The Day After Arrival, Part I: Tour of the School

The second day, we met our "Singaporean student guide" (a girl from Singapore who is doing a joint degree program with National University of Singapore (NUS) and UNC) in the PGP (remember that this is the acronym for our dorms) lobby and walked to the bus stop to catch the campus bus.

We caught the campus bus from the dorm to the heart of campus and got off near the Central Library. This was our first stop on the tour, and it was more than impressive. The library is huge and, like everything, very sleek and modern. It introduces a new theme that will recur several times: sleek and modern while still warm, brightly colored, and inviting. Many of the carpets, chairs, paintings, columns were bright and exciting colors.

Everything in the library, like my room and Singapore itself, is hyper-efficient. The librarian who led us around knew everything inside and out, never faltered, and had a very concise and organized answer for all questions. It was beyond impressive, especially when compared to most library tours I've taken in the U.S. She was flawless and fluid with the computer, and we were all floored by her expertise.

Here is an incredibly neat video. There is a place on the library's website where you can search for a book and it will bring up this video and virtually FLY you to the book! Is that not awesome?

http://nuslibrary.appspot.com/#

Search: TD313.12 Sin 2003

Besides the library, I will say the following about the campus:

It is very vertical, just like the dorms. Built on a series of hills, it's hard to tell where things begin, end, meet up, and diverge. It's a lot like an M.C. Escher painting, with walkways and stairwells here and there and everywhere. It's pretty neat.

^ Most of the walkways are outside.

^ The main library entrance is to my left.

^ This is the...mascot? in the Student Store.

^ In front of our classroom! "The one with the green wall."

The Bird Park & A Summary

After riding the bus from the airport to the dorms, we showered, unpacked, and ate lunch in the cafeteria in the basement of the dorms. All the food here is cheap (around $3 or $4 in US currency for a meal) and good. You can eat healthily and large amounts for little money, which is a blessing! I get bubble tea every morning for $1-$1.50 and it's delicious.

After settling in and eating, we caught a bus around noon to the "Jurong Bird Park." This was mainly just a way to keep us active and awake until the night so as to fight jet-lag. It was tough towards the end, but it was a really neat park, and we had a lot of fun exploring it.

Afterwards, around 5pm, though we were all dying, we went to a mall. We all wished we had gone at a time when we were more awake, but it was still a cool experience. The mall was ENORMOUS and we ate in the food court. Most of the stores looked very similar to U.S. stores, though almost all of them were NOT American stores.

The food was good in the food court. I would tell you everything I had, but I'm not even sure what it all was. My first two meals were essentially chicken and rice, and I'm not sure how to describe them beyond that. But know that they were good, and that I had dragon fruit juice with my dinner (it was not nearly as exciting as the name suggests).

Some people got this drink/dessert called Chendol. I would explain, but I don't know what it is. There is shaved ice, coconut milk, green jelly/jello stuff, sweetened red beans, and some sort of syrup. It was very bizarre, we all tried it, but no one could really figure out what it was or how the tastes were meant to go together. Apparently it's a "very popular" Singaporean drink, though, so we figured we'd give it a shot.

An Apology, An Explanation

Today is the first day I was able to access the internet. That's why all of these blogs appear with today (Thursday)'s date, even though they happened earlier in the week. Because of the delay, I chose to post the below blogs based on category rather than date, but from here on out I expect the blogs may have a more "here's what we did today" feeling. Hope you enjoy!

The Dorms - A.K.A. "PGPR" or "Prince George's Park Residences"

Here are our fabulous dorms! They really are quite nice. Like everything in Singapore (and like the overall island itself), the rooms are small but highly efficient. Plus, it's awesome to have singles! The landscape is incredibly small and incredibly hilly, and it is so fascinating how they build enormous buildings to maximize their use of vertical room.

^ As I said, it's tremendously hilly!

^ This is a courtyard behind the dorms. The bright-colored building to the left is the convenience store. Like most campus convenience stores in the U.S., it's overpriced, but it does have most of the things you could want.

^ A fountain flanking the above courtyard

^ The guys' rooms are on the 7th floor, and here I am on the balcony outside the elevator!

And lastly, here's a short video tour of my room!

First Impressions

Here are some pictures from our first bus ride, from the airport to our dorms. Notice the mix between "modern" buildings and nature. It was very interesting to me. The vegetation is gorgeous - so are the skyscrapers (which are mostly government-owned residential flats).

Arrival!

Here are some pictures from the Singapore Airport! My impressions: it is incredibly sleek and modern, and there are trees and vines growing all over the place! This will be a recurring theme: large, concrete, modern paired with tropical, verdant, natural. They are certainly two very different forms of beauty, and it's interesting to see how they go together in Singapore.

It was 5 in the morning Singapore time when we got there, after 21 hours of flying and 30 hours of transit. It was rough, but it wasn't as bad as I had feared it might be.

And here is a picture of our first step outdoors! It was only 8 in the morning and it was already HUMID!!! The heat hasn't been so terrible, but the humidity is pretty dreadful. Still, it's not nearly as bad as everyone had me believe.

The Airports

The Houston Airport was not terribly exciting, but here is a picture to prove we were there and super-pumped about it!

The Russia Airport was much more entertaining. Mostly because of the intimidating Russian words written everywhere, but also because EVERY store sold alcohol, and there was one store entirely devoted to vodka! Everything was terribly expensive, even ugly “Russia” t-shirts were about $40, but I got a bottle of water so I could have a Russian receipt and some sort of hardcopy proof of my stay there! It was neat to know we were in Moscow, even if the airport itself was none too impressive.

The Flights

They were grueling, but not as bad as I expected they might be. And, as promised, Singapore Airlines is AMAZING! I’ll just make a quick list of all the awesome amenities they provided that made the trip that much better:

- A titling computer screen with a pullout remote on the seatback in front of you

- Hot towels that they passed out when the plane took off and after the designated “sleep” times

- Designated sleep times when they turned all the lights off and made you close the window shades (this was bad on the flight to Russia, when we were trying to stay awake, and fantastic on the flight to Singapore when we were ready to pass out!)

- Tons of movies, TV shows, music, games: The Last Station, Broken Embraces, Glee, Skins, Modern Family. And best of all, not to mention most surprising of all…JOANNA NEWSOM!!! They even had the full album!

- Little pouches with socks and a disposable toothbrush and

toothpaste

- A fancy guidebook listing the various meals and between-meal snacks you’d be getting throughout the flight

- Yummy meals with schnazzy dishes and real silverware (and even Russian jam, butter, creamer, and….ACTIVIA!!!)

- A neat window in the back. We would get up to go to the bathroom and stretch from time-to-time and look out the window. Sometimes there were only clouds, but sometimes you could see whatever country we were flying over, including….ICELAND!!!

So, in sum, the flights were long but not too bad – I even slept pretty well on the last flight. All of us who flew from RDU were in two or three rows together, the food was good, the multimedia options were awesome, and I got to experience two of my favorite things: Iceland and Joanna Newsom! Can’t complain about that!