Making Memories with My Community

However, I was confident that I would make friends in Singapore and that the experience of studying abroad might not be as bad as I feared it would be!

As it turns out, there was a small group of students from Macalester who were abroad in Singapore at the same time that I was there! I happened already to be friends with one of these people. His name was Liban, and we had been friends since our first year in college. I was glad to already have a friend with me on my first day in Singapore, but that did not stop me from going out and meeting new friends!

One week after arriving in Singapore, I decided to sign up for a tour led by local Singaporean students. What was unique about this group was that they were all STEM majors at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the university where I was an exchange student. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It turned out that some of these Singaporean STEM students were physics majors like me! On the day of the tour, we started off by exploring the science building on campus, where I had the chance to see science laboratories and interesting experimental equipment. After that, we rode public transportation to the downtown area to begin our tour of the city. We stopped by various popular locations in the downtown area, along with a quick stop in Chinatown for lunch. This tour was a great way to experience the different communities in Singapore. While we were downtown, we saw the locals preparing for their annual Chinese New Year celebration. I was pretty lucky to visit Singapore in the Spring, which is when Chinese New Year is celebrated. 

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