well just finished a week of intense mandarin courses which lasted for 5 hours each day.  Studying mandarin is like one huge positive feedback cycle.  The more mandarin I learn, the more enjoyable it is to communicate with people and the more impressed they are that i can speak some mandarin.  This is turn causes me to study harder and learn more which envitably keeps feeding the cycle.  The only downside of this though is that i have seriously neglected all my other courses.  I have midterms coming up next week and my text books are all sitting on my shelf, not even opened:)  This weekend is going to witness some intense cramming by me, reminiscent of last year's exam time.  Oh well, i need to experience some short term pain, in order to receive some long term gain.  wo hen kaixin xiao pengyou hen da le, yinwei ta xianzai you xiatian gongzuo:) Ne me, wo ying gai zou....林步冉

    

My opening days in Singapore were uncomfortable at best and excruciating at worst.  This was mainly attributed to being constantly sick from the time I left shanghai up until about a week ago.  My sicknesses ranged from having food poisoning where I just layed in my bed for 3 days to a bad lung infection which kept me awake all night coughing.  I blame my ill health on the lack of nutricious food i have been eating here in Singapore.  In shanghai, I was eating like a king, and so I think my body harshly rejected all the cafeteria food I was feeding it once i arrived at NUS.  However, I am still eating better than I did back in toronto at my fraternity, so hopefully my body will soon adjust.  That is not saying much though since my eating habits in toronto were on par with someone from a third world country.  Speaking of Shanghai, I miss China a lot(especially my final week) and I now want to go back during the Christmas break, since it was the most interesting place I have ever been.  

 Coming to singapore for an exchange is similar to starting my life over since everything needed to be changed ie, cell phone, bank, courses, registration upon registration... This transition took awhile and kept me busy, but my time is only going to get more and more limited starting next week since I am taking five courses, likely playing for the NUS basketball team(starting tryouts), trying to learn mandarin, and now signed up for a stock trading competition.  I could start describing all the things I dislike about singapore, but since I am here for a year, I will hold out until I am about to leave in order to minimize the amount of enemies i will make:)

wuhan and yichang were great, although it does feel good to be back in shanghai.  Can't wait to see the 'picture terminator' formerly known as 'song killer'

I am now heading to wuhan tomorrow morning and staying with yujie's friend there.  Wuhan is described as one of the 4 furnaces of china because it is so damn hot.  I actually can't fathom this since beijing and shanghai are hotter than any other place ive experienced so far.  We ended up settling with taking a train since it was the only viable option, although i now have a 20 hr train ride ahead of me.  Although i am very excited for this trip, tomorrow is a very special day to me and i wish i could be spending it elsewhere. Wo xiang ni, wo de xioa pengyou. 

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going to post more pics soon