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

Days 62, 63, 64, and 65: Second Week Back

Monday morning started with the same old, same old, getting up and working on my blog, and philosophy homework. Around 10:00, I headed out to Campus D, hanging around for a bit before catching the bus. I had to take pictures of homework #2 before handing them back to the students using Pablo's camera. I had packed a PB &J sandwich, but I stopped at the food court to grab a chicken sandwich and a Pepsi just in case.

Before getting on the bus, I ran into Suri at the bus stop. She said that she had gone to Prof Wei Wei's classes in the morning, but had to head back to Campus A because she had a dentist appointment due to a chronic tooth problem. We got on the bus and sat next to each other, but she saw her best friend, started chatting over the seats in front of us, and I told her it was fine for them to sit together to chat. I ate my chicken sandwich and read during the bus ride, still perfectly content.

She leaned back about halfway through the ride, and said Robert was trying to get a hold of me. I checked my WeChat, and he offered to help me take high quality pictures of the homework using the scanning app he had (my phone camera is awful), and apparently Pablo's phone wouldn't load the images to the computer.

I tried to get closer to the office by riding all the way to the back of campus, but it turned out it took a turn away from the office, rather than towards it, so I ended up walking longer than I wanted to. However, I ended up running into one of the Pakistani graduate engineering students that I had met on the subway when we were just beginning our trip around China. We asked how our respective trips had been, and he introduced me to his friend, who was also in Mechanical Engineering. I told him that we should hang out at some point, and we went our separate ways.

Pictures from along the walk

Getting to the office, no one was there yet. Pablo came in soon afterwards though, and I had already organized all the papers for them to be scanned in. Around 1:00, Robert came in, and tried to help me take pictures. I downloaded the app he used on my phone, and using the scanning app, as well as the superb lighting in the office, I actually had ok pictures. But he had already started scanning it in, so I just let him finish it. He sent it to me via WeChat, but I found out it was refusing to let me download anything at all, so after helping Pablo with pronunciation of Chinese students' names, he went home and emailed me the document.

I went to heat transfer, handing back homeworks, and I had a lot of students coming to me, asking me about their homework issues. Most of them were misunderstandings on the student's parts, but a couple of them were miscalculations on my part. I took pictures of the corrections, and emailed them, as well as the other documents, to Pablo.

After heat transfer, I sat in on the first hour and a half of electronics (the part before the dinner break, there were several parts to it because it's a compressed class), working on philosophy while I sat there, and then headed home.

Tuesday started with the usual morning routine, and then getting out to grade the Heat Transfer homework I had received the previous day so the students could study off of their mistakes for the test on Friday.

I biked to the TA office on Campus D and sat down, getting to work. There were problems with the answer key, like normal, but I caught one of the main ones quickly, realizing it was just a calculation error on the publisher's part. After grading 3.5 problems out of 5, I decided to go for lunch. I went to the upper level of the food court again, choosing a random restaurant, and pointing at a dish on another student's plate. When they were making it, they kept asking me questions that I was unable to answer. They eventually gave up on me, and just put random stuff on my plate. It tasted like a strange blend of Chinese and Mexican food, with peppers, rice, some strange gelatin stuff that could have passed for queso in another country (which I suppose I am in.......) and some meat that I think was mutton. I ate half of it, and saved the rest of it for dinner.

Going back to the TA office, I found that Suri was sitting in there chilling out and reviewing some notes for her classes. I talked to her for a few minutes, and then went back to grading. I finished grading a bit earlier than that, but hung out in the TA office for a bit longer.

Leaving, the tulips outside were still absolutely gorgeous, so I asked Suri to take some pictures of me.

Getting into the lab, I wandered over to the window to take a picture of the mess of discarded desks outside. It really is so strange to see them all just laying around in the abandoned courtyard. The lab turned out to be a very short lab. It was the one with the truth tables and logic that Dom and I had worked out fairly quickly the week prior. Most students had done pre-lab work, so it went even more quickly for them. The longest group only took 2 hours, and as students finished, they headed out one at a time.

Since lab got out early, Suri and Alexandra decided to go home, and Dom and I went to the JCI office to try to figure out where the printing office for JCI actually was. We were told that there were no assistants available to take us there, but that it was "the second or third yellow building on the second floor".

