Days 66, 67, and 68: A Weekend out on the Town

Friday morning started bright and early, going to the 8 am heat transfer class on Campus A. I texted a couple of my best friends on the bus ride there. They were going to have a test in class that day, so I got ready to be a proctor for the test. Once class started, Pablo had me go around and check that their equation sheets were only one sided, and that they put their bags with their cell phones in the front of the classroom. Looking at a copy of the test, I realized that it wasn't too hard at all (although if I was taking it myself, I would have needed to study a lot more).

I sat down to proctor it, looking back at the class occasionally, while also reading some poetry, checking some email, and learning some Java, eventually giving up due to the slow wifi, and just watched the students finish their exam. They got 55 minutes for it, with 4 questions, going through the break time. After the time was up, I collected it, and Pablo gave them a break to let them relax and compare thoughts about the exam. I talked with Pablo for a bit, and then he only had 15 minutes of class left for lecture. I took notes, being studious, and then class was over.

I wanted to draw a bit, so I made my way over to the Foreign Languages Reading garden that was one of my go to places on campus, seeing some gorgeous roses and a pagoda on my way there.

When I got there, I walked along the edge, looking for my little pond side lookover, but I couldn't find it anywhere. Walking back along the edge, I figured out that the place where I normally sat had had a new wall put in (as proof, the bricks below even look significantly newer). I was astonished that they had done this over the New Year, but to finish my picture, I decided to make do and sit on the wall.

I sat there for about 40 minutes, not quite getting done with the picture, but getting about half of it colored before I made my way back to the bus stop to go back to Campus D.

After getting back to Campus D, I sat outside the food court for a bit, reading and enjoying the nice weather, as well as the beautiful flowers.

Eventually, I was driven inside by hunger, and I went to the line where you could pick your own dishes again. I accidentally swiped my card on one of the wrong machines, but I rectified it by getting something out of the area with that price, and then swiping it on the other side. I ended up getting a pork and dark leaf vegetable mix, a potato and chicken mix, and cucumbers (which, I'm pretty sure, ended up being the whole cucumber.) I ate what I could, and saved the rest for later.

After that, I went to the TA office to sit for a bit, and work on things before my office hour. I sat there for a bit and then Alexandra showed up. Soon after, Celia walked in too, and then Dom, Robert, and Suri as well. I talked to them all, about my drawings, my poetry that I was typing into my computer, and Dom and I showed them what Snapchat was. They have something similar in China, but it's mainly filters on a camera, not really a messaging app.

After that, all of them but Robert (who decided to rest, because the Chinese TAs are paid by month, not by hour) headed to Wei Wei's digital design class. Robert stayed in the office with me while I had my office hour. No one showed up, yet again, so I worked on philosophy homework for a while.

After a while, Robert woke up from his nap, and he started asking about my poetry. I let him read some of my poetry notebook, and he asked me about what I meant by some of it. I explained some of it to him, and I taught him what a Shakespearean sonnet was (much like how I taught Celia at the party). He said a lot of the words I used were too advanced for him to understand at this point, which mildly surprised me, but I let him know I would explain anything he needed at any point.

Around 3:30, he left to go find Suri so they could take the bus back to campus together, and I packed up to leave, as my office hour was over. I had to go to the JCI office to reserve a room for the Manufacturing Processes midterm (because it's an online class, and the professor is in Cincinnati), so I went to go do that. I went into one of the offices, and was severely misunderstood by one of the workers who thought I wanted to reserve a room for 3 days, rather than 3 hours, and eventually she directed me to the other office across the hall. As I was leaving, I was surprised to see Apollo sitting there, and I said hi to him. Getting to the other room, the other assistant spoke English much more fluently, and she filled out the necessary form for me. She had to take a call, and spoke in the phone in Chinese, while writing stuff on the paper in English for me. I was impressed by her linguistic prowess, and found myself a bit envious. She wrote that they would get back to me soon, and I could leave...so I did.

I went back home, eating my dinner, working on stuff, finishing Java (which was technically incomplete), and starting to work on JavaScript (which was a lot more complete), finishing a blog post, and just relaxing the rest of the night. Heather, the girl who I met on Wednesday, also told me that she was going to start teaching English classes in a week, and asked if I could come with her to the first one, offering to pay me or buy me dinner in return. It was an hour and a half commute each way, so I told her I would think about it and get back to her.

Saturday morning started with a long call, in which I cooked, talked for a while, and saw a couple of my other best friends towards the end. Very happy with the start of my day, I got ready for the rest of my day, in which we were going to see the new Wolverine movie, Logan, and go to Casa Maya with the Chinese TAs and a couple other people. We went to Shapingba, the stop near Campus A, to make it easier to go to Casa Maya afterwards. Five of us, Sean, Nick, Dom, Jessica, and myself, took the subway there from our apartments at Huxi Gardens. Dom was already at the shopping center near the subway, so the other four of us took the three wheeled taxi to the subway station, and met him there.

Once we got to the subway station at Shapingba, we had to find the person I invited. I invited all three of the Pakistani guys that I had met on the subway on the way to Beijing (after I lost my suitcase for a bit), but only one could make it. We tried to find him everywhere, and he said he was at a McDonalds near a roundabout. We went to one of the McDonalds that fit that description, and he wasn't there. We tried to get him to meet us at the Walmart where the others were meeting us, but he didn't know where that was. Eventually, he told us that he was near the McDonalds and KFC. It was close to Starbucks, so we just sat there and waited.

He showed up a few minutes later, I introduced him to everyone, and we made our way to the movie theatre. Finding out Sean was a professor, he started talking to him more than anyone else. As we made our way there, we found out the others were getting a bit panicky, and we reassured them we were on our way. I also found out that the Pakistani guy, Fadi, was working at his lab, and had to tell his professor that he had to visit someone in the hospital to get out of the lab to see the movie.

