Monday started with me sleeping in a bit to try to take the edge off of the start of the week. I heard Jessica moving around, and that woke me up. It turned out that she was going to proctor an exam in the morning, and that's why she was up and about so early. I went back in my room to watch some manufacturing processes lecture videos. After a bit longer, I headed out to take the electric bills to the JCI office and go to Campus A early to draw a bit before the Heat Transfer lecture.
I went to Heat Transfer, taking notes, and Pablo had a receipt for me to take back to Campus D with me for the JCI office worker named Tree. I couldn't remember what Tree looked like when I went to the office, so I just went in the office, and I started talking about the receipt. Seeing the confused look on the other lady's face (who I remembered was Hemia), I said that it was for Tree. She pointed me to the other office, and Tree exclaimed that she was over there. She started explaining that she was Tree, and embarrassed at their laughter, I said that I had remembered who she was, but just forgotten who to give it to.
Gorgeous painting across from the flags on Campus D
I quickly got out of the office, and thought about eating, but I wasn't quite hungry enough yet. I decided to explore. I found a path down the way, and took my bike down it. I had to share some of the path with the police wagon, but they quickly went past me.
I soon found a little alcove that I hadn't seen before, called Canna Valley. There was a winding bridge simply inviting me to walk down it, and I gladly obliged. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I decided to sit here for a while, working on philosophy homework.
area for excess water to flow
After I was done, I decided to walk a little bit even further down the path, but as I had already gone down this way before, and I was very hungry, I decided to head back and get some food.
Biking out, I ran into Dom, and he called out to me. I decided to stop, and ask if he was going to eat. He was, having just helped students with their models homework for a few hours, and I joined him.
I wanted to try the omelet rice that was in a picture, but the lady pointed to another type of omelet rice, and I acquiesced, deciding to try it instead. It had very little to no spice, which was nice, (except for the salad that you could choose to get on the side) and the rice was the first thing I can remember having here with soy sauce, which was an interesting note.
Tuesday was a long day of grading, lab, and my office hour. I slept in a bit, and watched a bit of anime and then went out to do some grading at the TA office. I graded models quizzes and the heat transfer homework. When I was finished, I watched an episode of Doctor Who while eating the PB&J sandwich I had packed. After that, I went to the digital design lab. I learned a little bit about SR gates and flip flops due to the digital copy of the textbook that Suri gave me. I also worked on philosophy homework and chatted with Dom for a while as well.
After lab ended early again, I went to get something else to eat. I went to the sushi place, trying to get some comfort food. After I took a bit too long looking at the menu, the lady flipped it over, and I found out that there was an English side to it. I got a blueberry cream float, and roasted eel sushi, enjoying it while I read a book on my e reader.
Afterwards, I headed to the TA office again to wait for my office hour. I watched another episode of Doctor Who, and then I started working on philosophy homework. Around 7:05, Black, one of my students, came in with questions on the Manufacturing midterm, and on the statics exam for the next morning. I showed him some of the solutions for both of them, working through them with him, and then he started talking to me about a few different things. He was curious about how hard it was to get an engineering job in the US, both with international students, and with myself. I talked to him about going to grad school as well, and I told him about the competitive job market. I also mentioned that I was going to try to get a co op in either Germany or Japan, impressing him. He was interested in talking to me further, and I told him that I'd try to meet with him over the weekend if possible.
Around 8 pm, I went back home, and I worked on various things for the rest of the night. Jessica was feeling a bit sad, because she had had to say goodbye to Michael that day, and she had gone to the airport with him. I emphasized for her, but I was glad that she had gotten the chance to see him.
lights on the pond at night
Wednesday started off with going to statics. They had an exam, so I had to help proctor it, and I sat by the front, working on philosophy homework while watching the class. I was reading about the Kantian branch of ethics, and one of the tenets of that is having "the good will", and Nick pointed at Will, saying that there was one right there.
After it, Nick and I decided how to split up the exams. I chose to grade the first three problems, and he gave me the exams to grade first. Will asked me if I was overworked, since I was a TA for all the Mechanical classes, and I said that I was doing ok. I mentioned that my advisor had sent along a greeting, and joked about how she would feel when she found out that I declared a second minor.
I sat outside for a bit, enjoying the beauty of the day, and practicing my French.
After a while, my hunger got stronger, and I decided to go to the food court to get lunch, stopping along the way to admire the few tulips that were left.
I pointed to a random thing on the menu, and got a beef meal with lots of peppers. It was one of the spiciest meals I've had here, and I couldn't force myself to eat too much of it at the moment. I decided to save it for dinner, and I got a chicken sandwich instead for lunch.
