My First Day

So after 20 hours in an airplane, only an hour of which was spent sleeping, I finally arrived in Singapore.  I was greeted at the airport by James, the school's P.E. teacher, and we took a cab to my apartment.  While on the cab ride, James explained to me that there was a small group of people that were going to Malaysia early tomorrow morning to spend the day at an orphanage over there just playing with kids, and asked me if I would like to go.  Now at this point it was 1 am local time, I had just spent the past 24 hours traveling with practically no sleep, and we had to get up at 7 am in order to get to Malaysia at a decent hour...so obviously I agreed to go.  It sounded like such a great adventure and like a great opportunity to spend the day that I could not pass it up, plus playing with the kids from the orphanage sounded so fun and rewarding!

After only being in the country for 8 hours, and with 5 hours of sleep, we all headed to Malaysia.  The guy who had organized the trip had brought along 3 very large stuffed animals for the children, and gave me the Minnie Mouse to carry, so that made getting through customs pretty interesting.  But we eventually got there and the kids were so wonderful, and so happy to play with us.  We juggled bean bags, jumped rope, wrestled around, and even made balloon animals.  The kids seemed to have and endless stream of energy in them and with my 5 hours of sleep I was trying to keep up.  There were about 20 kids in this orphanage ranging in age from 1 year old to probably around 13 years old, and it was wonderful to see how they looked after each other, with the older kids caring for the younger ones.  It was such a wonderful experience, and I look forward to my next opportunity to go back and see them again!

However my day did not end there.  When I finally got back to Singapore around (6 pm) my flatmate, Johan, had invited me to watch the South Africa v. Australia rugby match with him and some of his church buddies, most of which seemed to be South African, and again I found this impossible to turn down.  So me and a group of Johan's friends sat around watching rugby, eating pizza, and just hanging out which was very nice.  They were pretty amazed that I was from the states and had played rugby for so long, where as I was just happy to be with people who knew what the sport was!  Unfortunately South Africa had a horrible showing in the match, and lost pretty badly to Australia (I say unfortunately in respect to my company, being they were mostly South Africans), but it was still a good time.  The group decided to watch the Band of Brothers series, but as I began to feel myself zone out I decided to excuse myself, hail a cab back to my flat, and promptly collapse into my bed.  I could not have planned for a better first day in my new home.

Me and Daniel

 Little James loving the new Teddy Bear

 James filling some big shoes

This is Derrick, and his he made that bicycle himself...way impressive!