Trip - Mt Rushmore (July 2007)

In the few months that I am here, I have travelled to a few places with my family and my hubby's colleagues' families.

We went to Mount Rushmore in July for a few days. It was the first time that I had such a long ride in a car, my legs went numb and everytime I got out of the car during the stops we made, it took me a while before I could feel my legs and start walking. It's really that bad and I didn't exaggerate. It was fun though, 'cos I never experienced this before. Haha. But the guys had it bad 'cos they are the ones driving. We went with another family who also had a kid so both ladies had to take care of the kids while the men drive. Hee hee, lucky us.

On the way to Mt Rushmore, we saw a lot of farms with a lot of cows, horses and sheep. The scenery is nice, very different from Spore where all you see most of the time is buildings after buildings. As it was summer, the sun is really hot and we were lucky that we are in the car as it's really hot outside, over 40 degree celsius.. I wonder how people can stand that heat.

The car ride took us over 17 hours which includes pit stops and meals. Can you imagine that? We started driving around 5 past in the morning and we reached the hotel only around 11past at night. Haha, really quite an experience. The hotel wasn't like those nice hotels that you will stay during guided tours but it's cheap so we make do with it. As long as it's clean, it's okay and breakfast is provided even though it's not fanastic. What we had is basically, waffles, bread, cereals, coffee, tea, muffins and some juices. Very simple but at least it's "free". If you eat at Mcdonalds, the meal will easily cost us over USD 10 for the three of us.

After the meal, we went to Crazy horse memorial. This is really amazing, there is a guy who set out to carve the crazy horse face in the stone on top of a mountain. It took him several years just to carve a bit of the face and they are not getting public funding for this. They showed a video on him and how he used to climb over 700 steps to reach the top to do the carving everyday.

When he died, his wife and children took over the task of carving, it has been over 30 years and it's still not completed. They have little people working on the carving so I guess it will take many more years before they complete the whole project. Perhaps when I am old, I will go back and take a look at it again and hope that it will be completed. When this project is completed, it will be much bigger than the 4 presidents' faces in Mt Rushmore.

After visiting the memorial, we went to Mt Rushmore and we saw the 4 presidents' faces. There we took a stroll and it was really tiring with all the steps and up and down the slopes. But seeing it really amazes me on how could people do it back in the those days.

The next day was spent on travelling and we checked in to a hotel near to Precious moments park. At the hotel and even the room, we saw a lot of precious moments protraits and they are really nice. On the following day, we went to Precious Moments park and it was really nice. All the figurines are so nice, makes you want to buy up all of them but they ain't cheap. Ha.

After the park visit, we proceeded to go home but we stopped by Branson to do shopping. Initially, we agreed to stop for 2 hours before we drive home but in the end, we stayed there for more than 4 hours as there are so much to see.

It was my first real shopping experience and I was really excited because a lot of things are cheap. Clothes especially, fantastic. Just Disney store alone took up a lot of our time, things are really cheap there. We bought a lot of stuff and the car was stuffed full. After that was home sweet home.

Snow!!

It snowed today.. yipee... my first snow.. I have seen snow but never seen it snowed.. you get what I mean.. haha.. you can see the snow falling but they are not of same sizes, I always thought they should be of same size. Ha. The snow just fell on my hair and I could still see the snow instead of it melting off.

It's really very nice but extremely cold. It's less than zero degrees celsius now and it becomes real dark by 5pm. Can you imagine that?

Never experience such coldness and snow before. It's quite nice and a different experience. When autumn arrived, most leaves turned red and it was so nice, just like a picture out of postcard. Then the leaves start falling and now most trees are bald except for some where the leaves are all yellow and brown.

I have experienced summer, autumn and now going into winter which is really different from Spore. Their summer is really terrible, over 40 degree celsius for several days.. yucks.. autumn is cool, less than 20 degree celsius though it's not very clear when the seasons change. It just suddenly changed without you noticing it.

Interesting huh. We should be getting more snow now though a lot of places are already snowing, like Chicago.

When it was autumn, we sometimes get frost and you can see the frost on the grass, it's almost like the grass got frozen and I have seen snow pattern on a car in the morning once when there was a frost at night. Nice!! Regretted not taking a photo then though.

Looking forward to more snow coming within these two weeks.

My first blog!!!! & my kid

Hmm, never thought I would be doing a blog. Always heard about it but never attempted to create or find out more about it. But I guess there is always a first time for everything especially now that I am in United States.


Have been here for over 5 months. Time really flies.


I could still remember the time when I got on the airplane with my girl, flying over 24 hours including stop over time just to reach here. Horrifying especially with so much luggage to carry, wonder how I pulled thru' then. Ha..


Being here in USA was a really different experience for me, never thought I would have the chance to enjoy "tai-tai" life style. Now I really depend on my hubby to pay for everything, feels a bit funny but I am enjoying it. Ha, when I am going back next year, I won't get this chance again unless my hubby and I hit it rich.. yeah.. haha, but even then, I will still work so as to occupy myself..


Not working makes my brain dull. It's really hard on parents now to teach kids. Where are all the kids who are cute and obedient??? My girl nearly drove me crazy when we just got here, I never knew taking care of a kid full time could be so hard. Perhaps I never put in enough time and care when my kid was growing. Now that she is 4 yrs going on 5 yrs, it's really hard for me to change the way she behave.

Wonder where she got the traits of nagging, not listening, not focusing and eating slowly from. Imagine a kid who keeps repeating like a broken record, drags her feet over things that you want her to do, eyes wandering all over the place when you talk to her, takes over an hour to finish one meal. Oh my gosh, what a nightmare. We tried all sorts of methods and ways to teach her but it is not working as well as we wanted to and it's driving us nuts. Therefore, I believe, a kid has to be taught from young, ie, when they are only 1 yr old. Ha, maybe I am less patient with her, therefore, I wished I am working than taking care of her.