We Made It!

After much anxious anticipation, we finally made it to Singapore. We met at 5:30 Friday morning at Furman, and we arrived in Singapore at 1:30AM on Monday. In total, we spent about 32 hours travelling, took three planes, and ate four meals aboard an airplane.

The plane ride from Atlanta to Tokyo was by far the most adventurous. Dez, Kelly and I sat together. Whenever Kelly or I had to get up to stretch or use the restroom; we didn't ask the others to get up. We simply climbed over one another using the armrests as stepping stones. Once I accidently kneed Dez in the face when she was sleeping. Cary only got up once during the entire 14 hour flight. This happened at the ten hour mark. His seatmate slept nearly the entire time. We predict that he took a sleeping pill.

The plane from Tokyo to Singapore was much nicer than the plane from Atlanta to Tokyo. We had leather seats and our own personal televisions which showed a wide variety of movies and TV shows. Cary's television was the only one that didn't work in the entire plane.

When we arrived in Singapore, we were immediately greeted by two college aged women with signs for the APEC delegates. 25 feet later, 3 men from APEC came to greet us, and they helped me with my rolling carry on.

Instead of going through regular customs, we had our OWN line. That's right; we didn't have to wait for customs! This line was reserved for APEC delegates only, and it only took us about six minutes for ten of us to go through customs. After going through customs, another four or five students greeted us and helped us with our bags. Finally, three more students met us and showed us to our shuttle which took us to the hotel. One student rode with us, and I pestered him the entire time about a variety of Singaporean trivia. Some facts that I learned include that Changi is a type of tree, and tons of things are named after it. And There is a huge ferris wheel called the Singapore Flyer which is 30 meters taller than the London eye. I guess Singapore does not have royalty, but they pretty much treated us like we were royalty. Dr. Gordon said that on a scale of 1 to 10, this APEC has been a 12 so far. I have given it about a 25!

When we got to the hotel, we checked in and got some pretty sweet SWAG, and we were thankfully each given a room. As soon as I got to my room, I pretty much conked out.