Friends from SG

If you remember, I was just talking about two friends visiting in Nov and the next moment, Nov is almost over, YT is already back in SG and WL has arrived today!

We are so delighted to have friends from SG visiting us and our quaint little town. It was really fun as we brought YT around Karlskrona and had him over at our place for dinners. In a way, this little town has become our second home and it feels good playing host and showing our friends around. I must say that this isn't the best time to visit Karlskrona - autumn is coming to an end, the trees are all bare now and it's rainy and gloomy these days. But other than the scenery, I hope that they get to experience and appreciate a different lifestyle, one of a slower, simpler pace and one that we won't get to experience in SG.

Sew, sewing sewed!

I did quite a bit of sewing these days. I made two felt fruit hairbands for Jen's girls, a flattened felt lizard bookmark for SH and sewed two items which are going to be birthday gifts for a little friend. It's fun learning new sewing techniques like different type of hand stitches, free style sewing etc through these little projects. The birthday presents will not be revealed until after the birthday, hoho, so here are photos of the fruit hairbands and felt lizard.

Economical fried bee hoon

This is our favourite Sunday morning breakfast. Hmm, ok it's actually a tie with nasi lemak! We used to drag ourselves out very early on Sundays just to have a economical fried bee hoon or nasi lemak breakfast. Ha! This almost looks like what we have in SG, just short of the crispy fried chicken wings and ice cold soya bean drink to complete my meal. Being away from home for too long, I'm easily thrilled when I try to replicate local delights. lol.

Autumn in Sweden

It is probably the most beautiful time of the year now. All around the town, the leaves on the trees have changed colour. Just two weeks ago, everywhere was still green so I was rather surprised by the sudden change to all yellow, red and brown over a week. The autumn foliage is absolutely stunning. But this beautiful sight is very short-lived because most of leaves are falling and some trees are already bald now!

We thought we should quickly have some photos with the beautiful autumn foliage as the backdrop since the weather here is rather erratic and probably before we know it, it’s might start snowing. So last weekend, we took our camera and tripod and did an autumn themed photoshoot for ourselves!





Ha! We have an idea now to do a photo shoot like this for the coming winter and spring season. If we are going home in March, we will miss summer. Then again, it’s summer in SG everyday and we could probably do a summer themed photoshoot when we are back.

We have two friends from SG visiting us in November. And in December, I have planned a Winter Grand Tour as a finale, just in case we are really returning in March. lol. It’s looking very exciting but oh man, I’ll be on the move for over 3 weeks and travel from Karlskrona to Helsinki to Oulu to Stockholm to Kiruna to åre and finally back to Karlskrona. This does look a little oh-my-gawd now. =p

A visit to Karlskrona Montessori

During our free time in the bridal shop, Lotta (aka my colleague/friend) and I would chat a lot about differences between Sweden and Singapore. And one of the heavily discussed topics about the two countries must be the education system. Lotta's daughter, Saga is studying grade 3 in Karlskrona Montessori and she often shares with me how Saga loves going to school and all the interesting stuffs she does in school. And just two weeks ago, Lotta was very kind to bring me to Saga's school so that I could see for myself how lessons are like in Swedish schools. The school encourages parents to spend an entire day or two following their children through their lessons to understand what the children are doing in school.

Upon reaching the school, I was greeted by Saga's best friends but were all too shy to talk to me. lol. Still, they played very good host and led us around the school throughout the day. Lessons started at 8am and the children changed into comfortable home slippers upon arrival. I love this idea! Not only did it keep the floor clean, it made the children feel more at home and more relaxed immediately!

We went up to the second floor to Saga's third grade classroom and her two teachers were at the door to greet and welcome the children. There are 25 students in her class and this gives an impressive student-to-teacher ratio of 25 to 2 or 12.5 to 1! It is not just in Montessori that they have low student-teacher ratio. In other Swedish public schools, the number of students per teacher per class are capped at 25.

The classroom lights were dimmed and relaxing music was playing in the background. The children gathered around this 'cozy corner' of the classroom and excitedly whispered to their friends while waiting for the lesson to start.

The teacher then joined the circle and asked about their day and how they were feeling, basically just chit-chatting with the children. It was a great idea to begin the day making every kid feel relax and happy.



At 8.15am, the 25 students split into two groups of 12 and 13. One group was having a Geometry Math lesson and the other was learning about living things in a Science lesson. Their classroom can be separated into two smaller rooms by the doors in the centre, so they can have two lessons going on concurrently.



