Its the time of the year again for the Hokkien Huay Kuan's annual performance. We were a bit reluctant to let her particpate again as we have to bring Kaelyn to many many rehearsals at extended hours, sometimes 3 hours straight with parents having to pack lunch for them. Also, parents have to pay for their costumes, tickets to the show and DVD of the performance for keepsake. It's manpower, time and money all coming from the parents for the child to gain confidence and fun.
We tried to dissuade her but she was very keen so we just let her take part. This year, her class led by 叶家真 老师 presented the Red Lantern dance. Her costume was all red.. dressing just like for CNY. On the day of the performance, she have to report at NUS Centre for the Arts in the early afternoon for the final full dress rehearsal.
Finally the show started at around 7 pm with a big surprise for Daddy & Mummy. This year they have set aside a prize presentation for all levels of dance students who have performed very well during the dance exam. Only 2 per class were given the commendation and Kaelyn was one of them together with her classmate cum partner Liang Qi. We were all calling her name when she was on stage and was very very happy in her winning.
This is her first own self-earned prize which is from her own sheer hardwork and interest in dance.
After her performance, she was so hungry... wipe up the bowl of porridge in a few minutes and then pose happily with her prize.
We were very lucky to win a pair of air tickets to Australia in the Austville lucky draw. The travel agency CTC told us that it is worth $1,400 and we can choose to go to Australia or elsewhere. As we just came back from Melbourne & Sydney in June, daddy & mummy decided to go to Club Med at Bali instead. With the voucher, we only need to top up a few hundred dollars more. Club Med is an all-inclusive resort but some things are still chargeable eg. better wine, spa & etc.
Our room
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Relaxed by the beach
Cookie Making for kids
Kids Club
Swimming at the Kids Club. The staff find her very reserved so paid special attention to her..We put Kaelyn in the kids club where she gets to mingle with kids of other nationalites. She did not quite enjoyed it so we only left her there once or twice only. During her absence, we head to the quiet pool, meant for adults only, for a relaxing swim, sauna and steambath.
Daddy & Mummy try our luck at the dart competition... See mummy won silver.. hahah..
All of us had a good jump on the Trapeze... a bit scary..
Watch her maiden jump...
Nightly entertainment at very good standards. All the performers are internal staff who may be a waitress, security guard, front desk staff or life guard by the day but turned performers at night. Thumbs Up!
The resort is nice and relaxing but perhaps we are not resorts people so spending 5 days at the same place makes us feel caged up so we "escaped" to the town to sightsee other parts of Bali. Transport is really expensive so we only done it once..something like S$50 for 2 way .. feel so ripped off!
There are 2 highlights for Kaelyn during the city tour - to have her nails painted and hair braided
Another kids activity - Sand Castle Making
Another highlight of her trip is she gets to perform on stage... She told the emcee she's performing ballet... erm.. since when you know ballet? Hahaha...
This video shows the emcee interviewing her and then she went to tell the emcee the songs are inappopriate for ballet dance. The Aussie boys were instead grooving to the music....
Finally came the "right"music ... and she performed her "ballet"... the aussie boys on the other hand didn't know how to react to that kind of music... funny
We also participated in some of the activties such as morning yoga, golf, archery, swimming & sailing. I think an experience once at club med is enough. Someone told me Club Med at Bintan is better... I'll perhaps consider that option at my next lucky win!
Today parents are invited to My First Skool (Restaurant). Yes Kaelyn's school is transformed to a little restaurant and Kaelyn became waitress of the day serving food to parents who are the customers.
Little Chefs busy preparing food and little waitress served the pipping hot food to the customers
Satisfied Customer Daddy on the left and on the right, happy waiter & waitress after a busy day
Kaelyn started using English as her preferred language during the early years so Daddy had to speak to her in Mandarin so as to encourage her to speak more Mandarin. Her Mandarin has improved tremendously... kudos to Daddy and also My First Skool Teacher 彭老师 who has a lot of influence in her Mandarin proficency as well.
As Kiasu parents, we feel English is one that should not be neglected and she needs to get started on Phonics so that would help her in her reading skills. Also knowing Phonics well will also help in her spelling. She went through an assessment at LCentral and she is classed between "LaunchPad" and "Lift-Off". Mummy made the call to start her with, lower level, LaunchPad instead. She started to attend her evening lessons on every Thurs by Teacher Sharin who is a Londoner. Kaelyn enjoys her lessons very much and always tells us how much she like her teacher.
There comes a point when Kaelyn's dance teacher 梁永心老师 decided to go overseas to further her dancing passion. Her new dance teacher is a male teacher which mummy is a bit uncomfortable with. Mummy felt that we should switch her Sunday dance lesson to Saturday so that she gets a female dance teacher and she could join 姐姐 & 妹妹 's swimming lesson which is Sun morning. If she have dance on Sun afternoon, it will be too tiring so we activated the change to Sat about 2 months prior to her dance exams. She had difficulty adjusting to new teacher and new friends.. quite slowly & painfully she manage to merge in and accepted the change.
