Jet lag and first day adventures

August 29, 2013

If you've ever traveled to a foregin country you know that the first few days it's a lot of taking it all in and exploring the new surroundings. Our first couple of days in Singapore were full of those types of experiences. I really wish I had written this a week ago becuase already the details are starting to fade.

We arrived at midnight local time and made it to our hotel/ service appartment about an hour later. The boys (all of them) were quite wide awake and ready to explore. Unfortunatley, we had to wait until the rest of Singapore woke up. By 4am I was ready for a nap. I wish the rest of our family had done the same but I guess they weren't as tired (or smart) as I was.

I woke up about two hours later or so. We got dressed and went down to breakfast. Our service apartment is basically a hotel with large rooms. We get breakfast every week day, that's really nice! It's a pretty good breakfast with a lot of food and a wide variety to choose from.

The first thing we did was go to our Employment Pass appointment. Unfortunately, we didn't have everything quite in line for our appointment and were unable to get the Employment Passes completed. This has kind of been a big deal because everything we do, people ask for the employment pass number or ID card. But, luckily Singapore is a country which has many people moving here from all over the world all of the time and they're used to this sort of thing. Most places will take an approval letter in lieu and that has been a life saver.

We went down to the bank and deposited some money. I got a Debit Card.

We spent some time trying to get our phones up and running. It took quite some time but we finally got them unlocked and got some prepaid cards for them. Once we get our employment passes, we can get cell phone contracts. We had some lunch and by then we were all pretty exhausted and ready for a nap.

Evan and Ryan were so tired and fell asleep a little after noon. I was SO WORRIED. I knew Evan had school on Monday and I was so worried that he wouldn't make the adjustment. I tried to wake them up several times but they just kept sleeping. By 2 am they were wide awake. Ugh.

Jet lag is something else. Honestly, I probably did the best with it. I couldn't believe it. But that nap the first day at 4 am really seemed to help me so much. We tried to adjust the kids and ourselves to the 14 hour time difference a little bit each day. It took about 3 or 4 days and we were totally switched over. Everything worked out fine.

These pictures are in no particular order (as in, they got all mixed up so here they are...)

Swimming in the pool to beat the jet lag. It helped!

We are staying on the 18th floor. It's a long way up!

Looking out the living room window

Our boys in the city. It's strange to me to live in such an urban place.

I'm just gonna go ahead and admit to you how addicted I was to Diet Coke before leaving the states.
I litterally had about 64 ounces per day! Coke light is not exactly the same as Diet Coke but it's pretty close.
I like it pretty well but it did take a little getting used to. This bottle costs $3.10

We haven't been down to the Marina yet. This was a close as we got.
When we went to get our employment passes we were pretty close to the big DBS bank so we just walked over there to make our deposit.