Since arriving home, tons of people have asked me about my time in Singapore, expecting lengthy answers about traveling, experiencing new cultures, and eating good food. And even though I had a great time doing all those things, they didn’t feel like the most valuable or memorable part of my time in Singapore.
So when my good friend from Northwestern innocently asked me about my favorite memory from Singapore, I struggled to answer with one specific memory. All that came to mind were snippets of my best friends and I chatting in the dining hall for hours, our impromptu trips to malls, our late night deliveries of Al Ameen’s (a nearby restaurant with delicious North Indian cuisine), and the hilarious encounters we had whenever we went out to a bar. I didn’t have a singular favorite memory of Singapore, because my favorite memories were all threaded together by my new best friends.
Because I was in a totally new country where I knew almost nobody, during my first week in Singapore I had an intense (albeit irrational) fear of feeling alone and isolated for the entire semester. So when I planned to visit a museum with another exchange student who bailed at the last minute, I was devastated. But one of my local suitemates offered to come with me instead, and ended up spending the entire day showing me around. Fast forward a month, and we already had a list of twenty different things we wanted to do along with even more inside jokes we already had with each other.
By the end of the semester, I had a small handful of friends in a tight-knit group who I could talk to anything about for hours on end. They were all so different from me – three of them grew up in Singapore, while one of them was on exchange from Australia, and none of them were studying science like I was. But our eclectic and random memories together showed me that close friendships can form anywhere with anybody. Going abroad comes with a lot of new incredible memories, and they deserve to be shared with new incredible friends.
Three weeks into the semester, two of my suitemates and best friends from Singapore celebrated my birthday with me at a lovely afternoon tea.
At the end of the semester, all five of us celebrated an American Thanksgiving.