Chinese New Year Pictures

Nine SGD Carls Jr. Meal. Outrageous. And it was too big, I only ate like half. Our Chinese New Year Reunion Dinner. Only American fast food places were open.

Singapore Update 2

The huts we stayed in. Less than 8 dollars a night!
The whole trip cost around 50 USD :)

Coconut tree in Bintan, Indonesia

Hello everyone,

Sorry I’m getting worse and worse about sending out these email updates. I’ve been in Singapore for a little over a month now, and I definitely do not regret coming here in the least. Singapore is a wonderful city/country and is a terrific place to live. Life here is nicer than Santiago, probably because there is a fresh sea breeze constantly coming into my window, pollution is much more minimal, all of my food cravings (other than Cali-Mexican and Inn-and-out) are easily satisfied, and I really respect and am fascinated by the economic and government system in this tiny country. Singapore is an excellent place to live, however I regret not being able to volunteer in some type of development program that betters society or something. Singapore is just too developed, I think nicer than So-Cal even. The 4 storey-mall 5 minutes away from here has a lake on top of the roof. Singapore may be small, but they do it big.

Lately I’ve just been getting into the groove with my university, National University of Singapore. Here I am taking 4 courses: Public Finance, Money and Banking, Chinese 1 and International Economics. Exciting right? (Not.) Courses are very intense, and I think I might be slightly behind with the material, but I will snap into it sooner or later. I also have surprisingly acquired my surplus of energy back (I kind of lost it in Santiago). It might be the lack of Santiago smog, or the fact that I’m eating better, and exercising more regularly. As a result, my friend Christine and I have been trying out lots of different activities to use up all the energy. Lately we’ve been lap swimming, but a couple of weeks ago, I did two day-long camps. I am now rock-climbing certified and can use the on campus rock gym whenever. I also took archery, which was really boring. Oh and I’m taking cardio kick boxing once a week. It’s fun, but difficult especially because we have class in this non-air conditioned room and lots of Singaporeans don’t like to wear deodorant. I’m getting kind of bored with just lap swimming and kickboxing, so we might take windsurfing one of these weekends if we feel like shelling out the money.

I went to Bintan, Indonesia last weekend. It was a very chill weekend. We just took a 1.5 hour ferry to Bintan Island (not really that close to the larger Indonesian Islands), and stayed in these nifty little bungalows on the beach. (There are some pictures on the blog www.kianalea.blogspot.com) A lot of the island seemed like it would be straight out of Survivor. The beach had no waves, and we kind of had to walk a bit to find the nice water, but it was calming and so needed. My friend Sonya and I were the only ones that really dared to swim (she is from SD too, so maybe that’s why), so we hung out in the water until we were all pruney. There were little hermit crabs all over the beach. If you sit in the water, they bite your butt. There were fisherman in their traditional little boats spear fishing and net-fishing. Life there was just really laid back. I had a good time. Everyone else was complaining about the bug bites, but thanks to my mommy and my Auntie Jo’s advice about taking vitamin B complex and odorless garlic pills, I escaped a lot of unnecessary discomfort. Food was cheap, and beer was cheap (which was good for my friends who don’t like paying the 6 SGD dollars a can back in Singapore. It didn’t really matter to me.) I’m kind of mad the Indonesian visa took up a whole page in my passport. I am definitely running out of pages.

This weekend was Chinese New Year. Apparently Singapore is supposed to be the top-third destination to celebrate Chinese New Year in the world. We haven’t had school since Wednesday (Chinese New Years Eve), and pretty much everything is closed so people can spend time with their families. (We ate Carl’s Jr. for our new years reunion dinner, only the American places were open). A bunch of us went to Chinatown for the New Years Countdown. We got there at eight, and it was already really crowded. The show was really boring. Chinese people are not the liveliest crowd either. But it was very packed. A nice breeze kept us breathing normally. We were very disappointed by all the cheesy acts until all the sudden at Midnight, the world felt like it was ending. It was the craziest fireworks show I have ever witnessed in my life. The immutable sound of popping fire went on for at least 5 minutes. Not only fireworks, but giant balls of gasoline exploded in the air. Confetti was everywhere. It was awesome. Ok that’s all I have for now. Sorry these are always so long. I’m going hiking tomorrow in the only place to go hiking in Singapore, and I’m going to Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Bangkok, Thailand in two weeks. Miss you all! Let me know if you have some prayer requests.