[Grace] Kid Adventure

If you know me, you know I'm always down for a challenge.

 In the fifth grade, during the middle of class, some boy dared me to eat 50 wasabi peas at once. Of course, anyone with common sense would know this was a dumb idea (especially for someone with low spice tolerate like myself). But my pride was at stake, and so I had no other option. All 50 wasabi peas barely fit in my mouth so it took three minutes to chew and I was crying by the end since my mouth felt like it was on fire. Yet I was satisfied (if a little traumatized) because I had successfully completed the dare!

But I digress.

The point of rehashing my fifth grade memories is to emphasize the point that I never turn down a challenge. Which will probably contribute to a great deal of pain and suffering in my life time, but I don't care, because my track record for dares will be perfect.

Let me set the scene: It's a hot day in Singapore. My family and I are at the marina, where we have been a couple of times before. The kids are hot, tired and bored.

My dad jokes about leaving Cannon, which leads to a interesting, if not somewhat foolish idea: What if our family split up, kids and parents, and each go back to the hotel separately?

Getting back to the hotel was not the easiest of journeys. But remember what I said about never turning down a challenge? I was not about to back down. Now it was just up to me to convince my siblings. I was prepared to beg, sugarcoat, bribe or do whatever it took for them to agree to go on this adventure. Much to my delight, they were on board with the idea before I even had the chance to offer to wash their dishes.

Squad goals.

So we split up. Before our parents had left us, they have us our MRT (MRT is the subway in Singapore) cards, which was very important because most of the journey was on the MRT. In order to ensure we were not just following our parents, we gave them a head start and only embarked when they were out of eyesight. While we were waiting, my siblings and I came up with some ground rules.

1. This a race; maybe Mom and Dad don't realize it, but that just gives us the edge. (Another thing to note about me: I am very competitive. I was not about to lose).
2. If at any point we see Mom and Dad, we must not let them see us. This rule was mostly because my childhood dream was becoming a spy, and this felt like as close as I would ever come to being 007.
3. Stick together - it might disqualify us if we showed up the hotel with only 2/3 of the Beal kids. This rule was not made out of love for my siblings; it was made out of fear that we might lose otherwise.

Finally, once our parents had moseyed off in the general direction of the MRT (taking their sweet time, I might add) we set off. We wandered through a mall for a while, looking for another MRT entrance. Luckily, Cannon spotted a sign pointing us in the right direction. Cannon's uncanny ability to spot signs earned him the nickname "Hawkeye" adding onto his previous nickname "Foulwind" (best not to ask). 

As Kate, Cannon "Hawkeye Foulwind," and I entered into the MRT, we ran into our first real problem: subway maps. But we knew were familiar with the stops nearby our hotel, so we were well equipped with the necessary knowledge. After a minute of heated discussion, with Kate and Cannon doing most of the hard work, we came to the conclusion we needed to go to the Chinatown MRT stop, then get off there to catch a connecting train.

Once we got onto our train, we ran into our second problem: MOM AND DAD WERE ON THE TRAIN WITH US!!!! This sent all of my James Bond-Nancy Drew-Encyclopedia Brown skills into overdrive. Even though our parents were a few cars down from us, I still felt the need to whisper, if only to appease my dramatic alter-ego. In a low voice, I urgently alerted my siblings to the presence of our parents. The pressure all affected us in different ways: Kate was much more likely to to laugh, Cannon was more inclined to say random and unnecessary things and my IQ suddenly raised 20 points as I realized my true calling was undercover work (ahaha, just kidding, but only a little).

Mom is in the pink shirt.

The train car that my siblings and I were on was the very last train car. As we were trying to organize our game plan, we ran into a potential issue: We needed to exit the train, go up the stairs to find the next train station and then catch the next train. But if the stairs leading up from our current train station were to our left, we would have to run by our parents to get to them! Hoping that luck was on our side and we could run out of the train and exit the station without running by our parents, we waiting for the Chinatown stop.

Again, Mom is in pink.

Unfortunately, the universe wanted to test my spy skills that day and it turned out we would have to run by our parents to get to the stairs. As soon as the train doors opened, we sprinted out, hoping to make it to the next train station before our parents. Alas, luck was on their side and even though we ran as fast as we could, we reached the stairs at about the same time. The threat of discovery was imminent, which propelled us to move faster, as we beat our parents up the stairs. But then we got all confused as to where what station we needed to go to next - and time was of the essence since we were standing at the top of the stairs our parents were walking up!

Eventually, we just ran down a random flight of nearby stairs. After examining a map more thoroughly we gleefully discovered we were right where we needed to be! This was also backed up by the fact our parents were also waiting at the same station with us. While it is rather annoying to see Mom and Dad when we are trying to avoid them, it is also comforting because that means we are going to the right direction.

On the second train, we only went down one stop. Once we got off the train, all we had to do was run to the ground floor. Our hotel was right above the MRT exit, so once we above ground we were basically at our destination. We had to run up an absurd amount of escalators - in the Singaporean heat, I was getting quite the workout as I sped up 30 feet of escalators.

Finally, we could see sunlight! We made it to the hotel - and just in time to steady my breathing and practice my infamous "i'm-better-than-you-but-i'm-still-humble winning face."

I also made a video chronicling the whole journey - you can watch that here.