What a difference a week makes!

Well, the kids all came back, so apparently the new teachers weren't as scary as they first appeared.  I guess that means we passed the first MAE test, it wouldn't have looked good if our classes were empty. And instead of the planned lessons dictating the pace and delivery of the lessons we already feel we are able to take some control.  A much better feeling.  We each have about 60 students who come once a week after school and between the Chinese or Music or Dance or Maths classes etc they also do.  It is a lot of new names to learn when they are so unfamiliar to us, eg Jian Ming, Xin Wei and Yu Jun.  The Chinese have the surname first so the name is really something like Tan Yu Jun.  And then there are the Indian and Sri Lankan names too eg Nidharshaan.  Some use western names which is a bonus because at least you have a chance of pronouncing them correctly. Just as well we like a challenge! All the kids are lovely, though some perhaps a little spoilt.
It was a very full week though because we also moved twice. We had to vacate the hotel on the 11th but our apartment wasn't to be available until the 15th.  We moved to Peter's place at Lorong Chuan midweek only to find our place would now be available on the 13th, in 2 days time.  The win for us was that Peter had a spare computer table he was happy for us to lend long term and a contact for a courier.  So on the Friday before work we found ourselves in a Hiace van scooting across town with me in the front with Bala and Eric squatting in the back with our suitcases, boxes and the computer table.

Oh it was so good to move into our own home! We had seen this place as the 3rd of 3 on the only foray we did into the world of real estate agent visits in Singapore.  Our agent is great and we have no complaints but there is so much to consider and so many options - we just agreed to keep it simple and this one suited our purposes so we signed up.  When we actually returned to complete the hand over we were feeling a little unsure of what we had committed to but we were very happy with what we found.  It has everything we need and the location is great: 500m from the newest and biggest shopping mall in Singapore and the MRT which is only one stop from our work.  Across the road is an HDB (Govt high density housing) which has local green grocer, mini mart, makan stall etc. All so convenient, clean and feeling very safe.