Thursday, January 30, 2014

So much driiiivinggggg.. But worth it!

More errands and interviews today - and more success! We headed into LA AGAIN from Corona (we're seeeriously racking up the miles this week, WOW) and made it to the agency with about an hour to spare! We went to Starbucks for coffees and headed back to the building with a good 25 minutes early. And by "went back to the building" we mean went to where Google maps had told us to go... Which turned out to be either a Quiznos or a Verizon store..! Uhhh what?!! With out heartbeats a little accelerated, we walked up and down the street, double checked the address, looked back at the confirmation email - ahh! The confirmation email! It had instructions for how to get to the right building! Good news was that we WERE in the right place! We ran around the back of the Verizon store, up some stairs, across a rooftop carpark, and -- there it was!! Phewww! We were still there with a good 10 minutes extra but it was closer than we'd meant, eeek! We took a couple deep breaths and Luce went in for her interview while Han waited...

-- Luce -- 
My interview was going quite well but it was hard to get a read on whether or not the guy was interested in signing me (especially because my cold reading wasn't the most compelling performance). He gave me a bit of a spiel about the agency then asked me if I had any questions. The question that came out of my mouth, somewhat involuntarily, was "umm.. I'm finding it hard to get a good read on how you feel.. Do you like me?" hahaha I don't even really remember what he said back, I don't think he was expecting quite that honest of a response! Anyway, the conversation came around to me asking if he'd be interested in marketing us as twins, or at least sisters, and he said "great idea" and brought Han in!

-- Han and Luce --
Once we were both in there together it got easier and much more fun! Han did a cold reading (which wasn't stellar either but wasn't terrible - definitely a skill to work on!) and she asked a few questions. He really liked the idea of marketing us as sisters and he seemed pretty interested in us! We got a great vibe from him, but we won't know for a few days whether or not he'd like to sign us. He told us he doesn't sign multiple people that fill the same category, so he has to look through his current clients before he can be sure about us. He was a great mix of down-to-business, supportive, and friendly, so we're pretty hopeful that he'll become a solid option for us, but we're also feeling confident because we have some great agencies already interested and a couple more each lined up!
After our interviews we headed over to the new apartment to take some measurements before move-in day! We're just as in love with the place as we were before - we CANNOT WAIT to get in there! Especially now that we've been back in the car to Corona for 2 hours and are looking at another hour at least until we get home, waahh! :( 
(Luce doing her hair haha)
We really can't complain though because things couldn't be going better for us right now and we are SO thankful! That and we won't have to do the drive tomorrow because it's packing/getting ready to move day! Woooo!!!

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Represent!

We had another crazy/successful day today! We went back into LA for more meetings with agencies! Han had her first meeting at 12:00 and after a bit of a rush to get out of the house and a looong drive, we were there! And it was time for Hannah's first interview...

--Han--
I got there plenty early and went over to the board in the lobby to check which room I had to go to. There was another guy there who was meeting with the same agency - it turned out, at the same time! Soo it looked like I wouldn't be alone! There ended up being four of us interviewed at the same time which, though efficient, didn't seem like the best way to do it.. They were all really interesting people though, and asked some questions I wouldn't have thought of, so it worked out pretty well! The agent really liked my look and, even though my resume's a little bare, she was interested in signing me! It felt great to have a definite interested agency and it also made the next interview easier because I knew what to expect. I met Luce outside and we were on to the next one, feeling extremely lucky and blessed to have OPTIONS for representation!! So surreal!

--Luce--
While Hannah was at her interview I discovered that the Beverly Center shopping mall was only 5 minutes away! Yay! I had been really feeling the need to go shopping so this was the perfect opportunity! I spent some time in Sephora and H&M and bought some really nice stuff, but I quickly realized that I don't really like shopping by myself... It makes me really self conscious! But in no time Han was done with her interview and I raced back to see how it went!!!

