Scandinavian Care Package 101

My friends came bearing gifts from home, jubi!
This - is what I call a perfect Care Package, yum!

Drive-by sightseeing

A few weeks back I got a FB message from an old colleague telling me that he and a few other old colleagues of mine were planning a trip to Borneo - would I be home to meet up if they came through Brunei?
Well, it's not exactly like our schedule is fully booked with visitors here, of course I would be able to meet up!

So yesterday they came into Bandar with a bus from Miri, but due to the party we weren't able to meet up until quite late in the evening, only to make plans for today. Today we have spent most of the day together and it's been so nice to have friends here to show around!

I must say, in 48 hours they've managed to cover nearly all of the most important sights of Brunei though!
Yesterday they did the "monkey boat" trip into the mangroves and saw the Proboscis Monkeys, went into the city mosque, had dinner at the water village, walked around town and visited the Regalia Building - all in one day.

Today we went for sushi lunch:



After that we did some drive-by sightseeing. Yep, just driving around big parts of Brunei showing them around from the car window!
They also got to browse the big (...) Mall for a couple of hours while I was busy doing Zumbatomic at ISB, they came along to the "Monkey Supasave" (=the supermarket that has the monkeys in the car park), and we took them to Jerudong Park and around the Polo Club. Finally we saw the sunset from the Empire Hotel, very beautiful.

Tonight I took them home for a home cooked meal, which they seemed to enjoy after all their "traveling food". It was also nice to catch up on all the happenings back in the "Verdensfirmaet", my old airline, in Denmark.



Nice to see you guys, I hope you enjoyed your bullet-visit to Brunei!

A day in the Magic Kingdom

Today we were so lucky to get to spend the afternoon at the Istana, at the little Princess' 4th birthday party.

It was a Disney Princess-themed party, and they had transformed the whole Royal Sports Complex into a magical fairground with life-sized exotic animals, huge butterflies, pretty balloons, bubbles and other glittery decorations. It looked so pretty!
There was a huge play area, a Beauty Tent, lots of games to play, a tent with an Exotic Pet Exhibition and also a big scene where they had several performances throughout the afternoon - all in the Disney Princess-theme.

We all left the party so happy, feeling like we had been to a magical wonderland, what a fabulous day!
Here are some of the photos I took:

Gong Xi Fai Chai!

During the first 15 days of the new year, most Chinese will invite their family and friends home to their "Open House". We've had a few invites this year which is really nice, it's such a special thing to be invited to take part in all these different celebrations.
On Friday we went to the Open House of one of Lucas' class mates. It's pretty much the same as a Hari Raya Open House - you come, you eat, you go..!



Yes, of course you are supposed to chat and catch up etc, but considering there are so many people coming through at the same time, you are not supposed to take up the space at the table for too long, nor hog the host too long either! :)

At this Open House they wanted to do a quick photo shoot with all the children. They had their own photo studio set up in their garage, very cool!
I managed to snap some "behind-the-scenes-shots"! I just love these - check out Lucas and the girls!

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair

Linnea & Luca:

Storytime

Lucas sharing a story with Oliver the other day.
Oh how we are going to miss them when they leave (for good)... Only a few more weeks now until moving date, and we kind of just pretend still it's not happening. We'll wait and be sad once they are gone, for now we enjoy their company as much as we can.

Back to routine

We've had a long four day weekend thanks to Chinese New Year. It's been lovely, especially after last weeks frantic birthday party planning.
Not only did Lucas have his birthday party on Friday, I also had a little Girls Night gathering on Saturday to celebrate me! I got so spoiled, my beautiful friends brought me all sorts of lovely gifts - and these amazing lilies!
(I must buy flowers more often - it really brightens up the house!)



So it was nice to get a couple of extra days to relax, catch up with things around the house, and breathe.
Now, back to routine. And I love it.

Shufflin'

Here's Lucas, doing his best impression of the LFMAO Robot man!



The original:


(Picture borrowed from tumblr.com)

The Year of the Dragon

Today we enter the Year of the Dragon. The Dragon is the biggest symbol of good fortune in Chinese astrology and according to tradition the Dragon brings in the four blessings of the East: wealth, virtue, harmony and longevity.

The Dragon is considered the most special of the 12 signs of the Chinese Zodiac, as it is a mystical being rather than an earthly animal. In this context that means we can expect grand things this year. Bigger than life is very much a Dragon thing.
How exciting!

Happy New Year!

Zumbaaa!

Birthday family photo

Here's the Lego family, ready for Lego party!
It's not my t-shirt since I don't have a Lego one unfortunately (Thomas...?!). I had to borrow one of Nathan's big ones.
It was Lucas' idea that the birthday people should wear the same one! :)

The Lego party

I realized last year that sticking to a theme was an easy way of doing a birthday party! Then you know what you are looking for, and there are lots of ideas to pinch on the internet. The (lacking) access to party supplies here in Brunei proves a challenge, but I think we did a pretty good job with the birthday party this year too!

This is how the invite looked like:



We had chosen a Lego theme this year. About 20 kids were invited but only about 15 could make it.

Here's a few shots of the party room before the guests arrived, we had made a "Creation Station" with nearly all Lucas' Lego, all colour sorted, of course!





We also had a colour-in station set up, for those who didn't feel like building Lego:



There was a "Guess-how-many-Lego-bricks-in-the-jar" game set up. Four people guessed on the same number - 100, and since the right answer was 139 so we had to get them to guess a second time. (Lucas guessed 3000...)



We had all Lucas' little Lego men on display, it looked so cool!





I had also cut out 20 little yellow Lego men and hidden them in the room, but in the end we forgot to get the kids to find them! They were just so busy building..! :)





When the guests arrived, the building could begin! Even though we had all the Lego set instructions available, all the kids chose to be creative, and boy they built some cool things!









The girls both built and coloured-in:





After a while we went outside to do a Lego relay race. The kids got split into two teams and were supposed to move as many Lego pieces from one box to another as they could in a set time, with a Lego spoon! It was a close race, 32-30 in the end.















We also did a team-building game inside, where the kids again were in two teams. They then got a Lego plate each and we rolled a dice to tell each kid how many pieces it could add to the plate when it was his or hers turn. Both teams worked really well together, and built an underwater station and an helicopter landing "dock"!





Oliver did his own thing!



We also played Lego Bingo. The kids got all into it and it was great fun talking about all the different mini figures and how they looked like. Plus, it took quite a while..!











Finally, it was time for cake - a Lego cake of course!
Lucas didn't know how it looked like but he was really happy with his Kai Ninjago cake (the ladies at the Kitchen of Jasmine just love all my different missions I give them, ha ha!)









The cake was inspired by this dude:







Lucas and some of all his presents:



And here are the goodie bags, Lego ones of course! In each bag there was a Lego mini-figure and a Lego colouring-in book, plus some sweets.