Outside, the smell of the manure that they had been putting down for the flowers for the past week was truly overwhelming. I went to go use the restroom before catching the bus to Campus A, but before that, I got stopped by a student who wanted to make a foreigner "friend" to practice English with and I told him about the coffee hour. We exchanged Wechats, and I tried to talk with him a bit, but he ran off relatively quickly. (Later that night, I was chatting with a friend who I hadn't heard from in a while, and he asked, to my amusement, if the Chinese tried to make foreign friends to practice their English, as he had heard, to which I replied, 100% true!).
I headed to Campus A to draw a little bit before class started, and I basked in the good weather again.
While I sat there, drawing the pagoda, a dog came over towards me and started rooting through the bushes, to my amusement.
I got a good amount of drawing done, and I headed to class, feeling more fulfilled. As I was leaving, I caught a glimpse of an electric blue bird flying over the pond. It moved too quickly to see clearly, but I had a feeling it was a hummingbird, since I hadn't seen one before here.
After heat transfer, I headed back on the bus to Campus D for our weekly meeting, and after I got on, Wei Wei did as well, asking if he could sit next to me. I said, of course, and we chatted for a while on the way back. Getting to the office, we saw a lot of people in the hallway putting furniture together for the office. Jessica walked up for the meeting, surprising Wei Wei. We walked into the meeting room, and found that the walls had been plastered with Communist propanganda. Even Wei Wei laughed at it and thought it was a waste of money.
We had our meeting, and discussed that our week had gone pretty well overall. On the other side (in the video call from Campus A) Greg and Darryl (the computer science advisor who had come for one week) were discussing things as well. They emphasized the necessity of saying which students were having troubles early on, so we could make sure that they would go to the US. After we hung up on the video call, we discussed issues in our apartments, and then we went to eat, with the exception of Wei Wei. I had my leftovers with me, so I just sat and talked with the others.
I went home, and ate my leftovers, while Nick came in Jessica's and my room to put in the lights. Jessica was video chatting her boyfriend at the same time, so that added another layer of hilarity to the whole debacle. After that, I started to input the quiz grades to the models roster, and found that one student's English name was "Harry Potter". Of all things, why that? But eventually, I was messing up the grades, and realized that I needed to go to sleep and do it in the morning.
Thursday started off with inputting some more grades, finishing a blog post, and going to models lecture. I was feeling pretty sick from the leftovers that I had had the night before, but I forced myself to get out. At the end of lecture, a few students came up to ask questions about the game projects that they had completed, including Rex, who was the class monitor that I had met earlier in the semester.
The next class was coming in, and we had to move into the hallway. I ran into Heather outside the classroom, and she was talking to Dom. I introduced them, and she asked me if I had asked Jessica if she would be willing to go to the Saturday events I went to last weekend. I told her I hadn't asked, but I would. Dom was interested in sitting in on Heather's data structures class (since at least the Powerpoints were in English), and she asked the professor if he could. He ended up changing his mind though, because he was hungry. Sean told us that one of the groups that had come up to him asking for help had only had 12 lines of code, even though they had had almost a month to work on the project!
I headed back home to try to feel better, and I made a short video call back home. After that, I cooked lunch, which was an omelet, potatoes, milk, and a pear, which went easy on my stomach. I sat around, watching various things, and then I worked on watching Manufacturing Videos and grading some Statics exams.
Going out of the apartment, I couldn't help but admire the redbud bushes, and I took several pictures to remember their beauty. It still astonishes me how they turn orange, not in the fall, but in the spring.
I went to Dom's office hour to try to get a few more hours this week. I sat with him a while, and then some students came in for help, including Rex's group. I had told them earlier that they needed to put a pop up box for an output that they had within their Yahtzee game, and they had fixed it. However, when I input some characters into a numerical box, I effectively broke their game. They figured out a way to fix it, and we checked over their report, and then everything was pretty good.
I talked with Dom a while about the philosophy homework I was working on (Kantian ethics), and how it related to the characters in Atlas Shrugged that I hated. (It is one of my favorite books, definitely give it a look!) Then another group came in with their Yahtzee game, and we couldn't find anything wrong with their game.
I went to grab lunch, and saw the club tents set up like normal. I wished I could have joined one over the past semester, but not knowing Chinese prohibited me from doing so.
I got lunch from the "Pick your own dishes" line, which was lo mein, tomatoes with eggs, and cucumbers, which tasted amazing together. Before heading out, I grabbed a coffee for dessert, and then walked back to the office to grade statics exams for a while.
I stayed grading statics exams for a while, taking a break from staring at the papers sometimes to chat with a friend, but giving up around 8:30. I then went home, and tried to relax the rest of the night, working on my blog as well.
-Zoe
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