--Han & Luce--
After a great de-briefing in the car we were off to the next interview. This time it was for the two of us together! Very exciting!! We arrived at a swanky building and accidentally parked the car ourselves in a valet-only parking lot! Ooops! Luckily the valet guys were really nice and it wasn't an issue at all. 
We went up to the office and waited for the agent to see us (we were a bit early). After a few minutes the agent called us in and our meeting had begun! And it went fabulously! The agent seemed to have a very clear plan for how he was going to market us and play to our strengths. He was a very no-nonsense kind of guy and we got the feeling that if he didn't want to represent us, he definitely would've told us (and he didn't, so yay!!) All in all, we thought that the interview went very well and we're pretty excited about this agency! 

To celebrate all of our hard work starting to pay off, we went to The Cheesecake Factory afterwards to have a delicious piece of cheesecake! Yum! And then it was a long drive back to Corona, and for a while we were stuck in traffic behind THE UGLIEST back-of-a-head we'd ever seen!
Haha we had to change lanes just so we could spare ourselves from watching the balding man twist his dreadlocks... Ewww... 
We finally got back to Corona and relaxed then Luce cooked dinner for the fam (Mum and Q are practically bedridden with the flu, poor things) and Han vacuumed and did the laundry. Pretty sure we're the best kids ever ;) 
Now it's time for a couple episodes of Girls then bed - we need a good night's sleep so we're rested for more interviews tomorrow!

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Wahooooo!!

Yesterday was AWESOME!! Yeee it ended up being a much more eventful day than we'd expected! We woke up at a reasonable time and, around 11:00, both checked our emails to find that... an agency was interested in interviewing both of us!! AHH! YAAAY! We were SO over-the-top excited, we could hardly contain ourselves!!! AND THEN about an hour later, Han got a call from another agent who wanted to meet with both of us together!! Woooo!!! We were stoked! By 12:30 on the day the envelopes would have been delivered, we already had two interviews lined up!
We decided it was high time we went down to the SAG/AFTRA offices and sorted out our eligibility status. We'd gotten our principle contracts back in November but they still hadn't been processed, so, with our fingers crossed, we made the hour and a half trip back into LA to see what we could do. The offices were really beautiful. We got directed to the 7th floor and waited for someone to see us. A little while later, a man came out, asked us for our paperwork and absolutely nothing else, told us to hold on, and disappeared again. About 15 minutes later he was back! He said "there you go" and gave us a little piece of paper with two account numbers on it and that was that! We couldn't believe it!! Too easy - and now it's truly official!!! SAG eligible babyyy! On the way out Luce got ANOTHER call from an agent!! Yeee! He was a commercial agent and wanted to see her the next day (today!). Feeling so happy and confident and ready to rock some interviews this week, we went for a celebratory boba and headed home! On the drive back we had a long overdue and absolutely wonderful conversation with Tim! It was so great to catch up with him and he made the drive pass much quicker - which was great because we desperately needed to pee the whole way back! 
We spent the night watching The Bachelor and Girls, and emailing in some more submissions to other agencies - hopefully we can keep the ball rolling!

Today Luce had her first interview and Han had grand plans of productivity while she was out..

-- Han --
There were about 30 agencies left to contact by email or online, so I sat down to whip them out when - nooooo! The internet wasn't working!! What?! Apparently Time Warner Cable was having some issues (which means no TV either, waahh), so I went with Q to Starbucks to use their wifi aaaaand they must also be on Time Warner - or just having issues. In a last effort to find an oasis of gloriously high (or even low) speed internet, we drove almost half an hour to another Starbucks AND -- nothing. Womp womp. However! On the plus side, I got an email while we were out and about and another agency is interested in seeing me!! YAAYY! Not for another two weeks, though, so I won't be able to update for a while. Anyway, Q and I drove home and, ironically enough, the internet was working again! I banged out some emails buuut it was short-lived, so I'm currently writing the blog on my phone, praying to the internet gods, and waiting for Luce to get back from her interview!! So freakin excited for her!!!

