Lian's Blog: Winter Break Part I

I go back and forth on my opinion of New Year’s Resolutions. On the one hand, we see the new year as a fresh start, and so it’s a good time to build new habits. It was through a New Year’s resolution that I became a vegetarian, actually: one year, in high school, I resolved to be vegetarian for the month of January, and after January I decided to continue.

That said, the culture around New Year’s resolutions seems to be that a lot of people don’t follow through. I tried to be realistic in my goals for this year, which are as follows:

Write at least five sentences every day, at least through the month of January; if it seems achievable (which it does so far) I’ll continue through the rest of the year.

Blog once a week until I return to America in August. I’ll likely continue this blog after I get back, but it’s far enough away that I’m not worried about that right now.

I put this here so that you, reader, can keep me honest. If it’s been a week and I haven’t posted anything, feel free to nag me about it. A bit of external reinforcement never hurts.

For winter break, I went on a two-week long vacation. First, I went to Singapore to stay with my lovely friend Tara, whom I know from college. Then, I went to Tokyo and stayed with a friend of my mom’s.

First, Singapore. I’ve actually been there once before—I went in January of 2018, with a couple other college friends. We stayed with Tara’s family that time, too. It was a great trip. I will admit that I was really nervous about my first Christmas away from home. I have so many traditions surrounding Christmas—waking up early and reading my book by the Christmas tree, seeing relatives on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, eating certain foods, and so on—that I was worried I’d spend the whole day wishing I was at home.

That did not happen. I did wake up a bit early (by coincidence) and read by the tree, but I was too busy with Tara and her family to feel particularly homesick. We didn’t do too much—we ate some delicious food, played Codenames: Pictures, which Tara had bought for her brother, watched Shrek The Halls (which I loved), and generally relaxed.

I didn’t do as much tourism as my last visit to Singapore, since I did a lot of that in January. This trip was more about spending time with friends and relaxing by the pool. Tara and I did go to Gardens by the Bay, a lovely botanical garden. We had also gone in January, but there’s a lot to do there. Last time we went to the Cloud Forest Dome, which has plants from the cloud forest biome. This time, we went to the Flower Dome. Here are some pictures!