Natural Bridge Caverns

We spent the last day in Texas driving to see the Natural Bridge Caverns. I wanted to check out the largest known commercial cavern in Texas because the photos I saw of it were really WOW!


The ancient formations in the caves were awesome. It’s one of the most well-formed and well-preserved caves I’ve been in.


While we went there to see the formations in the caves, in the end, it was the wildlife ranch park next to the caverns that was the highlight of the whole trip!

It was so much fun spotting the animals, taking photos, feeding them food and touching them from the aircon comfort of the car!

I love the zebras best and found the ostriches super kaypoh-looking! Check the photos out below!

San Antonio

San Antonio is probably one of the most touristy cities in Texas. It’s famous for its River Walk (think miniature Venice) and Alamo.


It’s a very historical place with stories of war heros and battles. Unfortunately, all the historical facts given on the highly-recommended walking tour just flew by me as a non-American.


The River Walk was very pretty and quaint. It was nice to do some really touristy things for a change!

The place where they filmed the talent segment for the movie "Miss Congeniality" starring Sandra Bullock.

Outlet shopping at San Marcos

San Marcos is most famous for its outlet malls.

After 2 half days and 1 full day of shopping, Edmund was horrified that I could still continue shopping. It’s not so much buying many things, but the seeing, searching and FINALLY buying that was fun. I think I actually had more fun helping my friends buy things!

The other highlight was being able to have Chinese food (RICE!) from the foodcourt 3 times in 2 days. That was to make up for the previous 10 days of ang-mo food. My tolerance for ang-mo is decreasing with each passing year.

Overnight with the Chambers

I love it when we get to meet friends during our holidays abroad. During our honeymoon in Prague, we met Edmund's friend. This time we got to meet Edmund’s colleague and his family.

The Chambers were visiting relatives and invited us to stay with them at their dad’s place in Georgetown on our way to San Marcos. The timing was perfect and we appreciated their hospitality so much!

I enjoyed talking and getting to know the Chambers better that evening. I’m looking forward to visiting them at their place in Singapore.

Group shot by the fireplace. The house was much bigger than it looked from the outside!

GPA Reunion

Edmund returned from the GPA summer program in June 2009 so impacted and blessed. This year, I got a taste of the tremendous blessing and honouring during the reunion.

During the conference, we stayed at the Grand Hyatt Airport hotel and later at a resort near Lake Texoma.


We were brought to the rodeo, took a cruise on Lake Texoma, attended a gala dinner at the Westin (where Edmund looked like a China waiter, and I a waitress!), amongst other things.


We met people from all over the world. From Nepal to Haiti to Timbaktu in Mali to Romania! It was like United Nations!


I enjoyed the sermon sessions, and was most ministered to by the all-ladies sessions where the wives gathered to hear from Jill Briscoe. She’s truly an amazing woman! I also got to hear from other women delegates who struggle to juggle ministry, family, career and the unique problems they face in their countries and denominations. My own concerns were embarrassingly small compared to theirs, if you know what I mean.

Thank You God for giving me this once-in-a-life-time opportunity to be at the reunion and to hear from so many great men and women of God.

Visit to Oakcliff

The delegates were all assigned different churches to visit on Sunday. We got up super early to check-out, have breakfast and be ready to board the bus at 6.30am!!! We were the earliest group to leave the hotel.

We were assigned to visit Oakcliff Bible Fellowship. This was my first time visiting a mainly black church and they were celebrating their 30th anniversary!

Even though I didn't know most of the worship songs they sang, it was easy to join in in worship. There is just something rich about the music and singing that is hard for Chinese to re-produce... haha!

There was a little bridge-like part of a song we sang that really stuck with me...

To worship You I live
To worship You I live
I live to worship You

Dr. Tony Evans preached a really powerful and practical sermon. He was doing a series on the armour of God. His illustrations were so simple yet good because it drove home the point.

The icing on the cake was the tremendous hospitality and generosity shown to us. Waking up early to visit and worship at Oakcliff was definitely worth it!

Mesquite Championship Rodeo

I've only seen the rodeo on TV and it's always been on American programes like "World's most amazing videos" where you see the cowboy getting thrown off the animal and/or getting rammed by the animal after being thrown off.


Going to the rodeo was more fun than I thought it would be! We got free cowboy hats (that made us look slightly like farmers from China).


We got to watch a motorcycle stunt live.


We even saw a cowboy limping off with a bloodied face! Very exciting!

The funniest bit was when the field was opened for kids to get the ribbon tied on to the calves' tails. I felt traumatised for the calves to have so many kids running after their tails!

Treats for the wife

Last year when Edmund was at the GPA summer program, he returned with gifts for me FROM GPA. I got a card addressed to 'Mrs Edmund Wong' though I wasn't officially that yet, a floral tote bag AND US$100.

For the reunion this year, the wives got to go free!

All the wives from all over the world. Photo taken at DTS.

It looked like some Mrs Universe photo-shoot, just that we were baking in our hot pink polos instead of bikinis... haha! The shadows in the foreground show only a tiny fraction of the husbands taking photos.

Meeting John

Mae is my primary 1 class partner from long ago who lives in Texas and only comes back to Singapore once a year at most. While we were in Texas, she was back at home in Singapore! Terribly ironic!

Well, the next best thing was to meet her husband whom I’ve heard so much about but never met. We met John at Grapevine Mills Mall.

It was short meet up, but it was good! It would have been even better if Mae was IN Texas. This was the only time I wished she was in Texas and NOT in Singapore for my own selfish reasons, of course!

I totally forgot to take a photo with John, so the photo below of me and my pri 1 class partner will have to do! We took this shot after I came back from Texas and the day before she returned to Texas.

She's the most photogenic person (who doesn't purposely pose to showcase her best angle) I know! She's truly a beautiful person inside-out. I hope God brings her back to Singapore soon!

Six Flags over Texas

Edmund and I love roller-coasters. However, this trip to Six Flags revealed that our bodies could no longer take all that jerking, flipping, twisting and spinning!

Edmund threw up while on the Batman ride, and my nose bled while waiting for Edmund to finish up his ‘Merlion routine’ in the toilet.

After puking shot.

No more Six Flags from now on. It’s got to be Disneyland and Universal Studios! ;p

GRAND Hyatt

Ranked the #1 hotel in Dallas by tripadvisor

"Shiok" to be greeted by this after a 20 over hour journey from Singapore to Dallas!

Texas Trip (2-19 Jun 2010)

The last overseas trip we took together was on our honeymoon to Prague. This Texas trip came as a great surprise/bonus. We considered signing up for the conference trip at the end of 2009, but decided not to after considering whether we were suitable conference delegates and my limited leave.

However, things took a sudden turn in May 2010. The conference convener asked Edmund to reconsider going to Texas and I was very unhappy at my job.

I told Edmund, “if I resign from my job, I want to go!”. My blah job was definitely worth giving up for the once in a lifetime, God-given experience in Texas.

Once Edmund confirmed that it was ok for me to go and it was not too late for us to sign up, I put in my letter. All this happened in 3 days, although I had been wanting to leave my job for months! Just never felt the release to do so.

My last day of work was towards the end of May and we were off to America on 2 Jun.

Enjoying the yummy fish meal on the JAL flight to Tokyo (transit) complete with choya and refreshing yuzu drink (exclusive to JAL flights)! Loved it to bits!