"I don't really know where we are...but it's very pretty!"
Carly and I have a few games that we like to play when we are bored: the word association game, the name everything you would eat if you weren't in China game and, our newest fave, try to summarize this year into one sentence (one word, if we are feeling really crazy).
Obviously, this year cannot really be summed up in one sentence but in every culture class I ever took in college and even during my semester in Xiamen, everyone repeatedly reminded me that not everyone who asks about my time abroad will want to view the hour long slideshow or hear the story behind each picture. To keep us from boring them or getting mad that they don't want to listen, all of my professors suggested that we have one sentence that summarized our time so that people aren't bored to death and we don't feel sad that they didn't want to see all 10,000 pictures. So, Carly and I take turns summarizing this year, or one of our trips, into one sentence (it'a harder than you would think).
As practice, I'm going to try to summarize Singapore into one sentence (and then you don't have to read any more of this blog if you don't want to!)
"I don't really know where we are...but it's very pretty!"
(This sentence is actually kind of cheating because it's supposed to be something like "Singapore was..." or "My trip was..." not something that needs further explanation but this one just sums up the whole 3 days so nicely (plus, it's my game so I make the rules and I say this goes)).
Going into this trip, I hate to say it, but we sort of had that "I'll be glad that I did this later on but right now I don't want to actually have to do it" kind of attitude. Also, we didn't really know anything about Singapore - except that you are not allowed to bring gum into the country and that jaywalking is strictly prohibited- so we weren't totally sure what to expect which didn't really help the attitude we already had.
It turns out, that Singapore is actually everything and I ended up leaving with a very different attitude than I had going in.
Singapore is beautiful. Very, very beautiful. It is clean, colorful and bright. Everything looks modern and sharp and there are beautiful flowers and trees everywhere. The people are nice and the food is delicious. It's also very small. Very, very small. Which is nice because it means that if you get lost you just have to keep walking until you find where you're supposed to be ( cause you have to get there eventually) - except that it is also wildly hot and humid. While we were there it was a constant 89- 92 degrees with a humidity of 85-90% (which is why it was so weird that everyone who found out we were from China would be like "but it's so hot there..." because yes, it is but it's still hotter in Singapore). So, our plan to walk until we found everything did exactly go as planned - because we were melting into the sidewalk - and we ended up taking some buses and the metro to get where we wanted to go. However, those don't always drop you off exactly where you want to go either and often times we ended up walking and walking until some kind soul took pity on us and helped us find our destination. But, somehow, we got to see everything we had wanted to see and, thanks to all that wandering, so much more!
We also got to eat delicious food, meet people with some of the coolest travel stories we have heard this year and see an entire forest of Super Trees blink and flash to a Disneyesque soundtrack - which is how my attitude managed to switch from "I will be glad I did this" to "I will be so glad to come back...and stay....for a week....or a month....or a year....or always...."
If I ever go back, maybe I'll eventually have some idea of where I am when I am walking
but, if not, it sure is a wonderful place to be lost.
