Scoop from Singapore

First Full Day in S-pore

After my first full day in Singapore, I am feeling a little less overwhelmed, but also still filled with questions. Having Michele and Jeremy around helps a lot, and we are starting to meet more of the exchange students. It is interesting, that the exchange students really are not from the US. I don't know why I believed there would be more, or that I thought there would be less international students, but I think this will be a completely differnet cultural lesson. So far we have met students from Canada, Sweeden, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, and Mexico, with many many students from Canada and Sweeden. Along with learning the accent of Singaporeans, I am not trying to translate everyone else we meet too! I love it though, and can't wait to catch up on my sleep so that I can go out with them. We're hearing that a night out gets to be pretty expensive, but we'll have to try it out soon. Food here is amazingly inexpensive though. For breakfast I had pancakes because I was unable to make myself eat noodles at 9 am, and paid a dollar twenty Singaporean. Yay for that.

We were oriented today, although I am not sure if they really told us much useful information. We learned about their version of online class supliments (like WebCT) and they explained to us that many classes are videotaped, so at least I can replay over and over my professors if I don't understand them. I still feel totally unprepared for classes to begin in a few days, and still need to add a course and have no idea about anything related to the ones I am registered for. I would REALLY love to just be on vacation all semester, but I guess that's not going to happen. We are already talking about the trips we would like to take, so homefully we can get on planning for that sooner than later! :)

I am still trying to learn my way about campus, but am very confused on my thoughts of its size. There are dozens of more buildings here, but I don't think it takes any longer to walk from our hall to the main part of campus than it would to go from Terraces to Park. The humidity and the stairs are not a great mix, but Ithaca has prepared me well!

Tomorrow the IC kids and I are going to head off campus and around Singapore to take care of our immigration paperwork. We were told that you have to go early, drop it off, and then pick it up later in the day. Hopefully we will get some shopping done and start to explore this city. Tomorrow we'll get our transportation card, "ez-link" which you can just add money to and tap (think swiping at the subway, but just tapping your card instead) when you get on a bus or MTR (this subway).

posted by Bride-to-Be @ 12:29 PM