Hey Guys!

Haha.....erm....I know that I haven't been keeping my promise to blog. But it's so hard to blog often.....I really admire people who can blog everyday!

Since my previous entry, which is so long ago, it's been really eventful over here.


Pennsylvania
I went for my spring break in Pennsylvania for a week, and it was a great experience! I've uploaded the facebook photos. The vast farmlands just creates this serenity in you that really make you forget that you come from such a fast-paced world, like Singapore.




The Armish
But what was really great is the culture over there, and specifically the Armish culture. They are a group of people who stay firm on their christian practices that are more conservative and isolate themselves from the influences of the society. Their practices and beliefs are really amazing i tell you! Here's a shortlist just for your info!





Practices

• They do not want to be associated or "contaminated" by the US society so despite living alongside other Americans, they do not share the electricity and or water supply with the public. They also do not watch TV or listen to the radio.

• Education is only up to 6 grade and do not encourage further.

• At the age of 16, youths are given a chance to "explore" their identity and they can move out of the community and live the American life, and decide for themselves it the Armish lifestyle is what they want. (only 10-15% eventually leave the community!)

• They are not allowed ot own cars, but instead carriages or buggy. They belief that automobiles would bring them too far away from home.

• They do not have phones in their home but in a shack outside because they do not want to engage in unnecessary babble (from the christian bible)

• To avoid vanity, they only wear plain traditional clothes and avoid buttons or laces that are deemed fanciful.

• Oh they do not allow taking of photos because it is an undesirable form or human engraving, so we can't take photos of them and they do not have photos of anyone in their homes.
  

• there is no divorced, or you will be "ex-communicated" from the community.

• None of them have insurance because they do not belief in it. Instead, whenever someone needs money for medical fees or some other financial difficulty, they will organize a sale where the Armish people sell what they grow or make and give the money to the people who needs it.
  

The main idea is that they are really a very communal group and depend very much on each other. The farmhouse we stayed at hired a maid that was Armish and I was helping her out in the kitchen for two days. That was the closest contact I had with the Armish people.

The Farmhouse
Honestly, the greatest thing about the farm stay was breakfast every morning. Of cos the food is good, it was great EVERY morning! Toast, pies, fresh milk from the cows, scramble eggs, meat.....it was like buffet everyday!

And it's really nice to eat together with the family and the farm helpers at the table, where we would always sing grace before we had breakfast.

We also got to live abit of the FARM life, where we fed the calfs everyday, walks the goats (not the usual activity), learn to make cheese and milked the cows!





Exploring Lancaster
Every corner there is something in Lancaster. Canning factory, pretzel factory, winery, cheese experts, musuems of all sorts. All just within Lancaster and Intercourse county. There can be so much that I would talk about in Pennsylvania....but an advice, never come here without personal transport! I don't think there are any and even fi there are, you won't be able to reach the small areas where there's so much to discover! If there was time, I'd definitely would have stayed longer. It as really a road trip, driving around and exploring on the way. Oh we went to the Hershey chocolate factory, but it wasn't as fantastic compared to our "exploration". It was quite small in fact! But there was chocolate sampling! That's the good part!





Philadelphia
We didn't have enough time to explore philadelphia, but I went to the art museum. For those of you who are in to art, this is a MUST go! You can spend days there just looking at the art pieces. They have carvings and works form the Renaissance period, and alot more. I was lucky that they were holding a Picasso exhibition on the transitions in Picasso's works. And it was the only place in the museum that did not allow any exhibits. So too bad no photos.

Even the streets have murals everywhere on the buildings. It's really a art city. Oh but while i was roaming around the museum, Rose, Paul and Valerie went to McDonalds and saw blackness! The whole restaurant was filled with black people, even the staff! Maybe that's why the Philadelphia 76ers are good, they have so many black players to choose from!




