Saturday the 12th, Part II: Singaporean Homestay II - The Two Singaporean Pastimes

After sitting around and talking of many things, we went out to enjoy the two Singaporean pastimes: eating and shopping! Lydia's house is really close to Orchard Road (remember I said that this is like the Champs Élysées of Singapore) and all of the "popular," "trendy" shopping places in Singapore.

Far East Plaza, which is essentially a mall. I bought a green polo shirt.

Lydia tried to feed us fried mars bars. They were sickening.

A Trendy candy shop! Lydia insisted on buying us macaroons, even though we were all so full!

Ion on Orchard - one of the swankiest malls in Singapore!

^^ Food court

^^ Just some food shop near the food court. I know it sounds stupid and closed-minded of me, but it was kind of surprising to see this in one of Singapore's ritziest malls.

^^ Oh yeah, soy sauce!

^^ A 3-storey escalator!

^^ Entrance to the men's bathroom (or "Gents," as they call it here)

After shopping, we went back to the house to "clean up" and change for church. Then we headed out for evening mass. The service was not really much different from most church services I've been to in my life. Here's a picture of us with the priest!

After church, we went out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant where we ate "family style" (but it's called "Dim Sum" in Chinese). It was one of the top 3 meals I've eaten while here.

We had dessert afterwards. I'm still not exactly sure what it was...it was simply called "Green Bean," but it didn't look or taste like a green bean. It was pretty good, but not very sweet and kind of strange.

After dinner, we just went home and hung out the rest of the night, talking and laughing harder than I've laughed in a long time. It was very low-key and a ton of fun! I'll post another post soon that gives more details.

Saturday the 12th, Part I: Singaporean Homestay I - New Family, New Home!

I know I keep saying this about different things, but this was one of the best experiences I've had so far! Everyone from our group was put in groups of 2 or 3 and assigned to a homestay family. The families were friends and relatives of our Singaporean student leader, Hui Qian (hopefully you remember her and how to pronounce her name, because she's just going to continue popping up in these posts).

I was teamed up with two girls named Abby and Lacy and assigned to Hui Qian's cousin, Lydia. Here's our happy homestay family! (Also, note the trendy gray shirt I bought in the Arab Quarter for only US$21!)

From left to right: Lydia (18), me, Abby, Lacy, Aaron (21), Andre (16)

Essentially, we just hung out, shopped, and ate. They picked us up from PGP around 10 Saturday morning and took us to this delicious bakery called "Provence." The bread was amazing.

After breakfast, we went to our new home to look around and drop off our stuff!

^^ Home!

^^ Neighbourhood

^^ I got to play the piano for the first time in two weeks!

^^ Andre's room, where I slept.

^^ Lydia's room, where the girls slept.

^^ What a neat chair!
^^ Neighbourhood
^^ Me and Lydia in front of the house!

Miscellaneous Observations, Part II: Food!

Here is a collage of some of the food I've eaten! Yes, it is mostly chicken and rice...and prices are listed in Singapore dollars first, then US dollars.

1. Chicken rice (S$4.50/US$3.15) - a "traditional" Singaporean/Malaysian dish with subtly-flavored rice, roasted chicken, and chili sauce (I go light on the chili sauce - very spicy!)

2. Honey chicken rice (S$3/US$2.10) - honey-glazed chicken with rice and cabbage

3. Indian food (S$3/US$2.10)...I don't know the name, but I already blogged about it (see: Monday the 7th: Little India)

4. Egg & cheese prata with kopi (S$3/US$2.10) - a prata is like an Indian crêpe, and kopi is just brewed coffee with condensed milk. This is my standard breakfast, give or take an apple

5. Indonesian roasted chicken rice w/ aloe vera apple juice (S$4.80/US$3.36) - just like the other chicken and rice meals, but the chicken was spiced differently. One of the best chicken rice meals I've had, though I don't really know what about it qualifies it as "Indonesian"

6. Vegetarian meal? I know there's something there that looks like chicken, but I don't think it is. It only cost S$2/US$1.40, though.

7. Chendol! (S$1.80/US$1.26) - I described this in one of my first posts, but let me try again. Start with shaved ice. Add condensed milk sauce. Add sweetened red beans. Add some sort of brown syrup (wintermelon?). Add three weird, clear jelly things. Add green, tasteless gummies. My friend and I who split it still couldn't figure out how to like it. Each bite tasted completely different depending on how much of each thing you get. Overall, we didn't enjoy it, but we're told it is extremely popular among Singaporeans.

8. Lychee jello - I don't know the cost, because this was part of the meal seen in 9. Overall, the meal was S$14/US$9.80, and this was a "going out to a nice restaurant" meal. Lychee is a common fruit around here, and while I'm not crazy about it, this jello was actually really good.

9. Chicken rice (surprise, surprise), miso soup, shredded pork pastries (S$14/US$9.80) - This was a "prix-fixe" meal at a Dim Sum restaurant in a mall. Dim Sum, as far as I understand, is simply a Chinese idea of eating "lots of little dishes." I think one of the dishes usually includes these small round pastries (which are DELICIOUS). Anyway, this was a very nice meal in a very nice restaurant with a great atmosphere, and it was only about $10! Gotta love strong exchange rates!