We got to the KTV by Walmart quickly to meet the others. I introduced all of them quickly, as well, momentarily forgetting Celia's name, to my chagrin, and noting that Alexandra didn't come with them, but they had brought a friend named Randy. Fadi started talking to Pablo as well.  We went in the movie theatre, which was conveniently right there as well, and Robert printed off the tickets he had already ordered for us. They were 20 quai each (about 3 dollars US), and then we bought popcorn (which is really caramel corn here), and a small coke for 20 quai for both of them as well. I told Celia and Robert about the huge drink sizes in American movie theatres, and they were astonished.

We went into the theater, trying to find our seats, because they were assigned, but the money had started a few minutes before. We hadn't missed that much, so we were fine. But the movie was absolutely amazing! Logan was one of the best movies I've seen in a while, and one of the best superhero movies I've ever seen. Hugh Jackman was amazing as Wolverine, as always, and I highly recommend for everyone to see it.

After the movie, Fadi had to leave to go back to his lab, and we went to Casa Maya to get some food. I wasn't terribly hungry, but good food is always a good idea. The Chinese TAs had never had Mexican food before, so they ended up getting whatever the others were getting, including quesadillas, or the deep fried tacos that others (like myself) had gotten. We introduced them to the horchata water, although I felt that they weren't huge fans of it.

We chatted for a few hours about traditional Chinese musical instruments, movies (including banned movies, such as Fifty Shades of Grey), what they thought of the food and of the movie we just saw, and various other things, mainly just enjoying each other's company.

Towards the end of the night, Suri ordered banana caramel crepes that looked amazing, but I didn't touch them because I have an unfortunate banana allergy. We settled the bill, and headed out, four of us catching the subway, Dom going shoe shopping, and the rest of them going to their dorms near Campus A.

Sunday started off pretty lazily as well, with cooking, working on philosophy homework, and then I decided to go out to the park I had found last week to fly my kite.

I biked down there, enjoying the nice, although a bit chilly weather, and I decided to sit under the blossoming trees to read a bit before I flew my kite.

I decided to sit under the blossoming trees to get some fresh air and a much needed connection to nature. I read a bit of my book, and watched the very few people who were in the park frolic. There was even an old man with his wife and grandchild climbing one of the trees, and it looked like he was even trying to do tai chi in the tree. (Oftentimes in China, I found out, grandparents raise their grandkids while the parents work.)

The old man climbing the tree

I decided to start using the kite. I got a running start, and I got to get all of the kites attached to go up in the air. I had an idea of getting a picture, and I asked the lady who had been watching me with her child and their kite to take a picture. She spoke pretty good English, but she ended up taking two videos instead.

When I was walking near a tree, the kite got tangled up in the branches, and eventually tangled up in itself, as shown below. I worked on getting the knots out for a bit, but realized that I would need to probably cut some of them apart and put some of the thin yarn that I had bought a while ago through it instead.

After that debacle, I decided to go around and explore the park a bit more. I biked further, and realized that it was much, much bigger of a park than I thought. Its size was similar to the size Central Park in New York City.

There was even a pagoda that led to a dock of sorts over a river that looked really, really cool.After I biked around for a bit, I needed to go grab some lunch. I still hadn't gotten to most of the park yet, but I vowed to explore it another day.

Biking back towards campus, it started raining heavily (at least, heavily for Chong Qing), and that dampened my mood on my bike ride back (pun intended). I decided to go in a different gate to the university than I normally did, and a lady who had stopped to stare at me almost got run into by me when I was trying to avoid both her and another bike. Going into the gate though, it was an endless line of trees, and I wondered where exactly this gate was going to let out.....

Eventually, though, I found the back of campus that I had seen one of the days that I had gotten lost while biking around campus. I found a different dining hall from the one that we normally went to, and after some internal debate, I decided to go in and eat there.

I chose something off of a picture menu that looked good, and the lady motioned for me to pick 2 things. Realizing she meant two vegetables to put on top of the rice, I picked peppers and tomatoes, and then she also put fried chicken strips and sauce on top. It was very delicious, but I ended up saving most of it for later.

I made my way back to the apartment, getting thoroughly soaked in the process. After getting there, I tried to get to work for a bit, but I ended up having a really good talk with Jessica instead. We then went to the grocery store to buy the essentials, but ended up buying a bit more than we needed. We decided to get mushrooms to put into the omelet, as well as the other vegetables that we had gotten before. We had put some of the extra potatoes into the freezer the last time to try to preserve them, but that had caused them to go bad, leaking black liquid, so we knew not to do that the next time.

There was also a new bakery grand opening that day, and before we went into the grocery store, they were giving out samples of delicious chocolate cake. We decided to go to it after we were done shopping, and we ended up going just that, getting a large "slice" of chocolate cake, which was enough to split between both of us, for 18 quai, under $3. The guy at the cash register was trying to speak to Jessica in Chinese, but she didn't understand, so I saved her by talking about the cool constellation decoration on the ceiling.

We went to the convenience store by our apartment as well, to get some toilet paper, orange juice, and pop. It turned out that if you bought two 2 liters of pepsi, you got a large straining bowl free. We were used to the free tissues with drinks, but this was new, so we decided to get it.

The aforementioned bowl and cake

After putting away groceries, Jessica and I had bible study, with verses that talked about God's love for us, and we got to talking about our loved ones as well. All in all, it was a very productive and cheerful bible study for both of us.

While eating the rest of my food, and half of the scrumptious cake, I started coding again, getting to over 60% progress on JavaScript, found out that anime was streaming better than it was when I had first gotten to the apartment, and made a short call before going to bed, getting ready for the week ahead.

-Zoe