Well, we made it.  We left the United States a a few days ago (feels like weeks ago?) on July 2nd.  At some point during our 25 hours of travel time, we crossed the international date line (throwing everything way out of whack) and now we’re just chillin’ in the Singapore Metropolitan YMCA. 

It’s not so bad, but our bodies keep telling us to sleep during the middle of the day and we find ourselves wide awake in the middle of the night.  Imagine that.

The trip from Los Angeles to Taipei, Taiwan was brutally long, but the girls did very well overall.  If you ever want to get the Asian experience without the day of travel, I recommend a trip to LAX.  The International Flights building will give you a sense for the crowded, seemingly chaotic and varied pace of the Asian culture.

I won’t bore you with tedious details.  What can you say about a day on a plane, anyway?  I’ll just bullet point a few observations made along the way.

• This works for toddlers not twenty-somethings:  I was dozing on the plane and I kept hearing the PING, PING, PING sound of the flight attendant call button.  Even half-asleep, I wondered why someone was being a little heavy-fingered with the call button.  The sound persisted and I eventually woke up to find two flight attendants standing in the aisle, hovering over my little Sarah.  I guess Sarah had found the call button and was giving it a whirl.  It makes such a lovely sounding PING.  The female flight attendants were pretty amused.  That’s because she’s two, not twenty-two.
• The Chinese are beating us to everything.  In the family bathroom at the Taipei airport I saw a sign that read: Emergence Button.  I thought, "Wow, we’re just trying to figure out this whole emergent church thing and they already have it automated and available in public restrooms."
• At red stop lights there is one global universal: nosepickers.  I guess it doesn’t matter what side of the street you drive on or whether you use chopsticks or forks, if you’re gonna dig, you’re gonna dig.  And this Singaporan guy was digging–shamelessly.
• In terms of humidity, south Florida and Singapore could be long lost step-sisters.

I guess that’s all I’ve got for now.  The food has been good and no one is sick…so we can’t complain.  Our official orientation begins on Thursday. Until then we will enjoy the public transit, the wading pool at the Y, and the quirky Singaporan TV programming.  (Some of the shows are in Chinese with subtitles in another language I don’t recognize.  But they were playing The Simpsons earlier in English, so at least we know this country is civilized.)