Almost last entry this year.

I just can't believe that already so much time has passed by since I wrote the last blog entry. So many new things to write about...Soooo, where to start? 

Probably with Vietnam - a couple of days together with good friends in HCMC (aka Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon) with visits to the Mekong Delta and the Cu Chi Tunnels - it was a nice (I thought it would be the last) trip to end my stay in Asia. And then, a bit unexpected but nice nevertheless, the really last trip during these four months, almost a week in Kuala Lumpur. 

And then it was Monday, Dec 1, and I was on my way to Changi Airport for the last time, sitting in the cab and I just couldn't believe that my exchange year was almost over, my two stays abroad for this year were almost over and I was going back to Germany...

Stopover in Singapore + photos from HK

Yes, I'm back in S'pore for a bit more than 24 hrs - to be exact, my flight to Ho Chi Minh City leaves in 4 hrs :) Never getting tired of travelling apparently :D I think it's family genes ;) So saying first goodbyes here in S'pore, packing, sleeping - and then off again. Most of my Hong Kong pictures are uploaded on facebook, but I posted some here as well.

The Big Buddha on Lantau Island 

View from the Peak at night

Hiking on Saturday

Skyline

On the road again!!!! FINALLY HONGKONG!

Yaaaaaaaay, my exchange semester is OVER! I wrote my last paper today, I just have to submit it and then - oh my god, unbelievable - my fifth semester is done! And then I'm officially in my last semester :s time runs...

BUT now I'm on vacation!! Yes, I could not help it, I had to go somewhere...and I have to admit the very moment when I stepped out of the plane here in HK, I already felt the excitement and the life and the joy of being on the road again :) 

And seriously - this city is just amazing! Full of life, people, laughter, noise, shops, restaurants, construction sites, Asians, Europeans, whatevers, food, light, skyline...I haven't seen that much so far, but I already like it - really, really like it. And it's good to see some old friends again, it's been a long time... :) 

I wish I could upload some photos here to show you the beautiful view and everything, but I forgot the connection cable for my camera :( Anyways, I'll be here until Tuesday and I think I'm gonna keep you updated - tomorrow we're gonna go hiking :) Some exercise, finally, after one week without any sports (thanks to my cold which is gone now luckily).

Oh, not to forget - as time runs, it's only two and a half weeks more here in Asia and then I'm back home for reunion with the ones I love...I'm so looking forward to see you all, but at the same time I'm really sad to leave 'cause I found some amazing friends here. But - as we Germans say, "Man sieht sich immer zwei Mal im Leben."

Hugs from HK!

Woooooow, one MONTH!

God, I just realized that I did my last blog entry ONE MONTH ago! Incredible...I'm really sorry, I was not really in the mood of writing and I have loads of work to do as there is only ONE MONTH left here! Yes, today in four weeks I'll be sitting in the plane back to Germany, looking forward to see my family again, thinking about the wonderful interesting four months in Asia, missing my roommates and the friends I found here, looking forward to my friends, being nervous about my internship...

Well, but enough of this 'cause it just makes me miss home more. Back to what I did the last weeks and what I'm gonna do the next weeks! Well, the last weeks - I basically worked. Worked worked worked. And working here is hmmm different from working at WHU. It took me some time to get used to it and I think I got to value what WHU really teaches us and how good our students really are :D Just so much to that. 

The next week - well, the next one and a half weeks - will be still working, there are two more presentations to do, one group report to write, one exam to be solved and two papers to write. 

But THEN! VACATION! FINALLY! Yeaaaah, I bought my tickets to Hongkong (Nov 13 to 18) and Vietnam (Nov 19 to 27)! I'm getting really excited about this :) 

Hope it's gonna be a good ending for my Asia experience. 

Enough of that. Here come some photos of the last weeks, just to give you a more vivid impression ('cause I learned in my CB class that vividness increases the accessibility increases the retrieval...whatever... ;))

I went on another diving trip to Tioman and this time Martin, my dive buddy, took some photos:

Then we had a pretty okay Halloween Party:

Soooo, I'm looking forward to see you all again soon :) Hugs and Kisses!

Another Monday morning...

...another start in a working week...and as usual, I'm sitting in a lecture about how to read and interpret scientific papers (yes, I know, it's useful for my thesis, but after having read like 25 papers, I feel it gets a bit boring...).