During the Science lesson, the students walked around the class looking at pictures and had to decide if they were living things or not. The students gathered back in the circle for a discussion. For every picture, the teacher went round the class and asked every student to state if it was a living thing or non-living thing and explain why. I understood now why they further divided the (already very) small class into smaller groups of 12 and 13 - every child get to speak and share his/her opinion.



The Science lesson ended at 9.15am. From 9.15 to 10.30am, it was 'free time' for the students. Honestly, when I heard free time, image of a class with no teacher and children playing a fool, sleeping, screaming, doing nothing etc flashed past. Read: All hell break loose. But what I saw was far from my imagination.

Every student had done an individual weekly plan at the beginning of the week. When the teacher announced that they were free to do what they want, they looked through their list, chose the task and proceeded to complete the task. This was what Saga did in the 1h 15 minutes of free time:

1) Saga had a discussion with her friends about their school newsletter project.

2) She completed her 3 pages of her Math homework and placed the book in a homework box for the teacher to check.

3) She did 25 multiplication questions, timed herself and recorded the time down on the worksheet.

4) She went to the resource shelf and took a list of 5 Swedish words to learn pronunciation. According to the instruction on the list, she has to practice the words on her own, then repeat the words to a friend and finally to a teacher.

And the impressive thing was that she did everything without any instructions from the teacher! Everyone knew very well the tasks he/she has to complete for the week. There were plenty of lesson resources in the classroom with clear instructions on how to use them. Ha! In case you are wondering if Saga was more well behaved because her mom was there, every kid was so disciplined too! Here's what the others were doing:

1) Two boys challenging each other in a Math game to learn about addition and subtraction.

2) This girl is learning about subtraction of large numbers in thousands.

3) Some children were at their desk doing their homework.

4) This girl was playing a Math related computer game. (The Macbook belongs to the teacher.)

5) These young ladies were having a break outside their classroom. The children can take a short break anytime during their 'free time' and have fruits.

6) Two boys playing name-the-shape game with the teacher.

7) This girl is learning Swedish and the teacher is helping her with her questions.

These different activities were all happening at the same time! It's so interesting seeing every kid doing different stuffs, yet everything still feels very much in order and control. I'm very impressed with how these young children were so disciplined and were extremely clear of their tasks. They were totally in charge of their own learning. And what's role of the teacher? They are very clear of every child's learning progress and ability so they play an important role in charting the learning path and setting goals with each child. During lessons, they facilitate learning and ensure a conducive and supportive learning environment.

From a chat with the teacher, the difficulty and the number of tasks were pegged to their learning abilities. It's the first time I witness such effective differentiated learning. Every kid was learning at their own pace. Higher ability students who could complete the simpler tasks quicker can proceed to the more challenging tasks. A student who is weaker in Math can spend more time on the Math tasks and start with simpler tasks. There is a set of minimum learning objectives for all the grade 3 students, but how much more and how fast they can learn is unlimited! They encourage a lot of self learning for Math and languages. Science classes consist more of discussions and group projects.

From 10.30 to 11am, it was music lesson for Saga. There were children from grade 0 all the way to grade 9 in the class! The students could decide if they like to join the choir or to stay in the class to do more self learning.

Then we had lunch with the children. After lunch, the children went to the garden for some games with their friends.

From 12 to 1pm, the children had 'free time' again to do their work. During my 5 hours in the school, there were 2h 15min of free time in total allocated for the children to do their own learning. In SG, I don't recall myself not standing in front of the class of older and more mature children giving instructions and teaching for more than 40 min. And yet, in this Swedish school, these 9 year old children could be left learning on their own for over 2 hours.

All the textbooks and stationery were provided by the school. Textbooks are passed down from batch to batch. Pencils, pens, erasers and everything are found in the classroom. That's little surprise since Swedish pay very high tax, around 33% of their pay goes to social welfares and the social welfare is probably one of the best in the world. The more interesting thing I thought about sharing these common resources is that the children are more civic conscious and they learn to take good care of these textbooks and stationery. After using the stationery or learning resources, the children returned them to the shelves promptly.



This school visit is an eye opener! I would expect that this Montessori school to be slightly different from the Swedish public schools. But I heard from Lotta that the public schools are changing their teaching methods too and they aren't too different from Montessori. Hopefully, I get to visit a public school in Sweden to see the differences (if any) myself. I'm really not in a good position to do any comparison to a SG school since I have only been teaching in a Secondary school and my primary school experience is way too outdated. I would love to hear from any primary school teachers or parents about how it is like in a SG primary school or SG Montessori!