-- Luce --
Oh my goodness what an amazing day! I drove into LA at 11:30 to make it to my 2:00 meeting with plenty of time to spare! I was sooooooo nervous! And to add to the anxiety, by the end of the car trip I was completely busting for the loo!! So I went inside half an hour early and searched for a toilet.. Luckily, I found one on the 6th floor of the building and a woman was nice enough to give me the bathroom key - phewwww! So by 1:45 I was ready at the Agent's office and at 1:50 I knocked on the door and the interview had begun! It went surprisingly well!! The Agent, Elton, was really friendly and he seemed to genuinely like me a lot! He said that I had a "fresh and exotic look" and even though he had originally called me as a commercial client, he was talking about tv shows that I could be on in no time which was so cool! He had some really interesting tips and recommendations and by the end of the interview I felt like he had gotten a good sense of who I am and vice versa :) and the interview ended with him asking me to let him know my decision soon so I feel like the ball is pretty much in my court which is just such an exciting result from my first meeting!! Yay! I left the office very relieved and drove for an hour and a half back to Corona, got a coffee at Starbucks and flirted with a really cute guy, and then got home! Woo! What a wonderful day. Feeling very blessed :)

Sunday, January 26, 2014

We're on our way!

On Wednesday morning we woke up early, got all our stuff together and headed back to LA! aaaand then we turned around because we forgot the laptop and phone chargers, but then we really did head back to LA and went to Sam French and Staples to get everything else we needed to do our mailing!
Man, did we underestimate how long it would take or what?! We were up until 3:30 decorating the envelopes to make them stand out, editing our resumes/cover letters, running back and forth to Staples to print things, and sticking on sooo many labels. Also, on Wednesday night, we got the retouched versions of our headshots to print the next day! Here they are!!
Thursday was another full day of running around to finally get everything ready to send out. We printed the photos in the morning at this place in Van Nuys and the guy was so nice! We were thrilled with how well they turned out and it only took about 20 minutes! We were back at the apartment around 12:30 and taped, drew, wrote, stuck, stamped, and assembled soooo many envelopes! We sat and worked, without stopping except once for food, for 13 hours!! Woah. But we were done!! 
Ahh it felt so good! We got them in the post first thing on Friday morning and were more than ready to have them off our hands. 
YAY! Then it was time to pack up all Lucy's stuff because we were moving out on Saturday! We got a great handle on things and Mum and Q drove out to help us disassemble the furniture and bring more tubs for storage. It was all surprisingly easy and stress-free given our lack of sleep, and once we'd done all we could for the night we went to a Mexican restaurant right next to the apartment. We'd been smelling the most wonderful aromas for months and finally got to try it! It's lucky we didn't go there sooner because we would have had no chance of resisting that delicious food otherwise! Ahh so great and just what we needed after all our hard work!

Yesterday all we had to do was load up the U-Haul and drive it out to Corona! We were all done in no time and it felt amazing to have everything moved and be officially out of Lucy's place. Goodbyeeee K-Town! 
It was great for the semester and to get us on our feet, but we're SO excited to have our own place - now all we need is to find it! We spent a little while chilling in Corona, then we drove back to LA to look at a couple apartment complexes, hang out with some friends, and go see our acting coach's one man show. The first place we looked at we liked a lot buuut it was a little ways out of our price range. That's the only one we'd originally had lined up, but we did a little more scouting on the way and rang a bunch of places. Only one picked up so we decided to go and check it out and - we ABSOLUTELY fell in LOVE with it!! AHH! It was completely above and beyond anything else we'd seen AND it was entirely within our budget! We couldn't contain our excitement and straight away lined up an appointment for this morning to check it out with Mum and Q. 
After that we headed over to see Lucy's girlfriends from LACC, Kiah, Alicia, and Alisa. They're such sweeties and it was so nice for Luce to catch up and for Han to get to know them better. We carpooled with Alicia to see Chambers's show and all really enjoyed it! Well, once we managed to find it! Google maps failed us for the first time and took us to Del Taco, what?! We'd left about half an hour spare just in case and we needed every minute of it! We managed to find the place, park, and get in just in time! The show was really funny and had a few poignant moments thrown in too. After the show we headed over to JT's and went out for a coffee and chai lattes at a really cool little cafe nearby. We watched a movie and crashed on the couch, so excited to meet mum and Q in the morning to look at the apartment again!