So it's time to talk about the weekend again, yay! :D And it was a great weekend, especially the Saturday! Okay, not included the CB exam I had in the morning, but the night was brilliant! After going out for really good Sushi, we (oh, 'we' is four girls, all exchange students) went to Chocolate Heaven - specifically, Chocolate Buffet in the Fullerton Hotel, mmmmmmmhhhhhh...

And no, that is not my new lipstick on the left picture ;)

After indulging in the incredible chocolate dreams, we went to New Asia Bar, located on the 71st floor of Swissotel - feels like the highest building of Singapore, I have no idea if it IS actually the highest one ;) Was really cool, amazing view and really nice cocktails ;)

And then - Clubbing! Ministry of Sound, but with crappy DJs grrrr...whatever, we had fun anyways :D 

All time favourite.

I know, most of you have seen it, but I just love it. I love the music, I love the pictures, I love the dancing - and I love that it always makes me wanna go travelling again :)

What the ...?????

Check this out:

Worshipping - the traditional and the modern way

Bangkok - being one of the religiously most active cities of the world - is an ideal place to explore places of worship, both traditional and modern ones :) Starting the day with a ride on the river after which Bangkok was once named "Venice of the East", the Mae Nam Chao Phraya, I chose to take the traditional way first. Amazing, golden, emerald, indigo, ruby-red sparkling Temple of the Emerald Buddha took my breath away with its thousands oft glittering buildings, statues, chapels, small temples, big temples...followed by Wat Pho with its stunning 15 m long reclined Buddha - yes, photos follow as soon as I'm back in S'pore - golden, smiling, peaceful...
And then Bangkok's second-most famous places of worship - shopping centers, markets, stalls full of cheap and cheaper clothes, souvenirs, accessoires, clothes, shoes, vegetables, buddha statues, food, fish, fruit - everything you can dream of and more...coming back exhausted with hands full of plastic bags filled with clothes (yes, I know ;)) and a mind and a heart full of colourful, overwhelming memories...

Bangkok - city of the cities...

Yeah, I arrived in Bangkok, stunned by the temples of Angkor, overwhelmed by the differences and similarities of this most famous, most mysterical, most legendary city of Asia with Sao Paulo - liveliness, chaos, narrow streets, big streets, highways, people, people, people, food, markets, street stalls, food, chaos, atmosphere - what an atmosphere!

Angkor Wat - Temples, Temples, Temples

Just a few short lines from Cambodia - photos and long post when I'm back in S'pore! Arrived, hostel is great, temples are amazing, weather is okay, day after tomorrow I'm off to Bangkok :)

I miss u all.

I saw NEMO!

Yeaaah, I just came back from my trip to Tioman (amazing Malaysian island, almost as beautiful as Ilha Grande in Brazil!) - and it was just great!! 

I took my SCUBA-diving license there - three days with five dives and loads of theoretical stuff...at the beginning, I didn't really like the feeling under water, I felt quite uncomfortable, but on the seco

nd day I started to get into it and yesterday was just BEAUTIFU

L and AMAZING! 

We did a fun dive to a small island with a coral reef and saw octopus, turtle, loaaaads of really colourful fish and 

NEMOS! yeah, small clownfish - sooo cute!

I hope I can get some of the pictures we took and upload them here :) 

And yeah, I got some!

Diving Buddy I:

Diving Buddy II:

Diving Crew:

And - only three more days and I'm on the road again! Thursday morning I'm flying to Cambodia to see the temples of Angkor Wat till Sunday, then Siem Reap - Bangkok, a few days in Bangkok and then probably the train Bangkok - Butterworth - KL - Singapore, which will take more or less 2.5 days :) 

Random thoughts during class.

Yes, now I'm sitting here in CRC 1 (or something like that) in a reeeeaally interesting lecture - well, to be honest: It is quite interesting, especially when I tell myself that it is reeeeaally useful for my thesis next year ;). It's called marketing theory and research and is about how to interpret and use research papers. Actually quite challenging intellectually - most of the times ;)

So the ones who know me and who know how I'm studying: Yes, as usually I occupy three tables with 

- my notes

- laptop

- drink (still pineapple juice, not yet coffee ;))

- glasses

- pens

- more notes

- articles

- more notes 

- NO chocolate (and I'm proud of that!)

and YES, I'm sitting in the last row ;) (dedicated to Chris, I miss u girl!)

