Homestays, hot days and really long plays....

Day 13 in the Lion City! We just finished the first section of our NUS class: History of Singapore, and thus will be getting a new NUS professor tomorrow to start teaching history of Malaysia! Things are still going really well--we're heading to the zoo this afternoon!

But to recap once again: This past weekend, we got partnered up with a Singaporean NUS student for a homestay. I was put with one other UNC student and we stayed with Geraldine, seen below, at her condo near Bishan for the weekend (a neighborhood in Singapore)! We walked around her neighborhood and looked at some shops, ate a ton of food and went out that night. She took us to Settlers (which is the coolest board game+dinner cafe ever) for a few hours and then to a salsa club. And for anyone that believes salsa sounds foreign for Asia--think again. I was so surprised; there were a TON of people there, and I firmly believe they were all professional dancers. We were completely out of our league....
Geraldine is Chinese and lives with her parents in this private housing condo. This is really uncommon, as private housing is really, really expensive and more than 80% of Singaporeans live in government-subsidized flats. However, it was really nice. Three pools, full parking decks, playgrounds, bars, and gyms...for Singapore (which has no land), that's ridiculously nice. The higher floors are also considered the nicest because they get the most breeze and the best view of the city. From her shower stall, you could swing the window (inside the shower) wide-open and see the whole city, without anyone being able to see you back. Nice.

Her Dad, who is semi-retired, was soo nice and drove us all over the city (in a car, which is also pretty rare in Singapore). He made us tons of homemade Singaporean foods and he drove us to Geraldine's Catholic church on Sunday morning. We also go to try Durian! That's the nasty-nasty fruit native to southeast Asia that Singapore modeled a building after. Most locals love it, but they say you can smell it from blocks away and that most Westerners hate it. It does smell like a trash dump, but contrary to most foreigners, I actually kind of liked it!

This is one of the book stores Geraldine took us too. All these stacks of books are assessment books, used to drill kids on all areas of study starting in preschool. Education systems in Singapore, and throughout southeast Asia, are ridiculously competitive and kids' parents push them insanely hard from the time they learn to talk. Coloquially, it's called kiasuism: an anal, super-competitive, "afraid to lose," type of mindset most Singaporeans seem to have. As Geraldine's Dad said, proportionally, Singaporeans only know how to do 5 things: work, work, work, eat and sleep. So basically work. It's very uncommon for students to go out on weekends at all; instead staying home to work. We took a look at some of the books and they were so hard!! Forget the connect-the-dot and coloring pages, these things were hard core.

Seperate from our homestays, we're staying busy too. We got to visit three Hindu temples in Little India, led by the Hindu Society of students at NUS. They were beautiful:

Inside, elaborate, colorful dieties flanked the walls and ceilings. I have tons of these pictures, but will just give you a sample of one:

We also visited Clarke Quay (pronounced Clark Key), which is a major downtown shopping, dining, and nightlife area along the river. Though we only saw it during the day, it was really pretty.

The weather's staying hot as usual, but we're having fun! Just to end this on a funny note, this is a sign I took a picture of along a main street. It's part of Singapore's "Speak Good English" campaign. Most Singaporeans speak "Singlish" instead of English, which is often indeciferable to foriegners. So keeping with the kiasu mindset, the government decided they had to be the best at everything, including mastery of the language. Signs like these are posted everywhere to promote better English:
And last, but not least, Singapore is considered a "fine City." Not in the sense of beauty, but in harsh punishments for simple crimes. The two signs below were found in a subway and Little India, respectively.



Oh, what fun. Hope everything's going well! If you're interested, my sister also has a ridiculously cool blog covering her cross-country blog with bike and build! Go to www.bikeandbuild.org and go to "rider blogs" and click on "Meredith Gilliam." Good luck meredith!

Love you all!

Lizzie