Things I Miss About the USA

1. Good food. (Cheap food, even if it is Asian, just isn't the same.)
2. Clean bathrooms.
3. Clean showers.
4. Clean hallways.
5. A well-lit, clean shower, without bugs.
6. Izzy and Bob.
7. Window screens.
8. Carpeting.
9. Boots and sweaters.
10. Being able to walk around campus. (Buckley to Northwest has nothing on NUS.)
11. Not having to climb an average of 50 flights of stairs per day.
12. A printer.
13. Driving.
14. Not having to rely on public transportation.
15. Not having to budget a minimum of 30 minutes to travel anywhere.
16. Bus drivers who understand that there are people standing and trying to balance.
17. Being able to sit on buses.
18. Patient drivers.
19. Crossing the street fearlessly.
20. My entire wardrobe.
21. All my shoes.
22. Unlimited texting.
23. Texting KC about anything and everything.
24. A fridge.
25. A microwave.
26. A futon.
27. Snuggling under comforters.
28. Salads.
29. Cereal.
30. MILK.
31. UConn.
32. Class grades based on your own performance, not your performance relative to others.
33. Students who know how to have fun on top of studying.
34. Forever21 that is affordable.
35. Being able to take out money at an ATM not in increments of $50.
36. Store 24, Wings, Husky Pizza, Starbucks.
37. The study lounge.
38. 50 minute classes.
39. My cozy dorm room.
40. 3 ring binders.
41. Spiral bound notebooks.
42. Gum.
43. My cat.
44. My friends.
45. My family. (Even though they're here with me now!)
46. And the list goes on...

Some things I actually like about Singapore:

1. There's always something to do.
2. Never-ending shopping.
3. Every Nation Church Singapore.

Fun With Haga

This weekend promises to be a fun and exciting one, so before I get too ahead of myself, I figured I should keep everyone updated! Pam turned 21 a couple weeks ago, so to celebrate her birthday we went to Kusu Island. On the way, Gina, in all her friendliness, befriended a lone Japanese traveller. Who decided to hang out with us for the rest of the day. This is Haga. Unfortunately, I did not take many pictures with my camera, so the one picture I have of Haga is not very good. (He's hiding there in the corner.)



Here is a better picture of Haga that I stole from Jayne:

Haga is the short little man all the way on the right. Holding Jayne's hand in one hand, and reaching all the way to Gina's shoulder with his other hand. There are too many Haga stories to tell here, but basically he was a lone 39 year old Japanese traveller, carrying with him cubes of cheese and business class Japanese cookies, who barely spoke any English. It made for quite the interesting and exciting day.

The other main highlight of Kusu Island was the plethora of turtles. Kusu does mean tortoise after all.

Last weekend, as if we hadn't already eaten enough during Chinese New Year celebrations, Pam and her dad cooked us a five-course Italian meal. It was by far the best food I have eaten in Singapore so far. Unfortunately, I don't remember the names of all the dishes, but they all looked amazing and tasted just as good.

That's all for now, I'll try to check back in after the weekend. Hope everyone at home is staying warm!

Love,

Reb

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Happy Chinese New Year from Singapore! It's totally different celebrating this holiday in Asia vs. the US. At home, we don't get two days off from school that's for sure! (Although everyone at UConn has had more than enough days off this semester.) Despite popular belief, there is really nothing going on in Chinatown on the eve of Chinese New Year. Marina Bay is where it's at. We saw the most spectacular fireworks at midnight against the best backdrop ever. Apparently, the fireworks show is repeated every night for the next few days so I'm sure we'll be back sometime soon!

Wishing you all a happy and prosperous new year!

Love,

Reb

Weekend 3 in Singapore

Ok, clearly blogging is not my calling. I apologize for the lack of upkeep since I know you're all dying to hear about my adventures over here. Now that classes have started to pick up, I feel like I have so much to do. I have some assignments, but mostly teachers assign a lot of reading. Not my favorite thing to do. This past weekend was one of the funnest so far. Saturday, we made a trip to the zoo. I took over 300 pictures that day, not even kidding. The animals were just so cool! By far one of the best zoos I have ever been to. Or maybe it's just that I don't remember anything about zoos since I haven't been to one in forever. One of the first animals we saw was a big ugly monkey with a gigantic nose. Apparently, the bigger the nose, the more attractive the male is.

