Day 11: Lazy Saturday

I decided to not do much my first day off of work.

In the morning, I got up for a video call that never happened, so I decided to skype call another friend. I also messaged a bunch of friends from home, and read some more pages out of the book from yesterday. For breakfast, I had some rolls, milk, half of the dragonfruit we had gotten from Walmart a while back, and some double chocolate Pocky (which didn't taste more chocolatey than regular Pocky, unfortunately).

Inside of the dragonfruit

I also decided to start learning Python, which is a programming language, on the website Codecademy and watch some videos on YouTube.

Around 2, I decided to go out and get some lunch.  I biked over to campus, where Dom said that he, Nick, and Will were. Before that, I had to use some of Jessica's cable to tie my basket back on, but I did it easily. When I got to campus, they said that they were going to head over to Campus A to explore, but I decided to stay on Campus D to get some relaxation time. My lunch was some sort of spicy chicken and sausage mix with rice and some sort of white vegetable, which was pretty good.

We engineer better, and today's lunch

After that, I went to the campus store to get another flash drive, so mine didn't get corrupted by some of the Chinese viruses. I found a very cheap one that also read SD cards and smaller disks, so I bought two (one for here, to leave for the other TAs as well, and one to take home), and a really cute wallet. Going to check out, there was apparently an issue with the wallet, and walked away to find out the total price. Waiting, I looked at the candy, and grabbed a rose petal white chocolate bar that looked interesting. She came back and they started talking to me in Chinese. I apologized, and then they punched some numbers into the calculator. Apparently one of the gems on the wallet had fallen off leaving a discolored patch, and they were giving me a discount. I was really impressed at their honesty, since I hadn't noticed it myself, and I was made happier by the discount.

 My loot, and I was amused that they called the restroom the WC (as in the British Water Closet)
I explored for a bit, going back to the same pond from the other day, hearing a cat along the way. (Some of the cats here will just meow for hours to get attention....) I sat down by it, reading some more of my book, disappointed that I didn't see the swans from yesterday. After a little bit, I decided to draw the view of the part of the pond in front of me. After about 10 minutes of that, something came running out of the bushes at me. Startled, I thought it was a snake, and got ready to run when I saw it was pretty large. But it was shorter than a snake, and was a small furry mammal. As I watched, it burrowed under the rock directly behind me. I quickly realized the adorable fuzzy thing was a baby mole! I felt blessed to have seen the normally shy, nocturnal animal in the daytime.

Then some time after that, I noticed a woman trying to take pictures of the pond, so I tried to move out of the way. Then she was surprised, and asked if she could take a picture. I was surprised that she wanted to take a picture with me in it, and asked her if she wanted me looking at the camera or drawing, and she wanted the latter. So I went back to drawing, and she happily snapped her pictures. (I suspect it was because of the blonde, curly hair....)

After drawing some more, I wrote 2 poems, and read a bit more. To my delight, I discovered the swans had returned as well. However, the weather had gotten colder, and I was getting hungry. Giving into my carnal desires, I went back to the apartment.

I talked with Jessica a bit, finished my leftovers, and started watching some Doctor Who, Cyanide and Happiness, and Steven Universe the best I could with the slow wifi. The rest of the night, I just kind of chilled, talking again with people, typing up my poetry, watching stuff, and this blog.

I was looking forward to another relaxed day tomorrow!
-Zoe