“Back to School”
#2 Journal, 3rd April 2023

Krriinggg…. Kriiinggg…
The alarm call from the hotel rang at 6.00 a.m (GMT +8). Hoamm, we woke up from a really nice and comfy sleep, some of us felt like sticked to the bed, but it’s time to wake up!

We will meet our buddies at school, study at school, go to the ‘Garden by The Bay’, and end our day with dinner at “Street Chinese Restaurant”
Hang on tight everybody!! We’ll start our second day yuhuu?

Since we do not want to be late, we directly took a shower, and went downstairs to have breakfast. Today’s menu were bread, cereal, potato wedges, porridge, egg, meatbun, sausage, vegetables, mie hun, coffee, tea, and infused water.
(Sharron’s POV) I ate potato wedges and porridge, it tasted tasty and delicious. Most of us cannot eat too much because our stomach hurts if we eat too much in the morning except for Andrea and Sean they still ate so much. We went straight to the bus right after.

We hopped onto the bus, and quickly made our way to our main destination in this program, Dunman High School. This is the school where we are going to study for these 4 days. Although it was raining, we finally arrived at Dunman High school precisely at 08.47 a.m. There, we were greeted warmly by our buddies, which consisted of normal students and students from the student council. After we got to know each other, we made our way to the auditorium and sat with our buddies. One of the teachers then welcomed us and shortly briefed us on what our plans were today. The briefing ended with us, students and buddies, taking a photo all-together, before we parted with our group and went to our buddies class.
(Nixon’s POV) It was the middle of class when I walked in, the teacher proceeded to greet me and told the other students to grab me my seat, after we sat down, class resumed. It was chemistry class, and we were talking about chemical compounds and the enthalpy process. I can’t help but feel a bit sleepy, because chemistry is my least favorite subject.
Class ended, the bell rang as I made my way to the canteen, where my buddy showed me 16 different stores that are in the canteen, they all range from Malay foods, Thai foods, Korean foods, Western foods, etc. The canteen is very different from the ones in our school.
After I ate lunch at the canteen, our school time continued and I went to another auditorium for economics lecture, there were 2 sessions, the first one is about the increasing surge in electrical costs worldwide, and the second one is about Microeconomics Policies, which is government’s intervention at economic transaction (tax). After economics, I went straight to the main auditorium for the chemical energetics lecture, there, I studied thermodynamics. Before I went to my last session, I had another break, I went to the canteen with my buddy and chatted for a while.
We end today’s lesson with another lecture, this time it is physics, where I studied about collisions, elasticity, and dynamics. The bell rang marking the end of the first day of school, I quickly gathered with my group at the school’s lobby, bid farewell to our friends, and got on the bus, on our way to our next destination.

Next is what everyone is waiting for, the tour. All of us went on the bus at 14:00 after school, and we were on our way to Garden By The Bay. There, we were told to gather first so everyone can get their tickets. After the tickets were given, we were given the chance to explore the “Flower Dome” for half an hour. The flower dome holds a variety of different plants, such as the baobab plant, Aeonium tabuliform, Carnation, etc. Interestingly, some of these plants aren’t able to live in the tropical weather so the flower dome came up with a solution. They made the room artificially cold by using chilled water pipework, which allows non-tropical plants to sustain themselves.
When we were done exploring the flower dome, the tour guide instantly told us to explore the Cloud Forest for 1 hour and 15 minutes. This time of the year, the Cloud Forest was themed with the new movie “Avatar : The Way of Water” and was filled with creatures, such as the Na’vi, banshees, Anemonoid, etc. Our group took many photos from the first floor up to the highest floor called “The Lost World.”

Before we went back to the hotel, we were taken to “Esplanade Singapore” where we ate in Street Chinese Restaurant. There, we ate chinese food like eggs, fish, chicken, and also french fries.

Today, we weren’t as exhausted as yesterday, but we have done a lot of things so we still need to rest to recharge our energy. We arrived at our hotel at around 7 pm. The bedroom card was given to us after the teacher gave us some information regarding the activities for tomorrow. After we got the card, we went back to our room so that we can clean ourselves and take a bath. Unlike yesterday, we made our report in Sharron and Rara’s room. Because Andrea is the leader for today’s report, she compiled all of our writings and made them into a report. The meeting started at 8 pm and finished at around 9 pm, then we went back to each of our rooms to get some sleep.

One of our highlight of the day is when we had difficulty on understanding English with Singaporean accent a.k.a. Singlish. We were like “what”, “sorry”, “pardon me” for a hundred times today.
(Andrea’s POV) My buddy asked me “Can you eat ‘Cikong'” and I was like “Sorry, Cikong?”, “Yes, Cikong”, I got so confused what is cikong, turned out what she meant was chicken? It was so funny, we burst out laughing together in the canteen.

Today was ‘super duper’ amazing, we got to meet new friends from different country, we got to experience the way of study here at Singapore, and we got to explore the famous ‘Garden by The Bay’.

We hope that tomorrow we will survive the exam at our school haha… we can’t wait to meet our buddies at school again and have fun with them! See ya tomorrow?

Group Three, signing out! ✌️