We saw a lot of other monkeys, and definitely noticed a trend. They REALLY like to groom each other.

We also saw most of the main characters from The Lion King. We saw Simba,

Nala,

Timon,

and Pumbaa.

One of the coolest animals of the day though was by far the elephant. They had an elephant show that showcased how smart these animals were. Now I understand why KC loves them so much! At the beginning of the show, they elephants sprayed the audience members. We were in the second row, but luckily we only got misted.

Amazingly enough, even though elephants are ginormous animals, they have an amazing sense of balance. This elephant walked across the log like a balance beam, turned around without touching the ground, and then managed to balance on only two feet.

Basically, the point of the show was to show how strong yet gentle elephants are. All of us were amazed at how talented these creatures are.

Even though the elephants were really cool, my favorite animal of the day was by far the white tiger. One of the tigers seemed to know what us tourists like, since he was putting on quite the show. He spent most of the time pacing back and forth at the front of the exhibit, swam around in the water, and then went back to strutting his stuff so all of us could take fifty million pictures of him. I just counted the pictures that I took, and I took 45 pictures of the white tigers alone.

The zoo was very eventful, but tiring, so Saturday night was a night for relaxing. But we were ready for more adventure the next day. On Sunday we went to the horse races! We all dressed up and pretended we were the fancy rich people that go to horse races. I was crossing my fingers that there would be a horse named Dover so that I could cheer for it. (That was a reference to My Fair Lady if you didn't get it.) Unfortunately, there was no Dover, but there was a horse named Jewel Princess. I would have bet on her solely because of her name, but her stats in the past didn't look too great so I refrained. We were also disillusioned about fancy people going to horse races. We only paid a few dollars to get into the grandstand, so we were surrounded by old men who were smoking and betting. I guess you have to be in the owners' boxes in order to see the fancy part of the races. All in all though it was a mucho fun day.

Despite the intense wind and the sporadic rain drops here and there, the races were a blast. This weekend was one of the best and I look forward to the coming weekend as well! Hugs and kisses to all!

Love,

Reb

Adventures in Singapore

I guess I never realized going into this how time consuming it would be to keep a blog! I'm failing miserably, but hopefully I'll be able to catch up and stay caught up! Firstly, no blog about Singapore would be complete without pictures of palm trees =)

I haven't been able to do much touring around since classes started on Monday, but I went everywhere in my first week here. After going to Little India, we decided it would be a good idea to go to Chinatown to eat and explore.

From left to right: Evan, Gina, Geoff, and me. We're all from UConn but only Evan and Gina are on exchange with me.

On Saturday, we decided to hit up the beach! I think this is the first time I have ever been to the beach in January.



The water was surprisingly chilly, but with the hot weather here it was definitely welcomed.

Saturday was Romana's birthday, so we went to dinner at a restaurant by Marina Bay. That part of the city is absolutely gorgeous at night. We were able to see the Marina Bay Sands lit up:

The Fullerton Hotel:



The Merlion:



And other parts of the city:

On Sunday, Aunty Lay Hoon and Gu Gong took me out to lunch and then up to the SkyPark, which is the top of the Marina Bay Sands building. The view of Marina Bay and the surrounding area was spectacular from 56 stories high, even with the fog.







After the visit to Marina Bay Sands, I was dropped off at the zoo, where I met Geoff and Gina for the Night Safari. It was hard to take pictures since you weren't allowed to use flash photography, but I tried to get a few good ones!





And of course an elephant for KC =)

That pretty much sums up everything fun I've done here so far. My friends and I have done plenty of shopping; there are malls and street vendors everywhere!! Monday marked the beginning of classes for this semester =( I wish my time in Singapore could be all fun and games but I guess I have to fit some studying in as well! And the reason why I haven't posted any pictures of my room yet is because I'm still partially living out of my suitcases... oops. I guess I should finish unpacking soon. That's all for now though! More to come on the good life in Singapore! Miss you and love you all back home! xoxo

Love,

Reb