Valerie's holiday reflections

The main highlight of my December holidays was my trip to New York, USA. The temperature there was cold and we had to be wrapped in layers and layers of clothes in order to prevent frostbite, even though, my toes had suffered frostbite several times when we went out for a walk. The temperature when we were there ranged from -10 degrees to 4 degrees. It was even colder when the wind blows... In New York, we went to the Times Square to shop and also went to the Rockefeller Park to see the skating rink before Christmas. It was amazing to see the contrast between the atmosphere in Singapore and in the states. In Singapore, few of us celebrate Christmas, but in New York, everybody celebrates it. The streets were full of people and there were Christmas carols being sung around you. Even as we stepped into shops, we were wished Merry Christmas by the shop holders. It was a very special feeling. During my time spent there, my aunt taught me to bake. I learnt to bake different types of goodies which I can now make on my own, but that will wait until my mum buys me my own oven. 

Out of the entire trip in New York, I enjoyed going to 'FAO Schwartz' in New York City as it is the biggest toy shop there and everything inside seemed to be double the size of things we see in Singapore. The gummy bears there were as long as my thumb and the largest gummy bear there weighed like about 1 kilograms. It was amazing and definitely a good experience. The toys there were considerably quite expansive but the size of them  made up for it. Other than the sweets, there were different types of types sold there, ranging from styrofoam airplanes which could fly like a boomerang to soft toys taller than adults themselves. 

I liked going to the M&M store at Times Square too. The chocolates inside were much different for ours. In Singapore, most of our M&Ms come in packets, in colours we can't really choose from. But over there, the chocolate were of a variety of colours and a variety of flavours. You could even costomize your own chocolates like having your own name, birthday, wishes etc, written on the chocolate itself. There was another point that I felt was quite surprising, the salesmen and sales ladies in the shop came from different parts of the world, I remembered seeing one from Arizona, another from Florida and so on. It's quite unique how they have so many different people from different countries working together in one shop to serve different kinds of tourists. 

Being much of a book lover, I enjoyed going to 'Barnes and Nobles' and 'The Strand' too. The first bookshop I mentioned is very popular in the states as there is a cafe there for people to eat and rad the books they selected. You do not even have to buy it, all you have to do is to keep the book neat and not damages and you could spend your time reading away over there. I felt that it was quite special in a way that the customers would not have to buy them but could also enjoy the books in the same shop. The second shop, The Strand, is more of a secondhand bookshop. It takes in secondhand books from the public and sells them to others at a very low rate, about 1USD. They also have new books, but the price would be slightly higher, yet cheaper than other bookstores. It's a very special bookstore as it has a variety of books which could hardly be seen in other stores.

The cost of food in US is definitely much higher but of a larger portion. However, I prefer it's street side food more than those sold at restaurants. Perhaps it's just me but I like the chicken kebab, the chicken joe, pretzels etc, all from the road side street stalls. I didn't really like the food that was sold at the malls and the stores as most of the time, the food tasted just okay due to our different food cultures. Most of the time, I just missed the food back in Singapore. 

As much as I love Singapore, I would very much like to migrate over there when I grow up. It's a beautiful country, even though the cost of living might be very high. I hope that I'll be able to visit US again one day as I grow older.

--Valerie(16)

   2G