♪ Welcome to Singapore ♪

2nd of April 2023, finally it’s time for us to depart to Singapore. We gathered at the airport at

5.30 as we’d been told before. One of us, Juan, suddenly got sick several days ago. This morning, we contacted him many times but he didn’t respond. That’s why Mrs.Vony, his mentor, was worried. Luckily, when Brandon tried to contact him, he replied and said that he’s on his way. After a few minutes, all students were assembled to put their luggage inside

the baggage and recheck everything before we needed to go to Singapore. Then, we started to check our tickets so we could sit at our own seat numbers calmly. Our flight from

Surabaya to Singapore today was around 7.30 AM local time. On the airplane, we were given 2 choices about which meals that we wanted to eat, those were fried rice with fish or omelet with sausage. Besides that, there were yogurt, a croissant accompanied with strawberry jam, and also fruits. After the long process, we safely landed in Singapore around

10.30 AM local time.

As soon as we arrived at the Changi Airport, we picked our own luggage and met our tour guide, Mrs.Priscilla. She explained about Singaporean culture, ethnic groups, law, and history . After explaining a lot of things about Singapore, we went to Qian Xi at Tessensohn so we could have lunch at that time.

Henceforth, in the bus, we were explained by our tour guide about the Singapore Culture on our way into the Merlion Park. Although we rode a bus, we had to walk a few kilometers to actually meet Merlion itself. It doesn’t help that the weather was really hot. Everyone was pulling out their hats and umbrellas to protect themselves from the scorching sun. Sometimes we stopped at some spots, so Mrs.Priscilla could explain to us about the history of the monuments and buildings until we arrived at Merlion Park. There are art galleries, government buildings, and also we were introduced to the highest building in Singapore with

280 meters tall. We were given around 20 minutes to explore the area. As a result of that, we took photographs of Merlion together both individually and as a group.

Right after that, we went to Chinatown and saw some Buddhist temples. As soon as we understood about the history, we took a look at the buildings and shopped some things that we will bring back to Surabaya later, that are going to be memory items both for our friends and ourselves for around an hour. Fun fact! We got a sweet deal on keychains. $10 for 18 keychains! While we were shopping, our group got split up for a few moments, but we eventually got reunited again. It didn’t help that the weather was quite hot.

We ate at Yenney which is a Vietnamese restaurant. All of us, including elementary and junior high school students, were divided into 6 tables and each table got 6 foods. It was really delicious, especially the chicken. Brandon and Juan even asked for more chicken from other tables. They did get what they wanted but they also got lots of shrimps. Most of the elementary and junior high students didn’t eat their shrimp so it was given to Juan’s table. Juan ended up eating a lot of shrimps. We can all agree that the dinner was way better than our breakfast and lunch!

We proceeded to continue our journey to the hotel. It was kind of hectic when we put out all of our suitcases from the bus. We had to do it fast so the teachers told us to pass the suitcases instead of waiting for our own suitcase to come out. During our wait in the lobby,

we had a sudden briefing because the school’s schedule changed. After the briefing, Mr

Nando called us to receive room cards. It’s surprising how big the rooms are here!

In conclusion, today was very hectic but also a fun experience to have. Even though there’s many things we can highlight, they can’t beat our flight from Indonesia to here! We can’t (not really) help to be excited for tomorrow to start our school days in Singapore!