ah, where to begin? its chinese new years this weekend = quiet times here at pgp as most students have either went home for the holiday or have taken a holiday (in the case of exchange students)... for the number of us left its a chance to chill out in the city and - gasp- do some pre-emptive school work!! (you'd be impressed to know i read 50 pages today)
this week i finally met my law 'buddy' who is singaporean... we went out for dinner at nearby the school and i learned many interesting things about my temporary home -- first, all males must serve 2 years in the army after junior college and then are 'on call' for the next 13 years! they live in barracks and everything and even have 3-4 months of training and living out in the bush! intense! i also found out that you can get gum but only from pharmacies, and they require id! (still not sure why tho)... additionally i learnt that singapore is hoping to move to a cashless society-- this is the reason why any time i try to pay for something (like my school fees, my visa etc) no one will accept my cash or credit cards-- yep thats right, when anna and i got our student visas this week, we had to pay by first putting money on our bus cards! lol
tanya and i booked our reading week trip to vietnam this week as well - we'll be travelling from hanoi down to saigon over the course of 12 days... getting my visa for vietnam was quite an ordeal--- its in the middle of this obscure and wealthy neighbourhood- we seriously looked for it for 2 hours and found it only by spotting a small flag in the distance... it is seriously getting hotter here too- i have to estimate that it is at least in the high thirties, so wandering outside for hours = not as fun as it sounds! (however, please dont interpret this as a desire to see snow... i'd be quite happy to only see it once or twice more in my life time, to be honest!)
on the bright side, i was able to sample a local delight-- which i am pictured with above -- pork floss bun! yep, its a bun that is covered with these floss-fine pieces of pork... unfortunately i found it as bad as it sounds and the memory of it still makes me a little queasy, but at least i tried it!
i also had my first 'swimming lesson' with claire this week --- believe it or not, by the end of this term i might actually float - disproving the myth that black people sink... i will document it as it happens (hahaha) -- i am finding it really difficult to do the front crawl with my face underwater but with claires encouraging comments like 'swim accross the pool now, mofo' i'm sure its gonna happen any day now....
last night i went to chinatown to witness the light up for the new year without rain -- new pictures are now posted on flickr -- it was a lot of fun and really busy -- apparently the whole city will shut down tomorrow (sunday) and monday (and as a bonus the school will still be closed on tuesday- hooray!) ... in an interesting turn of events a chinese girl on our floor invited jo and i to her house for lunch tomorrow to celebrate the new year! amazing! we're going to celebrate chinese new year the chinese way -- really nice of her to invite -- i'll make sure to post about it!
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