Busy week!

Sorry that my posts were not as thorough as they have been in the past. I've had a busy weekend and a busy start to the week, since I had to keep up with the reading for both of my classes and complete a paper by today. I'm two thirds of the way through the actual in class part of the program, which is hard to believe. We just finished having Dr. Emmanuel (who had replaced Dr. Quek) to teach us Malaysian history. It's all very complicated, to be honest. Next we'll have the history of Thailand. That'll be an interesting change, since it wasn't colonized, as opposed to Malaya and Singapore.

Tomorrow we're leaving for Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia! I'm really looking forward to this trip, though Dan told us not to think of it as a vacation. And I'm not, but I do see it as a welcome break from class and the city of Singapore. I'm ready to venture out into more of Southeast Asia! We leave at 7 am on Thursday morning and get back last Sunday evening, so that means three nights in a hotel. That should be interesting. A relatively soft bed and aircon at night and lack of insect invasions... hopefully. Seriously though, PGP isn't all that bad, and the single rooms have turned out to be nice. The point is that I need to pack four days' worth of clothing and other stuff into a bookbag, allowing for the possibility that I'll buy something in KL or Melaka, the other city on the coast that we visit.

Since Malaysia is more conservative than Singapore and more Islam-oriented, we were told to dress more conservatively. At first I thought we had to just wear either skirts to cover down to our ankles or jeans and a long sleeved shirt, but now I'm not so sure. I think we do need to cover as much as we can without be uncomfortably hot, which is fine with me. I don't want a bunch of stares when I'm out in the city. And don't worry, mother, I'll travel in a group.

So that's what I'll have to write all about when I get back to Singapore. We're going by bus, and it's a five hour or so ride, so I should be able to get some reading done and maybe, finally, some leisure reading. I brought three books with me but I haven't touched them since I stepped off the plane here. That, and my iPod. I mean, I listen to iTunes while I'm sitting at my computer typing this, but I've yet to listen to the actual iPod. I look forward to reading, listening to music, and sleeping.

Now back to the past few days. I barely covered my trip to Pulau Island, but although we spent several hours there my post pretty much covered that aspect. Earlier Sunday morning we'd gone to the Changi Prison Museum on the other side of the island, which was interesting but not quite enthralling. I did enjoy the trip, though, since the site was dedicated to the place where the British had set up camp during the late 19th century all the way until the 1960s or so. The reason it's called "Changi" is because that's what the British called this exceptionally tall tree at the base. It was over 100 metres tall, which made it visible all over the island. Then, ironically enough, troops invading during WWII basically used that tree as a perfect way to aim their weapons from the Malay coast. At least, that's what I gathered from our tour guide. He got a bit longwinded so I tuned in and out of the story, unfortunately.

Well, after that our bus took us to a hawker centre nearby for us to all get food. It was quite crowded, and by this point in my study abroad experience I'm really starting to miss American food. However, I'm still adventurous in the food department. I ended up eating fried carrot cake. Now, let me just point out that I thought it either meant carrot cake as in the dessert or literally a cake with veggies like carrots.

Um, no. I ordered white carrot cake (I have no idea what black carrot cake is either) and it was basically fried scrambled eggs but not really, with random other stuff added in. I couldn't even begin to describe how much it was nothing like what I'd anticipated. It was good, but I don’t know if I’d order it again.

I don’t know, I just feel like right now I’m to the point where nothing’s really sitting well and all I want is some raisin bran or a turkey sandwich or spaghetti. For as unhealthy as people say American food is, at least it has vegetables. Yesterday I had fried rice and an egg roll for lunch, and prata again for dinner. (Have I described prata? I can’t remember. I think I have, but just in case: it’s really thin like a crispier quesadilla with anything inside, like cheese or chocolate or honey.) I got that but again it did not make me feel satisfied. Today I got plain noodles and some sweet and sour potatoes, and it was good.

Anyway, enough about my food woes. Overall it is delicious, but sometimes I just want to be able to walk into my kitchen at home for something simple that does not involve rice or noodles. Haha.

On to other things, like my plans for this afternoon. Dan was holding Chinese lessons, but he wasn’t going to start until 2:45 and he said it would last two hours, so I didn’t go. I really wanted to! Oh well, hopefully he’ll do another. It’s just that I wanted to be able to go out for the evening. A few of us have been wanting to go see Cars at the cinema, so I think we’ll try to see the five o’clock showing at Suntec City today. I’m so excited about not having a reading assignment tonight! That way I can just relax, watch a movie, possibly eat some pizza…? Haha.

Monday we went on another trip as a group, though this time for Dr. Emmanuel’s class. We went to Fort Canning, the old site of the Malay sultanate and its palace. There’s not much there now because everything was made of wood and in a climate like this that doesn’t last long. Anyway, we went from there to Kampong Glam, which I think I’ve talked about earlier as the Arab Quarter or Arab Street. There we visited the Malay Heritage Centre, which is a museum of sorts though small. That’s what I wrote my paper on, because I thought it was rather unusual that the centre barely had anything on the influences of Islam on Malay heritage, which seems to me to be rather crucial. But I just sent the paper off via email, so I should get back comments soon.

We hung out at Arab Quarter and visited a mosque, the same one that I have pictures of a few posts earlier (where I heard the prayer call). It’s a Middle Eastern style mosque with the onion-shaped dome, but I think it’s really beautiful. Other ones that are Southeast Asian are not so distinctly Arabic the way we think of it as westerners.

Let’s see, what else? I can’t really think of anything right now, and we’re about to leave to go to the movies. The cinemas have assigned seating, so it’s best if you get there early so you get tickets that are seated together. Different, huh? We’ll see if I like it.

Thanks to everyone who’s reading, and I hope you all have wonderful Wednesdays.

ps: I don't have time to post pictures right now and I'm not sure if I have any, but if I do I'll do it later. Sorry!