Kungsholmen fortress

We saw photos of Kungsholmen fortress on many postcards and also saw it across the sea from Drottningskär citadel at Aspö island but had no idea how to get to that island. Then I found out from the tourist information centre that the fortress is a military area which is still in use and we can only visit it with an official guide. So on one Saturday, SH and I joined a guided tour to visit this beautiful old fortification.



The Kungsholmen fortress together with Drottningskär citadel protected the southern fairway into Karlskrona. These impressive fortifications were huge deterrences to any intruders and they never had to fire a shot in anger.



The fortress walls were covered with the vivid autumn foliages. We were mesmerized by the beautiful colours. I think we ended up taking more photos of the foliages than the fortress!

The botanical garden had plants and trees from all corners of the world. The plants were collected during the Navy’s sea training cruises and the tradition of bringing a plant or tree to Kungsholmen at the end of a cruise continues until this day. Our guide pointed out a tree which was brought all the way back from China.



Honestly, after the tour, we wondered why we didn't join such tours earlier. It was so interesting learning more about the history of our town and how Kungsholmen fortress played an important role in protecting the town.

Sweet and sour pork

This is my third attempt on sweet and sour pork and I think I finally got everything right! Honestly, I LOVE this dish but I hate how deep frying uses so much oil and makes the whole house smell of oil even after I've mopped the floor and aired the place. Haha it's good there's a big deterrence or I might just cook this dish every week!

I followed this recipe minus the pineapples. Batter was good, not too thick. The sweet and sour sauce would have been perfect if I added pineapples. And thanx to Luz for sharing the 'magic deep frying temperature' of 180 deg C. Batter is crispy and golden brown, meat is cooked, soft and tender.

Homemade burger

The best thing about homemade burgers? They are personalized! You can stuff whatever you like into the burger. I like mine with lots of cucumbers and onions and sauces overflowing. How about you?

And nooo, I didn't bake the burger bun. We found these really good burger buns in the Sweden supermarkets. They are the same burger buns used in Max Burger (a Swedish fast food restaurant). Here's the burger I had for lunch today!

My new toy

I was all green with envy watching SH play with his new camera & new lens for the past two weeks. And to top it off, Mr Postman came a few times and dropped notification slips to collect parcels at the post office, but they were all for SH.

I was thinking that the online shop probably missed my order but my new toy finally arrived last week!

When I was little, my mum would sew dresses for me and teach me how to make little dresses for my barbie doll. None of what I learnt from my mum and home economics lessons remains. Guess for a start, I should do some really simple projects and get used to this new machine.

Let's see, how do I wind my bobbin and thread the needle?

On a side note, I started sewing with this old Singer sewing machine and my mum still has it at home. Isn't it pretty?

Karlskrona at night

Our friend, CW just picked up photography and he was eager to try out his new camera and lens. So we went out for a walk at the lake (again) and tried more night photography. Now, I have photos of the lake in the day, in the evening and at night! Here are some photos from tonight's session to share:

Char siew chee cheong fun

These days, I would roast a big piece of char siew and then use them for different dishes like char siew rice, char siew wanton mee or 新洲炒米粉 during the week. And two weeks ago, I thought I should explore more recipes with char siew so I tried making char siew chee cheong fun. The challenge for me was to find the right plate (out of my very small dishware collection) for the rice flour+water suspension so that when it's out of the steamer, the chee cheong fun would be a thin uniform layer and not stick to the plate. After some trial and error, I think I found THE plate. =D

And I must thank all the fabulous cooks out there who painstakingly put up all their recipes on the web. The recipes are really helpful for newbies like me!

Busy bee week but there's always time to play!

I didn't realize that I haven't been blogging for a week! There were a lot of things going on: school started on Monday, had lessons in school and made a gift for my friend who's returning to SG on Tuesday, farewell dinner for her on Wednesday, did wedding makeup at Qarma on Saturday, did makeup for family photo shoots during both weekends, photo shoot for baby Ethan and baby Chace on Friday night and we are editing all the photos today.

Despite the busy schedule, there's always time to play and have some fun! We tried light painting at my place after the baby photo shoot. Light painting is a photographic technique in which exposures are made in a dark place by moving a hand-held light source. It was challenging to imagine how the words and graphics look like laterally inverted and draw them in space. But coming up with ideas, executing the ideas and running to the camera to see how the drawing turns out after each shot was really fun! Here are some photos from the session!



And I must give it to my friend who came up with the idea for this broomstick flying photo shoot. It was hilarious!