am not selling Nutella or part of the company or anything for any random person who fancies making a fuss. Kthaxbai)


And yes, I'm lying on my floor writing this blog post because I'm still waiting for my lovely custom made desk. Oh, and the bed as well. That will be great.

Other than just being silly today there's not a ton to talk about.

That's a lie.

My very first friend that I made here, Appu, is moving on October 1st and she stops going to school after next week to pack. So I'm quite unhappy about that. So Appu, I know you don't read this but if you do, I wish you the best, have fun in America and enjoy getting away from the annoying English TA. Thanks for being my friend it made all the difference on the first day of school :)

Good night, everyone! 再见!

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Room Pictures!

Good afternoon, 

Here are some pictures of my room now that I've done a decent amount of unpacking today. I was actually given a new camera yesterday because it came for free with the TV so now each of us have a camera. Since I've got the new camera I'll try to put more pictures up!


My bookshelf! The bottom left is academic, the bottom right is Harry Potter, the top left is smartical books, and the top right is artsy! There's also a framed photo of a girl I used to babysit and me, as well as my photoshoot book. And a piggy bank.

My dresser. From left to right: 7 layer stacking doll from Russia, Ganesha the elephant head god from India, blue bird embroidery from China, a little ivory penguin that my mom gave me and a swan I painted in Taiwan. 

So I can't remember what I've already posted on this blog because I'm cool like that, so here's some pictures of surrounding buildings and such.

This is from my room. The building in the foreground has really bright lights that turn on when the sun goes down. It's annoying.


The lovely abandoned building next door, from my parent's room. Yes, abandoned.


View from the dining area of the pool. It's a huge pool that I sort of cut off. Also you can see the balcony of the people below us.

On Friday we actually went to this Moon Festival fair thing that had easily 20 vendors selling all sorts of mooncakes, from traditional to durian to pineapple. It was the most amazing thing I have ever seen in terms of buying mooncakes! We got two pineapple ones and one traditional one with white lotus seed. I love the traditional ones, I'm terribly old fashioned I suppose. Some vendors were actually baking mooncakes at the fair thing. There was a lot of durian which most people think smells pretty bad, but there's something wrong with me and I think it smells good! I don't know if I'll try it, but I didn't mind the smell very much. 

Friday, September 9, 2011

It's Friday!


Wow, it’s been a really long week. When I say a really long week I mean I was getting home at 7 three out of five days and it looks like I’ll be doing that for another 8 weeks, not including the actual lead-up to the dance show that will be every day after school. This is delightful! I went to bed at the extremely healthy, normal hour of 1am last night. Oh well. SAS is a lot more stressful than BHS because most people are very college-oriented. It’s considered horrible to have a C here, which is like failing. Which isn’t terribly new to me, but it’s weird to be in a school filled with people just like me in that aspect. Or, mostly filled with people like me. There are slackers like at any school, of course. I mean, it IS Singapore AMERICAN School after all. Haha just kidding.

I’d just like to mention how annoying the bus is, since I’m typing this up on the bus and will be posting this when I get home. On the bus ride to school I’m with all grades from Primary to High School, so K-12th. It doesn’t really bother me because no one is really awake anyways. On the ride home, however, the middle schoolers are incredibly load, annoying, and otherwise rude. I really don’t remember ever being that inconsiderate to others when I was in middle school! Sorry I just had to mention that. The good news is, the “school buses” are literally tour buses. For the Bedford kids reading this (if any of you do!), I’d compare them to the buses we took to DC, though without a toilet. ACAS girls, pretty close to the same buses we took around Taiwan, though not pink on the inside. It’s really lovely.

I'm taking pictures for a "Day in the Life of Natalie" photo-set (for lack of a better name) which I'll try to post soon!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Noms... Subway

Hey there,

Just wanted to update again today. I had drama and dance earlier and after lunch I have Chinese. I always fall asleep in that class. It's terribly boring and uninteresting. Sort of like watching terrible music videos on MTV. Anyhow, I'm finally eating Subways at the school. The high school has a Subway, which I think is pretty cool. It reminds me of eating there in Bedford on half days.

I don't have half days here, which depresses me greatly. Unfortunately with after school activities I instead have extra long days. Normally I get home around 7 after dance, which is tough getting used to. Getting back into the grind of stress and everything seems to have made me a bit sick. Oh well. At least I finally ate at Subway!!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Super Quick Lightning Update!

Hello there!

Guess what? There was a durian dog eating competition at my school today. A durian dog is a hot dog wrapped in durian. So now my school smells like moldy gym socks. What's really weird is that my friends are dying and the smell doesn't really disgust me (I'm still eating lunch no problem). So go figure.

Talk to you later!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Another Lizard!

Hey there,

So today wasn't a terribly interesting day filled with adventure. I sat at home and did my homework/watched YouTube videos. Heh. But my parents had an adventure filled day! They went to Carrefour, which is essentially a Walmart/Target type store. They also explored the Suntec Towers, not realising there are loads of Suntec Towers and figuring out which one you're at and which one you want to be in is next to impossible!

I was very disappointed they did not get me Oreos today. I was really craving delicious, artificial mystery cream between two chocolate cookies. Yum. But we did go to Italiannies, a really nice Italian place pretty close to our apartment. While walking there, we saw a little brown lizard just chilling out on a tree. If I had had my phone with me, I would have taken a photo, however I didn't.

One of these days I'm going to make a "Day in the Life of Natalie" video. Or a "Here's Orchard Road" video. I don't know which yet, but if you have an opinion leave a comment, I think I have that working now. If you don't care... well aren't you cool? Just kidding,

Well, I'm tired. So good night :D

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Another Chinese Dance Show and Other Stuff:

Good evening,

I just got back from a local troupe's dance performance. They finished their performance strong and in general the dances were very modern. The little children were amazingly synchronized! I don't know how the teacher managed to get literally 40 children on stage and all doing the same thing. Serious respect there. Otherwise there was a pretty snow dance and an interesting harvest-type dance. I was surprised there were no minority dances like Dai or Mongolian... Actually I was missing minority dances by the end of the show. Maybe because ACAS, Dance Revelasian, and the other Chinese dance I've seen has always included minority dances, I therefore have assumed that everyone does minority dances.
So I'm not certain if I'll try out for this troupe. The girls were very strong and the show was fine... but I don't know. That's all I'm going to say.

School is a grind already, I've already got a case of High-School-Exhaustion that has weakened my immune system enough for me to catch a cold. So I'm quite sniffle-y but that won't stop me from doing my boat load of homework tomorrow.

Oh, I learned something recently. It's a really bad idea to say "xie xie" (thank you) in Chinese to a shop clerk here when they help you with something. Because apparently that invites them to start talking to you in rapid-fire Chinese. And I don't understand enough Chinese to hold a conversation about makeup or whatever I was looking at in the store when I discovered this. Smiling and nodding sort of works. At least I understood when she was telling me how much something was. Then I figured out that "xiao jie" means "miss" and it all made a bit more sense. Either way though, from here on out until I learn Chinese properly... ENGLISH!

So tonight I'm really missing ACAS dance troupe. I miss the girls, the dances, the teachers and the costumes. Yes, even then itchy costumes that made everyone look chubby that magically looked okay onstage. The teachers who taught us beautiful dances, I miss as well. I guess you never realise how good something is until it's gone.
Of course I miss the ACAS girls a lot too!
It was weird not being onstage tonight...

Well, goodnight everyone :D