We decided to go home for a bit, Dom going to get some food beforehand, and I grabbed my bike from campus to take it back to the apartment. I got some work done with the wifi in the apartment, ate my leftovers, and at around 6:45, I pedaled like a maniac to make it on time for the 7 pm lecture. Wei Wei had had digital design in the morning to cover the concepts before lab, so it turned out that the lecture was semiconductor physics. He was covering capacitors, which I had covered the previous semester in physics 2, so I paid a bit of attention, but mostly worked on reading philosophy while sitting there. After class, I walked back with the others, and had some of the Skyline mac and cheese that Jessica had made the night before, as well as some Doritos, since I felt like I deserved comfort food.

I set my alarm for 1 am so I could get up and option for summer classes back at UC before the good ones were taken, but I overslept a bit, getting up closer to 3. Fortunately, all the classes I wanted were still open.

Wednesday morning started with reviewing a problem that I had to teach in heat transfer later, as well as going to statics and dynamics. Since I had left my bike on campus, I had to hurry up and walk to class. Somehow Nick and I still beat Will though, who left the apartment on a bike at the same time as me. Before going into class, I paused a few moments to admire the outside architecture of the building that I was walking around on. Nick had a very deep, gravely voice because he was sick, and he joked that he was Batman...which went over the second year students' heads, unfortunately.

 During statics, I received a new powerpoint from the previous week, and I had to go through it, and work on a problem that I ended up teaching to the class as well. I was pleasantly surprised at how well I've been doing with both teaching and remembering the material. After statics, I went outside to practice French with my friend through messaging back and forth (because he is a native French speaker, and apparently Wednesdays are our French speaking days now). The sunshine outside was uncommon, and amazing. I even took my coat off for a bit to enjoy the nice weather.

Before going to lunch, I met a girl named Heather, who asked if I was a foreign exchange student. I told her about our program, and she said it was nice to meet me. Getting to the cafeteria, dismounting my bike, I ran into her again, and we exchanged Wechats.

 For lunch, I had a variety of dishes, that were on a line of pre cooked dishes. You picked out the ones you wanted, and they put it on a plate for you. Each dish had a specific cost, and you scanned your card to reflect that. Even so, I got three things (an orange chicken patty, sweet potatoes, and potatoes with sausage) as well as rice, for 10.5 yuan. Normally I don't eat much, so I was surprised when I scarfed down my food ravenously.

 After lunch, I hopped on the bus to Campus A to go to Heat Transfer. I handed back homeworks to the students, and again, they found an error...but this time, it was entirely the answer key's fault. I vowed to give back students the points they deserved, but I didn't have to scan them in again, thank goodness.

Following Heat Transfer, we had a meeting on Campus D at 5:30, so I took Pablo with me to catch the bus to the other campus. We caught sight of Prof Wei Wei, Suri, Alexandra, and Robert in the line, and hopped in there with them. We were discussing our plans for the weekend, including seeing the new Wolverine movie, and showing the Chinese TAs Casa Maya. I had invited the Pakistani guys I mentioned before, but only one of them could make it.

After we got to campus, Wei Wei wandered off somewhere, and the rest of us made our way toward the meeting room. We saw a line of flags, and looked to see if all of our flags (Ecuador, China, and the US) were there. We found two out of three, and gladly took pictures. Right after we took it, a guy walked by with an American flag bandanna on his mouth, and we joked about getting a picture with him.

We waited for the others to show up, and at 5:30, still missing Sean, we started the meeting. It turned out that Sean was at the gym, and showed up about 15 minutes after someone messaged him. Wei Wei was our new supervisor, as Greg wasn't able to make it back this semester, and he ran meetings differently than Greg as well. Greg wanted us to have individual points to say at each meeting, and Wei Wei had his own agenda, and asked others for their opinions on each thing. We talked about grading issues, including ABET and its confusing qualifications, including the need to scan papers for the classes, apartment issues (of which we identified many things to buy/fix), phones and selling them back to the program (which Wei Wei informed us was no longer necessary, as the next TAs would be receiving phones.....to our slight dismay), and prerequisites for the 4th year students, reimbursements for items bought/having the program buy things for us, and grading in general (including our 4th year missing student). When we were discussing apartment issues, the Chinese TAs headed out to catch the bus, and Pablo decided to get a taxi and get reimbursed for it. All in all, the people who lived across town decided to call into the meeting next week, and save a trip.