Okay, apart from the start in a new working week, what happened last week (I hope that at least one lonely soul reads this article):

- wed: GREAT housewarming party (see below) 

- thu: work work work. met my deadline. yay

 :) but I missed Capoeira :(

- fri: not much.

- sat: not much. lecture from 12 - 3 :(. not much.

- sun: study. and, second highlight of the week: Capoeira on Sentosa! I really enjoyed it, I'm really getting into Capoeira! Hope to find a good Capoeira class in Koblenz when I come back (I guess in Valler this should be hard, don't know if some of the elder ppl living there are interested in Afro-Brazilian martial arts ;))

Below a picture of Sentosa:

So, for this week there are quite a few exciting things I'm looking forward to:

Tonight I'm going to Wala-Wala, a bar in Holland Village, with a decent live band on Mondays.

Tomorrow Capoeira class again. 

On Wednesday, my great buddy Ian is taking us out for the Chinese Mooncake Festival to let us try original Mooncakes :) and afterwards probably going out for Ladies Night. 

Thursday Capoeira again. 

And Friday morning the absolute highlight: I'm leaving for Tioman (a Malaysian island) to get my diving license! A three-days-course with some pretty nice ppl, loads of fun and water :)

Again - I miss you all and am looking forward to see you again - in only about 2.5 months, time runs...

Hugs and Kisses!

Housewarming Paaaarty

Yay, finally we did it, we threw our HOUSEWARMING PARTY! "We" by the way, that's (from left to right): Ashima, Mona, Karin, me and Sandra. 

It was really great, we invited a bunch of people, around 40 - and almost everyone showed up!! We enjoyed it so much, talking to sooo many knew people, getting to know so many interesting people, drinking, dancing, talking again, listening to the music - we had a great time! (And if anyone who attended our party reads this: We hope you had a great time, too!!)

Wanderlust + Homesickness.

Yeah, I have to admit it, it finally struck me: the well-known 5-weeks-foreign-country-homesickness. Already had it in Brazil, so it's a bit better this time, nevertheless do I miss my family and friends really much this week...

I have so much to do - both for Uni as well as for my texting job - that I can't really think about it, but it still leaves a bad feeling. And you all know that going to bed and waking up with a bad feeling is not a very nice thing! 

Nevertheless, I'm still happy to be here and I know that it takes just a few more days to get over it :) In the meantime, let me show you some photos of our trip to Bintan!

Capoeira

I just came back from my Capoeira class - two hours REALLY intense workout, my whole body aches like hell :D but it was SO GOOD! 

Yeah, I know it's weird - I came back from Brazil without having tried Capoeira there and now I'm doing it in Singapore ;) But it's so much fun and the people there are really nice, I enjoyed it so much. Okay, I have to admit - I only had two classes so far, but I think I'm gonna get really into it :)

Ah, if you wanna check out their blog, it's nuscapoeira.blogspot.com!

Very first blog entry ever.

Yay,

so finally I created my own blog - I've been thinking about it for a while, always about this trade off 'travelblogs are the most boring things in the world' and 'but I have soooooo much to tell to all these people out there' :D

So - here it is. My blog. Finally. For all these people who wanna hear about Singapore, crazy exchange student life, saudades do Brasil, Singapore, missing my amazing friends, finding amazing new friends, Singapore - so if you wanna hear from me, if you can stand my English (hopefully not yet Singlish), you're more than welcome to check my blog out and make comments on what I write.

So much happened during the last weeks that I don't really now where to start. That's why I do what most business students do - I'm going to make bullet points ;)

- spent the most amazing time in my life in Sao Paulo, Brazil
- went back to Germany to spend wonderful days with my family
- said Goodbye to my sister for one year (yeah, she's going to Uruguay, incredible huh!)
- went to Singapore for exchange!
- met great girls with whom I'm sharing my apartment now (five girls, five nations, four subjects!)
- went to Bintan, Indonesia
- started studying - no, it's not "Urlaub im Sueden" anymore, it's really studying!
- crashed my laptop screen
- bought a MacBook (yes, Karin, I have to mention it ;))
- fell in love with my MacBook
- spent great days and nights together with my roommates and the friend I made here so far
- planned my trip for recess week 

...and now I'm sitting here, writing my very first entry. And my battery is on reserve so I have to stop now. Haha, so you guys got lucky - I would have so much more to tell! 

Next time.

I miss you all back in Germany, Brazil, USA and whereever you are now. 

Beijos da Cingapura!