everyday life has begun...

everyday life (well, as everyday life in a foreign country can be...) has officially begun in singapore for me.

pictures of my every day room

so far, i have been able to understand all of my professors. but then again, i've only had two official lectures. my linguistics courses promise to be exciting, and because i'm the only exchange student there, the professors already know my name. good? bad?

i have heard however, that the korean professors for social work (who are the co-lecturers for my intro class) are kind of difficult to understand. apparently they say things like "shingapore" and "poricies." i've been advised to maybe just talk to them in korean instead...

another good thing is that textbooks here are actually pretty cheap. i think for a total of 5 books for 4 classes, i'm going to pay around 80$. unfortunately, they rejected my debit card and asked for me to pay in cash instead... time to go exchange more money...

i am however, very unimpressed with the singaporean students. being in asia, i thought class would be really quiet, intense, and overall a happy, if somewhat scary, learning environment. but boy was i wrong. people talk in class really loudly... they seem to have no concept of whispering, and kids are actually on their cell phones during lecture. everyone eats and has a jolly good time and the professors seem not to care. very, very different from the land called america. it's actually really irritating and i feel like if i were a professor i'd be the type to tell them to leave the class...

i finally met my hallmates, too! they're actually really cool and surprisingly, no one on my floor is actually from singapore. we're all either exchange students or full-time internationals. very, very odd.

life has not been all too boring though-- some exciting things happened this week, like meeting up with a friend from high school and going to the lady gaga concert pictured below...

the bus ride on our way to the concert

pictures of the venue at fort canning park

and a blurry picture of lady gaga herself

tonight there's a vigil welcome mass in one of the lecture halls for the holy day tomorrow. afterwards, i'll be coming back to my hall to eat tasty vietnamese food cooked by one of my hallmates for dinner... hooray!

-- pictures from dinner today with oh... half my hall : i was very impressed!