Separately some Sundays, we bring her to join in the swimming but she didn't seem to enjoy the water. She and 妹妹 were just playing by themselves in the baby pool and most of the time, only her lower body is wet. Sometimes she would prefer to stay at home than to go swimming so we just let her be.
The phonics & dance lessons run concurrently for a few months until January when LCentral said Kaelyn is ready to go to the Lift-off level. However, the Lift-Off classes are only available on Sat at 9 am. Oh my goodness, we have changed her dance to Sat so that all the activites can be separated out. Sigh.. so much planning has gone to waste. So now the phonics & dance lessons are taking place on Sat at 9 am and 2 pm respectively. Sometimes, she'll fall asleep in between but it has been a few months now so she's more or less got use to the routine. Let's bear with it a little while more when you complete your Lift Off level then we'll stop the lessons ok.
We arrived gloomy Sydney and checked into a Medina 2 bedroom service apartment. The apartment is as big as a 4-room flat with everything included. We were all happily washing and drying our clothes with the machines provided so that there's minimal laundry back to Singapore.
Gloomy Sydney .. is because it was raining non stop during our short visit. Such a waste. See Kaelyn holding the umbrella tightly whilst doozing off .
We head straight to Circular Quay where Sydney icon - Sydney Opera House, Habour Bridge & Darling Harbour are. Nice but because of the weather, the sky turn dark sooner than expected so our photos didn't turn out too well
We ended our day earlier as we are setting off early the next day for the Blue Mountains National Park. We took a train to the Blue Mountains for the Three Sisters. The journery was super long... can't remember how long but I thought it was almost 1.5 hours on the train. As we get nearer and peaks, the mister it gets. By the time we reach our stop, oh my god, the weather is soooo cold & misty...we reckon it will be unsafe to get there, all of us will get drenched in the mist and near impossible to see anything even if we get to the Three Sisters. See, we can't even see what is opposite the road... Such a disappointment!! We had Subway for lunch and head back to town.. Travel for 3 hrs to eat Subway was the joke till today.
After a disappointing visit to the Blue Mountains, we all agreed we need to eat something good for dinner to make ourselves happy. We had a nice charcoal bbq dinner... see the prawn, when u put the sticks of prawn on the machine, it auto turn the sticks so that the food will be cooked evenly without you turning it manually. Nice, warm & cosy evening!
Day 3 breakfast is homecooked meal. After eating all the Australian food, we are all craving for porridge hahah.. so here's the spread.
Today is the day where we parted our ways too. Daddy & Mummy decided to bring Kaelyn to kids attractions while Uncle Swee Lye & Aunty Christabelle will find their own entertainment - Shopping! We visited the Sydney Aquarium and Sydney Wildlife World. I think these are the highlight of Kaelyn's trip.
Confession Time! Mummy has neglected this blog for the past year as work has kept me really busy.. much apologies!! Also with the lost of my handphone, all the precious photos of Kaelyn were gone.. heartache! Let me recollect the wonderful memories of the past year and blog them without the photos.
This Jun holiday, we are on a free & easy holiday together with Uncle Swee Lye & Aunty Christabelle. I love Melbourne which is really nice and vibrant. We spent our first 2 days in the Melbourne City.
Victoria Market is just 2 minutes walk from our hotel (Sky Lounge Central Apartments) where fresh produce is easily available. See how nicely the minced meat are presented!
Daddy & Uncle Swee Lye picking fruits for all of us... the rock melon is really sweet!
Trams are easily available at Melbourne. This historical public transport adds a nice dimension to the modern look of the city.
We are at the Federation Square - juz right behind Daddy is a campfire whereby passerby can join in for some warm moments and sing along. We also visited Melbourne's Chinatown and Harbour Town Outlet Mall.
The last 2 days, we rented a Nissan X-Trail as we're tracking into the surburb of Melbourne. We are heading towards Phillip Island today. We stopped by Nobbies Centre where you are able to catch tons of sealion but erm.. where are all the sealion today? No luck!
We finally reach Phillip Island and all of us are seated here facing the freezing sea... feel like we are all 面海思过 ...when the sky started to turn a bit dark, the penguins will head to shore for home. The penguins are really small and cute. They will wait for their friends, queue up and walk towards the sand to find their homes.. such good team work (sorry we are not allow to take photos).
Today is the last day at Melbourne and we are going to drive to the Great Ocean. These are some scenic pictures along the Great Ocean Road... first time seeing a lighthouse at a closeup.
Our final destination is to see the Twelve Apostles. There are many routes to take to reach our destination and we've chosen the worst routes of all. The roads are winey and is the longest route. Daddy has to drive really fast at the last 1 hour as the sky is getting dark. The scenary was awesome and worth the visit!
There is some news about ash clouds from a volcanic eruption in Chile that have drifted across the Pacific and caused havoc for air travel in Melbourne so the next morning, we set off for the airport earlier in case of bad jams. Phew, clear sky for the day and we took a domestic flight to Sydney with no delay. Kaelyn is having her organic lunch on board. Sydney, see you in 1 hr 30 mins!!
