A waft of hot air hit me as I was walking through the terminal that connected the airplane and the airport and I was clearly overdressed for the hot weather. Immediately, I noticed how large the airport was because there were multiple terminals lined with brightly lit stores and food venues. I made my way towards the immigration checkpoint authority and I could see people of many ethnicities lining up to get into Singapore. The lines moved quickly and in no time, I was watching the baggage carousel intently for my luggage. I picked up my luggages and I pushed my cart towards the exit. At the exit, the owner of the company I used to find my apartment in Singapore greeted me and we made our way to the parking garage. I noticed a couple things upon leaving the airport: one, the weather was extremely hot and humid, two, Singapore is a developed tropical island, and three, Singaporeans’ Singlish is really interesting to listen to (their sentences were speckled with la’s, leh’s, wah, etc.).
I arrived in Singapore one day before orientation so I could adjust to the new surroundings. On orientation day, we made our way to school via bus. Orientation was held in SMU’s Administrative Building and the building is both modern and technologically advanced. When we got onto the fourth floor via escalators, we were greeted with canvas bags filled with SMU goodies. We entered a set of doors and the auditorium was filled with exchange students. The orientation ran from nine A.M. to noon and the staff of SMU’s Office of Global Learning greeted us by acknowledging all the students’ home countries. The presentation about Singaporean laws was particularly interesting because there were many laws that were critical to be cognizant of, such as smoking should be contained in smoking dedicated areas, jaywalking would incur a fine of 1000 SGD, no durians on the MRT, and so on. The orientation ended with a SMU student giving us a tour of the campus and I was able to locate where the closest MRT stop is, where all the different building are, etc.
