Cub Scouts

I was just informed by my six year old that he needs a safe, so that he can put his Cub Scout uniform in it. And right there you see the level of fanaticism with which our son has embarked on this new venture in his life.

He had some friends in Cub Scouts last year, which sparked his interest. This is the first year he could join here in Singapore, so we decided to try it, even though neither Erik nor I was in Scouts as a kid, although I did have a summer stint as a Girl Scout day camp counselor. But that's another story.

Ethan was so excited about scouts that when all he had for a uniform was a hat, scarf, sash and socks, he took them on and off repeatedly the first. Now that he has the rest, he's preening in front of the mirror with a silly grin on his face. We attended the first pack meeting last night. Aside from the fact that half the kids were Asian, you could tell yourself you were in the States. I wondered how all the non-Americans felt about pledging allegiance to our flag. Truth be told, I have a hard time saying the pledge of allegiance these days. I remember the pride with which I said it as a child. Now I have mixed feelings about "the republic for which it stands." Don't get me wrong - I'm immensely grateful for having been born an American. I just think a little of the gleen has been rubbed off. Still, saying it with a crowd of young boys who are being trained to believe it 6,000 miles away brought a feeling of unity back to me. Ethan? He's just itching to get some of those patches and pins for his uniform.

Megan's logic

Yesterday in home school, we were talking about Genesis. I told the kids that we were going to read about God changing Jacob's name. I asked them if they remembered how God changed Abram's name to Abraham. They did, so I said, "So do you remember what Jacob's new name was?"
Megan said, "Jacobham?"
Good guess.

Where have all the pictures gone?

For those of you who are wondering why there haven't been many pictures on my blog lately (and I know that many of you spend significant portions of your day wondering things about my blog), Erik has been a busy beaver posting them at our website. I don't know how to add to it, but there are some photos from this summer, so take a look. When I figure it out (or rather, when my husband takes the time to sit down and explain it to me) I'll put some new pictures up of my own.

The ghosts are hungry again

It's that time of year again, when the ghosts of people past creep out of the ground, or wherever they are, and wander the earth hoping to be satiated by their living friends and relatives. Or so I'm told.

The Hungry Ghost Festival is evident in that many businesses and apartment complexes place a large rusted barrel out in front where people can worship. Hoards of little shops sell piles of paper money and effigies for burning purposes. To burn these in honor of your deceased loved ones is to "feed" their hungry ghosts so that they can rest in peace again for another year.

So it's common to see people standing near these barrels of fire, throwing in paper with pictures of money, cars, houses, anything that might allow your dead to live a more comfortable afterlife. What is interesting about seeing this is the complete disengagement with which people will perform this act. I saw a woman yesterday having a conversation with a nearby guard while she absently dropped her piles of thin paper into the fire without looking. If I have ever seen an empty ritual, this is it.

Why are Asians so superstitious? I'm curious to know the origin of this and other rituals. When I went for a haircut on the first working day after the New Year, my hairdresser told me it would have been very bad luck had I cancelled, being her first appointment of the New Year. She had already had two other people cancel that day. She felt certain there would be one more, because "these things always happen in threes." She sincerely believes that her life is directed by this ebb and flow of positive and negative luck.

As for me, I will not be purchasing any paper to burn. I don't believe in luck, or ghosts, for that matter. On this day I'm thankful that my hope is in something I believe to be much more real and life-giving.

Knowing enough to love for life

Tomorrow Erik and I will have been married for 9 years. When you think about it, even if you know someone for a long time before you get married, you know next to nothing about them when you consider everything that you will encounter about each other. People ask, "How did you know you were supposed to marry Erik?" and I could stammer out a bunch of different reasons, all valid, but in the end I think it amounted to faith that what I knew about him was enough. In fact, when I had known Erik all of about 6 months, a friend of mine, in teasing me about how much I liked him said, "If he asked you to marry him tomorrow, you'd say yes."
"No I wouldn't!" I retorted with feigned surprise, while thinking, "Yeah, I probably would." Because bottom line was, I knew enough.

What did I know? I knew that Erik was a man of God. I knew that his main ambition in life was to serve Him with everything he has. I knew he was someone who would challenge me to go beyond myself, but do it in such an encouraging way that I would really believe I could do it. I knew that I could trust him with my life. I knew that he was wise, intelligent, strong, patient, adventurous, and fun. I didn't know those things nearly to the degree I do know, but I saw enough of them to know I wanted to be with him.

Nine years later I know a lot more. I know that he has such amazing endurance that he can run circles around me, even though I exercise daily and he never did, up until he decided to do a triathlon. I know that he garners respect from his peers for his gentle and approachable demeanor. I know that he loves goofing around with the kids until it's way past their bedtime. I know that he'll fall asleep within two minutes of his head hitting the pillow while I lay awake for another 1/2 hour. I know that he can just get close to a computer and it will stop doing whatever thing has been frustrating you for the past 15 minutes (like he just did now). And a million other big and small, great and not so great things. And I know that in another 9 years, I will have learned even more. There's a comfort in knowing so much about a person, and being known just as well in return.

What hits me sometimes is knowing that God knew all these things about Erik, and He knew how much I would need them even more than I did.

When playing is just so much more important

I'm watching, as surreptiously as possible, my daughter running around with a small Chinese rice measure box filled with coins. She is asking imaginary people, "Do you need a coin? Yes?" and then giving them one. She is running around the living room doing this at a more and more frantic rate as her need to also use the bathroom grows. It's amazing to me that if I were to ask her, "Do you need to go potty?" she would insist with vehemence that no, she does not!

A 30 second bathroom break is just too long to fathom taking when such joy as this is possible. Or so it seems.

The Book Tag

My brother cyber-tagged me. Somehow it was more fun when we were kids and we played tag in person, but there it is and I must respond, so here goes:

1. One book that changed your life:
The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning

2. One book you've read more than once:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

3. One book you'd want on a desert island:
This is such an unfair question, because it presumes there's some book you'll really want to read repeatedly, but if I'm stuck indefinitely on a desert island, isn't anything I read that many times going to become something I hate? In that case, I wouldn't want to choose something I currently like. I think I would choose the complete works of C.S. Lewis because I haven't read most of them.

4. One book that made you laugh:
I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

5. One book that made you cry:
Most recently, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

6. One book you wish had been written:
My own

7. One book you wish had never been written:
Many, but none that bothers me so much I care to name it

8. One book you're currently reading:
Sacred Marriage, by Gary Thomas

9. One book you've been meaning to read:
Gift from the Sea by Ann Morrow Lindbergh

10. I'm meant at this point to tag 5 people. I tag Liz, Mandy, and whoever else might read my blog and have one of their own.

National Library Book Sale

As a woman reared on good books, I jumped at the prospect of the National Library's Book Sale. Admission was free, and all English books S$2. I envisioned myself loaded with great information books to supplement our homeschool times. I even gave myself a spending limit. I needn't have bothered.

Doors opened at 9:30 on Saturday. I arrived shortly after 10 a.m. to find about 2,000 people in the queue in front of me. I seem to have been working off the erroneous assumption that out of 4,000,000 people, I was the only one with an interest in cheap books. Still deeply entrenched in the American disdain for long queues (though I have resorted to calling them "queue" instead of "line") I told myself that if I wasn't in the door by 10:30, I was ditching.

The queue moved with lightning speed actually, so I was in the door about 15 minutes later. Inside I was handed a large plastic bag and set loose on thousands of bins full of manhandled books. I worked my way down to the English kid's books and found that only about 10-20% remained. It seems the way to approach the book sale is to come early, indiscriminately grab piles of books to claim as your own, then find a spot on the open floor where you can flip through them and decide at your leisure which ones you want. I saw people with 3-4 stacks 2 feets high each of books. Fighting twinges of bitterness, I battled my way into viewing several bins until my tolerance for chaos reached the breaking point. Another queue to have someone count my books (7), and a second wait to pay for them, and I was out of there in about an hour. I saw people with what looked like hundreds of books - what time did they come? I learned that the queue began at 7:30 a.m. That's when you have to ask how truly important is the great deal?

There were just as many people waiting outside as there had been when I arrived. I wanted to scream, "It's not worth it! There's nothing left - turn back!!" Next year maybe I will try to be there early. I'll be sure to bring a good book and a partner to help me nab my own stacks.

Majulah Singapura!

I have no idea what my subject line means, aside from the second word being Singapore in Malay. But it must mean something good because it's part of the national anthem. It's in fact the only part of the Singapore national anthem that I can sing, the rest being also in Malay. I have it running through my head right now because yesterday was Singapore National Day. We spent it at our friends, the Wilsons house, in part because they live right next to the stadium where all the festivities were (but mostly just because we really like them).

