Gratitude

Much of our life in Singapore is the same as it was in Melbourne. There’s grocery shopping to be done, clothes to be washed and dried, a house to keep cleanish, school lunches to pack, offspring to be yelled at, and all the other minutiae of family life.

Same shit, different country.

But we also like to get out to see and appreciate where we live. In Singapore we live much closer to the action than we did in Melbourne. In fact, we lived so far out in the outer suburbs that a drive into the centre of Melbourne (and it had to be a drive as there is bugger all public transport in the ‘burbs) took about 40 minutes if there was no traffic. The freeway, which is most definitely NOT free, often resembles a car park as opposed to a road so we rarely bothered heading into the big smoke to do stuff.

In Singapore, you are never far away from anything and with an amazing and cheap public transport system we tend to get out and see more.

Chinese New Year lanterns at the Fullerton Bay Hotel.

This past weekend was the beginning of Chinese New Year festivities and I took the Missies into the Marina Bay area to check out the River Hongboa. The River Hongbao was so crowded that we decided not to go onto the floating platform and instead walked around the perimeter of Marina Bay. Seeing my adopted city at night, all lit up and with the locals in a celebratory mood filled me with an enormous sense of gratitude for this amazing opportunity.

It’s moments like this that make Our Big Expat Adventure so wonderful. That in amongst all the hard stuff – the settling into a new country and culture, coping with the girls emotional adjustments while juggling my own – and the grind of day-to-day life it was wonderful to feel myself fill with the wonder of it all.

As I stared out at Marina Bay the Big Missy took my hand and said “I love living here, Mum!”.

So do I, so do I.

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