Discoveries made inside and outside the classroom

Today marks the end of Week 9 of the school semester! During the week, I was mostly working on assignments. I had another partner presentation in my Global Health class. Our presentation was about the social determinants of health (SDOH). SDOH is the concept of how social factors like income and environment influence a person’s wellness. It was really nice getting to work with my classmate and we became friends because of it. On the day of our presentation, we had technical difficulties since my laptop was not working. However, we marched on and we completed our presentation! Another assignment I had to do was for my Tamil class. We had to write ten sentences using verbs we learned in class. An example sentence was: “”நான் ஒரு புதிய சட்டை வாங்குகிறேன்.” It means “I bought a new shirt.” The other assignment I had was a project for my geography class about water use. We had to individually record our water use throughout the week and then compare my data to my classmates and then to Singapore and the rest of the world. I use more water than the average Singaporean but way less than the average American which was interesting! Throughout the project, I learned about how Singapore is trying their best to ensure water sustainability as a small island-state. At the same time, I better understood how I can reduce my water footprint by conserving more water.

Then the weekend arrived! On Friday night, my friends and I wanted to have food from home so we went to Five Guys at Ion Orchard, a shopping center ten minutes away from Marina Bay Sands. It was actually my first time eating at Five Guys but my friends said there’s not that much difference between this and the American franchises. On Saturday, we went to a cafe in downtown Singapore and later went to Arab Street where we got to visit the beautiful Sultan Mosque and ate near Haji Lane, a road filled with MENA cuisines. Then today, we studied at another cafe called The Book Cafe. Afterwards, we went to a Japanese-inspired mall called Takashimaya. We ate at the food court inside and I finally had the Malay staple dish here called Nasi Lemak. It is a dish consisting of Malaysian coconut milk rice, sambal, crispy anchovies, peanuts and cucumber. It has been so amazing to be able to try cuisines from all over Asia because I never had the opportunity to do so living in a rural area in Pennsylvania. It has been life changing to learn and explore my palette here in Singapore!