Yesterday, it was Chinese New Year.

Gong Xi Fa Chi or Gong Hey Fa Choi.

I've met some new people: Dean (from Australia) and Tom (from Canada). We went to Chinatown to see a performance and they were singing old songs and new songs such as (in Cantonese) Lam Chee Chun and Jackie Cheung. There was a lot of Chinese people. The decorations in Chinatown was beautiful. After the performance, we walked to Espanade and the fireworks started at 12AM. The fireworks only lasted for 15 minutes.

Earlier this week, we finally met the other Penn Staters, it was always Minh, Thanh, and I who hanged out as a PSU group, we went to Holland village to eat Vietnamese food. It was delicious. I met Dan, Leslie, Karl, and Sarah. Now, we have 7 people exactly from PSU.

Today, Minh, Dan, Leslie, Karl, Thomas (He's from Germany, but he's a penn-staters for now), and I went to Night Safari. At first, I was hesitated of walking around a rainforest at night because I thought there would be snakes. Before we went into the walkway, Minh asked one of the workers about the show times and it was going to start at 9PM. He asked her what would be in the show and she told us that it has everything, she said something that I shouldn't know and Minh tried to keep it quiet, so I won't run away. Guess what it is.

We arrived at Night Safari around 8:30PM. We started to walk around for 15 minutes and went to the show. The show was amazing till the part where the guy took out a python where people was sitting at. I screamed soo loud and I barely looked at it. It was huge. Before the snake came out, there were otters that was being taught how to recycle. It was so cute. Each otter was responsible for each bin (there was a paper, bottle, and cans recycling bin) and they picked each item and put into the bin. After the show, we walked for 2 hours straight and I was tired. The whole walkthrough was exactly 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was worth 15 dollars and had a great exercise for my legs.

After coughing for 2 weeks straight, I finally gave up and went to the doctors. I went to the campus hospital and it was really cheap compare to Penn State prices. You wouldn't believe it. I only paid $18 and it provided medications for my throat and running nose. For the past two days, I've been sleeping a lot because one of the medicines is really drowsy and I would be knocked out in a second.

Finally, the weekend came and I met my neighbor, Sakrya. She's Japanese and she's really nice/optimistic person. She invited to go to Bintan Resorts which is located in Indonesia. We were supposed to meet the group at 7:45AM, but you know people would never arrived on time and we didn't leave until 8:15AM. We took a cab to the ferry terminal. We brought tickets for the 9:15AM ferry. The ticket was $50 roundtrip. When we went through immigration, the ferry has already left and we have to wait for 2 hours for the next boat. The boat ride was only 45 minutes. When we arrived to Bintan Islands, it was very rural area. The location we're going was 'Mana Mana'. When we arrived there, it was a beautiful beach. The sand was very soft and smooth that you can run on it without slipping and you can acted like a Baywatch girl. We stayed there for a day and it was relaxing/destressing moments. I barely got a tan and I'm still white. Check out the photos.

Happy New Years. Right now, I'm in Singapore and I'm very lonely>=. I have no one to celebrate New Years, except to call my family and my boyfriend. This is the first time I've ever travel myself in another country. It's scaring, but it is also an opportunity to explore into a new surroundings.

I left New York on December 30, 2003 at 11PM. I was supposed to depart at 10:15 PM and there was a delay. At the same time, I caught a cold from the skiing this weekend. This was not a good trip for me that I kept coughing. However, I took some medicine (drowsy) and slept the entire trip. This is the first time I ever took an asian airline: Cathay Pacific and they had good Chinese food. Although I wish I had a better trip to Hong Kong (which is the third stop) because I sat behind two babies that would not stop crying. I thought I was going to die at this point. The babies would cried every 2 hours. It was very unpleasant trip for sitting there for 20 hours to Hong Kong. When I arrived to Hong Kong, the plane has already left to Singapore and I had to stay there for another 5 hours. The good thing was that I met a person who was going to NUS and her named was Claudia, she's from Vancouver. She helped me a lot because I didn't know where I was living. It turns out that NUS has email my brother the information about the residence housing and I never received it.

I arrived to Singapore at 6:30PM on New Years Day, when I got off the plane and went outside the airport, the weather was very hot. I was wearing the wrong clothing (black sweaters and black sweatpants) and I was sweating. After Claudia's friend gave us a ride to NUS and settling down into Sheares Hall, we met a couple of locals (Singaporean and Malaysian) and they took us to a club. I was not tired because I slept a lot in the plane and didn't have a heavy jet lag. After that night, I came back and slept till 8 because I have a business orientation at 10AM.