What a Wonderful Weekend!

Friday

I have so much to catch you up on! What a wonderful weekend it was.  Friday was a minimum day at Westwood, and I didn't have any lessons, just did quite a few observations.  I was lucky enough to observe the science department head, Puay Keong, teach 5C physics.  It was really great to get to observe him in the classroom, it is obvious that he is a very great teacher that the students like and respect.  He was very serious as far as the content instruction, yet he was joking with them, asking them questions, and answering their questions along the way.  As 5th years, they are mostly doing review of physics concepts that will be on their final exam.  Today they were going over Newton’s First Law, and F=ma, etc. Towards the end of the period, the teacher put up a problem on the board to “test their thinking” and get them to “think outside the box:”  

5 + 5 + 5 = 550 

He then said, add one stroke to this problem to make it true - and it can’t be a (is not equal to) symbol.  The students (and I) sat for about 5 min in silence, trying to come up with a solution.  He then showed us: 

5 + 545 (add a stroke to the second plus sign)  = 550

Their reaction was incredible.  They all laughed and sighed, and it was a really great end to the lesson.  He said, “We need to be innovative thinkers in the real world.  Sometimes we need to think outside the box.” It was really amazing to see their reaction, things like that are so impactful.

After school, Rae and I headed down to Boat Quay to try and find a Wells Fargo, let's just say that didn't work out as planned - but we made up for it by finding something even better: 

Happy hour!!

Delicious raspberry and strawberry margaritas!! 

Boat Quay at sunset... 

After about an hour, Katie and Elise met up with us to go to dinner.  We walked around the city and ended up finding this great food court and really cute rooftop bar - it was a really fun end to the week! 

Saturday

Saturday was a great day, and started out nice and early! I went to the CCA (Co-Curricular Activities) Fair at Westwood Secondary and it was such a fun morning! It was so great to see the students so excited about their organization.  Two girls on the 'netball' team toured me around the fair, introducing me to all of their friends at the different booths and telling me everything I needed to know about the different CCAs.  I also got to meet the choir director, which was awesome, and he told me to come by their rehearsals any time! 

(I'm definitely going to this week!)

CCA Fair at Westwood!

After the fair, I went back to the hostel and met up with the rest of the girls, and we made our way to the Botanical Gardens! It was such a beautiful day, there were so many amazing plants to see, and needless to say I took hundreds of pictures... The gardens were huge and so fun to walk through.  We walked across the entire thing, and made our way to Orchard Road when we finished.

Almost as if it were timed, it started pouring rain the second we walked out of the gardens.  Luckily, we found an indoor mall and a delicious (western) breakfast place with wifi! As much as I tried to tell myself I wouldn't eat western food when I was here, I couldn't resist the avocado, bacon, chicken, tomato, egg sandwich and salad.  It was delicious, and a perfect way to relax after a long trek across the gardens.  

After lunch, and trying to avoid the rain as much as possible, we wandered around Orchard Rd. looking at shopping mall after shopping mall.  I almost got my hair cut, but the wait was way too long, and eventually we made our way back to the MRT station.  

We decided to make an entire day out of it by heading to Clarke Quay for dinner and a few drinks.  The rain finally died down, and we went to the main strip of Clarke Quay, had a few drinks, and got wraps from a delicious kebab place - one of my favorite meals yet. 

Elise headed home after dinner and Rae headed to the airport to pick up her boyfriend (Mike!?! Where are you?! ;)) and Katie, Katherine and I decided to hit the town and celebrate a successful first week in school.  It was a great night, we saw a great live band, and danced the night away to some throwback tunes like Sublime and Red Hot Chili Peppers - let's just say that when "Dani California" came on, we were way too excited.

Sunday

Even after a very long night, we mustered up the energy to go to the Singapore Zoo! It was SO fun, SO beautiful, and I conquered like 3 of my lifetime bucket list items - 

1. See a white tiger 2. Play frisbee with a sea lion and 3. Ride an ELEPHANT!

I think words can't even describe the zoo's amazingness, 

so I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures :D

(And I was so happy, as my pictures turned out much better than they did the night of the 

Night Safari!) 

 Omar, the white tiger!

 Omar and Winnie! 

(I may or may not have bought a stuffed animal and named it Winnie ;)... you'll see later!)

 Turtle!

Baboons!

Bath time for the lemur :)

Malayan Flying Fox!

 Puma... 

 Sleepy Asian Lions!

 Polar Bear 

Katherine feeding a giraffe

 Missing my SST Science Cohort! Science Rules!!

Komodo Dragon... so cool! We saw him get fed - he ate 3 whole chickens!

 The elephant we rode! (I sure hope someone has a pic of us on her!)

Stan the sea lion (all the way from California) that I got to play frisbee with!

(hopefully someone has a picture of that too!)

You can't really see him, but he's splashing the audience:) 

It was a wonderful weekend - as you can tell, and although it went by really fast, it was great... Now back to another week of school! I'm teaching 3 of my own lessons this week! 

Wish me luck! 

____

Cat of the Day

Today’s cat of the day goes to Winnie, my newest edition to the collection! (In honor of the real life Winnie, who I'm in love with, pictured below) 

The real Winnie :)