Recovering, or Life as We Know It in Singapore

It’s been just over a year since we packed up our few remaining possessions, including the adorable Mr. Bailey, and started our lives in Singapore. Sometimes it seems like it couldn’t possibly have been that long, and other times it seems like we’ve been living here for ten years already.

In the time that’s passed since we first arrived, I’ve come to terms with the fact that my walls will forever be covered in lizard poop, that despite the fact that many locals also speak English, I will rarely be understood, and, no matter how well you store them, if you leave any pantry items open for more than a week, they’ll be stale the next time you reach for them. (I simply try to eat all the cookies and chips as soon as we open them to save them from this terrible fate). Life in Singapore has been nothing short of an adventure, to say the least. But if there was one word that I could use to describe the events of the past year it would be “recovery.” From both the exhilarating to the dismal (but, unfortunately, mostly just the dismal), the past 12 months have been a never-ending cycle of recovering from one event to the next, with little to no time in between to try to catch our breath…much less write. In short, we’ve found ourselves consumed with:

• Battling numerous bug infestations from the fairly harmless book lice to nefarious fleas and ticks
• Trying to combat numerous ovarian cysts
• Endlessly adjusting to time zone changes
• Recuperating from amazing trips (like Bangkok, Thailand – highly recommend) and terrible trips (Bali…sad, but true)
• Hosting visits from loved ones (we wouldn’t mind doing that one more often)
• Making great friends
• Losing great friends
• Struggling with insurance companies and immigration in both Singapore and the US
• Recuperating from a root canal and the countless dentist trips that come with it
• Continuously trying to make day trips to the beach
• Combating the mold and mildew that inevitably finds its way into our belongings
• Annihilating every toaster we purchase in Singapore (more on that later) 
• Adjusting to changes in responsibilities at work (again…and then again…and then…you get it) and working opposite schedules
• Tracking down countless lost packages
• Resuscitating relationships back home
• Trying to figure out how to file taxes when you’re married to a foreigner who works in a foreign country, but worked in the US for part of the year, and you work solely in the United States
• Losing VPN access to Hulu (why, Hulu, why?!)
• Dealing with a number of health issues that have recently plagued Bailey, from the stroke that terrified us in the middle of the night, to the fungal infection that just won’t go away

Whether this is just life at 30, or, as my sister put it, “It’s life at 30 when you’re living in a foreign country,” I’m not entirely sure. But here I find myself once again in this continuous cycle of recovery as I try to breathe life back into the blog that has gone neglected for far too many months. Bear with me and I’ll try to bring you some posts that will hopefully be mildly entertaining, if nothing else, and give you a glimpse of our ongoing adventure in Singapore.