International Student Orientation

What a day, learns tons and met some great people! I woke up yesterday morning and attended the Int'l Student Orientation and Lunch. Forgetting I was at a big school, I didn't leave for the bus stop until 9:45 (it started at 1000) and I ended up being very late. However, at the bus stop I meant some kids from Univ. of Illinois. Two of the girls live right on the other side of my dorm, and these were the two girls I hung out with the rest of the day/night. The Information session wasn't anything new; how to do this and that which I had already figured out. We learned there was 360 students doing the exchange; about 65 Americans, 60 Canadians, 40 Swedish, and other European and Asian countries. They then provided a spectacular lunch buffet full of delicious mystery meats, fried things, and miniature desserts (lady fingers!). For the next hour, we all mingled with the various groups and many practiced their conversational English with us, it was very fun. I had my ERAU shirt on, and there was only 1 person who recognized it, a solo guy from UF. Meant lots of Mexicans who hung out with us the rest of the evening also.  One of the girls has some Singaporean friends and taught us some random facts about the country:

The government owns all of the apartments in the city. If you want to rent one, you can rent one, or "buy" one, which is really renting it for 99 years. After three generations live there, then the apartment gets put back up for sale. Also, there are so many trees here (as I didn't think there would be since this place is almost like one huge city) because the only trees that are allowed to be cut down are native trees. It's illegal to cut down a foreign tree; you can build around it or dig it up and re-plant in the area you found it. There are plaques with numbers on alot of the treet on campus, so maybe that is why they are marked; they're foreign trees. I also learned the reason the school is backed up onto a Live Fire Range. You might need to resort to a map of Singapore to fully understand this, look at the west coast of the island. Back in the day, there was a huge Chinatown here that grew into a good 1/8 of the country. The government of Singapore was worried an uprising was going to happen, so they decided to take the land from the Chinese and turn this tiny portion into a Chinese school (NTU) and the majority into a militarized zone, to keep the people on check just in case. There is also another school inside of NTU, called NIE, National Institute of Education. If you want to be a teacher in Sing, you MUST attend this college.

Another very interesting thing I didn't know was the illegality of Jehovah's Witnesses. When Sing gained their independence in 1965, they decided every person on the island who turned 16 MUST join the military. There was a grouping of Witnesses who disagreed with the idea. For a long while, there was a constant battle between the two on males at 16 joining the military. In 1992, the Sing government confiscated all the Witnesses practicing land and declared it to be illegal to practice. Of course, there are still many groups of Witnesses here, who try to practice in secret and have forever-changing meeting places. It's hard for them, since they do not chose to participate in the pledge of allegiance in school (like we did in school every morning), which gets noticed, as well as their belief of just going from door to door and talking about God. They still must do that, it is a part of who they are. What the government does then, knowing you are illegally practicing, is they put you in jail for 3 years. For every year after that that you refuse to join the military, its another 40 days in jail. So, imagine for the rest of your life, attending prison for 40 days every 365. 

I have a funny story to tell yall. Ever heard of a soft boiled egg? Google it if you haven't to appreciate thing. Yesterday morning I ordered kayan (I think I'm spelling this right) toast and 2 eggs. Kayan is a fruit-like spread, that I think it tastes like honey butter, so no complaints. I had a skype date with the fiance, so I asked the lady to make it to-go. First off, this is always a struggle, as only the students are required to speak English on campys and the help doesn't always speak. This lady at this particular stand which I frequent doesn't speak almost any English and I swear she's always mad when I come. Anyways, she puts the toast in a bag, but keeps saying "no, no" to the soft boiled eggs. I shrug her off, put them in my toast bag, and walked up stairs. Sitting at my desk, I begin to crack the eggs. I gave it a big hard WACK on the desk. I then discovered what a soft-boiled egg was..... It's half boiled and is gooey inside, you put it in a bowl and eat it kind of like a soup with a spoon..... It exploded everywhere! So embarassing....

The Illinois and Mexican group and I decided to go out and party last night. There is a HUGE nightlife scene here, as 2 million of the 5 million population of this country is foreigners, who really like to party. There was a party being thrown near Little India especially for foreign exchange students from the 3 schools in the area. The alcohol here, as I spoke of earlier, is mega expensive. So, the thing to do, is to go to the 7-11 and buy your own and go hang out at "the bridge" and drink it before going to the clubs. Everyone, locals and foreigners alike, participate in this. The bridge is this pedestrian bridge over a harbor a bit inland, surrounded by lots of restaurants, neon lights, and street vendors. Very "city" kind of place to be. There are 3 sections of the bridge you can walk on, and the raised separating between the two is where everyone sits, dangles there feet, and drinks. We all hang out here for the next 2 hours and drank. I bought a Tsingtao, delicious Chinese beer they import to the US which I would recommend anyone who likes to try new things. I also tried a Thai beer, very sweet and gross.

I went with the Mexicans to get into a taxi and we went to the club. It was all Europeans. They only let in 500 ppl at a time so we had to stand in line for a minute. They had a strict dress code, and we actually watched a guy strip down and change his clothes in the line. My student idea (only a photo and NTU) worked as my ID and we went into a 2 story building full of dry-ice which smelled gross, high powered beams and strobe lights, and super loud bass techno. You can stand in front of the speakers and could feel the bottoms of my pants move. Very crowded, really bad drinks, and got pushed out the way all the time. If I had to guess, take this as you will since I've never been to Europe, but this would be what I would conciser a European club. It closed at 3am, I have no voice since when we were dancing with the girls, you had to scream in order to hear each other, but it was very fun.