We left early this morning to get into Singapore in time for my late afternoon class. The water was a lot calmer, which was great news. Custom's was very easy, now that I finally got my student pass. Because I am staying past 60 (or 120?) days, I need a student pass. This is a little ID card with my student visa on it. They didn't even need to look at my passport, just scan the card and push me on through, it was great!
There is so much going on this week, I need to catch up on homework before the Vietnam trip on Friday! I am trying to bring my laptop, so I can make posts and stay connected with the world during my Vietnam War tour in Hue for the weekend. This was the ONE biggest trip I wanted to make while I was out here, so I am super excited to go. I keep hearing how beautiful the country is, and we are going to the imperial city the people hold as the most beautiful in all of the country, so it should be quite a treat.
Went for a run today, and I got thinking about something. So Singapore has a requirement of military service, as we know. I have heard that every male has to do it, unless he had somewhere around $60k to buy his way out. Because its a 3 year requirement of service, this would also mean that all the local males that are in college would be at least 21, but none of them look it. Neither did Alvin, the local who I talked to a couple weeks ago about the military, so what do I know. That is a lot of money, for a low and middle class, of even upper-middle class family to fork up over military service that would only benefit the country and the boys state of mind. Does this mean that most of the men who are in the service for their 3 year requirements are the lower/middle classes? Is being in the military at that young age synonymous with not being rich? If you are a 19 year old in college, can I assume your family has lots of money? It made me wonder if the army is considered a burden only the lower classes have to face before college. How sad is it to think that?
Alma and I were eating dinner and I noticed something else today. So every time I get food, I get chop sticks. I love using chop sticks. Funny side story: A day or so before I went to China, not having realized I would be eating with chop sticks, mom grabbed a pair out of the drawer that they got in Korea and told me to eat with it. I have NO idea how to hold them, what to do with them. As I struggled, I got upset and gave up. Why eat with those when I only had a few days left with a fork? One of the first trips we took in China was to a boarding school. We ate lunch in their cafeteria. I have a memory of sitting down with my tray of food, starving, holding chop sticks. I realized, I had to force myself to learn, eating one small piece of rice at a time, so I would just starve. Now I love to eat with them. But, I feel like I'm the only one. When I look around the cafeteria we go to every day, the only people eating with chip sticks are eating soup. They chop stick their noodles into a spoon (think the kind they give you to eat miso soup at Japanese restaurants) and then eat it. Everyone else eats their meat and rice with a fork. Still no knives, they cut their meat with a spoon.
We are learning Chinese characters in class, they are very hard. The lao shi showed us a video about how many of the basic characters evolved from back in the day until now. For instance, the character for man looks like a stick figure, as the people drew the symbols of what they saw. Most the characters unfortunately, had an evolution going from looking like the object they were, to being flipped and twisted into something totally not recognizable to their meaning . There are others that are just weird. Friend for instance, is a combination of the moon character written two times, and then the character for left and for right. These are supposed to symbolize the left and right hand holding hands together. But double moon? They also have a saying, mama huhu. This is said, when someone asks you how you are and you are just okay, you say mama huhu (its sounds just as silly as what you are probably pronouncing). It literally means horse-house-tiger-tiger. Even out lao shi doesn't understand why, it just is.
So re-cap of coming up events: Vietnam this weekend, Alma and I are going to Penang, Malaysia the weekend after. Right after that, Dad and Max stop by for a 15 hour layover before our fabulous hike of Mt. Kinabalu in Malaysian Borneo for a week. It will be a busy and exciting month to come!
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