Hello from Singapore

Last night, after more than 36 hours of traveling, I finally made it to Singapore. The journey started off smoothly (or so I thought). I checked my bags, made it through JFK security, found my gate, and boarded the plane. We were supposed to take of at 12:45 am, but due to general JFK air traffic we had to wait a little longer. Luckily, my China Southern plane had a good movie selection, so I started a movie to entertain myself. An hour and a half later, I finished that movie and we were still on the ground. I dozed off a bit, and woke up to the pilot announcing that there were some mechanical issues, and they'd update us in an hour. Obviously, this was not promising.
Next thing I know, it's 4:30 am and they're announcing that the problem is not yet fixed, so we have to deplane. We took shuttle busses back to a gate in the basement of JFK, which did not have nearly enough chairs for the amount of people on the flight. After getting a nice seat on the cold, hard floor, I figured I would go use the restroom and stretch my legs. I asked an employee where the nearest restroom was, and she informed me that we were not allowed to use it. At this point, it basically felt like we were being held hostage. It wasn't long before someone started screaming at them that we were all going to die if they didn't let us get water or pee. They began escorting us to the bathroom in groups of ten, which kind of brought me back to my preschool days where we were not allowed to go to the bathroom by ourselves.
After a while they announced that they were getting us a new plane and a new crew, and we'd be leaving around 7am. They also changed our gate to one upstairs in the terminal, which was nice because there were more seats, better heating, and unlimited bathroom access. 7 quickly turned into 7:45, which quickly turned in to 9:30. Obviously, I would no longer make my connecting flight in Guangzhou, China, but all the agents said that I couldn't rebook my transfer until I arrived in China. I waited on a 40 minute line to get a "very important" piece of paper proving that our flight had been delayed. Some people said this would help us when we arrived in China, but I'm pretty sure they just wanted people to stop screaming at them.
We boarded the plane after 10am, and I fell asleep before takeoff. I woke up about 8 hours later, watched a few good movies, and slept a little more. Once we made it to Guangzhou, it felt like we had overcome a great challenge, but a new one was just beginning.
There was one flight left from Guangzhou to Singapore leaving that day at 6:30 pm, which gave us about two hours from the time our first flight landed. After waiting on a long transfer line with basically everyone else on our flight, we reached an agent who told us we would have to take a flight the next day at 8:30 am, because the 6:30 pm flight was already overbooked by 13 seats. She said there was also a Singapore Airlines flight leaving at 1:35 am, but she wasn't sure if there were open seats, and seemed genuinely confused by our suggestion that she should call them to find out. We were given forms to get a temporary visa so we could stay at a hotel for the night, but decided to try asking someone else about the Singapore Airlines flight before leaving the airport. After a heated exchange with a new ticketing agent, she took our passports and said her supervisor would look into it in the next 20 minutes. After waiting for about half an hour, a new woman came over to us with our passports and tickets to the 6:30 pm flight (which they had already told us we couldn't take) and said, "this is boarding in 10 minutes, you should go". We ran through Guangzhou airport, and somehow boarded the flight to Singapore. They informed us that our bags would not make this flight, but we were just happy to be on the plane.
Getting off the plane in Singapore was a huge relief. Although not everyone speaks the clearest English here, it was a million times better than in the Guangzhou airport. I got a SIM card, filled out the forms to have my bags delivered to me, and took a taxi to my new apartment. I arrived to my apartment at 12:30 am Singapore time, wrapping up my 36 hour journey from Stamford, CT to here.
Today I woke up pretty early because of jet lag. I walked around the city this morning, got breakfast, and had a campus tour of SMU before my appointment to get my student visa. Then I went to a Hawker Center for lunch, which is a popular type of food court here. There was not much for me to eat there, but I did have some indian bread and potatoes. It seems like my options are to expand my food palette or eat plain white rice for every meal (I think you know which is more likely). On the bright side though, there is an ice cream place and a mac and cheese restaurant in the shopping center below my apartment building, so I probably won't starve.

Some of SMUs buildings are on Stamford Road- feels like home

This afternoon two of my roommates and I continued to explore the area near our apartment. We found a cool temple where people were making offerings of some sort and burning lots of incense, we found a 5 story shopping mall devoted entirely to electronics stores, and we found the local synagougue (although we didn't try to go in yet). We made it back to our apartment right before a torrential downpour and thunderstorm, which I guess is something I have to get used to happening daily here. Now I am just waiting for my bags to arrive, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.
Overall, it was a rocky start to this journey, but it can only get better from here!

Buddhist temple around the corner from my apartment