The joy of traveling and the AMAZING country of Singapore

Hey so this my very first time blogging to I hope all those who feel so inspired to read will take that into consideration and not be offended if I spell a word wrong or if things just don't make since. Also if your wanting to follow me on the trip I am warning you that the internet is on and off and usually runs really s-l-o-w so sorry if I can't post as much as I would like, but I'll do the best I can :).

So as many of you know I am on the Navy ship Mercy doing a humanitarian project with LDS charities. I left on July 1st from San Fran and skipped a day and arrived in Singapore on the 3rd. Here is the story. On Thursday I packed up all my luggage and happily left to airport. Unfortunately when I got there my luggage was too heavy. So I switched some things into my smaller bag which was a tight fit. But I wasn’t too worried so I checked in. Then just as I was abt to settle in, I got a call over the intercom telling me to come, so I came to the checkin and my bag had split! I didn’t know what to do so they had some duct tape and I taped it up like crazy and then I sent it on the way just about after having a heart attack. Anyways so I called mom and she told me she would bring a new duffel bag and she zoomed all the way to the airport and dropped it off for me just in the neck of time. Needless to say I was kinda paranoid about it and so I prayed and luckily when I got here everything was a ok! I was happy and felt blessed. Traveling wasn’t too bad, I slept through a lot of it luckily. We landed in Tiawan for our connecting flight and it was kinda cool I suppose, even though we were only in the airport. They had these flower, garden type places all over the place, I think it was to improve your carma or something. We then hopped on a plane to Singapore and arrived at noon. Luckily my bag was happily there and we went and drove to the ship. Afterwhich we sat through a long amount of orientation and then I had to lug my bag all the way down the stairs and considering I was already completely exhausted, basically I felt I was just about ready to die but luckily I made it and found my nice cozy bed on the bottom of a 3 bunk bed with about 2 feet between the floor and the next bed. It was great!

There was an early 4th of july party in this ball field that night but unfortunately we could not go to it because it was outside the base and we hadn’t gotten our tags yet. So we decided to watch the fireworks off the roof of the ship which we decided to do after we showered (which felt like heaven by the way) but unfortunately they were like 10 minutes early and we missed them which we were sad about but apparently it only lasted like 3 minutes anyway so it was all good and I really didn’t care too much because I was completely exhausted! I then went to bed and I was soo happy to sleep, even if it was in a little hole.

On Sunday we got up early and road a train to go to church. Their train system is amazing in Singapore and the city is very clean and the people are sooo extremely nice, always willing to help. The church was a pretty big church holding about 3 wards all at once starting at 9am. We went to one that was in English and it was really nice. Its was so wonderful to meet with the people, they were soo nice and the spirit was soo strong with them. Its cool that the church is the same even clear over in Singapore.

After church we all went our separate ways and a group of 8 of us went to go eat at a traditional Singapore food court. On our way we met a man who was going there as well and someone in our group talked to him and he showed us the way and surprisingly enough he bought us our food as well. We had this food called carrot cakes which had raddish and eggs and one had soy sauce and green peppers and I think something else but I can’t remember, anyways it was really good. We also had these green veggies in this really good spicy sauce. I really liked it, who would have thought Singapore food was soo good? Why hadn’t I discovered this before? Afterwards we decided to go on a hike at this huge rainforest park and since apparently it was kinda hard to get there our Singapore guy took us there and we rode by train and bus. The park was really cool and we saw monkeys and everything. There was even a part that we went on this suspension bridge over the trees and it was amazing. The only bad thing was, was that it was crazy humid and I sweated like crazy, I felt like I had just worked out and was sweating and it just wouldn’t stop. The trial was about 3 miles long in total and it was awesome. Afterwards we said good buy to our Singaporean man and headed over to china town. There, there was tons of stores and food marts and it was kinda crowded. I had this really good blueberry chocolate cake and I also bought a purple robe for the showers. They had all sorts of foods there though, and cheep stores. I think its because its kinda part of the black market…We then headed back to the ship to that was setting sail the next morning. Singapore was awesome and soo clean and nice. Its funny though how they have tons of rules there such as its illegal to chew gum or to spit. Also if you bring drugs into the country then you get capital punishment. So they are crazy strict, but amazingly nice people!