We were able to simultaneously watch the activities on TV while seeing some of it outside, like the skydivers who flew over and landed inside. And the fireworks. I don't know where the idea of fireworks for holidays originated (probably in China, since that's where they were invented, along with everything else) but my theory for the 4th of July had always been the "rockets red blare, the bombs bursting in air" bit from the national anthem. Maybe that's why Americans do it, but I guess Singaporeans just like the way they look.

Anyway, we ended up having to stay until 10 p.m. because half of Singapore was trying to leave the stadium. That was ok with us - more time with our friends celebrating a holiday that doesn't mean much to us except a day off from work.

Erik's addition: The title means Onward Singapore! Check out photos of our evening.

Side Trip

We interrupt the Brenna family tour of Singapore to bring you "Ethan's emergency room adventure." Yesterday (my birthday, by the way), Ethan started complaining of stomach pain. At first, I thought it was just a ploy to get out of going to soccer practice, because it seemed fine when he was there. Afterwards though, he started complaining again and looking peaked. He refused any dinner (and it was Subway sandwiches - this kid can put away a 6" by himself!) and wanted to go to bed at 7.

At about 10 p.m., Ethan came wimpering out of his bedroom. We took his temperature, and he had a slight fever. Now, this is where my medical upbringing and Erik's collide. My dad worked in a hospital (read "great insurance") when I grew up, so we felt the freedom to treat anything with a trip to the ER. Erik's family was more along the lines of "if the towel can't hold any more blood, maybe it's time to take you in." So Erik was inclined to let Ethan go back to sleep and wait it out, while I was reaching for my keys. I won, so my mom came with me to a close children's hospital emergency room.

We had to wait about an hour to see a doctor. She determined that he was simply quite constipated, which is what we thought (though the fever threw us off, especially as it had risen by the time we got there). So our boy got to experience his first, and hopefully last, enema. It went to work within a minute. Ethan and I were in hysterics in the bathroom because he kept trying to see what was coming out and every time he bent over, the toilet automatically flushed and made him jump about 3 feet.

With a pain free boy, we tried to leave by following some people through a door to the lifts. If we had used our powers of observation, we might have noticed the "staff only" sign on the door. We got to the basement car park and were unable to exit any of the doors. We went up and down several times, looking for alternative exits or signs of life, but found neither. We finally got someone's attention through the original door we entered, and he went in search of a staff. Meanwhile, a nurse came up the elevator. "We're trapped!" we cried to her, and she laughed and let us out. So that was a good way to spend 20 minutes at midnight when we were already beat.

Today we're pushing the fiber on Ethan. He's never had this problem before, but I'll admit we haven't been eating very well since we've been out and about every day with the family. We're just thankful it was nothing serious.

Living like tourists

Two days ago my whole family (meaning my parents, my older sister, and younger brother) all made the arduous trip to Singapore to visit us for the first time. Ethan is so excited to have his uncle here that he is bouncing off all the walls. We've set up a special blog for people to follow our adventures. Now that I think about it, we really could have just posted everything here, but this creates a good sense of solidarity and family bonding. You can read about the Brenna adventures here at the blog.

Specialized Skills

I was at a friend's house today who is a chiropractor by trade, though she isn't practicing right now due to the presence of two small people in her house. I did something screwy to my neck last week, so I asked her if she'd take a look at it. She found a little chiropractic tool and had me lie down on her son's foam interlocking alphabet squares (my chiropractor in the States doesn't have those) where she quickly fixed my problem. As she did this, I mentioned to her that, unlike her, I have no specialized skills like she does. It amazes me that she can touch my neck in various places and determine exactly what's wrong. I have a degree in communication, which means I know how to communicate well, though I don't always practice those skills. My communication abilities rarely wow anyone, to my knowledge. At any rate, they aren't skills others don't naturally possess to some degree. Mine might just be considered more fine tuned.

On the way home I thought, "No, wait, I can develop film! That's my specialized skill!" I used to work in a one hour photo studio developing pictures. I was elated by this thought until I remembered that since then, digital photos have come into being and I am not trained in developing those. Many moons ago, I even knew how to develop film and photos in a dark room, but I think I've forgotten all that by now. I also know how to pantomime, but that's a skill of mine that is generally mocked, rather than praised.

So here I am, feeling fairly unskilled, but that's ok. You don't need to comment on any skills you think I do have. This isn't a cry for validation, just an honest proclamation of myself.

Any suggestions?