OOPS: Retroactive Photo Upload - Business District

Okay, so when I was covering the scavenger hunt, I forgot to upload some awesome pictures that I took of the "downtown" business district, which we saw on our way to Marina Barrage (the last stop on the hunt). The skyscrapers are pretty impressive and very beautiful. They made Devika and I both step back and say, "I can't believe humans can create something so much greater than themselves!"

Enjoy!

I feel like I need a few words to break up the pictures...there was a lot of construction in the area and a TON of (mostly Malay) construction workers lining the streets. It was an interesting side of Singapore, one that our Singaporean facilitator said she wouldn't want to find herself in alone.

Friday, June 11th: Pulau Ubin

Okay, so Friday the 11th was one of the most awesome days we've all had here thus far! Our graduate coordinator coordinated a trip to this island called Pulau Ubin, and 19 out of 25 of us went. We had to take an hour long bus/MRT ride to a ferry station, and then a 15 minute ferry ride to reach it. It's a small island off the coast of Singapore (yes, an island off of an island) that has been *mostly* untouched by development. It is a tropical paradise, the last part of Singapore to be untouched by development, the last old-school "village" in Singapore. Or so they say.

As I said, it was a great experience. We rented cheap bicycles and rode around the bike paths that criss-cross the entire island. These days, it is primarily set up for tourists. We took a picnic lunch and ate on the trail. We were disgusting, hot, sweaty, and bug-bitten all day, but it was absolutely worth it. Aside from the natural beauty, there were several surprises - rundown houses, dilapidated temples, mangrove forests, and other things!

Since it was a day of so much *unprecedented beauty* I'm just going to put a link here to an album full of all the pictures I took while there! Enjoy!

Click here for pictures!

Making Up For Lost Time

When I left for Malaysia, I had just blogged about Tuesday, June 8th, when we went to the museum and explored the waterfront. Since I am horrendously behind, I'm going to try to blitz through the things I've skipped to make up for lost time.

Wednesday, June 9th

I spent most of Wednesday in the library doing homework and giving myself a break. After class, though, Mattis and Devika and Tess and I went to the Engineering Canteen, trendily named "Techno Edge," on campus. While there, a monsoon arrived, and it rained like nobody's business! It was absolutely insane - the gutters and intricate drainage systems all over campus turned into not-so-little rivers, and the rain just kept going. Fortunately, I was able to stay under cover until it ended!

Wednesday night is "lady's night" at most of the clubs in Singapore, so a big group of us went to a club called "Zirca," located in Clarke Quay (my favorite place ever). It was a TON of fun, and the club actually got really crowded!

^^ Clarke Quay! That's me!

Thursday, June 10th

After class, a group of us went to the Arab Quarter to shop for clothes. We have a lot of events (I think I've mentioned this before) that require "smart casual" outfits, and I didn't really bring anything like that with me. Plus, the Arab Quarter is rife with super-trendy "hipster" stores with clothes similar to what one might find in Urban Outfitters or American Apparel. There is an alley called Haji Lane lined with hip boutiques that look like they could be in Paris or New York, and this is where we headed. First we tried to stop by the Sultan's Mosque, the largest mosque in Singapore, but they were having prayer and wouldn't allow us inside.

The interesting thing is that the mosque is one street over from trendy Haji Lane. And even more interesting, right behind the mosque, and parallel to Haji Lane, is the lane I'm standing in in the above picture - Arab Street. In stark contrast to its trendy neighbor, Arab Street features lots of touristy stalls and lots of "traditional" Indian and Malay clothing. Singapore is such an interesting fruit salad of different "cultures" and lifestyles!

^^ A shop selling "traditional" clothes with an awesome name!

^^ Arab Street

^^ Yuck.

^^ Arab Street

^^ Arab Street

^^ Haji Lane
^^ Haji Lane
^^ Haji Lane

OUT OF ORDER: Back From Malaysia

Greetings! So we just got back from our 5 day excursion to Malaysia! It was...an interesting and unexpected experience. We weren't expecting to spend so much of our time in a tour bus, and we had a CRAZY tour guide named Francis. He has become our new scape goat - his accent and overuse of the word "whereby" in inappropriate grammatical scenarios, not to mention his sexism, patronization, and cultural insensitivity - made him the perfect butt of many jokes.

In spite of Francis and the aggravations inherent in having to do what a bus driver and an insane Malay-Chinese man told us to do, the trip threw us some curve balls. The biggest thing that came out of it is an overwhelming sense of group solidarity. After so many hours together on a bus (it took 18 hours from the time we left the hotel in Malaysia to the time we got back to our dorms in Singapore yesterday, and that was just one day), we have all bonded A LOT. We played a lot of games - card games, word games, picture games, "never-have-I-ever," spontaneous a cappella karaoke - and had lots of meaningful (as well as some not-so-meaningful) talks about all kinds of things, from religion and our dream futures to our dislike of Francis and our love of being silly.

I think I'm going to post a picture album on another site and then link it from the blog, instead of doing the picture/word blogs I've been doing thus far. I'll post a few blogs here describing what we did, though. And then eventually, I'll hopefully make up all of the days I never blogged before leaving...