Today was Australia Day! Yeee! We met in lovely North Hollywood at 10:30 and had a look through the apartment all together. It was even better today! The place has all the amenities - pool, spa, barbeques, sauna, fitness center, laundry AND the cutest little one bedroom apartment we could have hoped for! Mum and Q gave us a huge stamp of approval - like, we can't quite describe how great of a find this was. The other ones we saw for the same price a couple weeks ago were legitimately frightening. Anyway, it was too great to let someone else snap it up (in fact, there was another guy touring it just after us) so, we signed the lease! We officially have an apartment!! YAAAYYYY!! 
(In the leasing office!)
We picked up meat pies and custard tarts from Bronzed Aussie in honour of Australia Day, headed out to Corona, and are watching the Sean and Catherine's Wedding Bachelor special, so sweet! It's been such a long, busy week, and we are feeling SO accomplished and actually pretty proud of ourselves! We're making it happen baby.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

"For the first time in foreeeeverr" - well, in a month!

We finally made it back to DISNEYLAND!!! Ahh it was such a lovely day - the thought of Disney was about the only thing keeping us going the last few days and it exceeded our therapeutic expectations. We did the most random assortment of things but it was perfect! First off we met Thor!
He was pretty aThorable (hehe) and we're pretty sure he was actually an Aussie! We did Pirates of the Caribbean, Indiana Jones, Tarzan's treehouse, and then headed towards Downtown Disney to use the rest of our birthday voucher for the Rainforest Cafe! 
On the way we bumped into the Fairy Godmother!! She just popped out of nowhere - we're hoping maybe she'll grant us a wish or two!
We had an Awesome Appetizer plate to share and - feeling slightly guilty after eating so healthily all week, but also extremely satisfied - we headed into California Adventure! We did Tower of Terror and MuppetVision 3D then spent about 20 minutes hanging out in Art of Animation watching the lovely clips from all the movies. We'd thought about staying for one of the nighttime shows but we were wiped aaand it also turns out that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays off-peak in Disneyland most of the live shows/performances stop! Good to know because we are SO lucky to have a few beautiful visitors coming our way over the next couple months and a Disney trip is most definitely going to happen!
Luce grabbed a gingerbread Mickey and we headed home for spaghetti bolognese for dinner and another restful night before we get back down to business tomorrow!

Monday, January 20, 2014

Errands and Exorcisms

The last two days have felt like the most well-needed exhale after holding our breath for ages. Yesterday we had a wonderful sleep-in, cooked brekkie, and didn't leave the apartment until about 2:30! The only thing we had on was helping Yosh (our photographer/filmmaker-friend) out on the set of a horror film he was the camera-guy for. He needed a couple featured extras for the scene, and it took us a while to wrap our heads around it haha. It was a fake documentary about making a fake documentary about an exorcism - think a movie about making paranormal activity. We were acting as the film crew and in the scene, the actress (playing the actress in the horror film) gets possessed by a demon. It was a really fun cast and crew, and it was nice to be a part of a smaller, more intimate group in a production. The two of us wrapped at 9:30pm but we heard today that the filming didn't finish up until 2:00am!! Eeeek! It was a fun night, though, and we were glad to help out - that kind of thing always comes back to ya!

Today was another chill day. We packed all our stuff up, ran a couple more mailing related errands - not entirely successfully - then came out to Corona to see Q! We went via the grocery store and got ingredients to cook up a delicious three course meal for the three of us!
Entre: Shrimp cocktail
Main: Crab-stuffed Salmon with zucchini, squash, and rice (it looked better in real life)
Dessert! Banana split!!
YUM!!! We spent the rest of the night watching Downton and The Bachelor, and cannot wait to have a glorious sleep in our own beds!

** Also, just uploaded a vid of our elephant trek from a couple weeks ago! check it out on the 'Elephants and Good Luck' post! http://hannahandlucyd.blogspot.com/2013/12/elephants-and-good-luck.html **

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Who knew photos could be so stressful?!

Woo! We are getting down to business!! The last few days have been super successful - and somewhat stressful/riddled with pointless anxiety/sleepless - BUT now that the stress is over we're feeling pretty accomplished!
On Wednesday we did a photoshoot with our photographer-friend Yosh (pronounced Josh, I don't know) and it was really so fun! We got some very artsy pics and it was also great to get in some practice for Friday's reshoot of our headshots - we'll get to that later. 

