Summary of Year 2011

 Summary of year 2011

It's been almost a year since I last blogged about the Duo. I am not only far behind in my entries, my photos are also not in order!!!!The ironical part is that I now have more time on my hand than before as I've quit teaching in June 2011 and only started with Nanyang Poly in Oct as an adjunct lecturer!

I'll try to summarise as much as I can for my own sake (failing memory) and for my kids' benefit as well as I recap their activities in the past year.

Kyle

He coped well in his new school and enjoyed all his activities, particularly in his game time during recess with friends and weiqi lessons. He even managed to clinch a bronze trophy during the inter-class competition. Outside of school, his Akido lesson on Fri and swimming lessons on Tues and tennis on Sat continued weekly. It was only during mid year that we decided to put him in Keppel Club for extra training on Sat.  Other than that he was freely pursuing his interest in reading and had finished the whole Tin Tin series, Asterix series, Ben Ten, Geronimo, Diaries of Wimpy Kid, Beastquest and also devoured all the Science Comics that I bought from JB. It was only in September that I realised that we needed to do something about his Chinese and promptly sent him for a one-week crash course with Jiang Lao Shi. It was then that he learnt how to take a bus from opposite our house to Fu Lu Shou building and we picked him up after his 3-hr lesson. After the 5-day course, he wanted to continue with the  same teacher (with sugar-coated voice) and he stayed on for 1 term before I stopped his lessons there (don't believe in traveling so far for classes). He took a short course in Weiqi Association in Waterloo Street during the holidays  (to keep him occupied) and he travelled there on his own and back. He also took part in his 1st Keppel Inter-club swim meet and Sengkang swim meet as well.

Meryl

The little girl finally went on to Pri 1 with must gusto and surprised many of us with her consistent performance. She had shown herself to be a conscientious and independent worker needing little supervision (I was more than happy to leave her on her own). She did well for almost all subjects, usually scoring 95 and above and was awarded the top 10% in her cohort at the end of the year. She is also well-adjusted in class and made many new friends. In her own words, "Everybody in the class wants to be my friend ...because I'm so cute!" She chose to join Chinese dance and was able to execute a split by end of the year, to my amazement. She was also enjoying her Guzheng lesson which was part of the curriculum though I never had the chance to see her play the instrument. She did asked for indiv lessons to which I ignored as I didn't want to start her on anything new on top of her  weekly Aikido, swimming and tennis lessons. She also requested for piano and I put it off till about Oct when I asked a neighbour, a China student, to teach her to play for leisure. She was quite happy with the arrangement until one day she came back and told me she wants to go for grading for piano. So in Dec she started lesson proper for 30 mins per lesson with her new piano teacher. She also managed to get her Bronze certificate for swimming in Dec and her Yellow belt in Aikido in August. For her birthday last year, we did away with the usual party and substituted it with Build-a Bear, bringing her to see her favorite dolphins (wanted to swim with dolphins but was fully booked) and she decorated her own birthday cake.

Fun Time

Kids travelled quite a bit last year. In March we went for a road trip to Malaysia with another family. We had a homestay at Bob's in Kota Tinggi and made day trip to Dearu. Kids visited crocodile farm, ostrich farm and played at the beach.

In June, we travelled to Melbourne for 12 days and stayed at a farm, went for day and night walks at Mornington Sanctuary, went fishing by the river, sat on an old steam locomotive to visit their local bazaar, hiked at Wilson's Prom, toboganned and skied at Mt Baw Baw and shopped in Melbourne with Penny and her family.

The kids also had 2 days of Staycation at Orchard Hotel during one of the holidays where they just fooled around in the tub and we went out for movies and food. On one of the public holidays, we went on the Tree-Top walk again and the kids caught fish and prawns from the streams on the way.

In Nov, we went for Tim's company trip to Langkawi and  visited the aquarium. We also had a day where we went out on a boat to snorkel with the Duo who are hooked on snorkelling, like their mummy. We swam with reef sharks and had a fantastic time!

As I was teaching in Dec, the kids had to settle for home-based fun. They had their playdates, bbqs and a visit to Universal studio with QQ. Of course our Wednesday Exercise night was ongoing throughout the year and the kids had their usual fun with their good friends.