Heading out, Sean and Nick went to get food, Dom went off somewhere else, and Jessica and I headed home. Walking back, we saw something flying erratically, and we realized it was a bat. Looking at it strangely, I realized that the poor thing had gotten up a bit early, and was looking for insects for its dinner. I joked that Nick should be here to see it, since he was the new Batman, hinting at a missed opportunity. Continuing on, I was stunned when something flew through the tree branches, past my face, brushing my nose. Taking a few seconds to recuperate, I realized that it was the bat! I kidded that I had been chosen as Batgirl, but I was still somewhat stunned by the close encounter.

Getting home, I was ravenous, so I fixed myself an omelet for dinner, heading to sleep soon after.

Thursday morning, I had decided to go to Prob and Stats to get a sense of what I would have next semester when I take the class. Will said that they were already several chapters ahead, but that I was welcome to sit in. I didn't know many of the formulas, but lots of it was common sense, and simple calculations, so I caught on quickly.

After class, we headed to get something to eat. There was a noodle place that Jessica, Nick, and Will had looked for the other day and hadn't found, so we went there. The line was horrendous though, so we went a few doors down, and we saw some of our students eating at another noodle place, so we figured it was good. Will ordered for us, two non spicy bean noodle dishes for Jessica and I, and spicy for himself and Nick. Jessica ordered some beef for her meal, which she split with me.

Will taught us some of the characters, using his laser pointer to point out what things on the wall meant. When it came time to pay, I didn't have change to pay Will back, but I figured I would give it back to him later.

 Jessica and Will both went to the bus stop to go home, and Nick and I stuck around for our respective office hours (me for Heat Transfer, and him for Prob and Stats), having confirmed that our 4th year students were indeed free at that time. Thursday afternoons were times off of classes for clubs or other meetings on Campus A, and for most of CQU in general. We both wanted something sweet for our dessert, so we decided to go to D Café to get a mocha for Nick, and a tiramisu to go for me. The office had changed, because apparently, there was going to be disclipinary action in the room next door and they didn't want noise near it (as if office hours make a lot of noise....)

We got to the room, and found out it was a classroom, and lots of people were studying. Put off by it, I messaged Pablo to tell him, and Nick and I sat on a bench outside to wait until it was closer to the time of the office hour. To pass the time, I organized homework grade spreadsheets, and Nick taught me how to use the charts for Prob and Stats that I was confused about. Dom even showed up, which surprised me, until I realized he had mentioned he was going to be on this side of the city today. We chatted for a bit, and then we went into the room, finding that Pablo was already in there. Nick realized that no one would be there today for Prob and Stats help due to the heat transfer test, and decided to head home with Dom after Dom finished talking to Pablo.

Dainty tiramisu

I was happy that about 5 students came in to look at homework solutions so that they could study more for the exam they had the next day. They were a bit shocked that they weren't allowed to take pictures (a rule from UC, high above us), but started writing down what they needed in order to do better. There were a couple questions (only one about grading), and when I successfully answered a conceptual question, I felt extremely proud of myself for being able to understand a fourth year class without 1. having taken most of the prereqs for it yet or 2. having studied very much for it. I realized I had been picking up more concepts than I thought simply by taking notes. I stayed longer than necessary, working on things, and answering more questions until I went to catch the bus. (And walking out, I found out that I was going to have to go to Heat Transfer to proctor the test and stay for the lecture afterwards rather than Models lab in the morning, which surprised me a bit!)

After getting home, I finished my noodles, and worked a little bit on learning the basics of Java, another coding language. The guys were going to watch the movie Sausage Party in their apartment with Sean, and Jessica and I decided to go. I was a bit shocked at how crude it was (every racial, ethnic, and sexual joke you can think of was most likely in that movie), but that did explain its R rating. The movie was having trouble buffering, which wasn't a shock, and we spent the rest of the time waiting exchanging memes, so it was a great time, especially with Nick's still deep voice.

Afterwards, it was about 10 pm, and I went back to the apartment to catch some zzzzs, before having to get up at 6 am the next morning to head to Heat Transfer.

-Zoe