SINGAPORE: the early days

I present to you one good looking EAP (education abroad program) family...


In between the process of getting to know each other, we became acquainted with the sights and sounds of Singapore by going on tourist overdrive during the first week. It was super fun, but super tiring as well!

We saw the world class city skyscrapers...




(Taken from a boat ride throught the city strait. For those who thought Singapore was a third world country, clearly it isn't!)

We saw many merlion statues, Singapore's mascot. Frankly, I'm not impressed. They could have come up with something better than combining a fish and lion.


The thing is hideous!

We visited the Malaysian district...

Will you check out this mosque? Amazing.


Next to this beautiful mosque, I witnessed the beheading of several sheep during a muslim festival, filling the streets with blood. It was supposed to be a joyous occasion, but I was ready to vomit. No pictures for this one!

Malay women resting



Later, some of the guys decided to go on stage and Malay dance in their traditional attire!


Drink up. I bet most of you haven't ever even seen these. Neither have I, and am still working my way through the machine


Our EAP advisor/one of the best people to exist on earth, seems to really like zoos. We went to four or five of them! One even during the night time! We also visited at leastt four or five museums as well, or at least it felt like it was that much. I think I've had my share of zoos and museum for sometme now.

(It was really hot, and we were taking a break!)


(Amy in a box, what a cutie!)







Other places we visited were Sentosa (Singapore's island resort), Chinatown, museums, delicious restaurants, basically did the whole tourist package.

Yes, this was what happened in Singapore during the first week or so. I really like eveyone in the group, and am happy to have them here because, if not, the whole experience would have been much different. But by the end of this week, I was tired and just ready to chill for a bit! The locals haven't moved back yet so the dorms were quite empty and lonely. I was happy that school was about to start so more people would be around!

HELLO SINGAPORE!

I love airports, but I hate flying. So I was happy to finally be done with the 20 hour flight complete with a mad sprint across the airport in Japan to make it to the connecting flight. When I got to Singapore, I found out due to hotel complications that I was homeless for the night! I started to freak out. Thankfully, wearing Cal attire does pay off, and several other UC students studying abroad in Singapore as well found me in the airport. We all looked pretty bad from the long flight, something remembling the following picture...

HAHAHA I love this picture.

Anyways, we headed off to what would be the first of many hostels!



Did mention I couldn't breath initially? I felt like I was breathing in water due to the high humidity. Luckily, this feeling went away fast.



So this was my first shot of southeast asia in the morning, waiting at the bus stop. Do you see any differences in the architecture from America?

I had no idea what to expect! A bit of scared mixed with excited, and happy that another adventure was about to begin, I paid 80 cents and boarded the bus to the National University of Singapore.

It actually began in 2006..

So this is my life at home, away from my life at Cal. I spend my days in a typical American suburbia, the skies are usually blue and the association lawns are manicured by professional companies. Not bad I think, and it's nice that my friends and cousin live close by. About a five minute drive away, practically every big chain store/fast food restauarant is represented. However most of the time I eat 30 minutes away, where all the good hole in the wall asian food is at. I spend my days doing lunches or frequenting cafes and catching up with the latest news of my friends, my afternoons visiting places I still care a lot about such as the LH library or my old elementary school, my dinners cooking with my mom, and my nights at Guppies for supper. Occasionally, there will be a beach trip thrown in, new years parties, karaoke nights, dollar theater movies, and of course the bi-annual broomballing high school reunion. It's chill, peaceful, and fun. Gotta love it.

However, this time around, my typical break at home was cut short. Because a year ago on a whim, I decided it was time to make the trip to Southeast Asia. Singapore, to be exact.



Goodbye home in suburbia!


Goodbye pretty trees in front of my house!







Goodbye friends from home!


A toast to future good times!


Goodbye mom!

And about 6 hours and no sleep later...I boarded a flight and flew halfway around the world.

Another blog...why?

(This gorgeous sunset was taken from a old rickety boat sailing through the South China Sea on the last night of our Philippines adventure! We had just been saved from getting stranded on a deserted island, not kidding.)

So I've decided to make a blog to cover 2007. It occurred to me that I have been moving all over the place lately, and will continue to do so for quite some time! Keeping track of things in a nice order would be nice way to remember all the stuff that has been going on. It's already been established that I am a failing facebook photo uploader & tagger, but I will try to include some photos on here instead!

If you're reading this from CA, I hope you will enjoy checking out how southeast asia/asia is like!

If you're reading this from Singapore, thanks for taking a good amount of these pictures and I hope you like enjoy this as well!

p.s- Don't mind the dates, they aren't accurate. I just use them to keep the post in somewhat chronological order.