Study Abroad Diary: Hannah Burnett – post 2

Student experience 6 September 2019

Hannah is a third year MChem (Hons) Chemistry with Industrial Experience student, currently studying at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Here she discusses arriving in Singapore and how she’s settled in.

Arrival

It’s been 2 weeks since I arrived in Singapore. After a long and uncomfortable 14-hour flight, I landed in hot and humid Singapore. The strangest thing initially was the time difference; we had been served breakfast an hour ago and now it is 7 pm and dinner time! The second strangest thing was Changi airport itself! After getting slightly lost I stumbled across the HSBC Rain Vortex; it’s a massive waterfall-type feature in the middle of the airport. I was lucky enough to catch the rain vortex light show which was an amazing experience.

Due to the timing of the flight I couldn’t check-in to my on-campus accommodation (guaranteed for exchange students by NTU) so I stayed in a hotel closer to the airport, in Katong. After dropping my luggage at the hotel, I set out to find a pre-paid SIM card, because who can live without data? It turns out that this was exceptionally easy and relatively inexpensive (my SIM card was $15) since most convenience stores, such as 7-eleven, stock them.

The morning after my arrival, I woke up to my alarm, which I had set to force myself to acclimatise to the time zone. Going downstairs to a huge breakfast buffet is a good incentive to get out of bed too! After breakfast I got a Grab cab (Singapore’s Uber equivalent) to my accommodation. I spent the rest of the day settling in, registering and going to a welcome presentation.

Over the long weekend in Singapore I got to explore the country. Singapore has a train system (MRT) similar to the tube, which makes it so easy to get to the centre of Singapore from the campus. On the first day of exploring my friend and I wandered down through the city, visiting museums, famous hotels and the marina. It also happened to be National day in Singapore (54 years since Singapore became independent from Malaysia). At about 8pm hordes of people were gathering around the marina to watch the national day fireworks. It was an incredible yet slightly surreal experience.

After the wonder of the first weekend, came the frustration of registering for courses. For exchange students, courses must be approved by the school before you can register. The approval process at NTU was very slow and stressful, however I eventually got registered on all 4 courses that I wanted. A tip for an easier registration process is getting in contact with the relevant member of staff within the school/department early on and then keep checking up on your registration status.

The following weekend I went on a trip organised by GEM club (a club for exchange students) to an island in the north west called Pulau Ubin. There was such a variety of nationalities on the trip; we were put into groups and had to complete challenges, such as performing a dance and taking squad photos to get points. Unfortunately, my group didn’t even make it to the top 3! But it was fun nonetheless. If you are studying abroad and have the opportunity to go to exchange student event like this, do it, because you’ll have a great time and make lots of new friends.