Travelling and the first two days.

Well, we all got here safe and sound. Our friends who flew from San Francisco were delayed for takeoff there and therefore didn't make the Hong Kong connection. They got here yesterday at about 1:00pm as opposed to us who arrived about 12 hours prior. We flew RDU to JFK to Hong Kong and then on to Singapore. The JFK-HK flight was 16 hours and interestingly we flew up over the Arctic, which was particularly neat since there was a mounted camera on the bottom of the plane which you could put on your personal TV and watch icebergs and mountains and such. Most people barely got any sleep, but I also felt that most of us have not been particularly jet lagged. When we got to HK we were all so pumped, only to find out we had about another 4 hours of flying before we got to Singapore. Customs were really easy and we got to the university without a hitch.
We are living in Prince George Park residences on the NUS campus. The rooms are a perfect size with a bathroom attached, 1 bed, a desk and some drawers. Luckily we have air conditioning and a fan, if we didn't it would be unbearably hot. When I got to my room, there were no sheets or towels or anything and we had been told that we'd be provided with such amenities, but since it was so late I just threw the top of my backpack inside a t-shirt and slept on the mattress and drip dried from my shower, later finding the maintenance office and requesting a set of sheets.
I only nabbed about 5 hours of sleep and got up early. I went exploring a bit, finding the "canteen" and eating a cheese and egg burger- basically an egg Mcmuffin on a hamburger bun- with spicy ketchup and a green tea/mango drink w/ chucks of real aloe in the bottom. I also ate a little cheese Prata with some others later when everyone else came down.
We went on the bus and the MRT (metro) to a Hawker's station at Clementi, one of the little burbs in Singapore. It was an outside market complete with an outer ring of shopping, an inner ring of food vendors and a center market. I had fresh orange juice, this fattening meal called soemething Teow.... and some fried bananas, also managing to try some bean curd drink and also cane juice. We went exploring the market and tried a mangosteen and I later made friends with a fisherman who offered me an apple after seemingly badgering me about why I was in Singapore, what I was doing there, how old I was only say " you're 18! I'm 78! Do you want an apple?!" (still holding the knife used for cutting the heads off fish he'd been motioning with at me).
Afterwards we went to the Jurong Bird Park which was very touristy, but also filled with some really neat birds. I watched penguins be fed, entered the largest enclosed aviary in the world, saw the largest man-made waterfall and watched a birds of prey show.
We finally went a local mall to buy some necessities and eat. I got a Spicy and sour soup with dumplings as well as some shampoo and soap.