An advantage (of many) of having our kids in an international school is that I get even more perspectives on education and schooling as I’ve never been part of an international school community before. Of course, I only get the parent perspective, as opposed to the teacher one that I am getting at KR, but I’m still learning quite a bit from the tidbits that I get from the evening reports of my girls.

My Primary 3 student went on a field trip to a hawker center this week with her class. (Johan, as a legit SAHD, was a chaperone.) I had assumed that the purpose of the hawker center trip was to test local cuisine and to have a fun outing with the class. I was wrong. The students were assigned the task of interviewing the proprietors of the food stalls to learn more about human migration, which is the sub-theme of their Unit of Inquiry, “Where We are in Place and Time.” Each person in the groups of 5 had a question to ask, for instance, “Where are you from?”, “Why did you come here?”, and “Why do you make the food that you make?”, which was Hazel’s question. Apparently, the interviewee did not understand the question, so Hazel didn’t get an answer. She took it in stride, of course, and still enjoyed eating some local food with her classmates after the interviews. She learned plenty from her classmates’ research, however.

When reporting to us about the trip, she said that people migrate for a reason – either an opportunity or a challenge. I said, “So, that’s kind of like us? We migrated to Singapore.” In my mind I was thinking it was for my own personal/professional challenge of fulfilling a Fulbright Fellowship. “Well, yes, kind of,” she said. “But we came for an opportunity. People that come because of a challenge leave that country that they are in because of a challenge like war or famine or something bad happening in their home country. We came here because you had an opportunity, not because we *had to* leave our country.” Point taken.

On Tuesday evening, we met up with some folks from KR at Gardens by the Bay, which is adjacent to the famous Marina Bay Sands. We discovered the Children’s Garden, the Adventure Trail and the Tree House. The girls didn’t have their swim suits so they didn’t get to take advantage of the humongous splash park, but they had fun frolicking on the trail and climbing in the tree house. We promised we would go back. We want to  to explore more of the bay and garden anyway. One restaurant’s name there pretty much sums it up: Majestic Bay.

The other Fulbrighters and I went to the US Embassy on Friday afternoon. We met with representatives from the Public Affairs office. They shared what they did and we shared what our projects are about. We also got some pretty sweet swag.

We weren’t allowed to take our phones into the Embassy with us, so we had to take pictures outside. Yes – it looks like a fortress.

This past Saturday was filled up with morning cleaning and an afternoon with a playdate for Lulu. Her friend from school, Bibi, came over for a swim and to play legos. Bibi is from The Netherlands, but lived most recently Bangkok. They hit it off in their class as the two newcomers. I can only imagine the teacher’s introduction: “Lulu, Bibi. Bibi, Lulu.”

Today we went to Little India for some exploring and sight-seeing. We saw and quickly toured a famous Hindu temple. None of us understood the rituals that were being performed by the leaders or the participants. We watched with respect, took a few pictures and then moved on. Our girls had questions about the statues, but, unfortunately, I couldn’t answer all of them. I don’t know much about Hinduism, we left it at “they pray differently than we do and that’s a good thing.” “Wow,” said Lulu. “There church is a lot different than ours.” We had gone to Mass in the morning, so it was fresh in her mind. “Yes,” I said, “but they don’t call that a church. It’s called a temple.”

Nearby was the Mustafa Center. It is a five-story building filled with retail goods. They girls have never seen anything like it. They were happy to make it out with new Barbies, which will be lovingly added to their collection back home. Will those Barbies be migrating to the US because of an opportunity or because of a challenge? I’m sure my third-grader will have an answer.