Spring time=time to come out and play!
Hey I finally get to touch a softball glove again!!!!! It was a beuatiful sunny day, and I was on my way back.....AND! I chanced upon a softball recreational team and manage to join them!!!!!!! You don't know how much I miss just htrowing and catching a softball man!!! They play in a league called intra-murals here. Iit's like interhall games, just that you can just form a team yourself and play. It's really for the fun, so it's not so structured, the matches usually don't have a referee to umpire.

Oh and we got to know a group of people who plays frisbee. Apparently they know the previous GIP batch and have been trying to locate us (the new batch).

Another nice thing is that I no longer need to wear LONG SLEEVES to jog! I can just go jog whenever I feel like it and the weather's so nice sometimes!


Back to work now, spring time is here, so are the datelines!

Rhode Island day 3- valerie and I

Issey and Daphne left for Maryland today while Valerie and I decided to stay in Rhode island.

Finally we made some snow man! Paul was really good! His was like a sculpture piece with arms and boobs! Valerie's and mine were the usual one with stick arms and carrot nose.




Paul brought us to his parent's place which was just across the barn about 200m away-they live in another apartment which was build by his father.

It had a more cottage feel than Paul's place! His mom likes to collect ornaments and China (porcelein), and she's in to handicraft too! This quilt that she put together is made up of small pieces of clothes pieces made by each member of their family when they were young. It's really a meaningful piece, especially when all the pieces are sewn together just how they will always be connected to each other.


We met Paul daughter's pet snake. It was very colourful and had a nice pattern. It was really yucky when I touched it at first, because it's tail was like a lizard!! And you know how fearful i am i lizards!!!! But after that, it was really quite fun because they are really easy to handle and maintain-except that you have to feed them frozen baby mice!!


Paul drew us around Wakefield where they stay. This is a paint research plant where they test out the paints out in the open. Paul said that they test their paint here because it's near the ocean, so they paints can undergo the test of elements like moisture, salt, sun and wind.


We went to a part of the long beach that lines Wakefield. It was really chilly and windy that day. Coldzzzz! But the view was nice.


When we got back, Paul brought us to one of his secret chambers in the house. Inside what did not seem like a door or whatsoever, was a room full of ammunition. Rifles, guns, pistols, for military or hunting he had a whole collection of it!


Paul allowed me and Valerie to get a feel of the rifle. He emphasized "The gun is always loaded".


This is a container to transfer gun powder to the old kind of pistols. In the olden day, the gun can only fire one shot at a time! And ti's so troublesome to reload. You have to pour the gun powder into the gun, insert a flint. How did they survive fighting in a war?!

Rhode island 2- Valentine's Day

We woke up to another sumptous breakfast fro Valentine's! And after breakfast, Paul brought us on a mini-tour around the house.

This is Paul's RV (caravan). According to him, the high oil prices have made travelling in an RV very expensive, he can't afford to go on road trips in his caravan anymore. Oh yah, driving to Texas could go up to thousand dollars!


This is his workshop where he built some of his furniture. It used to be his mother's greenhouse until it became too tiring for her to tend to her plants.



Oh yah I must tell you guys about Paul's collection of bikes! He has I think about 10 bikes! And the car on the left is a vintage car that people collect as antiques, and he has a chevrolet old sports car! Ok I'll be going to Rhode island again, I'll take a clearer photo of the vintage car and the sports car.



After the tour, my apartment people went on a trip to Newport in Rhode Island. Being another state of "New England", Newport has very British feel to the houses and the school buildings. There's nothing much to do there but go visit the beautiful beaches and try their seafood. We didn't get to eat any seafood this time round since Rose wanted us back for dinner.

We visited the Cliff Walk, which is basically taking a stroll on a cliff at the shore.





Oh yah! Look at how steep the steps of the stairs are?! I slipped and would have sustained serious injuries if Issey didn't break my fall. Hate to say this......but I owe him one. I really can't imagine what would become of me if I fell!


Haha did a bit of snow shovelling when we got back in the evening too! It's really quite tiring!