Weekend

Yesterday we watched the grad students at NUS practice their presentations, and it was very long and not entirely interesting, to put it nicely.

Had lunch at the inn and went to Little India and Chinatown. Bought stuff - very cool places. Lots of hawkers that try to get you to stop in their particular store and buy there stuff. It's also not to difficult to pay less than what's listed ifyou say it's too expensive or say you could get it cheaper somewhere else..then they usually drop their price. Yay for that..I ended up getting separated from Kathryn and Noelle, so Isaac and I ate and then came back to the hotel for a bit. We then went to this music hall called the Esplanade, connected to a big underground mall. There's been a music festival here the past week or so, and we saw a couple musicians and had a drink. Then we returned and it was pretty late...

Had to wake up really early this morning to go to the Chinese market and check out all the fish heads and produce and dried things..It was very interesting - many many things you don't find in the states. I took some pictures, but I'll put them up tomorrow or something. Kathryn Noelle and I went on the temple walk and visited the places of worship - the mosque was really different, and the temples are pretty cool. There was a very peaceful buddhist temple in chinatown and I probably could have stood in there for a long time. I don't really believe in much, but when I walked in there I just got a feeling of peacefulness..I felt really at ease and relaxed in there. There were monks and other people singing and it was so methodical and relaxing. We wandered around Chinatown a bit more and had lunch, etc. I contemplated buying things but I didn't.

I went off on my own and decided to come back to the hotel early to rest since I'm not really feeling that spectacular. That brings me here, and I doubt the rest of the evening will be very eventful. It's been a week now and I guess we've gone all over the city and I'm becoming comfortable with it. I'm waiting to do the exciting things this week like a night safari and a jungle walk on a suspension bridge! :D