I have three weeks left in Singapore and I can't believe it! As my trip nears its end, more and more activities seem to be piling up! This past weeks activities consisted mostly of food. One night we went to the supermarket with our coworkers and bought TONS of food. We then went to one coworkers apartment with a beautiful view of the city and had a steamboat. This was basically a pot of boiling broth that we threw food into. We had fish balls (yuck) sausage, cheese tofu, corn, carrots, radish, mushrooms, fish, chicken, dumplings and more! One of the UC students that is here has parents that live in Singapore and the night after the steamboat we were invited to his house for dinner! His mother cooked us a traditional Indian dinner and WOW it was delicious! We had chips and juice first, then rice, chickpeas, cauliflower, chicken, yogurt with onions, chipati and more for dinner followed by fresh, delicious fruit and then ice cream for dessert! It was so nice to have a home cooked meal and to enjoy time with Prasad and his mom! What a sweet lady. ... Other than that I have been busy at work, laughing through the pain as stated in the picture below. We had spent days compiling a bunch of data that was extremely tedious and painful only to realize that we didn't have to do ANY of it! The basketball hoop is from a project we are working on to encourage upcycling and to make recycling fun in schools. All made from recycled materials and the net is even made from a plastic bag! I am enjoying my last few weeks in Singapore but as my time here begins to near I get more and more excited and ready to come home. It feels so close but so far! I know I am going to be so sad the day that I leave but I am definitely ready to see all my friends and family.
Headed to Bintan, Indonesia this Saturday for a relaxing night in a hut/hotel above the ocean. Will post again soon~
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This past weekend was so busy! The weekend kicked off by going to get some more weird food with our coworker Shaun. We have started what we call "food crawls," which is just a bar crawl except with food. This is really fun because Shaun knows what foods to try and always eats the rest if we don't like it! After lots and lots of food we headed did a quick walk through China down and then headed to Fort Canning Park. This was a lovely little park in the middle of the city. We climbed up a lot of stairs and suddenly heard the strangest noise. It turned out to be frogs but it sounded like loud cows mixed with hiccups. Saturday morning, we woke up VERY early to meet Shaun at another park at 8:30 am. This was my favorite forest experience so far in Singapore. The path started off unpaved, which is very uncommon in Singapore and soon we stumbled upon a reflexology walk in the middle of the forest! We kept walking all day long. It was drizzling and wet but being in the forest was exactly what I needed to get out of my blah phase. We saw a beautiful view of a quarry, fig trees, monitor lizards, a small mammal climbing a tree that I can't remember the name of and more. By 11am we had walked 8 miles! I was exhausted yet felt so refreshed. I don't know about you guys, but forest therapy is the best form of therapy I could ever imagine. Theres nothing like being surrounded by trees, engulfed in fresh air and nature. Ahhhhhh. After our hike we went to get more food, of course and then enjoyed the rest of our Saturday. Sunday was the most eventful day of them all! We left the house at 6:50am to go to the Island Pulau Ubin for a beach clean up hosted by SEC. Sunday was Ubin day, which marked the end of the 10 week long celebration of the island. It was full of people and our beach clean up turned out to be really successful. I gave a small briefing to a group of the beach cleaner upers and while my nerves got the best of me, it was so nice to be a part of something like this. We had been working with Shaun, preparing for the clean up for a few weeks and everything finally came together. I was very happy to be surrounded by people who care about our planet and loved coming together to make a difference. One thing Shaun talked to the helpers about was changing mindsets-- we have to start living in a way that coexists with nature and doesn't fight against it. In just one hour we collected a half a ton of trash! I couldn't believe it. Overall, I was just really happy to be a part of something so positive. After the clean up we explored Ubin with Shaun and some other people involved in the clean up. We hiked up to a beautiful lookout spot that over looked a quarry. Views like that just really get me sometimes. By the end of the weekend, I had walked over 20 miles and seen a million and a half trees and although I am covered in mosquito bites, sunburnt and utterly exhausted, I could not be more content.
Well blog world, I have officially hit my "low" during my stay here in Singapore. I knew it was coming eventually and I figured it would be during the few weeks in July where I have not much going on and dang it, here it is. I've been really missing home and all my friends and family so much lately, it's getting a little overwhelming. This has happened to me the past two summers that I have spent traveling as well and it's all just a part of the roller coaster they preach to us about in the study abroad meetings. Anyone reading this, don't be concerned, it's only normal and I'll be back to normal in no time!
... On another note, something that really stands out to me about this travel experience is my lovely coworkers who I can easily call friends. In India and Costa Rica I hardly socialized with the locals besides the few adults in charge of our program. However, working at SEC has thrown me into a bunch of friendly, welcoming, hilarious Singaporeans! Knowing me, yes, I was a little shy at first getting to know my new friends but they all make it so easy. Even my boss feels like my friend and makes every effort to make sure we are getting the most out of our time here. A few times a week we go out to lunch with some coworkers and they help us pick out what food to eat and laugh at me for being so picky and scared to try new foods. We went out to "emo night" at a bar with our friends Shaun and Esther and had a great time just hanging out with them. Half of the SEC staff went to the Ramadan festival and shared food together. Our friend Shaun took us to the Botanical Gardens to tell us everything he knew about the trees and plants (which was a lot) and then took us to a hawker center to make us try new foods including shaved ice with syrup and corn on top...and another time took us to try bean curd which was surprisingly delicious. Overall, I just feel really lucky to be so welcomed by our new friends! They are always asking us to do things and are really making me experience Singapore in a way that I never could have without them. Below are some pictures of our SEC monthly "fun outing" where we all went first to lunch and then to Play Nation to play video games during work hours! ****I wrote this post about a week ago, little late in posting oops This past weekend my travel buddies and I decided to take a quick weekend trip to Malacca in Malaysia! We jumped on a bus that was supposed to be four hours long, and eight hours later at 3 am we arrived! After somehow managing to find a taxi and wandering through a dark backyard we found our hostel and went to bed. The next day was filled with adventuring around the extremely HOT city and doing our best to explore while not dying of a heat stroke. Some pictures are below. We walked along the river, enjoying the vibrant murals and took a river cruise at night to see the rest of the town. Again, everyone we talked to was kind and sweet and our hostel host was the sweetest! While it was deathly hot and pretty touristy, I definitely enjoyed our little trip to Malacca and glimpse of Malaysia.
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Megan DeBanto
Spending my summer interning for the Environmental Council in Singapore. Here it goes... Archives |