We had the most bang-for-your-buck delicious Chinese sesame chicken for dinner and headed home. We also got our first ever comment and follower on the blog!! YAY! So sweet, Victoria follows us and has her own blog and aspirations to move out to the city of angels - check it out at victoriazway.blogspot.com! 

Thursday was a HUGE day of semi-boring entirely necessary errands. We went apartment hunting, edited our resumes, wrote out our agent letter, and went through the pics from Yosh and found the ones we liked to send to Chambers for his opinion! 


Feeling all sorted, we sat back, Lucy cooked up a storm as per ushe aaand Chambers replied about the pics!
"Make up sucks. Facial expression sucks. Wardrobe and bras suck."
OH S#!@
Noooooo!! Total smack down..
Ugh the night before our reshoot?! We were pretty devastated. We were reshooting the head shots because the first ones weren't up to par and now we'd been told our practice run was a fizzah, yikes!! The only thing that could lift our spirits was this article on buzzfeed: http://www.buzzfeed.com/michaelrusch/haribo-gummy-bear-reviews-on-amazon-are-the-most-insane-thin
HA so hilarious!! We were in stitches laughing! We scrambled to fix some things for the next day and went to bed for an incredibly restless night's sleep... 

Ahh okay, finally it came time for our head shots! Eeeek! We were crossing our fingers and holding our breathe all morning, but when we got there Anthony, the photographer, totally put us at ease. We shot outside, on the roof and in a street nearby, and it went GREAT! YAY!!! Phewww! We actually ended up having a really fun time! We were thrilled with the pics and preeeetty sure Chambers would like them too! These were the two winners! (Still not retouched)

We ran a couple more errands, and just as we were making a left turn towards the apartment, a police car pulled in front of us and turned its flashing lights on! We didn't think we'd done anything wrong, so we kept driving behind him... then he pulled to the side of the road and, because there was no one else around we guessed that we must've done something wrong so we pulled over too! So terrifying! The police officer got out of his car and we didn't know whether to roll down the window or get out! AH! But then he crossed the street and walked towards an apartment complex hahahaha phew! We felt very stupid but also very relieved! 
So we went home, relaxed, and started watching the first series of Girls - we're completely hooked! 
Today we went to boot camp and got back in the swing of acting for the first time in a few weeks! We met some lovely new people, laughed a lot, AND finally got the okay on our photos/letters/resumes to send out! Wahooo! Now all we need to do is get the pics retouched and we're good to go! 
We went to the Samuel French bookstore after boot camp, then came home and now we're watching (and enjoying) an absolutely dreadful movie. It's been a great couple days and we couldn't be happier or more relieved to've made it through!

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Back to Reality..!

We made it back!! Yay! 
We spent Thursday night and Friday catching up on shows, eating at strange times, and organizing everything we need to do in the busy week ahead. 
On Saturday we headed back to LA! Wooo!! A friend we met on our first night ever of background work, Mike, invited us to dinner at the Tam O'Shanter with some other friends. It was SUCH a cute place! The oldest restaurant in LA and completely authentic Scottish/UK food - after a few Yorkshire puddings we were in heaven. The conversation was great, many, many laughs, and before we knew it two hours had gone by! 
We snapped a pic, said goodbye, and then went back to Lucy's via Ralph's. We learned on the way in that there's been some sort of plastic bag boycott in LA - wtf?! So we just got the essentials: cereal, milk, paper towels, bathroom multipurpose cleaner, toilet cleaner, gloves, and air freshener. Yes, you guessed it, it was time to clean the bathroom... Anyway, we refused to pay for plastic bags, so we juggled all our cleaning supplies and breakfast food and hoped no one looked too hard at what we were carrying - we either looked like clean freaks or absolute slobs. We made it back and cleaned the bathroom! It was pretty disgusting (and, for the record, was nowhere near that disgusting when Luce left for our holiday) but it felt great to have it all sparkly and clean!
After that, we went over to JT's to hang out and watch Friends with him and Noelle (his friend from high school that we met, she was lovely!) into the wee hours. We ended up crashing there and in the morning JT cooked up a storm for brekkie! 

