Our first full day

Good morning to all of you, it is approximately 10pm here and we have just finished our first full day in Singapore. We arrived to our temporary home at the Orchard Parksuites shortly after 2am. After just a few hours of sleep we were up and going for a full day orientation to the city.
Our guide, Angie, and our driver, Tom, kept us awake and engaged all day as we were introduced to life in S'pore. Our day began with a driving tour of Dempsey Hill, a former army barracks converted into a shopping and restaurant area that features many cuisines. From there we drove outside the City Centre to see the future location of the new Lakeview Campus for the Canadian International School as well as driving by the current location at Jurong East. We will officially tour the school next Tuesday but for now driving past to see it allowed us to see how nice it looks and the beautiful surroundings.
Up next a side trip to the Singapore Botanic Gardens. This beautiful setting is free and covers acres of grounds with waterfalls, ponds and walking trails. Seeing bananas grow freely was very interesting. Halie enjoyed watching Dannette feed the swans, turtles and giant koi that populate the water areas.

Singapore Botanic Gardens

Following our walk, we were shown many necessities such as the medical centres, hospitals, grocery markets and money changing stations. We learned to navigate the MRT subway system and even took a quick ride. They are not kidding when they say Singapore is clean! The subway was immaculate!!
To wrap up our day Angie took us to a local place for lunch where we dined on chicken and rice, a Singaporean staple. We learned that food is often shared family style and enjoyed having a local with us to make suggestions. Finally, with a quick tour through Chinatown to a see the Lantern Festival decorations. It was bright and amazingly colorful. We hope to get a chance to take the river cruise to see the Lanterns lit from the river.
By then we were all exhausted and needed a long nap. We dragged ourselves out of bed around 7pm and ventured out on our own to find an ATM (quite a challenge to find one for your specific bank) and then a bite to eat. I confess we were all over stimulated by then and went for the American staple of TGI Fridays :)
Tomorrow is our first full day of house hunting which we are all really looking forward to. The city is also abuzz right now as the Formula1 races are this weekend here in Singapore. It's a very large street race circuit and concert featuring Lady Gaga, Adam Lamber and Daughtry!
I think we are all doing our best to adjust quickly but recognizing it is very different than Chicago! Enjoy the pics, that's all for now. Good night!

An evening down Orchard Road, right outside our housing