Holidays in Singapore

I am so lucky to be in Singapore now. As I already mentioned Singapore is a multicultural country and you can celebrate different holidays almost every day! ;D Tomorrow, for example, I'm going to Sentosa Island to celebrate Indian Festival of Colors (also known as a festival of love <3) - Holi. *feeling excited.

Now, however, I'm gonna share with you my experience of my first celebration of Chinese New Year (a year of Horse) and Chingay Holiday (which is usually celebrated 7 days after the Chinese New Year).

Chinese New Year is an important holiday in Singapore, where people invite each other to their houses,   eat tangerines, enjoy fireworks, go out to China Town for food. We were invited to New Asian Bar , which was on 70th floor and offered a great view on Marina Bay Sands hotel and other amazing buildings of Singapore Downtown. (By the way, the architecture of the buildings here is really impressive because the weather stays the same - Singapore never experiences strong winds, frost, or whatever can damage buildings - that's why architects can experiment a lot with the shapes and height). We didn't stay there long - since it was quite crowded and we believed that we can find a better view on fireworks, so we decided to go to Marina Bay, where they had nice performances and a lot of lights and decorations. Pictures cannot describe all the things I see but anyway I uploaded some for you:

Chinese New Year Fireworks at Marina Bay

 China Town, "lucky coins" and Horses

Buildings *_*

Later, I was invited by my friend - Eleonore, an exchange student from France to a Chingay Parade, holiday, widely celebrated in South East Asia as a procession of the Goddess of Mercy. From our dorm (also called College), we got free tickets, and were lucky to get seats in front of the prime-minister of Singapore - Lee Hsien Loong. The parade was very bright! The participants represented different Singapore organizations - university students, youth associations, association of ballerinas, representatives of different cultures like Japan, Korea, etc. who reside in Singapore. We enjoyed music, dances and fireworks. The theme of the parade -"One People", and the speech of the prime minister made me feel so patriotic haha, and honestly, I never feel like I'm an outsider when I'm here, no one does I guess :) 

And here's another small celebration… of my Birthday. It was on Monday, February 10, and I'm so happy my friends shared this day with me, even though they had work/projects/sleep experiments, they anyway came!

More entries are coming soon: My Recess week in Thailand, My Classes, exams, projects and challenges, "Singapore safe by default or by design", "Feng Shui in Singapore", Life in Alice and Peter Tan Residence Hall, Palau Ubin trip, Zero Uncertainty Avoidance in Singapore, how come is it true?  and many many more

Mischief managed

 I wrote this very first entry about my exchange student experience many weeks ago… Realized I didn't really published it anywhere.

It’s is the end of my first week in Singapore, and I’m sitting in my dorm room alone…bored…not because there is nothing else to do in the city, but because I lost my voice :( I “blame” crazy air conditioners. Also, I went to Sentosa Island last night and swam a little bit… All of this made me sick. All the physical symptoms remind me that my body needs to rebalance itself and relax, which appears impossible during the orientation week (perhaps everyone has experienced at least one orientation week in their lives, when you enter a new society/environment and you want to learn/explore/communicate = no place for sleep). On a happy note, I finally have time to geoblog about my first days. I will describe why I think Singapore is a wonderful place for studying abroad.

Reason 1 Singapore is multinational, multireligious, multilingual… It is a home for about five million people, and about 10 million people annually visit Singapore. It keeps fascinating me everyday with its diversity, cuisine, hospitality, etc. The very first thing that I did here is I went to the city tour with a group of exchange students, which was organized by the iCare (university project for international students). We visited old parts of Singapore, which embodied the coexistence of Malaysian, Chinese, Indian cultures. Here are some wonderful things that we saw:

Colorful Arab Street with good food and nice shopping. Here you can find such things as Persian carpets, halal alcohol free perfume, handmade bags, scarves and souvenirs. 

Chinese Part of Singapore and preparation for Chinese New Year + beautiful temple

Later, my friends and I went to see the Garden by the Bay, which is situated next to the Marina Bay financial clusters. It is regarded as symbolic of Singapore's status as a premier tropical Garden City, and embodies the notion of work-play-live environment. Through the creation of such a perfect environment, Gardens by the Bay seek to position Singapore as a leading global city of the 21st century and botanical capital of the world. And this is the reason No. 2 why I like Singapore - it is very beautiful and green. To turn Singapore into a Garden City was a mission of ex prime-minister, Lee Kuan Yew. 

Here is another Garden Picture - this time Singapore's Botanic Garden: