One month later... (Part 2)

And now it's been one month since I arrived in Raleigh. 31 days ago this time, I just checked into my dorm and feeling sad that I did not have my luggage with me. My worst experience here so far actually began right at the beginning, but I'm glad it's over and the experiences here after that has been good so far (including news of insurance claims haha).

So looking back at the past month, it seems i've done quite a lot. Attending welcome dinners, making friends, exploring ministries here, going to the gym (yes! more about this in another post), attending classes, doing things that need to be done when you live alone, making a trip to St. Louis and other trivial stuff. I still haven't gotten down to fully doing what I set out to do here and will need more self-discipline, determination and God's grace to do so.

I've been asked a couple of times by the people here what's the most distinctive difference between Raleigh and Singapore. Well there are lots of differences from people to weather to food. The top 3 "surprises" are:

1. People are generally more courteous. Cars give way to pedestrians crossing the road even when it's not at the zebra crossing. Everyone automatically walks on the right side whenever there's a divider, whether it's in a tunnel, the stairs or wherever. Holding doors for the person behind you is something everyone does, even when the person behind you is as far as 2 metres away.

2. There are more cars than people on the streets (outside campus). Even on normal streets (not highways), you hardly see anyone walking on the streets because everyone drives.

3. It's much less humid here than in Singapore and when it rains it's small rain for the whole day. Everyone was so afraid of hurricane Hanna last weekend though the rain that it brought to Raleigh was just like the thunderstorm you get in Singapore so frequently.

I think I can say I've adapted to life here quite well, especially with the food and living alone. However, one of the more difficult things is the language, and by this I mean the American accent (as well as the different accents of the exchange students from different parts of the world). It takes some effort to concentrate to listen to what they say cos it can be quite easy to switch off and not listen to the conversation. I guess some of the students from China probably feel this way too when they hear Singaporeans speak English (or Singlish). Also applies when I speak Chinese here to the Chinese students, cos after all my Chinese is not like theirs and it takes some extra effort to concentrate on the conversation. The Americans say my English is very good while the Chinese nationals say my Chinese is very good. Well they probably just didn't expect Singaporeans to be able to speak English/Chinese so well (I would think I'm not that good at both). Thumbs up to the Singapore government for implementing the bilingual policy in schools, as well as to my parents for training me in both languages at home!