I’ve made some progress since my last post: 1)I’ve been assigned to three schools in Singapore. 2) I know where my own kids are attending school. 3) I have been researching places to live in Singapore.

About a month ago, I skyped with the Fulbright team in Singapore. It was an informative session in which I learned that I will be assigned to three schools: one is toward the western part of the city, one is toward the east and one is in the northern part of the city. I started to read about the schools and they seem like great places to learn – for both the students there and for me. I’ve also started the process of getting ethics clearance for my project from MOE. I’ll also choose my classes at NIE when they become available in mid-November.

My own children will be attending the Canadian International School in Singapore, at the Jurong West campus, which is on the western side of the city. Due to the generous support of IIE/Fulbright/DOS, their education expenses will be covered. This is such a huge relief to us. Since then, we have paid for the application fee and are in the process of paying for the other expenses. It’s starting to fall in place!

With the school location pieces of the puzzles known, we began looking at housing options. First we were looking at propertyguru.com to find rentals. There were many available near CIS and other places throughout the city. Because we are only staying for 5.5 months, we decided that even a furnished apartment rented in the traditional way would not be optimal. There’s not guarantee that cookware, linens, dishes and even utilities/wifi would be included. For that reason, we re-started our search at Airbnn.com, where we have narrowed it down to a couple of viable options. We will be booking those soon.

I titled this entree as 163 night in Singapore because that’s what Airbnb calculated when I entered the dates for our stay there. It was a bit of an eye-opener to see it in print. It also reminded me of how my kids talk about long they have to wait for something, like going to grandma and grandpa’s house or waiting for Christmas. They talk in terms of “night sleeps.” They’d say, “How many more night-sleeps until___________?” We have not counted down the night sleeps until our departure, but, thanks to Airbnb, we know the number of night-sleeps of our stay. 🙂