We went to Mosaic on Sunday morning and it was so great to be back, it's been so long! And Hank (our favourite pastor) was back!! Yay! Feeling all inspired, we headed back to the apartment to clean it up becauuuuse... A girl was looking at it that afternoon to potentially take over Lucy's lease!! She ended up LOVING the apartment and is keen to move in asap! YAY!!! So now we're on to apartment hunting ourselves and cannot wait to get set up in our own place!!!
A few hours later, we went to this industry mixer at CBS studios we'd been invited to by another friend from background, Nick, called the Greenhouse Project. It was fun! There was a really successful voice actor there who spoke for quite a while and shared some pearls of wisdom with us all. We mingled as best we could, but the jet lag was still on the incapacitating side, so we didn't stay super late. It was a pretty low key night anyway (presumably) because the Golden Globes were on! We got home and watched the GG's - loved Tina and Amy! - and went to bed.

Yesterday mum came to LA to do some apartment scouting with us!! We got a really good sense of a few different areas and found one place we like a lot. We also found quiiite a few scary, slightly derro places, so we maaayy have a little more trouble finding a place than we'd first anticipated. We're staying optimistic, though, and hoping to do some more looking around today or tomorrow! Last night we finally had a super quiet night in, had a yummy dinner, watched movies, and swooned over El Bachelorrr, Juan Pablo. We both got a solid 12 hours sleep and are feeling like we've finally gotten over the jet lag! The rest of the day we'll be running errands, doing some paperworky things, and getting ready for a photo shoot tomorrow with our photographer friend, Yosh! And tonight we're going over to JT's to cook dinner and watch some more Friends!

Friday, January 10, 2014

Goodbye Singapore!

Our last couple days on holiday were lovely! On Wednesday we drove to Malaysia and went to Legoland!! 
It was SUCH a fun day in the theme park and water park! We practically had the place to ourselves! Eddie and Will were so brave, going on all the rides and slides, and Will kept telling us about how much courage he had. We went on one little roller coaster and afterwards he said "I didn't think I had the courage for that" and when we went on another, even scarier one, he squealed afterwards: "My courage could've popped out!" So cute!! 
We spent ages in the water park, went on slide after slide, stood under a huge bucket of water, and braved the wave pool with Nan! We dragged ourselves back to the car, exhausted, and headed home. Poor little Will got sick on the way back, he was very pathetic, but we don't think it ruined his day! We had udon noodles again for dinner and fell into bed for our last sleep in Singapore.

On Thursday we went out to see Frozen with Dad, Nan, and Eddie (Will was still feeling sick so he and Claire stayed home) and it was just as lovely seeing it the second time! Ahh absolutely love with the music and Eddie's reaction was adorable. We went out for dim sum/yum cha for lunch and ran home to get ready to go to the airport!
It was really tough to say goodbye. We had such a wonderful holiday and, excited as we are for our lives in LA, we weren't ready to go back to reality. Our flights home went by quickly, though, and before we knew it we were back in the States! Ready to rock 2014!!

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

"Clearly you've never been to Singapore" ;)

Yesterday was our first proper day in Singapore! We all got up early and went exploring.. We caught the MRT (coolest, fastest, and least smelly subway EVER) to these huge biodome gardens by the water and renewable energy mushroom looking things.

There were two garden domes: the Cloud Forest and the Flower Dome. They were pretty incredible, such beautiful nature in the middle of a city! Nan and Dad, gardener extraordinaires, were in their element - very fun day!
We went back to the apartment to rest for a bit before going out to the Night Safari at Singapore Zoo!! As a pre-show, two guys came out and did this intense fire breathing/eating (ahh!) show - very cool! 
Then we went into a little amphitheatre for a "creatures of the night" show. At one point they needed an audience volunteer and they chose Eddie!!
Then we met our personal tour guide, Nur, and hopped in a little buggie to traipse around the zoo! We saw heaps of animals!! A few experiences were particularly memorable though:
1) Bats - gahh!! Walking through an almost-pitch-black enclosure of free-flying bats was slightly terrifying! We could feel the wind rushing past our heads as they flew by!
2) Will can speak otter. Like, he was really talking to them!! He goes "ooh, they sound like me!" And starts making the most adorable, high-pitched squeaks and the otters squeaked back and started frantically looking around for him. Very Dory from Finding Nemo.
3) Daisy the Leopard. Our tour guide told us the most heartbreaking story - Daisy had a mate for 10 years and he just passed away. We asked what affect it had had and Nur said that she refused to eat for weeks and became wary of the keepers because she thought they'd killed her mate, so sad :( but she was absolutely beautiful, sleeping right up against the glass.
4) A hippo!! We saw this massive hippo, really close up, and he stared us right in the eye! 
5) Sick kid. Not memorable in the best way, Ed got really sick towards the end of the tour and we had to wind things up. It didn't spoil the night at all though, such a unique experience!!

