Finally in Singapore!

Okay, so here I am, finally in Singapore!! This is my third day here and already SO MUCH has happened! I'll start with some details of my flight...

I left Madison on Sunday and drove with Angie to Chicago. I have really been wanting to see Umphrey's McGee in concert and they were playing a three-day New Year's / 10 year celebration show at the Aragon (which is such a beautiful venue, by the way!!). It was the most phenomonal thing I have ever seen. Even if you don't typically enjoy the type of music they play it is simply amazing to watch them interact and experience the visual and musical cues they use to play in such synchronization. But I digress.

After the concert we met up with Kristin at Leg Room. It was PACKED. We didn't stay for more than maybe an hour and went to another club on State or Rush. It was super fun. We got back to Kristin's around 3:30 or 4 and started to watch a movie. I was going to watch the movie for an hour or so, take a shower, then hop on the bus and catch the train to O'Hare. Um not a good plan.

Next thing I know I wake up and see lots of sunlight outside, so I frantically ask Angie what time is it. Oh, it's 8:30am. Yea, my flight is at 9:05. So bascially I am screwed. I grabbed my things and Angie and I ran to her car and drove to O'Hare as fast as humanly possible. I did manage to brush my teeth on the way, although Angie probably has some toothpaste stuck to the side now. (Sorry about that Angie.) Angie couldn't find her cell phone so we couldn't call the airport and ask them to hold the plane, although I'm quite certain there was no way they would do that anyways. I freaked out the whole way there and ran through the airport as fast as I could. THANK GOD there was a bit of fog and the plane had been delayed about 30 minutes, so I made it!! Phew. That was a very close call.

I flew to Detroit and had a very short layover, just enough time for me to grab an $8 sandwhich (that I only ate 1/4 of) while my name was called over the PA system to board the plane. From there I flew to Tokyo which took almost 14 hours.

I also had a fairly short layover in Tokyo. I had just enough time to stop at the Oragami musuem and take some pictures. (I'd love to post them right now but I'm having troubles uploading things using the library computers.) My flight to Singapore was about six and a half hours, and we had TV screens on the back of the chair in front of us so I watched movies (Into the Wild and The Beach) and slept the whole way.

After arriving in Singapore I met up with a taxi driver who took me onto campus. As soon as I walked out of the airport I was instantly reminded of Orlando -- palm trees everywhere and very humid weather. It took about 30 minutes to drive to the other side of the island onto campus. It was around 1:00am on 2 January when I arrived to meet up with my student buddy. I was pretty hungry so we went to the supermarket which is right on campus, then I went to sleep for about 6 hours.