Today, the students woke up in the iconic Marina Bay Sands after a fun night in the hotel before heading to the airport. On the bus, our tour guide Elaine briefed us on the Jewel, which is a dome-like aspect of the airport we were on our way to see. After that, the students took a quick nap on the bus until we arrived.

Singapore values efficiency, so a lot of Singapore is automated. Getting boarding passes and checking in bags was quick and easy with the big group, and gave us ample time to go see the Jewel.

Our tour guide, Elaine, explained that it was built to incorporate more parking for the airport, and they decided to add a mall to increase revenue. Therefore, it is 5 stories underground, 2 are parking, and the remaining three contain the mall and an atrium with the largest indoor waterfall in the world on the first floor. To deal with the water splashing back up, the architect, Moshe Safdie, decided to make the waterfall continue 2 stories into the basement. It is all harvested rainwater with tanks in basement 3 and 4. The outside framing of the structure contains the piping for the water, and are turned off when it is raining. Since rain is so heavy in Singapore, Safdie designed it to use rainwater instead. A rail train runs through the middle of the atrium for passengers to get where they need to go in the airport. Since the water would disrupt the train’s electrical work, the waterfall had to be placed off-center in the dome, which caused structural challenges when constructing because it meant the compressive forces were not equal from all sides. Since Singapore also gets a decent amount of sun, Safdie decided to use low-e glass windows to reduce infrared radiation, but still let in the visible light spectrum for the plants in the atrium. There are about 100,000 trees and 2,000 trees, so this was very important.

After seeing the waterfall, we shopped around a bit and got some food before going through security and meeting at our gate. The first of two flights was about 4 and a half hours, and most of us slept in an effort to get back on Chicago time.

When we arrived in Taipei, we walked around the airport and got some food. We got boba and pancake-like wheels filled with crème and peanut butter. Overall, we rated it a 6.5 out of ten, and we’re a bit underwhelmed, but they were still pretty good and cool to try.

After about an hour and a half in Taiwan, we boarded the second plane for about 16 hrs. Once again, this flight was Hello Kitty themed, so the headrest had Hello Kitty, the flight attendants’ aprons, the cutlery and cups at meal time, and more. This was super cool.

To pass the time, students slept, read, listened to music, watched movies, and went through the millions of pictures we took on this trip. When we arrived in Chicago, we went through customs, got our bags, and met our family before saying goodbye and heading home.

Blog by Claire Corrigan