Today we had a later start, recovering from the late night zoo adventure and sick child drama, and the two of us navigated our way to Orchard Road for a shopping extravaganza!! This street was unlike anything we've ever seen! A series of probably 20 huge, full-sized shopping centres! Gaahh!! So overwhelming and amazing, WOW! Everything from H&M and Cotton On to Cartier and Prada. Thanks to Nan, G'ma & G'pa, Uncle Matt, and Uncle Steve, we had Xmas money to spend guilt free, and we were outta cash before we knew it! We were stoked with our purchases though, nothin' like retail therapy..!
We came back and had a swim in the pool with Will. We were about to race and Will have us a stellar pep talk: "Do ya have your courage?" "Yes!" "Do ya have your kicking legs?" "Yes!" "Do ya have your umm.. paddling arms?" "Yes!" "Then leeeet's do this!!" Haha he's such a crack up!
Tonight we went out Octapas for paella, sangria, and churros, delish! 
The atmosphere in Clarke Quay at night is so buzzy, we felt great strutting down the main street in heels and new dresses! A wonderful and tiring day!

Monday, January 6, 2014

Somewhere, beyond the sea...

Saturday was absolutely beautiful!! We went on a boat tour around the islands near Koh Samui and luckily the sun was out and it was a picture perfect day! 
After about an hour we stopped at an island to kayak and snorkel. We were using "Triaks" so it was us with Will in one and Dad, Claire and Eddie in the other. Surprisingly enough, we held our own with the rowing (or is it paddling?) and kept towards the front of the group! We went under a ledge of a cliff and through an amazing grotto/cave that was like something out of a movie! So cool. After a little while we both started getting really tired so we asked Will if he could be our cheerleader and cheer us on.. He said sure and after taking a few seconds to think of something, he came up with a cheer for Hannah: "Come on Hannah, you can do it! You're the best and you know best!" We both had the biggest smiles on our faces and requested a new cheer for both of us! Will's second cheer was: "You have the strength, you have the courage, you can do it straight away!" So adorable! We paddled until we arrived at a little beach and then we all got out to snorkel for a while! The water and the fish were beautiful and we also swam through a little cave (and Lucy got really scared!) Once we'd had our fun it was back to the boat! We had an amazing lunch onboard and played some cards with the fam and then we stopped at another tiny beach where we could get off the boat. When we got to the beach it was completely packed with other tourists, so we decided to walk up to the lookout and lagoon on the island. The walk ended up being much more of a climb because the stairs were more like a ladder - so steep!! We went up and up and up and couldn't believe that the kids could climb so many steps! It was worth it though when we got to the top because the view was breathtaking :) 
We looked out and could see the most beautiful lagoon and decided that even though it was a bit of a detour, we really wanted to walk down to it and have a swim! 
But when we got there the walkway was completely fenced off and a bunch of signs said "No Swimming" NOOOOOO! Drenched in sweat, we climbed backwards down the stairs ladder-style and finally made it to the beach! Phewww! We swam and ate ice creams and waited for the little speedboat to go back to the big boat. Then it was straight back to Koh Samui and back to the house where we had yummy take-away and packed to leave on Sunday!

Sunday was a traveling day - back to Singapore! We woke up early and headed to the beautiful outdoor airport..! It was all very smooth traveling and before we knew it, we were in our hotel which is so lovely! It's in Clark Quay and all of the buildings are beautifully decorated with pastel colors and lights :) AND to make it even better, there's a shopping mall under the hotel... Dangerous! Haha, but it was great because we headed down to the mall for lunch and got some delicious Udon noodles for an early dinner. Later on Nanna arrived - so good to see her! And we all got early nights in preparation for some fun days in Singapore!