Erik and I, quite by accident, watched National Treasure last night. Ok, it wasn't an accident that we watched it like, "Oops, how did that DVD get in there? Oh, well, guess we're stuck now." I mean that it coincided well with the celebration of American independence. So we thought, "We should watch some other patriotic feel good movie." But all the movies we could conjure - Glory, The Patriot, Born on the 4th of July - aren't exactly what you'd classify as "feel good." So does anyone have any suggestions for a movie involving American history that doesn't make you depressed? Are we asking too much?

Speaking of which, there's a quiz on msnbc right now about American citizenship. Erik and I took it. I am proud to say that I scored 95%. Erik squeaked in with 85%. I guessed better than he did. Take it - see how you do.

Story time

Our bedtime routine these days involves a wonderful little book called The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. If you are a parent of young children, or even an adult with a need for a good book, I have to recommend it. It is a sweet story of how a little china rabbit learns how to love others as he is lost time and again over the course of many years. My son wasn't too excited about it at first, but now each night it's "Let's find out what happens to Edward!"

Also on our top picks for kid books these days (because I'm convinced that you're dying to know) are Pippi Longstocking, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, the Magic Tree House series (Ethan's determined to have every one, and will, thanks to his Nonna), and the Froggy books.

I'm re-reading a book called Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow, which is really more about contentment than anxiety. I enjoy reading history, and I admit that history which involves tragedy is quite fascinating to me. While I was in the States, I read Hungry Ghosts (about the famine in China following the Great Leap Forward) and last week I finished Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer, which delves into Mormon Fundamentalism. What's on your shelf these days?

Celebrating American Style

For our first time celebrating the 4th of July in Singapore, we joined several other families at what I think was the naval base here. All I know is that we parked by some really cool "black and whites" (old, colonial style houses famous in Singapore) and walked to a field filled with what you'd expect - a big stage with someone singing American songs loud and not too well, vendors selling over-priced food guaranteed to kill you in the long run, and various blown up kids' jumping apparatus. Ah, America. Sorry to say, Ethan had messed something up on our camera, so I don't have any pictures besides the ones I took on my cell phone (not good enough to show, even if I could transfer them to my computer). You'll just have to imagine the fun.

Erik was still away on business, so I manned the lines for corndogs and fries myself, then waited with the kids in line for the blown up slide. They did it twice, and Ethan managed to frighten and awe most of the onlookers by rolling down the slide instead of sliding. He made it down in about 1.27 seconds. That's my boy!

Meanwhile, our friends had braved the line for the bungee jump, the kind where you start on the trampoline and they hold you down while the ropes tighten then let you go. Ethan debated for awhile before deciding he too wanted to go. It was then that we entered The Long Line. I told him it might take up to an hour before he got on the ride, but he was still determined to go. There comes a point in a line like that, say after the first 15 minutes, where you know that you have committed too much of your life to this activity and you must follow through. When we had moved 5 feet of the 20 foot line in 1/2 hour, I knew we were in for it. We got to where there were 8 kids in front of Ethan (three could jump at a time) and the man running the ride informed us they were shutting down until after the fireworks. At that time, it was 7:30. Fireworks were planned for 8. "So do we have to stand here for an hour?" I asked, trying hard to breathe spiritually.
"Ah, sorry. Yeah, must come back. No light now - cannot jump. Not safe." Murmuring began amidst the crowd. What? Why? With mounting tension, every ounce of American in us came out - we demand an explanation! We demand compensation for this lost hour of our lives! You are infringing on our right to the pursuit of happiness! Quick! Give us something for free!!
Instead, we got tokens, with numbers that indicated our place in line. When I broke the news to Ethan, he lost it for a moment, then resigned himself to his fate. We joined our friends again for those lighted rings kids like at this holiday, as well as for sparklers. The fireworks were short but good. Since I'd told Ethan the story behind The Star Spangled Banner, he asked, "Was it this loud all night for the man who wrote the song? Was it the same sounds?" I thought, "Wow, you were listening to me."

When they were done, we ran back to the bungee jump. After another 15 minutes of waiting for the lights to come on, the jumping resumed. Just as Ethan got strapped in, I realized I didn't have a camera, so there is no photographic evidence of his joy.

So, with lessons learned and friends enjoyed, a dirt and sweat covered crowd hiked back (is it 10 degrees warmer than when we came? we wondered) to our cars and headed home. Happy 4th - here's hoping yours is just as fun or more.